Tom seals second book deal with US publisher

“IT’S been going brilliantly so far. Better than I could ever have imagined,” beams Saggart author Tom McAndrew.

Tom recently secured a three-book deal with a US publisher.

His books feature a witty Irish detective called Shamie Doocey who begins experiencing sight problems just as he is assigned his first big case where he has to investigate the disappearance of a crime writer’s wife.

Since the first instalment of the planned trilogy launched, ‘Doocey Half-Sees Whodunnit’, he has been doing many media interviews.

He was recently on Newstalk FM, on the Seán Moncrieff show, talking about the book. Journalists have been interested in hearing about how Tom’s sight challenges inspired him to write about a detective who had bad sight.

They have praised how he does not let his sight challenges hold him back and that he still manages to see the funny side of life.

Alongside all the media interest, Tom has received “great” local support from neighbours and friends in Saggart and the wider Citywest and Tallaght communities.

“My local post office even stuck up a poster of the previous article The Echo carried about me,” he exclaims.

Aishling, Rachel and Lisa, who work in the post office, have all read the book and say they “really enjoyed it”.

Their only criticism was that Tom needed to put in even more “juicy bits”. “I told them I’ll try to do this in the second book.”

Tom is currently organising with Tallaght Library to do a talk about his book and how he came to be published.

He hopes his story might encourage other up-and-coming writers from the area to keep on going in pursuing their writing dreams.

He has also received great support from where he grew up in Belmullet in County Mayo. He had a book launch in the local bookshop, Careys, and they ran out of books for people.

The book has also been selling very well online. As of writing, it is number two in its category on Amazon.ie, which Tom “can’t believe. I was really delighted to see this considering the millions of books available to buy on Amazon.”

Tom has even had interest from TV production companies about adapting the book for television.

He would like to thank everybody who has supported him; for more information about Tom and his book, visit TomMcAndrewWriter.