Ellie Brannigan

Ellie Brannigan has lived in South Florida for the last twenty years. She loves the ocean and any food dish with shrimp. When she’s not creating new fictional worlds, she reads, and travels…and eats.

Brannigan's new novel is Death at an Irish Wedding.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

For Death at an Irish Wedding, I was asked to come up with several titles. In fact, this was the third title selected, and I wrote the book under a completely different title and saved my word doc that way. When I went to look for my story later, I couldn’t find the manuscript. Any author might imagine my immediate reaction of holy smokes, my work has all disappeared: belly tightening, sweaty palms, slightly sick…but then I went to my saved emails and found the email stream with my editor. Crisis averted, but it was an awful ten minutes of panic.

This is the Irish Castle series, and at the end of the first book there was the question of ghosts in the castle. I liked Haunting in an Irish Castle, but my publisher wasn’t sold. Once the story progressed, I realized it was more about the super-secret Hollywood wedding of Rayne’s rich American client and her actor boyfriend than ghosts. We came up with alternates and Death at an Irish Wedding stuck. It was a lot of fun to bring in Irish wedding traditions to the getaway weekend to fit the title.

Through each story, the struggle for Rayne and Ciara to save Grathton Village is paramount and it is unfortunate that people keep kicking the bucket—which is why I’ve included more of the villagers in book three, Death at an Irish Village, available in August 2025. The title completely matches the story.

What's in a name?

I think names for characters are hugely important and I spend a lot of time researching what might be appropriate for the area and time period. Let’s unpack Rayne Claire McGrath, my protagonist for the Irish Castle series.

Rayne—a fun play off of ‘rain’ that her Irish father, with a poet’s soul, gave as an ode to his birthplace. Ireland is known for gray rainy days.

Claire. This is a family name, and she is named after her poor dead aunt who died as a child.

McGrath. This is a popular Irish surname that has been around for centuries.

Ciara Smith. Her name also tells a story…though Nevin McGrath was her father, she didn’t know it until her mother got sick with cancer and introduced them before she died. This gives Ciara all kinds of baggage with claiming her stake at McGrath Castle, and Grathton Village. She feels she has to prove herself doubly hard.

Blarney, the Irish setter. Just saying the dog’s name makes me smile. He’s his own character and attached to Rayne. He’s supposed to be a bird dog but doesn’t have the hunter’s instinct.

Maeve, Aine, and Cormac Lloyd—the live-in staff at the castle, all have classic Irish names. They are part of setting the scene.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I wrote angsty poetry and children’s stories as well as novels that rightfully never saw the light of day. If my teenage self knew about Death at an Irish Wedding, I’d like to think she’d be pumping her fist and doing the pogo.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I love a plot board. I love lists. I have an addiction to notebooks and go through a dozen at least a year. As I sit down to write, I have the reader in mind, wanting to entice and entertain. I have been known to take the ending I’ve imagined beforehand and throw it out the imaginary window if I feel it is predictable. My biggest thrill is when I’m reading reviews, and the killer has remained masked until the end. As a voracious reader, which I am, I want to be fair and lay out clues, and then mix everything up.

Visit Ellie Brannigan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue