John has a novel way of enjoying his retirement

John has a novel way of enjoying his retirement

27 April 2016

SEAFORDE writer John Orr has released a debut novel on the theme of obsessive love.

Damaged is romantic fiction which follows the life of the main protagonist from poverty to academic achievement — and the love affair which ruined it all.

Spending his working life in the caring industry as well as having been a professional counsellor, John has always been fascinated by people and their relationships between one another. 

In Damaged he looks at the impact a love affair has on the existing relationships in the main character’s life as well as his reaction when it doesn’t end happily ever after. 

John describes Philip Larkin as a great source of inspiration, using Larkin’s premise that ‘everyone is damaged’, as well as drawing upon personal experiences.

“At the beginning of the novel I have quoted ‘This be the Verse’ by Philip Larkin, one of my favourite poets,” he explained.

“As a psychiatric nurse, lecturer and counsellor I have seen and heard much that substantiated Larkin’s claims.”

Discussing the plot of his book, which has a university setting, he said: “I suppose it might be described as a love story, but more correctly it is an obsessive love which becomes very vindictive.

“There are two central characters, the first being the [unnamed] man who is the narrator. He has come from a very damaged background of violence and rejection.

“The female, Siobhan, starts off as his student but they fall for each other, big time.”

But Siobhan also has her own demons to battle as the story unfolds.

Born in Drumaness, John had a happy childhood and assumed he would be working in the local mill but went on to have a varied career as, among others, a nurse, a tutor, a lecturer and a counsellor.

He began working in the Downshire Hospital, studied for a diploma in nursing and has since done everything from working as a tutor at Magee College to achieving a number of degrees.

But in what has turned out to be a busy retirement, the father of six and grandfather of nine has enjoyed developing his “scribblings” into a whole new direction in life.

Last summer he launched his Tales from a Quiet Man — a collection of 33 short stories, dealing with a wide variety of themes from love and hate to murder and nostalgia.

John has met many interesting characters over such a varied life and career and said it was his son who first encouraged him to translate his love of storytelling into a book.

“He put one of my stories on to a web page,” he said. 

“I do not know anything about these things but over four or five weeks it got 12,000 hits.”

He added: “Writing a novel is very different. I must say my preference is for short stories. This one actually started as a short story, then it became a novella, turning into a full novel.”

“There is another book of short stories which will hopefully be published soon.”

John is also working on a book based on a hotel in the west of Ireland.

Damaged, published by Austin Macauley, is available to buy online from Friday.