Cecelia Ahern recently celebrated the launch of her latest book, Into the Storm, which just happens to be her 20th book. Remarkably, it came out late last year in the same year that she celebrated 20 years since her first, mega-hit novel, PS I Love You. Alice jumped on Zoom very late one night to speak to Cecelia all about grief, love, motherhood and manifesting your dreams.
This story was originally published on January 19, 2025
The story of Cecelia Ahern’s success could easily be a plot from one of her best-selling novels.
The now prolific writer got her big break 21 years ago when her very first novel was published and became an overnight success. Cecelia had already signed a two-book deal for a life-changing amount of money – which only grew when the book was optioned for a big budget Hollywood movie.
That book was, of course, PS: I Love You. Cecelia was just 21 when she wrote the heart-breaking and uplifting story of one young woman’s immense loss (which she wrote without really having experienced grief herself at that stage) and was 23 when it was published.
She watched, mouth agape, as it soared up the bestseller lists to #1 in her home country of Ireland (where it remained for 19 weeks), as well as the UK, US, Germany and the Netherlands. It’s now sold in over 40 countries and yes, was made into the box-office hit of the same name, starring Gerard Butler and Hilary Swank.
In the years since, Cecelia Ahern has written and published a book nearly every year – amassing 19 titles that have collectively sold more than 25 million copies across the globe, with several of them adapted for the big screen, making her one of the most prolific and successful writers of her era. And, along the way, she’s married her long-time love and welcomed three children.
It still feels surreal, she tells me, on a late-night Zoom call from her hotel room in London. She spent much of 2024 being reminded that it was the 20th anniversary of PS I Love You.
“It’s kind of weird when you hit a point like that and suddenly you’re forced to look back,” she says. “First of all I can’t believe it’s two decades. But ultimately I look back and think how lucky I am. What an amazing adventure I’ve been on and what an amazing gift I was given.”
While her literary success appeared to find her almost overnight, Cecelia certainly wasn’t a complete unknown name in Ireland. She’d managed to mostly stay out of the media glare, but, while she was growing up her father was a well-known politician, who eventually became the Irish Prime Minister when she was a teen.
In her late teens Cecelia was part of an Irish pop group called Shimma, who finished third in the national final for the Eurovision Song Contest. And then, her photo was splashed across all the glossy magazines when her older sister Georgina married Westlife singer Nicky Byrne and she was a bridesmaid. The nuptials were dubbed Ireland’s ‘Wedding of the Year’.
Although she’d been passionate about singing and dancing, Cecelia was eyeing up a job in the media. She’d completed a degree in Journalism and Communication and was working through a Master’s degree, when the idea for PS: I Love You popped into her head. She pulled out of her course and for three months, every night between 10pm and 6am she wrote the novel out in longhand on packs of A4 refill paper.
The story of a 30-year-old woman who had lost the love of her life to a brain tumour (only to find that before he died he’d secretly posted her a package of cards containing a year’s worth of monthly challenges), just poured out of her – she didn’t do a scrap of research. “It was all in my head,” she says.
In the decades since, she’s written about a number of different themes – whether it’s morality, self-esteem, the pressure to look a certain way, the human spirit or peri-menopause! – but the one she loves to come back to often is always grief. Which is exactly what she explores, in a whole new way, in her latest book, Into The Storm.
Into the Storm introduces us to the lead character, Enya, on a wild December’s night. It’s dark, cold and pouring with rain and Enya, a GP, is crouched over the body of a teenage boy in the middle of the road, performing CPR. Mercifully, the boy who was hit by a car survives, but Enya’s life is splintered into two. Trapped in a loveless marriage, the storm – and accident – propel her to break free. But even in the remote country town she escapes to, she’s still haunted by that night.
Also weighing heavily on her mind is a clock that’s ticking away, seemingly getting louder by the day. She has a milestone birthday coming up: she’ll be the age her mother was when she passed away, much too young, in quite confusing circumstances. It’s an age Enya has been dreading – part of her is very certain that she will meet her own death at the same age. How could she possibly outlive her mother? Plus, although she has been dead for decades, Enya feels she’s been following her mother’s footsteps ever since she died. But, now that those footsteps will no longer stretch out in front of her, she’ll be adrift. It’s like losing her all over again.
This theme of grief is one that Cecelia often returns to in her books, sometimes just subtly, or as crucial thread to the story. Grief, she says, is something that fascinates her.
Cecelia on Grief
“I think what fascinates me about writing about grief Is that I love the overcoming part,” she says. “I just love to write about people who are going through transitional moments in their life, when life has thrown something really challenging at them and they have that moment in life when you think, ‘I can’t this is too big for me. I can’t face this now that this is too much!’ That’s the moment I want to write about, because that’s the moment you have to dig so deep learn more about yourself than you’ve ever did: the good parts and the bad parts. You question everyone around you. You question everything and that’s just a really juicy point for me as a writer.”
