In 2006, Vanessa Fox O'Loughlin moved from a career in event management to self-employment, founding Inkwell Writers Workshops to run fiction-writing workshops taught by bestselling published writers. During the
post-2008 Irish economic downturn, the company was renamed The Inkwell Group and became a publishing consultancy. O'Loughlin publishes crime fiction as "Sam Blake". In 2019 she was elected to the Management Committee of the
Society of Authors. In 2024, she was elected as the new chair, succeeding
Joanne Harris. In 2022, O'Loughlin was one of over 100 authors to contribute to
100 Ways to Write a Book – a compilation of author interviews put together by author Alex Pearl during the
COVID pandemic.
Sam Blake In 2015, Swedish publishing group
Bonnier Twenty7 signed O'Loughlin to write a three-book series of crime novels featuring
Garda detective Cat Connolly and set in
Dublin. eventually featuring in the Irish top ten for eight weeks.
In Deep Water and
No Turning Back also entered the Irish bestseller lists. In January 2020, standalone thriller
Keep Your Eyes on Me was released by Corvus Books, together with an audio recording from
Bolinda Publishing narrated by
Harry Potter star
Evanna Lynch.
Keep Your Eyes on Me was also a No.1 Irish Times bestseller. In January 2022
The Dark Room, was published by Corvus Books. In 2023 her debut YA was published with Gill Books,
Something Terrible Happened Last Night, followed in May 2024 by ''Something's About to Blow Up
. She is continuing with adult fiction however and Three Little Birds'' (January 2024) was her tenth book. In April 2026, she was a guest on the
Off the Shelf podcast.
Writing.ie O'Loughlin founded
Writing.ie in 2011; it developed into an Irish writers' web resource that covers literary events and offers advice to writers. The
Irish Independent describes Writing.ie as "a one-stop shop for authors". ==Personal life==