Carmel Harrington, author of 'The Nowhere Girls' - Bestselling writer discusses leaving it late, training to improve, and the novel that changed her planning

Carmel Harrington is an Irish bestselling author of 13 novels. Her latests, 'The Stolen Child', was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and won Good Housekeeping's 'Good Books Autumn Collection'. She left it late to start. After wanting to be an author for so long, it was a conversation with her husband, and a dream for her daughter, that pushed her to start. She's written family dramas, a tie-in with the hit TV show, 'Cold Feet', and has now switched to straight-up thrillers. Her new novel, 'The Nowhere Girls', tells the story of two children abandoned at a train station, and the investigative journalist 30 years later, who wants to find out where they ended up. It was inspired by a news-piece, which led her to wonder... 'what if this happened in Ireland, where everyone knows everyone?' We talk about her path to publication, also why she started off with no idea at all, and how switching genre has changed her writing. You can hear about her love of notebooks, her ego-wall, and how she's trained to get better. Get a copy of 'The Nowhere Girls' - uk.bookshop.org/shop/writersroutine Support the show - patreon.com/writersroutine ko-fi.com/writersroutine

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Carmel Harrington, author of 'The Nowhere Girls' - Bestselling writer discusses leaving it late, training to improve, and the novel that changed her planning is an episode from Writer's Routine by Dan Simpson.

This episode is 54:23 long.

This episode was published on Mar 20, 2026.

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