Sharon Collins
What if your first love was "The One"?
Thats what happens to Carrie Conway. Its the Summer of 1990. Guns n'Roses are the biggest band in the world. A night out costs less than a tenner and that leaves you change for a bag of chips on the way home.
Carrie's working for pennies in a shop on Grafton Street, under the gimlet eye of a frustrated spinster, and she wants out! She's eighteen years old and bored to tears with her life (and on/off boyfriend Anto who can't seem to take NO for an answer) and on a night out in McGonagles, meets the most spectacularly beautiful man she has ever laid eyes on. His name is Steven Williams. And the best bit is he loves her too!
From that moment on, her life, changes, and how!
Escaping from her dysfunctional home, and the violence of her stepfather Noel, she moves into Steven's house and the relationship intensifies. She is blissfully happy and unaware of the battle that lies ahead.
But why is Carrie's mother so set against the relationship?
And why, when Carrie discovers that she is pregnant, does it start a chain of events that will destroy everything, and everyone in its path?
And who is the man called "The Spider" who's machinations are the cause of everyones troubles, and who won't rest till he has what he wants, at any price?
Chasing Shadows is the story of how love, real love, can survive anything.
Set in Dublin in the early 1990's and filled with a cast of unforgettable charactors, Chasing Shadows will keep you on the edge of your seat till the very last page.
Follow Carrie on her journey, as finds herself, and discovers who she really is, in the most unexpected way.
My name is Sharon Collins, I am a native of that select suburb on the northside, also known as Blanchardstown. I lived there till five years ago, when me and my son, Dylan, upped sticks, and moved to Meath. I now live in splendid isolation with him and my mad moggie, Dignam, who spends the day sleeping, eating, and trying to convince the world that he's actually a rotweiler!
My first attempt at writing a book was when I was nine years old. Unfortunately, the manuscript has not survived. Hardly surprising, since I chose to hide it under the bathroom lino, and it was only unearthed when we were moving house and my father was tiling the floor! Still, it was a start, I suppose.
I have a brother and a sister. She's the cute and artistic one, and he's the tall and musical one. I'm the one who sat in the bedroom all through my teens writing an endless diary and listening to Motorhead records. I can only thank God that the net and blogs weren't invented till I was old enough to have a life. Otherwise, I might have been the first person to be surgically removed from BEBO.
Chasing Shadows is my first book. I wrote it over a year ago and worked like a demon to finish it. Its based around people I might have known and theres a bit of me in there too. (Though I ain't saying where). The music we listened to and the places we went to are central to the plot and I think people who lived the scene back then will like the story.
I am currently halfway through the sequel entitled "Rain" and I hope to be able to publish that in 2009, work, kids and moggies permitting.
The last five minutes always seem like an eternity.
The shop was almost empty, a last couple of students, looking at incense and perfume oils, and the buskers outside playing their last songs of the day.
And then salvation.
The bells of the church up the street begin to peal and we grab bags and run.
Mrs. Chandra barely looks up from the till as the long z-reading comes spewing out, only saying a cursory goodbye as we run out the door.
We three, Nancy, Becky and me, Carrie.
Like synchronized dancers we stop, about four steps out in the street and light up, and then start walking down the street towards the Molly Malone statue.
“Thank God it’s Friday” Nancy exhales a stream of smoke and sighs.
Any other evening we would have turned right leaving the shop and went in for one drink in Bruxelles and headed home when the heat of the evening faded and the crowds on the street had gone. There’s something gorgeous about Dublin on a summer evening. And twilight is my favorite time of the day.
But on Friday nights, it’s different. No matter if your tongue was stuck to the roof of your mouth and you were on your knees dying for a pint, on Friday's you sped home like the hammers of hell were chasing you!
On Friday night we all go home and get glammed up in our best and meet at nine in Bruxelles and go on to McGonagles. On Friday, every girl is Stevie Nicks, and every guy is Axl Rose and, most importantly, a prospective Saturday date.
Friday night is rockers night and it’s not to be missed. Tommy from the Sound Cellar does DJ and he plays the best music around. The air of the nightclub heaves with condensation and pulsates with good, hard, rock music. Tommy has never played Bon Jovi, because he said that any man that wore more lipstick than a woman should be shot, “with balls of his own excrement”, never mind be a rock star.
The smell of leather jackets from “Unique” and “American Classic” in Temple Bar, mingles with the hum of “Lynx” shower gel and aftershave. And as for the girls, they are doused in patchouli oil from the Body Shop and wearing all sorts of Indian frippery from “Chandra’s” and “Damascus”.
The aim of the night is to get a “wear”, Dublinese for a snog, down the side of Trinity and bag a date for Saturday night when no one wants to sit at home counting the stipples on the ceiling.
We push through the hordes of Spanish students, sitting and standing on the pavement outside Mc Donald’s and give the Dice Man a wave as he begins his last trip up the street of the evening.
“G’night Thom” Nancy smiles and he gives her his slow wink.
The buskers are packing up, the guys from Australia who do the Beatles covers are singing “Love me do” in harmony and they wave as we walk by, blonde hair shining in the sun.
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