Wexford-based businessman set to release his first novel

A Wexford-based businessman is set to release his first novel…

Across Wexford, Karl McGlone would be known for his business endeavours, owning the newly-established Escape Wexford, alongside his brother Dave.

However, over the course of the past year, McGlone has also been working in the background on another passion project: writing his own novel.

Karl’s upcoming novel is entitled ‘Project Red Bird’, which will be released worldwide on 1 September 2025 in Kindle, paperback, and hardback formats via Amazon.

Set in the fictional city of Monroeville, Project Red Bird is a high-stakes conspiracy thriller that blends political intrigue with relentless suspense. It follows Ethan, an ordinary man drawn into a dangerous mission to find his missing best friend, uncovering a ruthless crime boss, corrupt officials, and a plot with global consequences.

We recently caught up with Karl to discuss more about his upcoming book, the difficult year that he had, how he found solace in writing, and to discuss his writing process from a simple draft to a fully-published novel on Amazon.

“This book is more than just a story for me — it’s the project that got me through the hardest year of my life. In 2024, after the loss of my father and a series of other personal challenges, I found myself struggling to keep my mind clear of heavy thoughts. Writing Project Red Bird became my lifeline — something positive to focus on, a way to channel my energy and creativity when things felt overwhelming. In many ways, it saved my sanity,” Karl told Wexford Weekly.

For Karl, writing a novel and focussing on his creativity allowed him to escape what was admittedly an incredibly difficult year for him. Having a focal point, such as building characters or telling a story, proved to be a guiding light for him:

“2024 for me was a year of hell in more ways than one. Not least the death of my Father, which hit me like a freight train, especially as his death was from a short battle with cancer. He was diagnosed almost 2 years ago and less than 6 months later he was gone. Which led to a lot of shock, heartbreak and grief for my whole family. Many other issues arose before and after his death too and throughout 2024. It felt like I just couldn’t catch a break. Everytime I tried to pick myself up and build myself back up, something would come along that would knock me right back down again.”

“I’m someone who has been lucky enough through life to have exceptionally strong Mental Health, but in 2024 my Mental Health was obliterated. I don’t remember the exact date I started, but one day I got an idea for a basic story, of a girl going missing and I tried to focus on the idea and build it out: who’s noticed she’s gone? how do they figure out she’s gone?”

“And suddenly anytime my mind would drift to negative thoughts, I had an outlet to turn to. When those darker thoughts appear, I could focus on the story and try come up with more ideas and connection points in the story. I could build up characters and figure out their back story and connections to each other,” he continues.

“Many nights during my annus horribilis in 2024 I’d be awake at 4am staring at the ceiling with a million thoughts racing through my minds, “What could I have done differently?”, “How could that happen?”, “Why didn’t I noticed that”? – but once I had the story to focus on, it was like a light in the dark. A focal point to turn my thoughts fully towards and turn off the negative thoughts like a light switch,” Karl said.

For some people, penning together a novel is something that they often think about but never seem to pursue. Despite not having a background in English, Karl was always the creative type – starting a film production in college, winning awards at film festivals, and then venturing down the route to opening his Wexford-town based business, Escape Wexford, a unique virtual reality experience.

“This is the first book I’ve written, but I’ve always had a creative background. I studied Sound Engineering & Music Technology in college and quickly transitioned into filmmaking while in college. Before turning 20, I set up a film production company along with my brother Dave and we made various projects. Our first ever short film was picked up by a film festival in Wales where the patron of the festival was Michael Sheen. We won an award at that festival and it spurred us on to keep making things and over several years we kept making films and working on films and ultimately finding ways to make money in the filmmaking industry.”

“We then began our own little film festivals, we ran some in LA, New York, a small one in Dublin and the Wexford Film Festival in the Wexford Arts Centre for several years before Covid hit. Covid ended that venture unfortunately. Then last year alongside my brother, we opened Wexford’s first ever VR arcade – Escape Wexford VR Escape Rooms and Games on Peter street in Wexford Town.”

“Creativity and especially story based creativity has always been a major part of my life, writing a book is another feather in my cap but it’s not something I planned, it kind of just happened. When I started writing it was to focus my mind, in the end I was pretty happy with the story and decided to see how I could make it an actual book,” he said.

For many people who start writing, especially their first novel, they experience ‘writers block’. Writer’s block is the temporary inability to produce new writing, often caused by stress, self-doubt, or creative exhaustion. For Karl though, writer’s block wasn’t really something that acted as a stumbling block, with his creative ideas flowing throughout the year-long process:

“It took about a year to write the book, and it came pretty naturally. The story flowed well and I was constantly filled with ideas. The hardest part was narrowing down which ideas to use and which to toss. I did have a lot on in the same year as mentioned and even when writing things were still going wrong here and there so for a couple of months especially while setting up Escape Wexford on Peter Street, I did fall away from writing but I picked it up again in January 2025 and the idea flooded back and I finished the 1st draft a couple of months later.”

“Then, it took a few more months going through the script, refining the writing style I wanted, formatting, and finding as many spellling mistakes as I could, although I’m sure one or two slipped through the cracks,” he told Wexford Weekly.

The entire process took approximately one year for Karl to complete. And, during a difficult period in his life, one of the nicer aspects, along with finalising the book, was that he got solace from writing.

The act of simply writing, journalling, utilsing individual creativity, is something that Karl recommends to those that are grieving or need an additional outlet for whatever reason:

“100% I’d recommend writing as a tool for those grieving. It doesn’t even need to be writing a novel or story. Journalling or writing short stories or any sort of writing can be therapeutic. I think creativity has a huge role to play in the human experience. Creativity of any sort can be a huge outlet whether you are grieving, stressed, worried, angry, or heart broken.”

Whether you write, make music – even if it doesn’t sound great, try make a movie or a play, paint a picture or whatever form of creativity works for you, ultimately creativity can give you that focus on something new which can in turn give your mind time to settle and calm among the chaos around you. That’s not to say having a creative project on the go will solve all your problems, but having that project to focus your mind on can allow your mind some clarity which in turn makes decision making easier. For me personally writing Project Red Bird allowed me to keep my sanity in my darkest moments,” he told us.

Karl’s upcoming novel is entitled ‘Project Red Bird’, which will be released worldwide on 1 September 2025 in Kindle, paperback, and hardback formats via Amazon. One would think that publishing a book can be quite a tricky process, but Karl tells us that publishing the book was actually one of the easier processes involved:

“Literally anyone can publish on Amazon via Kindle Publishing Direct. One you have a book and it’s formatted correctly and you have cover art, you can upload it all there. Follow the steps and they’ll take care of the printing and delivery. It can be tricky to navigate but the hardest part is actually writing the book,” he told Wexford Weekly.

Along with the novel being available on Amazon from 1 September 2025, ‘Project Red Bird’ will also be available locally at his local shop, Escape Wexford on Peter Street in Wexford Town, from that date, while he’s currently working to have it stocked in physical bookshops across Ireland. You can also pre-order the book now via Amazon.

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