Laura McLoughlin

Over the course of my teenage years, I completed a lot of personality tests and received a lot of answers. Myerr Briggs says I’m an INFJ, my enneagram is 3w2, and, apparently, I’m a Type A person. Pottermore sorted me into Gryffindor the first time, and the Slytherin the second. I was born on the year of the dog, and my blood type is B+ (two things you may not think have associated personality traits but reportedly do).

All of this is to say that I’m not sure I am very good at describing myself – are any of us, really? – but this blog post (the first on this website) is my best effort.

Hi, my name is Laura Jayne McLoughlin (though it used to be Fulton).

I’m married (7 years and counting) to the best person in the world.

I have two dogs – one of which is a demanding, food-obsessed King Charles who would prefer to go through life velcro’d to my lap. The other is a sweet, silly hothead of a Labrador who would eagerly play fetch until he threw up (and then probably keep going).

I currently live in “the sticks” of County Armagh, Northern Ireland, and moving here has been an everyday education into the way of the countryside. It has been both a horror and a joy.

I’m not sure I have a favourite book, but I’ve read Eat, Pray, Love twice now, and that’s more than I can say of most books. The Last Unicorn and The Halloween Tree are also exceptionally special, repeat reads I would recommend to anyone.

I’m allergic to rabbits, horses, and, most disappointingly of all, cats.

I love autumn better than any other time of the year, and the month of October most of all. I plant a bed of my own pumpkins every year and curate 9 separate autumnal themed playlists on Spotify.

Orange is my favourite colour (I think).

I’ve been writing since I was very small – in school jotters, fluffy notebooks and diaries with cute little silver locks. When I was around ten, I moved all of this “work” to my family’s first computer and though it took me a while to learn how to type, I can’t imagine writing anything of length by hand ever again. I’ve since gone on to type a large collection of stories and poems, half-formed manuscripts, and, indeed, a few novels that I have actually completed, too.

The first of these is called The Many Ghosts of Donahue Byrnes (though it wasn’t always) and it comes out this October.