Neil Randall

Neil Randall is a novelist and short story writer. His debut novel, A Quiet Place to Die (Wild Wolf Publishing), was voted e-thriller Book of the Month for February 2014. His first collection of short stories, Tales of Ordinary Sadness (Knox Robinson Publishing, 2016) received much critical acclaim. One story was short-listed for the prestigious Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2009, another long-listed for the RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition 2015. His latest novel, Bestial Burdens (Cephalopress) was released in April of this year. His shorter fiction and poetry have been published in the UK, US, India, Australia and Canada.

Another Kind of Kindness

It was no secret that I hadn’t seen or spoken to my father for many years prior to his passing. A fact which fascinated a great number of people – literary aficionados, academics, biographers and journalists. You don’t achieve that level of professional success without your personal life coming under intense scrutiny. In that respect, I cannot even begin to recount the number of interviews I have declined over the last decade. But my desire to tell my story now has nothing to do with appeasement, or of trying to set the record straight. Nor will it be sensationalised nonsense penned purely for financial gain. I want to write about my father to try and understand our complex relationship and work out exactly how I feel about him today.