So Sharon Collins and Essam Eid woke up this morning knowing how long they’d be looking at the same four walls.  It’s hard to believe that after all this time the story finally has an end.  Now all that’s left was to give my story an end which shouldn’t have been so difficult since they’re one and the same story.

It was a ridiculously busy day yesterday.  The sentence hearing went on most of the day and by the time I finished work it was almost ten o’clock so I was looking forward to a fairly gentle start to the day before settling down to writing.

But some time after 8 the phone rang and there was a voice saying they were calling from the Gerry Ryan Show.  Now Gerry Ryan is one of the top broadcasters in Ireland.  He’s also a pretty integral part of the Sharon Collins story.  One of the most lurid elements of the trial was a certain letter recovered by gardai from the hard drive of one of the computers Sharon had access to.

This letter, only part of which survived, had been written in a fit of pique around April 2006.  It was part of an email to the Gerry Ryan Show and the section that survived was a catalogue of allegations about PJ Howard’s sexual tastes.  Now Sharon has said that these allegations were taken out of context and PJ has said they are just totally untrue but the Gerry Ryan letter is still one of the most distinctive pieces of evidence.

Well today it wasn’t Sharon contacting the show, it was the show contacting me.  I ended up reminiscing with Mr Ryan himself about his appearance in court.  An unexpected start to the day to say the least.  And after the Gerry Ryan Show it was Neil Prendeville on 96FM in Cork to follow up on a piece I did for him before the sentence yesterday…all before 10.30 in the morning.  Then Spin 103 just before 2.  I suppose this is what they mean by publicity – I’m feeling positively over exposed but if it gets The Devil in the Red Dress out to a wider audience then needs must.

But the main work of the day was writing my final chapter.  In fairness this is a story that pretty much tells itself but there was still an awful lot to cover just giving an account of yesterday’s events.

It’s now almost done and now the real work begins.  It’ll be a while yet before I can stop telling this story but I’m beginning to look forward to moving into the next phase of this author business.  Right now though I’m so tired I could fall over so a more in depth post will just have to wait until tomorrow.