Sometimes, it seems all the world's a writer. Young, old and soon-to-be published writers came out in force to applaud Catherine Dunne on her fourth book, Another Kind of Life, which was launched by journalist Justine McCarthy this week in Eason, Hanna's Bookshop on Dawson Street, Dublin.
Chris Binchy, nephew of the great Maeve Binchy, will have his first novel, The Very Man, published by Macmillan in June. Turning Turtle, by Denise Deegan, which she says is about "balancing your life as a young mother", will be out next month, published by Tivoli, the new Gill & Macmillan imprint.
Sarah Webb's last book, Something to Talk About, is due out in paperback in June, while Always the Bridesmaid, which has just gone on sale in the UK is already number one in the in the Bookseller's Heat-Seekers Chart, where the fastest selling books from new talent are monitored.
Adrian White, a Dublin-based Easons book buyer, was beaming having just signed a two-book deal with Penguin.
Crime writer Julie Parsons, who was there with her daughter, Harriet, says her latest book, The Guilty Heart, is due out in mid-April. The psychological thriller is once again set in Dún Laoghaire, which has become the murder capital of Ireland in her fiction.
Off the Wall, the latest poetry anthology from Niall MacMonagle, the English teacher at Wesley College, who was responsible for the highly successful Lifelines anthology some years ago, was present at the launch also.
Dunne, who taught in Greendale Community School, alongside writers Roddy Doyle (who also attended) and Paul Mercier, began writing "for my own entertainment". She left her job as a teacher of English and Spanish in 1995 "when writing became an obsession". Her first book, In the Beginning, published in 1997, became an international bestseller, and was short-listed for the Italian Bookseller's Prize, the Bancarella.
Another Kind of Life, which has already sold more than 50,000 copies in Italy, where Dunne is very well known, was inspired by the story of Dunne's own grandmother, Elizabeth Delaney, and the stories told by Dunne's father, Charlie MacAlister, about his mother and growing up in Holywood, Co Down.