Celestial Land and Sea

Nine years after moving from Belfast to London, Grace Byrne wonders whether or not she made the right decision. She finds little satisfaction in working for the Anchor news team, and the eternal bitterness of her boss doesn’t make it any easier. The only positive thing about being stuck in the office every day is Andy, with whom she has been smitten since first joining the Anchor team. After a less than comfortable conversation with her boss’s assistant, Grace returns to her flat in Hampstead contemplating whether she herself might be the real cause of her dissatisfaction.

Her modest flat is her sanctuary; yet when Grace returns home exhausted on a particularly blustery evening, she discovers a door in her home that she’s certain she has never seen before. Rife with curiosity, she opens the door, takes one tentative step, and falls into an abyss, leaving behind her home in Hampstead and landing inside a pirate ship on Clare Island, Mayo.

As Grace begins to unravel what has happened to her, she learns that she must now walk in the boots of Gráinne O’Malley, the notorious sixteenth-century female Irish pirate. At first, the reasons for this trans-migration and identity exchange are not clear, but Grace accepts her mission to follow in Gráinne’s footsteps.

Cast into the drama of a revolt against Queen Elizabeth I, Grace finds her courage, her inherent sense of purpose, her distant heritage, her present-day raison d’etre, and of course love. Celestial Land and Sea transports readers to the generational source of our shared heritage, and of our recurring challenges and our transcendent triumphs.

To echo the words of Romantic poet Lord Byron, ＂If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.＂

This is the quote by which Amy McLean abides. Although she spent her childhood scribbling out short stories, it wasn’t until she began studying English Literature at the University of Sunderland that she realised her dependence on writing. In 2014 she graduated with a first-class degree and a published dissertation about Lord Byron.

The niece of a spiritual messenger, Amy often focuses on the Spiritworld in her writing. Her debut novel Walk On explored the concept of the guardian angel, and she frequently calls upon parallel timelines between past and present, heaven and earth.

Spending her childhood between her Aberdeen birth town and the North East of England, Amy developed a taste for travel at a young age. Curiosity one day led her to Hampstead, and from then she never looked back. The area now plays a large role in her life as she strives to capture the magic of NW3 and its rich history and culture.

When she’s not writing or visiting Hampstead, Amy can be found indulging in the cinematic careers of Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton, uploading videos on YouTube, and dangling toy mice for Medora the cat.