I’m delighted to welcome debut author Sylvia Leatham on my blog today. Sylvia is going to talk to us about her writing journey and her latest book, so grab yourself a cuppa, get cosy and let’s get talking to Sylvia.
Bio:
Sylvia Leatham is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. Her books seek out the human heart behind global issues or technological change, finding comedy in the everyday and romance in unusual places. While she has a passion for science, human relationships are what really fascinate her.
Chaos Theory, her debut novel (published September 2025), was the first in a two-book deal with Storm Publishing, brokered by Laura Bennett of the Liverpool Literary Agency.
Prior to publication, her debut novel was shortlisted for The Letter Review manuscript prize in the US, and for the Watson Little Indie Novella novel prize in the UK. The first chapter was shortlisted for the Retreat West First Chapter competition. The book was also longlisted for the Mslexia novel prize and for the Novel London Literary prize.
Contact Link: https://linktr.ee/SylviaLeatham
Welcome Sylvia and congratulations on your two book contract. Can you tell us about your writing journey?
Unlike many writers, I didn’t grow up in a house full of books. Only because I didn’t grow up in a house full of anything. Books were expensive, luxury items in Dublin’s north inner city in the 1970s and 1980s.
I may not have lived in a house full of books, but I did grow up in a house full of stories – and funny ones at that. My father, Brendan (RIP), was a master at telling long, elaborate jokes. He could string a story out over seven or eight minutes. The telling always seemed spontaneous, as if he’d just now remembered an anecdote he must share with you. He never signposted that he was telling a joke or inventing a fiction. Looking back now, I’m certain he added his own flourishes, voices and characterisations to whatever he’d originally heard down the pub or in the garage where he worked.
In spite of a scarcity of books as a child, I devoured any reading material that came my way. Around age eight, I wrote my first ‘book’ – a story about a brave dog who helped out other animals in his neighbourhood, apart from one local cat, who was his sworn enemy.
Despite this early promise(!), it took me several decades to really take writing seriously. I always wanted to do it, but somehow always managed to avoid it. My excuses to myself were myriad. I wrote for my day job (first as a journalist, then as a copywriter), so I couldn’t possibly write all day, come home, and then write again. I told myself I didn’t have time to write, or didn’t have the headspace. I made several half-hearted attempts at a novel in my 20s and 30s but quickly ran out of steam. I had no plot, no structure, no story. Yes, I could create a whimsical situation, and I could write sparky dialogue, but my characters never had anything to do.
I took various writing classes over the years but always found a way to self-sabotage. I laboured under the mistaken belief that you either had talent or you didn’t, and it couldn’t really be taught or learned. On some secret level, I couldn’t bear the thought of failure. What if I tried and it wasn’t any good? Far better, safer, not to try at all.
Enter Marian Keyes. Not literally. But two things that Marian Keyes said, on separate occasions, radically altered the course of my journey. (One was said in an interview on Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast; the other was part of a YouTube writing tutorial that Marian recorded and shared during the Covid era.)
On the podcast, she said (paraphrasing from memory): Anyone can better at writing, if they’re willing to work at it. That sounds simple, but it annihilated my preconceptions and, more importantly, gave me a practical roadmap to writing:
- It’s okay to be quite bad at writing at the outset.
- You can get better.
- If you put in the effort, you will reap the reward.
I began to understand that writing was a craft, a process, a practice. I did everything I could to improve. I became dogged and dedicated. One time I spent six hours at an outdoor concert (LCD Soundsystem in Malahide Castle, Dublin), came home, turned on my laptop at midnight and attended an online writing tutorial with the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York. That’s how obsessed I had become.
The second Marian missive was a writing prompt, issued during a free online tutorial (the series of four hour-long videos is still available on YouTube and well worth a watch for anyone who wants to write a novel).
The eight-word prompt was: “The donuts had failed to de-escalate the situation.” For some reason, I ‘heard’ this in the first-person voice of humanoid robot, and soon the character of Kobi was born. Kobi means well but has a hard time fitting in at his new job in an office. Soon a whole cast of characters came to life in my head, and I realized I had the makings of what would become my debut novel, Chaos Theory.Chaos Theory was published in September 2025 by Storm Publishing. It’s taken me a long time to get here. I look forward to whatever comes next
Chaos Theory blurb:
Sometimes the future arrives whether you’re ready for it or not. A charmingly quirky, feel-good Irish comedy about accidentally finding yourself.
Maeve McGettigan has just landed a job as Dublin’s least prepared robot babysitter. One minute she’s coasting through her boring marketing job; the next, she’s responsible for Kobi: a well-meaning robot assistant with zero filter and a knack for publicly humiliating her. As chaos erupts around her, Maeve finds herself unexpectedly caught between two very different men: Shane – her on-again, off-again messy situationship – and Josh, Kobi’s nerdy-in-a-hot-way creator who makes her question everything she thought she wanted for her life.
But then Maeve and Kobi’s story takes a truly shocking twist, and it’s suddenly time for her to decide: what – and who – is she really fighting for?
A wonderfully heartwarming read about finding your people and embracing the unexpected, even when it’s a mischievous robot. After all, sometimes the most chaotic situations lead you to exactly where you belong.
Chaos Theory is out now with Storm Publishing. More info and buy links: https://linktr.ee/SylviaLeatham
Thank you for talking to us today, Sylvia. I hope your book flies!
Karen King 