Dunamanagh man finally gets around to his latest book

WELL-KNOWN Dunamanagh man Niall ‘Barney’ Conway has departed from his usual area of expertise for a newly published book which will be officially launched this Saturday night.

Fittingly – given his decades-long affiliation with the club – ‘Breaking the Habit: The White Lie’ will be unveiled at the Clann na nGael clubrooms with a bucket collection on the evening for Foyle Hospice, a local palliative care service close to Niall’s heart.

While the former Clann na nGael player and chairman is a playwright with a passion for creative writing, this isn’t his usual rodeo.

He co-wrote the history of the GAA in the locale with Danny Devine, evocatively entitled ‘The Prairie Fires of Aughabrack and Dunamanagh’, nearly 15 years ago, and in more recent times created ‘The Lucky Shirt,’ a comedy production detailing Armagh’s All-Ireland winning journey of 2024, adapted from a previous play about Tyrone which never reached the stage.

With ‘Breaking the Habit’, Conway has conjured up something entirely different, explaining that, “this wee book is a bit of a departure for me because most of my plays are sports-based or political satire.

“This one is a bit of a random subject for me – basically there’s an 18-year old girl who travels over to London to a convent, and that’s her chosen career. In year two she’s starting to question it, and she eventually picks up sticks and leaves. The book charts her 12 months in the secular life, the trials and tribulations of that, and in a nutshell, that’s what the book is about.”

The book was by no means an overnight process. He made a start on the project almost two decades ago before other endeavours got in the way.

“I wrote the first draft of the book in about two weekends about 18 years ago, and then I took a bit of a break! I was busy with ‘The Prairie Fires’, Scor, a few plays that I’ve written, but I wanted to finish it. When I picked up where I left off, it took about two or three months and I’m glad it’s done.”

The book will be launched this Saturday evening at 8pm in Dunamanagh and Conway, who plays for the Northern Ireland over-50s soccer team, is hopeful of raising funds for Foyle Hospice.

“We have a very informal book launch, there’ll be a bucket and a pop-up stand for Foyle Hospice and we’ll hopefully raise a few quid,” he said.

“It’s also available on Amazon if people want to buy it – I’m not exactly JK Rowling so I won’t be getting floods of sales but I will donate a pound of every sale to Foyle Hospice. It’s a great help to people in north Tyrone and ever since my father Joe passed away a few years ago, I always had it in my mind to do something.”