Cecelia says that she loves getting a character into a really wobbly stage of their lives and then taking them through that experience and the journey that follows it, eventually leaving them back on their feet.
“It’s because I’m fascinated by the human spirit, I think,” she says. “Like, time and time again, we think that we can’t get through something, and we do. I’m drawn to it. We’re always going through life happily until something happens, and of course you’re not ready for it because you’re not expecting it! And that happens continuously in life: you get over one bit, get a bit stronger – or not, in some cases you’re weakened by it – and then you have to face the next thing, still weakened by the last thing. How are you going to do that?”
Because, as Cecelia says, grief comes in many different forms: not just in that traditional sense like the death of someone you love. “There’s so many forms of grief: the grief of losing yourself, losing your identity, losing your way, losing your path, and I just love that stuff. I don’t love it when it happens, but I love the healing.”
The Power of January, A Strict Schedule and the Career Gift that Came with Motherhood
While January is often a time of positivity, thanks to the promise and hope of a fresh new year, Cecelia says that’s most often not really the case in the UK. “It’s not like it is for you guys, in the middle of summer,” she says. “Here, it’s more like, people have no money and it’s grey and dark and cold and nothing’s growing and… it’s hard.”
But, thanks to her rather strict writing schedule, Cecelia bucks the UK trends and always looks forward to January as being a time of optimism, growth and creativity.
“I have always loved January because I hibernate and that’s when I do most of my work,” she says. “I come into it so positive and excited. But I am also very disciplined. I begin all over in January and start a new book, which is always then due on the 31st of May. I edit for the summer and then it’s published in the autumn. That’s my schedule every year. The only thing that has thrown it out since I wrote PS I Love You was Covid. That delayed the publishing of the book I wrote to the year after, so I’m a year ahead now.”
Her daily writing routine stayed similar to how it was during her debut novel – she’d write through the night, 10pm until 6am. But then, she started having children and quickly realised that schedule wasn’t going to work.
“Actually, after I had kids, I was really worried that I wasn’t going to be able to get back into working at all,” she says. But instead, she didn’t miss a deadline – although she had to change her schedule.
“I had to get strict about it and instead of midnight hours I did nine until five, so it turned into a regular job for a while,” she says. “But now the kids are a little bit older I’ll do more like nine am to 1pm, then I’ll pick up writing again from nine pm until midnight.”
And despite her fears, motherhood only enriched her as a writer – she says if anything, it’s made her better at her job.
“I think the more experience you have of life, more material, more emotions, more everything, it’s going to help as a writer,” she says. “My first novel back, my editor did say the biggest difference they noticed in my writing was that I get to the point more. I was far more efficient. And I think she’s right! As a mother you have less time, you have to be far more efficient and focused.”
How Cecelia Manifested Her Dreams
“I was a real dreamer as a kid,” says Cecelia. “I lived in my head. I’d pretend all these things, I was a doctor, talking to people, I was a gambler, winning at everything – I can still see in my head the room I was in when I was creating all this up.”
As she got a bit older, all the stories Cecelia began creating in her head were about things she was interested in: dancing, singing, creating.
“I was still young at that stage and I wanted to be a dancer and a singer – I’d just close my eyes and imagine all these things I’d be doing,” she says. “I’d imagine getting to do that show, or getting that record deal – and then I did those shows, I joined bands and I did get a record deal. I’d daydream about all these things in my head.”
Cecelia says it’s made her a big believer of the power of the mind.
“I think from a young age, I was manifesting my dreams,” she says. “I really believe in the strength of the human mind. I you can see it you believe it, and you can achieve it.”
Sometimes, she says, she has to be a bit careful about it.
In Into the Storm the accident takes place on a hideous day just before Christmas. “So the next Dec 21 it was a really rainy day, just like I’d written about,” she says. “My editor text me, just as I’m about to start the engine and says ‘whatever you do today, don’t get in the car!’ I thought, oh no! Because I really had to go, I had to collect my 14-year-old from a house. So I drove so, so slowly, having that horrible fear that what you create you can manifest into reality.”
Cecelia says her sister quite often pulls her up on it. “It’s not that I’m psychic, but she says to me that sometimes the things I write about happen – sometimes maybe other world issues. But I think that’s also the job of the writer, to always be looking ahead and saying, ‘what if?’”
What she hopes she’s manifesting for the next 20 years is to keep living this dream. “If I can continue this, that would be amazing,” she says. “If I could just keep writing and have writing as my career, that’s my dream – because it’s getting harder and harder. But then, also obviously just the health, happiness and safety of my family and kids. They’re the three most important things I think you can have: health, happiness and safety.”
Into the Storm by Cecelia Ahern is out now wherever you buy good books!