Brain injury to children’s author shows fact stranger than fiction
When John Hearne fell on a beach while running backwards during a family holiday in Sligo a few years ago, his children thought it was funny. So did he. Until a few days later, when he realised he had injured his brain. It took him several years to reclaim his normal life – and he struggles with some tasks – but with professional and family support, John has rebuilt his life. And this Friday night, his latest children’s book, Someone’s Being Messing with Reality, will be launched in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop.
John had begun working on the story before the accident, and in a twist that proves fact is stranger than fiction, it featured a boy who had acquired a brain injury.
The Wexford-born children’s author who lives in Mervue in Galway City, had previously worked as an economist in Dublin before moving to Galway in 1999 after his wife, Marie, got a job at the then GMIT.
“For the first month, I was looking out the window at the rain,” he recalls with a laugh. Having only lived on the East coast until then, it shocked him.
That behind him, John decided to pursue freelance journalism, doing bits and pieces of everything” for publications, including daily and weekend newspapers.
His economic background was a strength as it allowed him to carve out a niche, specialising in business and financial issues.
“I still do a Friday consumer column for the Irish Examiner,” says John, who since turned his talents to children’s fiction.
He has also worked in ghost-writing and editing for years, “mostly for business people”. Among them is former All-Ireland winning Armagh footballer Enda McNulty, now a sports psychologist and coach.
John has a keen eye for a story and had always loved writing fiction.
“Ever since I was a child, I was making up stories,” he says, as he prepares for the official launch of Someone’s Being Messing with Reality. However, he quit fiction in his 20s, “because I felt I wasn’t any good”. But the desire wouldn’t go away.
“I came back to it, because it’s an itch you have to scratch,” he explains. “If there’s a story in you, it has to come out.”
He has written short stories, one of which was nominated for an award, but he was drawn to children’s books because “those were the ideas that suggested themselves to me” and “I had so much fun with children’s fiction, I decided to stick with it”.
Pictured: Author John Hearne. Photo: Brian Harding.