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Keith Long's avatar

How do you write so many high quality stories so fast? ? — Where do you find the time lol you’ve got a great book currently coming out, you just finished the story (name escapes me) about the woman and the hand, and now this killer tale. Well done. I love seeing new Delaney stuff in my inbox

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Hanna Delaney's avatar

Haha, I don't know. I had a little sprout of an idea for this when I was doing some more Muldoon research—looking at Irish folklore. The Dullahan (headless faerie) really caught my attention and I loved the old stories. The Grand National is held here in early April, and it all just kind of came together. It was cooking in the back burner for a week and I wrote it down ASAP. I wasn't going to enter this round , simply because I've had a lot of deadlines to get through and as you so rightly pointed out, another book. But this one was short and sweet. It was actually Sean McDonnell asking who was entering that made me think "hmm, should I?"

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WS Ribelin's avatar

This brought to mind Dick Francis, who wrote about jockeys and horse racing--great job!

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Hanna Delaney's avatar

Ah, thank you so much. I'm glad you could picture that.

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Stephen Duffy's avatar

Great story! Felt like I had a betting slip in my hand reading that commentary paragraph ("Come on, The Irish King!") 😆💚

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Hanna Delaney's avatar

Thank you. Most times I visited my Nan the racing would be on, so it was rattling around back in the idea jar 😄I remember thinking 'hm, probably wouldn't sound right if I narrated' but then in The Grand National this month they had their first female commentator. Funny.

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Evelyn K. Brunswick's avatar

I must've missed this when you first posted it. I loved it. I didn't find it scary at all but a lot of 'horror' stories are more fun than scary (like Lovecraft - I simply can't ever find HPL scary in the slightest, mainly because of his ridiculous OTT language).

This one was great because it was sort of ironic, especially the last line about Comeuppance.

I was also wondering whether you were going to surreptitiously insert something about 'sculpture' in there, given the dead bloke's name.

I'm betting (lol) you had a wry smile on your face when you wrote this one...

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Wendy Cockcroft's avatar

This is absolutely brilliant!

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Liz Zimmers's avatar

Oh my god! What a ride! I’m heartbroken over The Irish King, but I guess Jim got just what he bought and paid for. Tremendous, breathless story!

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Hanna Delaney's avatar

I know, I know. King is in horse heaven though. Little girls are feeding him apples and he has miles and miles to gallop around with. He's a happy boy.

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Hanna Delaney's avatar

Thank you, Liz. Pressed go before I was ready to finish 😂 thank you for reading.

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