Tim MacGabhann Books In Order

Publication Order of Call Him Mine Books

Tim MacGabhann
Tim MacGabhann was born in Kilkenny in the year 1988 and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and a BA that he obtained from Trinity College Dublin. Tim began a PhD on Joyce and Dante.

He has reported from all around Latin America for outlets such as the Washington Post, Al Jazeera, and Esquire.

“Call Him Mine” isn’t the first novel that MacGabhann completed, as Tim has been writing novels since he was only fifteen years old.

He wrote a sort of Gothic, gay and divided identity love story during his time as an undergrad since he had been reading authors like Paul Levane and Oscar Wilde.

After it was harshly and deservedly rejected, Tim met up with the guy that actually took the time to read it, Daniel Caffrey from Lilliput Press, and he spent time with him, sitting in what was the sandwich shop at the very top of Tower Records. The guy told him that, like all first novelists, that Tim was trying to do too much.

He took a month off of journalism and was staying at his girlfriend’s place for September. After this, his creative writing was able to take flight. During this time, he penned a novella that he hoped would get him accepted into the creative writing program. He wound up getting accepted into the University of East Anglia, where he moved in September of 2016.

During Tim’s time at East Anglia, he devoted all of his time to working on “Call Him Mine”. All he did was walk to Tesco, go to campus for his classes, and go back to his apartment quickly and continued this triangle the entire time. He thinks there could be a triangle worn into the ground where he would walk during this time. In five months, he completed four drafts. He was rewarded with this discipline with publishers rapidly picking up his novel.

Tim says the novel comes from the frustration he felt being a journalist, having to write decorative pieces, compared to local Mexican journalists. He would go, see some intense things, and write the story. Unlike the Mexican journalists, the stories were finished once he completed the piece and he closed his laptop. The guilt he felt being in this position led him to pen his debut.

Through the novel, he looks at his own complicity as somebody that makes their money by covering some terrible things without anything bad happening to them. This space inside of his head is what the novel became.

Tim’s work as an author is directly derived from his prior work as a journalist. He focuses on his creative impulses in fiction, both modes are vital. Journalism feels to him like you are shining a light on a thing that people maybe didn’t know previously. With fiction, you have to dive deeper into yourself. It involves a lot of hours spent in quiet of rewriting and reading.

Tim still feels a love for the buzz from journalism. It feels to him like he is an ice-skater, as you are always rushing from one place to another and the all the best stuff is all the stuff that you never thought you would hear. He loves the unpredictability of it, which is the exact opposite of fiction, which is something that depends on this predictability. Journalism is a world that makes you live in constant surprise, something that Tim finds that he misses.

Besides writing, he plays guitar a fair amount. He is enough into it that he envies Paul Muldoon’s butterscotch 1951 Fender Telecaster. Tim has been with a few bands, but absolutely refuses to give out the names, because he was a diva and the bands were all horrible.

Tim’s debut novel, called “Call Him Mine”, was released in the year 2019, and was published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson. His work is from the mystery genre.

“Call Him Mine” is the first novel in the “Call Him Mine” series and was released in the year 2019. Andrew, a jaded reporter and Carlos, his photographer boyfriend, are sick and tired of telling another story. From corrupt politicians to cartel massacres, sifting through the dregs of Mexico’s drug war, they believe they have seen everything. They find a body that even the cops are too afraid to look at, what began as just one more reportage turns into the type of story reporters dream about.

Until Carlos begins pushing for answers too quick and ends up murdered. It leaves Andrew grief-stricken and flailing about for revenge, answers, and justice. Caught up in a web of some dirty money that stretches from the death squads in El Salvador to the boardrooms of America, Andrew has to figure out whether to save himself, or to find Carlos’ killer and the person that ruined the only home that he has ever known.

Fans found this to be a compelling debut that is uncompromising and tough the entire way through. This is a gripping, hilarious, and poetic crime story that is an off the wall read. The book is a visceral trip through the many underworlds in Mexico, and is a heartfelt testament to lost friendship. It is able to pull you in quickly, tramples your heartstrings, yet is somehow still able to leave you feeling alive and uplifted.

“How to be Nowhere” is the second novel in the “Call Him Mine” series and was released in the year 2020. Life is on the right track finally for Andrew, a recovering addict and reporter. He slowly is coming to terms with Carlos’ murder, pursuing his sobriety and building a new home for himself and his new partner.

Andrew has just about forgotten all about the story that wrecked his whole life, however, that story has not forgotten about him. A series of lethal threats makes him help the very guy whose gang killed his boyfriend and left him without a home.

Readers found this to be a blistering thrill ride deep in the fog of Central America’s tragic and present future.