Eamon Somers was born and grew up in inner-city Dublin. He was a campaigner and spokesperson with Ireland’ fledgling lesbian and gay rights movement (NGF - now NXF) in the early ‘80s, serving three terms as President of the Administrative Council, during the period of the Charles Self and Declan Flynn murders. He is particularly proud of his involvement in the Tuesday Talkshop which met weekly in the Hirschfeld Centre for several years. Somers shares with Oisin Kenny his legacy of community work, the inspiration for his fascinating novel, Dolly Considine’s Hotel, and how crowdfunding has changed his outlook on publishing.

Oisin Kenny

David Norris nominated me to be president [of the NGF] because of what he called my righteous anger. I guess that energises you a lot. I’ve experienced very little [serious homophobia] in my life. was in the building game... and everyone knew was gay there. I’m not saying they were entirely comfortable with it but they put up with it.

(The NGF’s response to AIDS) We met with politicians and talked about condoms to try institute safer sex and we were laughed at by politicians who said you will never get people to wear condoms, you will never get men to wear condoms.

I thought in order for things to really change we had to develop a community. My belief was things like the Tuesday Talkshop would give people an opportunity to develop confidence and talk openly and argue positions. So that was the main purpose of it. That’s why call myself ‘the Transition President’, because it was [moving] from campaigning to more community development.

During Charles Self, it was basically an exercise in allowing [the Gardaí] to indulge their homophobia. They wanted fingerprints, stories, statements, and photographs, and names. It was like something out of the KGB. can certainly remember sitting in Pearse Street Garda Station trying to negotiate with them about what they should and shouldn’t ask. By the time Declan Flynn was killed, the community had changed quite a bit.

I worked in a hotel when I was 18. We would have 200 people signed in every night because, under the licensing law, there was a term called the ‘bona fide travellers’. So the bona fide traveller could drink all night, whereas anyone else would have to go home at 11:30 when the bar closes. So ostensibly the Gardaí and everybody turned a blind eye to the fact that this hotel, which had no bedrooms, had lots and lots of people drinking until three and four in the morning, all notionally staying in the hotel. It was mostly politicians and actors who were there. So guess that’s why it was ignored. They could get away with it.

I always wanted to write something about it and invented this character called Julien, who is a young writer, and he gets a job in the hotel. changed it to 1983 because was interested in that particular period. was made redundant just around that time, Ireland was in a bit of an economic downturn but instead of politicians addressing the downturn, they were pursuing the pro-life constitutional amendment, the Eigth Amendment. So the whole country was talking about this and was diverted from the economic situation.

Younger writers are much more relaxed about self-publishing because it was never frowned upon. Up until the ‘90s or maybe even later anyone who self-published, that was the end, you would never get published by a mainstream publisher. There are thousands more people writing than there would be published. We can publish ourselves directly on Kindle. My difficulty with that is that we need some gatekeepers. The good stuff will be hard to find.

Unbound manage the risk of publication by saying to the author raise the money for us, sell 350 books in advance and then we will publish. [Crowdfunding] has changed everything in my life. It has changed my sleeping patterns, it’s changed my mental state. It’s a whole new skill at least and a whole way of looking at the world. We are 56 percent there, which is quite good.

If you would like to support Eamon Somers in the publication of ‘Dolly Considine’s Hotel’, you can make a donation on the Unbound website page for the novel. Visit www.unbound.com for details.