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By Pamela Clare

I've never been to Ireland. Although both sides of my family claim their heritage from the Emerald Isle, only my brother has had the good fortune to visit and live there. So when I decided to set Carnal Gift, my second novel, in 1754 Ireland, I started my research by pillaging my brother's book collection. With a master's degree from the University of Dublin in Irish-Anglo literature, he had a lot for me to choose from.

"This isn't going to be 'Irish' like an Irish Spring or Lucky Charms commercial, is it?" he asked as I carted an armload of books to my car.

"No," said I. Nor was it going to feature Americanized ideas about Ireland derived from our celebration of St. Paddy's Day—shamrocks, leprechauns, green beer.I wanted this book, a sequel to Sweet Release, my first novel, to be about the real Ireland, the Ireland that few Irish-Americans know.

So I read Irish plays, Irish histories, books about Irish myths and Irish folk medicine, pored over historical maps and weather charts. I found books about the history of Irish clothing and underwear—yes, underwear—and read those, too. I tried to absorb the culture in any way I could.

One of the biggest aids to my research was a collection of letters between a father and daughter that dated to 1748, just a few years prior to the opening of Carnal Gift. Although the authors of the letters were Protestant and more English than Irish, their letters contained colorful references to servants and other lower-class Irishmen and women, including descriptions of their speech. I read them all, and I took copious notes.

By the time I'd finished this crash course in Irish history and culture, I'd learned many things that were completely new to me. As strange as it feels to say now, I didn't know a thing about the laws of the Penal Era, which more or less made it a crime to be Catholic. Under the Penal laws, Catholic priests were banished under penalty of death. Catholics could not hold state jobs, attend universities or send their children to school. Catholic marriages were declared null and void, and births and deaths were not recorded. Catholics caught celebrating Mass outdoors or in a cowshed—the churches had been confiscated by the Church of England—could be punished. Although these laws were not uniformly enforced, the result was a kind of powerlessness and poverty that no American can imagine. I found myself wondering what horrors my ancestors might have experienced—starvation, beatings, imprisonment, deportation, the grinding misery of utter poverty.

From this research, grew my heroine, Bríghid Ní Maelsechnaill, and her brothers, even-tempered Fionn and the young raparee Ruaidhrí. The hero, Jamie Blakewell, a Sasanach from the American colonies, had been sitting in the wings waiting for his chance to shine since I'd finished Sweet Release, in which he'd been a little boy.

At this point, I was ready to write but for one thing: I wanted Gaelic in the story. Though I'm bilingual, speaking English and Danish, this book wasn't set during the Viking era, and I don't speak one word of Gaeilge. (OK, maybe one word.)

I managed to get in touch with Mick Bolger, lead singer from Denver's Colcannon, and Mick agreed to help translate passages into Gaelic. Soon, I was hard at work writing, listening to tunes by Colcannon, Altan, and Paul Brady to help transport my imagination to a place I've never been. Every so often I would send Mick an e-mail asking him how to say this or that or perhaps asking him to come up with some scathing insult or words of endearment. Mick's helpful and humorous responses were one of the best parts about working on the book.

They say that writing your second novel is one of the greatest challenges of being an author. You have as long as you like to write your first book, but the second is generally written under contract and on deadline. And although the first is written mostly to please yourself, your second is probably written with an agent and an editor waiting in the wings and expecting great things, which, thanks to your initial success, you're now sure you cannot deliver. The result—flagging confidence, nervousness, writer's block, insomnia, panic, insanity—is called Second Book Syndrome. And I had it bad.

But one problem I never had was getting in touch with my characters. For a year, they lived in my mind, talking to each other, telling me stories. And as their lives unfolded, they became real to me, and I lost myself in the book.

And I do mean lost.

One night as I was busy writing, the phone rang. I answered, my eyes still on the computer screen.

"Hi, Pamela." It was a man, and he had an Irish accent.

My first thought was that my novel had somehow found a way to call me. I pulled the phone away from my ear, stared at it in wonderment, before I realized a real, live person was on the other line. It turned out to be an Irish acquaintance, not my novel after all.

Click here for more about Pamela Clare.

Earth to Pamela.

In the end, the hardest part about writing Carnal Gift was the ending, not because it was difficult in and of itself, but because I'd grown so fond of Jamie, Bríghid, Fionn, Ruaidhrí and Ireland itself that I didn't want to say farewell. But the pain of saying farewell has long been a part of Irish culture, as well, and as I finished the book, I tried to pour in all of that sweet longing that so many millions of Irish emigrants felt as they watched their homeland disappear behind the horizon.

The book represents a year of my life, a year of hard work that was both challenging and, thanks to Mick and my characters, lots of fun. As for missing Jamie, Bríghid and her brothers, I have just one word: sequel.

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