Letterbox Archives - Page 2 of 3

Special Edition: London Book Fair, Part 1/3

By Helen WalshPosted on April 26, 2023Posted in LetterboxTagged helen walsh, London Book Fair, publishing, travel, writing advice, writing life

I’ve returned from a fascinating week in London in which I stayed in Shepherds Bush, a dynamic area west of Kensington I’d never really visited except to go to meetings at the BBC. My hotel was oddly fascinating. My room triggered an unfortunate muscle memory of Super 8 Motels from US road trips; the breakfast area was filled with publishing types and in the evenings hordes of men speaking Russian, often sporting loud gold jewellery, occupied the main floor […]

Origin Stories + London Book Fair + Book & Film RECs.

By Helen WalshPosted on April 11, 2023Posted in LetterboxTagged agents, family, helen walsh, publishing, scottish, travel

When my sisters and I were bored or listless, depressed or anguished, our mother would inevitably say, ‘you need a project.’ It set our teeth on end. Did she not understand the nature of heartache? The cruel injustice of the world that handed things to other people – whether that was a loving partner, a paying job, good health or the opportunity to chase your dreams – and denied it to you? We wanted to wallow in […]

Life of a Queen

By Helen WalshPosted on January 23, 2023Posted in LetterboxTagged book clubs, helen walsh, Queen Mary, Sundance, travel, writing life

Hello stranger. It’s been a while. While the Prince Harry memoir Spare breaks bestselling records, and British journalists sneer yet gobble up every available column inch to denounce it (apparently despising the media pretty much guarantees they despise you back. . .), I’m here to talk about the Queen. And I don’t mean Elizabeth II. Last May, we took a transatlantic crossing between New York and Southampton, England on the Queen Mary 2, decades after my parents and three older […]

Home Again, Dorothy.

By Helen WalshPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in LetterboxTagged Canada, Cork, Dublin, Home, Italy, Lesvos, Newfoundland, pull focus, Shadow Life, Thanksgiving, travel

Ultimately, I believe home is found in comfort and familiarity. Today, I celebrate all my ancestors who came before, the generations that will come after, and most importantly, the loved ones who walk beside me in this life.

Want To Join Me In Dublin’s Fair City?

By Helen WalshPosted on June 24, 2022Posted in LetterboxTagged city, discovery, Dublin, events, Film Festival, helen walsh, Hodges Figgis, Ireland, publishing, pull focus, thrillers, travel

The Dublin book launch of Pull Focus, postponed last fall due to Ireland’s strict Covid lockdowns, has been rescheduled for July 12th. I’m entirely delighted. As readers of this newsletter know, I hold dual Canadian and Irish citizenship, and have spent a lot of time in Ireland over the years, visiting friends and family (and my father’s grave, who’s buried in his hometown of Mallow alongside my grandparents). I also partially wrote Pull Focus during two residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie at Annaghmakerrig, […]

Hola, City of Angels 😎 🌴

By Helen WalshPosted on May 2, 2022Posted in LetterboxTagged city, Diesel Books, Getty, helen walsh, los angeles, publishing, pull focus, santa monica, thrillers, travel, venice beach

Well, that was fun. Meet ‘The Jane’ – a gin, cucumber juice, fennel-infused SoCal kind of cocktail, created by Jonathan the mixologist at Piccolo Santa Monica where I held my long Covid re-scheduled City of Angels (aka, Los Angeles) book launch. A drink as feisty and original as her protagonist namesake. It was wonderful to be back in LA, a city where I previously worked. Years ago, during a two-year run on a crazy entertainment project, I’d fly […]

The Cozy Mystery of Spirited Ex-Pats & Other Happenings

By Helen WalshPosted on March 22, 2022Posted in LetterboxTagged britbox, events, france, helen walsh, provence, pull focus, television, thrillers, travel, tv

Recently, we watched the first episode of Murder in Provence, a cozy mystery series produced by ITV, airing on BritBox. A Cozy Mystery Worth Watching Set in Aix-en-Provence, France, the scenery will leave you drooling, nose pressed against the television, as cars wind through breathtaking lavender fields, or pull up in front of 16th-century chateaus. Then there’s the restaurant scenes where middle-aged characters (yay!) drink rosé and eat charcuterie during long lunchtime meetings, while the sun beams beatifically on the […]

Want To Get Away? Try The Turquoise Perfection of Exuma

By Helen WalshPosted on January 24, 2022Posted in LetterboxTagged exuma, helen walsh, pull focus, thrillers, travel

The Exumas are a chain of 365 cays over 130 miles in The Bahamas, starting thirty miles southeast of New Providence. Great Exuma, at 60 kilometres long, is the largest and most populated island (about 7,000). Much of the beaches and sea in the area are preserved by the government under the Exuma National Land and Sea Park, protecting underwater limestone and coral reefs, drop-offs, blue holes, caves, and marine life. I snapped this picture […]

When Is Life Stranger Than Fiction? Let’s Discuss…

By Helen WalshPosted on November 29, 2021Posted in LetterboxTagged helen walsh, publishing, pull focus, thrillers

Recently I wrote about Anthony Broadwater, a man convicted of the rape of bestselling author Alice Sebold, the experience of which she wrote about in her celebrated 1999 memoir, Lucky, was exonerated. And in a stranger-than-fiction twist, the Executive Producer of the Netflix film adaptation of Lucky played a supporting role in the exoneration before he himself was fired from the production for raising questions. In a plot twist worthy of an Oscar, the project was then subsequently killed, […]

Book Birthday (🎂🥳) + Belfast

By Helen WalshPosted on September 13, 2021Posted in Letterbox

Two years after I signed the publishing contract for Pull Focus, and 10 years after I wrote the first few pages, my book officially published last week. I’m grateful to everyone’s enthusiasm in the early reviews of the book, in sending comments, in entering the swag giveaway contest and blogging about it, and of course, to my publishing and publicity teams. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a small army of bibliophiles to […]