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In a time when each week seems to brings news of yet another writer clinching a large deal with lots of noughts after the lead figure on the cheque, it is easy to not appreciate the hard work of the journeyman writer working for overdue recognition.

Some weeks bring good news and some not so good for those writers outside the ranks of young women authors who are currently enjoying home and international success. True to form, for Kildare writer Martin Malone there was good news and bad news in recent months.

The Ides of March brought mixed fortunes to the Malone door. March 15 was his silver wedding anniversary to Bernadette and the day he heard he had won the Francis Mac Manus RTE radio short story competition for a story written last year.

Less happily, just a few days previously, he had been told his novel, The Broken Cedar, had not made the shortlist for the largest single monetary prize in the world. So, the double celebration brought mixed emotions for the former military policeman turned author.

The Impac Award offers a single prize to the winning book. But apart from the cash in hand, there is the prestige of winning an international competition which has public libraries as the nominating bodies. Titles are nominated solely on the basis of high literary merit. First awarded in 1996, the winning books ever since have become part of the IMPAC collection. For an Irish writer, it is international recognition emanating from his own capital city.

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was established by Dublin City Civic Charter in 1994. It arose from an initiative of Dublin Corporation on the instigation of the then Lord Mayor, Alderman Gay Mitchell.

In 1996, David Malouf was announced first winner with Remembering Babylon. The award was presented by Jeffrey Archer, then riding high in both the political world and in the world of letters before police escorted him to a spell in jail for perjury.

Malone’s third published book, The Broken Cedar was joined on the International Impac Dublin Literary Award longlist by fellow Irish writers, Colm McCann (The Dancer) and Gerard Donovan (Schopenhauer’s Telescope). A total of 147 titles were in contention for the €100,000 award. None of the Irish three made the final ten. The winner will be announced on June 15 in Dublin.

Putting a brave face on his disappointment, Malone said: “I kept the fingers crossed and said a few prayers. I have to say I was not disappointed that I did not make the shortlist; these things come and go; and it’s down to the judges in the end.”

Still, a placing in the top ten shortlist, if not an outright win, would have been the boost he needed to receive wider recognition for his work. As it was, he had heard nothing about his nomination from his publisher before he took a call from his agent Faith O’Grady to say he was long listed. “It was the first I had heard of it. Then I got some literature in the post from the publisher, who had not even told me the book was nominated.”

Earlier in the year the book was featured on the Marian Finucane programme on RTÉ Radio 1 as a reading club choice. What was unusual was that Malone was invited to appear unexpectedly on the live broadcast when the members had finished discussing The Broken Cedar and to address points raised in the discussion.

However, in a classic case of logistics missing a marketing opportunity, the British publishers had sent just 350 copies of the book to bookshops in Ireland when the broadcast was heard by some 350,000 adults. “The show got a great reaction; but the book was filtering in at the time. Simon & Schuster said they had sent 350 books over for the whole country. It wasn’t available in all of the shops if somebody went to buy it,” said Malone

As with many writers writing on a subject they know well, he is often asked if his writing is about himself. Having served for many years in the Defence Forces as a military policeman and having experienced several tours of service overseas on UN duties; not surprisingly, many of his stories are touched by the experience of military life.

He said: “People ask: ‘Is this real, did this happen to you?’ When you are writing human interest stories some of what you are writing about has happened to people. But they are not about me. We are not as unique as we think we are.”

Indeed, Malone’s powerful writing in an earlier novel, After Kafra, which deals with post traumatic stress syndrome, drew an unexpected response from a former military policeman who had served in Lebanon in the same areas as Malone.

“I had a 14-page letter from a chap living in Wales who thought I was writing about him. Our paths would have crossed but we would never have spoken. He had left the army. He had dealt with some horrific situations during his service in the Irish army and was suffering, and did not know he had this thing,” said Malone.

In yet another trying development for the author, RTE television commissioned Malone to script After Kafra for television but, to his obvious frustration, the finished playscript went straight to the archives; “They develop more than they produce,” he said. “They paid me for it; so I can’t really complain; but I did complain at the time. I would prefer to write novels; but if somebody is going to cannibalise my book to meet a development budget, I want to do it; not somebody else. In any case, I am now looking at turning it into a play for the theatre and possibly touring it during a summer season.”

Malone is determined to be heard.

“I like to put a message in that there is something there. The Broken Cedar is about standing back and letting events overtake you; and we are guilty of that sometimes in different areas of life. And then when the main character does decide to do something about it; he makes a complete balls of it, and this is what we are all afraid of doing. I like to have some kind of spiritual thought or some kind of message. That comes across anyway if you are writing about characters who are real people and they will have some degree of spirituality and caring about different things as a lot of people do. The material is all around. The publishing thing is so difficult,” he said.

In addition to After Kafra and The Broken Cedar, Malone wrote the novel Us and many winning short stories. In 2001 Us won the John B Keane award in the Sunday Independent and was shortlisted for the Kerry Irish Fiction Award. Last year he won a major prize in Killarney, and this year the radio short story competition, all for his shorter fiction.

But, to begin with, his first story was published in 1989 in Woman’s Way and was about a young boy visiting his grandmother in hospital who is trying to back a horse from her hospital bed. Rough and Tumble was the title of the story and the name of a horse she had backed because she felt rough and tumble. “It didn’t win anyway,” said Malone as if the outcome of the race had been a surprise to him, the author.

He subsequently won the annual Ireland’s Eye short story competition; and won the Fallen Leaves campus radio competition and did well in local competitions in Athlone and Westport; but, tiring of the uphill task, had given up on writing and was serving in Lebanon in 1996 when a BBC producer rang the camp to say she wanted to develop a story he had submitted for broadcast. “She was a page and a half short and wanted more material,” he said. “I was up half the night trying to get a page and a half in; but she broadcast it and that brought me back into writing.”

He sold two more stories to BBC4 and a dozen stories to RTE following which he was shortlisted twice for the prestigious Hennessy Award for new Irish writing for short stories published in the Sunday Tribune.

By 2004, he had two completed stories to hand and considered what to do with them. In the event, one story won a large prize in a Killarney competition on 2004, and the other won the Francis Mac Manus award in 2005 to break the mould of always being the bridesmaid, hardly ever the bride.

While Malone’s writing career seems to be a work in progress; by now he has well earned his spurs as an author. “After being shortlisted for the Impac I would hope publishers would be more favourable towards my next work. A lot of them don’t seem to like the army theme in my writing.”

Now retired from the army, and back living in his hometown of Kildare, Malone writes full time but carries over a military legacy in his approach to the work ethic.

“Discipline is part of the gift. You need to be able to get to the desk and write even when you don’t want to. I try to write with control and restraint and at the same time try to find substance in what I am saying without beating people over the head with it. If you are writing about real people they will have some degree of spirituality and caring about different things,” he said.

“What I like about writing is that you do not need to have a degree to do it; but when your time is scarce you pick your battles,” he said. Asked to describe his work Malone opts for: “Three quarter literary fiction the other quarter is maybe spiritual.”

Few will doubt Malone’s perseverance and fortitude in his own long battle for recognition as a serious writer with stories to tell.

© Brendan Nolan

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