History

Thank you for visiting RobertGollagher.com.

This site first went live on 24 August 2002. I have just rebuilt it in January 2004.

Apart from the different look and feel, the biggest change is that all three of my novels are now online in full. Previously this was only true of my first novel, The Colour of Sunday Afternoons, whereas only sample chapters from Green Dream and The Street Angel were online.

The other advantage of rebuilding the site is it now conforms to the Strict HTML 4.01 specification. Which means the site should be accessible from a very wide range of browsers and devices, including for example Pocket PCs.

I finished The Colour of Sunday Afternoons in 1998 after working on it sporadically for three and a half years, in between the demands of daily life and several bouts of illness. I am deeply embarrassed now by how bad the writing is (for example I was overly fond of commas, as one literary agent gleefully pointed out) and the tempation to either burn the whole manuscript or waste weeks editing it (when I should be working instead on new material) is still very strong. However quite a few readers told me they really enjoyed the book and some even found its little message inspirational in a modest way. So the book is here online, imperfect and amateurish as it is, for you to enjoy if you will.

By early 1999 when I finished my second book, Green Dream, I had matured considerably as a writer. For a start it only took me seven months to complete the novel, which by coincidence was exactly the same time it would take me to finish The Street Angel later that year. My ability to tell a story, hopefully about a subject which was important and which might actually matter to the reader, had improved greatly. When several readers told me Green Dream reduced them to tears I knew I was finally getting somewhere as a writer.

None of these books have yet been professionally edited and all contain a few typos and oversights which a good editor would remove; if any of the books is ever published through conventional channels that task would then finally be carried out.

I hope you might find that you enjoy at least one of these three novels. Please let me know if you do, as the more feedback I receive the more I will be encouraged to roll up my sleeves and write the next one, which hopefully might be better again than anything I've done till now.

Thank you again for visiting

Robert Gollagher
January 2004
Brisbane