I am a writer based in County Kildare, Ireland, an extraordinary setting and in my view a wonderful backdrop for a writer. I write novels across a range of genres and subjects in order to explore the human condition in all of its variety. I believe our lives are essentially an exercise in restriction, with each one of us revealing different degrees of this restriction. Some of us are born healthier, prettier, more intelligent, driven, socially more adept, or more astute in the transaction of our daily business. Some of these traits can be learned, perhaps honed to a fine degree, while others are fixed from birth. What defines us as people is how we respond to these limitations, making us, for example, happy, resigned, persistent, thoughtful, caring, or regretful. It is our interactions with others, as we seek to influence people or events around us, that not only determines these states of being, yet makes us endlessly entertaining for me a writer.