My unusual timeline from street kid to being published in New York…

My unusual timeline from street kid to being published in New York…

Here’s my unusual timeline from being illiterate to published in New York:

1.     I had severe ADHD as a boy and couldn’t read and write at all. I struggled terribly at school and was called ‘stupid boy’ by one bully teacher. By the time I ran away in 6^th class, I could barely read and write my own name. I never went to high school. Until 2009, I couldn’t read and write anything except my own name.

2.     I was invited on one radio show at local ABC Lismore station – North Coast ABC with Fiona Wylie. There were so many callers, that I was invited on every fortnight. The lovely producer of show Barbara Heggan contacted ABC Books and I was asked to write a book. Because I couldn’t read and write I was given a ghostwriter, Mike Hayes. I also started doing other radio shows around Australia.

3.     This first book was ‘The Dog Man’ and was published by ABC in 2001 and became an instant bestseller.

4.     I wanted to write my next book myself so in 2009, I finally asked my wife Lee to help me learn to read and write. Mainly I wanted to write down all the poetry pouring out of me – but I also wanted to write another dog book on dog language. I get sick of repeating all the same information all the time, over and over – anyone would! – so books are a great way for me to help people with their dogs more efficiently.

5.     I’d developed a lot of new ideas on dog language, so I submitted another manuscript to ABC/ HarperCollins. After a bit of tweaking, this got published as ‘What’s Your Dog Telling You?’ in 2011. Again this became an instant bestseller.

6.     I then wrote ‘What’s Your Dog Teaching You?’ in 2013. This is about the life-lessons dogs have taught me over the years.

7.     Then I had a radio documentary made about my childhood in Ireland for RTE Radio and this gave me the idea for submitting an idea for a memoir overseas. I wrote 3 chapters and sent it off to as many agents as I could and within 3 weeks I had 11 literary agents interested. I chose to sign with Daniel Lazaar of the prestigious Writers House in New York and he managed to sell my book in New York to Skyhorse.

8.     Now I’m plunging headfirst into learning as much as I can about social media and it’s been an exciting learning curve.

9.     I love encouraging other people to write a  book and submit. If I can have a go – so can anyone. Just do your research first. To help get you started, I have 15 great writing tips that can help you get published. These have already appeared in Writing.ie – the extremely popular online Irish writing magazine.

10. It’s pretty mind blowing for someone like me who was incredibly illiterate to even learn how to read a book – let alone have four books published! Especially my life story in New York City! If anyone had told me I’d be saying these things when I was a kid huddled in a hay barn with my dogs, I would have thought they were completely insane. Even more exciting, my book’s available in North America, Canada, Australia and now Brazil. It looks like more foreign rights will be sold soon and I’m also available on Audible.com. I would recommend everyone to have a go at writing a book – but I’ll repeat this again – definitely do your research on the Internet first. There’s so much free advice out there so take advantage of it. I’ll always be grateful to Australia for allowing me to reach my full potential and explore the writer in me – and I hope you’ll be inspired to try your luck at writing a book too!

If you want to see how a fast-paced story moves along – try my memoir, The Boy Who Talked To Dogs. Remember – the first 3 chapters got me offers of a contract from 11 agents in 3 weeks – so it might give you some good ideas. Another good idea is to listen to The Boy Who Talked To Dogs on Audible.com. It will give you a great idea of how much energy and excitement can be exploding out of your energy. This is an actor reading it and he did a brilliant job! I couldn’t switch it off when he started…and it’s inspired me to write even faster next time!