About
Born in 1990 in Eastbourne, East Sussex, UK to Irish parents, Declan has been writing since his childhood. Living in Limerick since the age of nine, he wrote for his secondary school’s magazine, acted in a youth theatre group, and had been shortlisted to be Cuisle Young Poet of the Year by the age of 17. Since then, he has worked as a journalist for a university newspaper, run a college radio station, written for the Guardian’s music blog, and continued to voraciously write fiction and poetry, some of which has even been published.
Declan has a BA in English Lit & History from the University of Limerick, an MA in History also from UL, and is currently on sabbatical from a PhD in History & Communications at UL. All of his research has been interdisciplinary and focused on the use of fiction and poetry as a form of political communication. He has also taken continued professional development courses in marketing, political comms, creative writing and narrative design for video games. He has worked professionally in marketing and PR and currently works for UL as the Student Support Officer for the Kemmy Business School.
In his spare time, he blogs, reads, is involved in activism on a number of social issues, and writes and plays music. He enjoys playing a wide range of video games, from Stardew Valley to Dark Souls by way of Civilization, the Tomb Raider reboots and anything else that comes his way. He greatly enjoys player choice and is drawn to RPGs that draw from the BioWare style of writing or try to implement tabletop rules, such as Pillars of Eternity. He also enjoys tabletop games: he currently runs a D&D campaign, plays in another, and is learning Warhammer’s D&D-esque Cursed City game.
Writing
The eldest child of two writers, Declan grew up in a house full of books. Immersed in literature from an early age, he developed a love for a wide variety of styles and genres. At the age of 10, his mother handed him Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, a moment which began his journey into the classics - and in the case of the latter title, began a lifelong love affair with gothic writing. At 13, he dove into Shakespeare, inspired by the ‘Queen Mab’ speech in Romeo and Juliet, which he was studying in school. His love of Shakespeare was encouraged by his mother - who owned the Bard’s complete works - as well as by his studying of Othello for his Leaving Certificate (the Irish equivalent to the A-Levels/SATs) and by the chance to act in an all-teenage performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the age of 16. His father introduced him to T.S. Eliot, Sir Terry Pratchett, Umberto Eco, Patrick O’Brien, Ursula K. LeGuin and the playwrights of Ancient Greece, all of which had a lasting impact on his love of fantasy and historical fiction.
Studying for a double-major degree in English Lit and History, he devoured the classics of the English literary canon from Christopher Marlowe to Philip Roth, developing a taste for works that examined the human condition and/or history and politics through allegory, metaphor and the judicious use of the fantastic. His degree dissertation examined the blending of cultural expression, Christian theology and political pragmatism used to justify the First Crusade and the introduction of the hitherto heretical concept of holy war into Church law. Although awarded an MA in History, his thesis was on the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser and the use of fantastical poetry and fiction as political commentary in the Tudor era. His PhD thesis is on the role of novelists, playwrights and poets as propagandists in Georgian Britain.
A would-be writer since he could pick up a pen (his first ‘stories’ were written in scrawled shapes because he was too young to have learned how to write), Declan has been shortlisted for the Cuisle Young Poet of the Year in 2007, has performed at readings hosted by the Limerick Poets’ Society and has been published in Crossways. Not limited to poetry, he has been writing short fiction and long-form non-fiction since his teens, as well as working on musical projects. Determined to make a career of his love of the written word, but well aware of the difficulty of doing so successfully, he was focused his career choices on working towards this goal. An award-winning and award-shortlisted journalist in both print and on the radio, he has freelanced for the Guardian and been published in the Irish Independent. He has worked in marketing and PR jobs requiring a focus on copywriting and content creation, taught undergraduate history students, run workshops and classes on academic writing, run afterschool tutorials for Leaving Certificate students of English Lit, and worked on an afterschool English reading comprehension and literacy programme for primary school students. He also continues to blog and to write creatively, most recently he has been learning how to use the interactive fiction engine Twine and has recorded guest vocals for a track on UK alt-rock act Heartwork’s second album Whatever Comes After It.
Declan has a deep interest in interactive fiction and video games as outlets for his writing, being fascinated by the interactivity and scope for emergent narratives present in RPGs and games with roleplaying elements.
Games
Declan’s first-ever video game was FIFA ‘99. In the intervening two decades, he has played everything from obscure indie gems to AAA shooters, and has developed a taste for games that prioritise player choice and a strong narrative. This frequently takes the form of the now-classic Infinity Engine D&D CRPGs (Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape:Torment) and the games they inspired - from BioWare’s RPG output to Obsidian’s recent reimagining of the format in Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny to the Assassin’s Creed franchise’s recent entry into the RPG market. However, he also loves games that require players to do some detective work to understand the full scope of the story and that allow scope for emergent narratives based on the interactions between scripted story elements, player choice and the magic of RNG, from the AAA Destiny franchise to indie titles such as the Fallen London universe and Stardew Valley by way of his personal favourite approach to this style; FromSoftware’s ‘Soulsborne’ games and Elden Ring. He does, however, still enjoy a bit of FIFA every now and then.
He has been learning different approaches to games writing since 2014, when he worked on the script for a tutorial segment of a subsequently-cancelled tactical shooter from a now-defunct indie studio. He has spent the COVID-19 lockdown experimenting with Twine and inklewriter, as well as taking online courses in writing and narrative design for video games. He also has a deep love of tabletop gaming, especially D&D - he plays in a campaign and DMs another, and has recently joined ULFM’s weekly podcasted and livestreamed D&D campaign Only Fools & Honses, with his first appearance coming in Episode 5.