Interview With Author Aoife Gaffney
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am an Irish writer, money coach, and reliably mediocre cook, though I promise the cooking has nothing to do with the writing. By day I work in education, and I also run Prudence Moneypenny Coaching, helping women, and increasingly couples and families going through separation or divorce, take charge of their money without dying of boredom in the process. By night, apparently, I write books.
I See What You Don’t See: My Life With UC is my fifth solo book, on top of six co-authored titles, and it is easily the most personal one I have written under my own name. It is my account of a forty five year journey to a diagnosis nobody believed I needed, told the way I tell most things, honestly, and with more bathroom humour than any respectable medical topic probably deserves.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I See What You Don’t See: My Life With UC
A mystery illness lasting 4 decades and a lengthy but awful dalliance with Campylobacter. I was finally diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis and had no idea where to start. I wrote the book I would have liked to read many years ago, when no one would listen to me.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I have some favourite clothes that I like to wear. My lucky socks, and usually a fleece as I can get very cold if I get lost in thought.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
So many!
Atomic Habits
Psycho Cybernetics
Paul McKenna
Naopleon Hill
Steven Bartlett
Renee Rose
Roxie Nafousi
Richard Templar
Keith Barry
What are you working on now?
The edits, always the edits.
I have another idea brewing, it might start as a key note first to test it out.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Get your team on board first.
Have a hashtag, block off 24 hours and promote the living day lights out of it.
People love to help if you let them.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write, don’t over think it. It does not matter if it’s rubbish, writing is muscle. Pour love into what you are writing. There is no point in writing something you hate. Use AI to help you structure your thoughts. The ideas have to be yours and it must be yours when its finished. Edit and edit again.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Give yourself permission.
What are you reading now?
Atomic Habits, again
Psycho-cybernetics, again
Think and Grow Rich, again
Infinite Possibilities, Mike Dooley
What’s next for you as a writer?
Buy another pair of socks.
Upgrade my laptop.
Redesign some existing covers.
Make coffee, do yoga, get ideas for my next project.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
A book about escaping a desert island with only 3 books, besides the one I was holding.
Infinite Possibilities, Mike Dooley
A book about surviving on a desert island with only 3 books while I worked out how to escape.
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