Mayo author pens latest book

The latest work from an award-winning Mayo children’s book author is published this week.

Castlebar-native Kevin Moran has penned the next instalment in the hugely successful Doomsday Club series.

Published by O'Brien Press, Bog Bodies is a thrilling new adventure featuring everyone’s favourite characters. Funny and action-packed with scares aplenty, a group of four friends deal with growing up and the challenges of friendships, families, and otherworldly shenanigans from the darkest realms of Irish folklore. Friends Conan, Jack, Jerry and Yash return in this new adventure, packed with excitement, scares, and a zombie horde of bog bodies.

Hailed as Ireland’s answer to the Hardy Boys, Kevin’s debut novel, The Doomsday Club, won the Eilis Dillon Award at the Children’s Books Ireland Awards 2026.  “It can be a lonely job when you’re writing and you don’t really know what’s going to happen when you send a book out into the world, so winning the award was amazing and provided a bit of validation that you are doing something right,” said Kevin.

Set on a fictional island, Kevin drew some inspiration from Clare Island for Bog Bodies.

The Mayo man was also inspired by the pupils he teaches at a primary school in Dublin “Some of the kids I teach in Dublin have very little idea of life outside of the capital,” said Kevin.

His students played a key role in prompting Kevin to dream up The Doomsday Club for that 10 to 13-years old age range.

“There is not a lot for kids of that age, especially boys. I noticed myself when I was teaching sixth class. The girls would be moving on to the young adult romantasies even adult books and the boys would kind of stop because there wasn’t much to bridge that gap from child to teenager,” said Kevin.

“When I wrote the first book, I was teaching sixth class and the boys in the book are sixth class boys from Dublin city, so it was very much a case of write what you know,” he added.

Kevin has noticed that children are not consuming books in the same way as previous generations.

“There are just so many distractions and it’s easy for adults to criticise but we are the same when it comes to picking up the phone and being stuck in them all the time. I think that’s why it’s really important to have books for kids of that age. It’s one thing to say they are not reading, but you have to have something that appeals to them, gets them hooked, and interested."