Featured Author: Annamarie Delaney

Finding Story in Movement, Memory, and Becoming

Born Irish, brought up English, lived Scottish, and now naturalised French, Annamarie Delaney’s life has always unfolded across borders: geographical, emotional, and creative. It’s fitting, then, that her writing is deeply concerned with transformation, identity, and the quiet moments where inner lives shift shape.

For Annamarie, storytelling began early. Reading came before school, and writing followed naturally … diaries, poems, letters, songs … any space where thought could be shaped into language. A voracious reader by instinct, she still reads widely, finding particular joy in discovering new voices within the indie writing world.

A major turning point came when she left the bustle of Glasgow’s West End for the stillness of rural France. There, surrounded by slower rhythms and rich local histories, she filled notebooks with encounters, memories, and conversations, particularly stories shared by neighbours recalling life during and after World War II. These diaries gradually evolved into episodic, character-driven tales emailed to friends, her first time sharing her work beyond private pages.

Encouraged by an enthusiastic reader from the Netherlands, those reflections were shaped into Tales From Chez Jacques, a six-book series published through KDP. Not long after came Chrysalis To Nightingale, a stand-alone, character-driven literary novel set in Glasgow, born from reflections on the city’s diversity, contradictions, and emotional undercurrents.

Chrysalis To Nightingale follows a woman who has withdrawn from adult companionship, pouring herself into domestic routine while silencing her own inner life. When music, and two very different men, disrupt that carefully constructed world, buried memories begin to surface. Darkly humorous and emotionally complex, the novel explores damaged pasts, fragile awakenings, and the difficult work of becoming whole.

Excerpt

Irish’s voice didn’t ruffle the silence, gradually filled with a prolonged chord from the classical musicians. The story unfolded without his words. The god, Onkel, resplendent in a gold shirt, walked serenely across the imaginary water. He’d won the ‘I’m too old and it’s too cold to be walking about naked’ argument but the shirt, open to just above the only a little bit paunchy navel, revealed golden curls on a broad chest that didn’t look aged at all. He sat down on a rock, staring moodily out over the water, attended by a fussing group of sprites and nymphs. The unclothed queen, that was me, watched unnoticed from behind a conveniently placed bush. The nice husband violinist, then the viola player, followed by the cellist, made jaggy, tweaky sounds as the clumsy nymphs and sprites tried to sort the increasingly irritable god’s long, golden hair. Pulling her own long blonde locks, my long blonde locks, modestly over my not-really-but-supposed-to-be naked breasts, the queen stepped shyly up to the god and held out the comb. He, Onkel, the god, dismissed his ineffectual attendants, indicating that the shy queen should take over the job. I sat down behind him, maintaining a modest gap between my not naked breasts and his shirt covered back, expertly teasing out the tangles while the water lapped gently at the lakeside.
Georg, sitting just a few feet away, caressed his guitar. The melody of our song, Georg’s, Onkel’s and mine, whispered over the muted strings. Onkel’s angelic voice drifted across the hushed stage. He asked me who I was and where I had come from. I, the queen, answered hesitantly, low voice murmuring an almost monosyllabic reply, echoed by the guitar as though to give the god a chance to make it out. Gradually he, the god, cajoled the fearful woman into telling her story, repeating the hard won fragments to encourage her to say more, while the guitar wove a melodic spell around them. The young woman explained that although she’d been a queen she was really a nobody, had nothing to offer except her beauty, couldn’t see anything in her future except loneliness. ‘What about love?’ the god asked. She replied that she wasn’t sure what that was. They, the god and the girl, became calm and still together, while the guitar played a heartrendingly soothing solo. The god asked the girl queen what would make her happy. She gazed into the water thoughtfully, sighed and gazed some more.
‘What I’d really like is to stay here with you, forever.’
Irish, whispering the final words of the legend.
‘And so, me darlin’s, Queen Achtland became immortal by crossing over into the other world to be with the golden haired god. And every time they kiss a tune is born.’

Today, Annamarie lives serenely in the depths of rural France, where erratic internet and phone connections shape a quieter, more reflective pace of life. Any interviews or conversations, she notes, are best conducted in writing, a format that feels entirely in keeping with her thoughtful, interior approach to storytelling.

📘 Chrysalis To Nightingale

Genre: Character-driven literary fiction

Available on Amazon:

Amazon.com : annamarie delaney chrysalis to nightingale

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