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Coming in 2023

Posted on December 4, 2022 by - Blog, My Writing

For all of the bad news over 2022 (the Ukraine War, Climate change disasters, attacks on democracy etc.), the year was a relatively calm time at Irish Imbas Books and we managed to release a trio of works that I’m quite proud of.

In March, the fourth book in the Irish Woman Warrior Series – Liath Luachra: The Metal Men – was released (and well received by followers of that series). This was accompanied by a supporting short story, ‘Liath Luachra: The Consent’ (note: this is only available through this website) which resolved a gap in the plotline that I hadn’t been able to cover in the books without disrupting the flow (it brings the character Bressal back into the series). Overall, I’m very satisfied with both

Meanwhile, in about two weeks, the digital version of FIONN: Stranger at Mullån Bån, book four in the Fionn Mac Cumhaill Series finally gets released.

This book marks a step change in the direction of the series as the maturing Fionn (Demne) starts to make his mark and begins his struggle to solve the mystery around his heritage. As always, he’s supported by his three guardians: his aunt – the bandraoi Bodhmhall, the woman warrior Liath Luachra, the eccentric womaniser Fiacail mac Codhna, and a number of other characters from Rath BlĂĄdhma (and further afield).

At this stage, I’ve seen three reviews for the book. All three have been very positive, which is always something of a relief.

What’s coming in 2023?

For the next six months, I’ll be working full time in the creative space and focused on completing the following projects:

Liath Luachra: The Great Wild.

The Great Wild is a prequel to the Irish Woman Warrior Series. The first ‘chapter’ is now complete but its slightly experimental nature means I’m still a bit uncertain as to what the final product is going to look like. The target for release to Patrons is Mar/April 2023. I’m not sure when it’ll be publicly available, yet.

Liath Luachra: The Raiders

This isn’t a new book but a repackaging of two previous ones (Liath Luachra: The Seeking and Liath Luachra: The Metal Men) so if you’ve read those, this probably won’t be of interest

Given the strong positive feedback on these books, I wanted to bring the two stories together into a single narrative (which had always been the original intention). This will require some minor rewriting to make the story more accessible for people who haven’t read the other books, but it shouldn’t be significant.

‘The Raiders’ will be exclusive to Amazon for a few months (which means the digital versions of Liath Luachra: The Seeking and Liath Luachra: The Metal Men will be unavailable from all other bookstores over that time. If you’re thinking about getting either of those books from Apple/Kobo/Google Play/Barnes & Noble/ etc., I’d recommend getting them before Christmas as they won’t be available from those suppliers for several months.

Fionn: The Betrayal

Are you a follower of the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series? Have you ever wondered who facilitated the deadly ambush in Fionn: Traitor of DĂșn Baoisnce or how’The Adversary’ managed to obtain physical tokens from Bodhmhall and Liath Luachra? Have you, perhaps, wondered what exactly happened at the great battle of Cnucha (where Fionn’s father Cumhal was killed) or why so many vested interests have it in for Demne/Fionn?

If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, then Fionn: The Betrayal may be for you. This series is slowly but surely drawing to its conclusion, so I’m planning to resolve a number of plotlines with this particular book. It won’t be the last in the series, but it will certainly answer some of the mysteries lurking in the background since book 1. There’s also an overlap with the Liath Luachra Series in there although I don’t think you’ll be able to identify it just yet.

The projected release date for this is June/July 2023.

Beara: Cry of the Banshee

Yes. It’s finally happening. After six or seven years of distraction with the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series and the Irish Woman Warrior Series, I’m finally returning to West Cork and Beara, the most south-western point of Ireland. There, more skullduggery and mythological detective work, await the ever-cynical Mos O’Suilleabháin (O’Sullivan).

Beara: Dark Legends was my first self-published book and it took about 4 years to research and write. It was quite successful at the time of its release, but the effort of producing it left me wrung out to the point where I couldn’t cope with starting the second book (hence the detour into the Fionn and Liath Luachra series). I’m now satisfied that I can get this series up and running again, so expect to see an announcement towards the end of 2023.

Other Projects

There are also a number of other projects sitting at different stages of development or completion, that I’ll also be working on over 2023. Some of these include audiobooks, film/tv scripts, a non-fiction project (The Fundamental Concepts of Irish Mythology) and two more ambitious projects that I’m not in a position to talk about yet. These kinds of projects are hard to scope out in terms of timelines but they’re important from a creative perspective in that they allow me t explore different aspects of storytelling.
I’m also hoping to carry out at least one or two collaborations over 2023 so if you have an interesting (and appropriate) project, send me an email before I get overloaded. 

All in all, 2023 is looking like a very important year from my perspective. Roll on New Years Eve!

Training the young Fionn mac Cumhaill

Posted on December 3, 2022 by - Blog

This is a representation from illustrator Arthur Rackam of Liath Luachra teaching Demne (the young Fionn) at a very early age.

It’s actually a visual representation of a scene from MacgnĂ­martha Finn where Liath Luachra and the young Fionn chase other around a tree with a switch.

There are quite a few interesting and unknown elements associated both with the picture and to that scene, but I’ll cover those in VĂłg at a later date.

CĂș Chulainn was Arrested and Led Away in Handcuffs

Posted on December 3, 2022 by - Blog

Louth has been running a pretty fun community re-enactment of An TĂĄin every summer since 2011 (sadly cancelled in 2020/2021 due to Covid) and it was back again in June this year.

Designed as a community walking and cultural education festival, it usually begins in Rathcroghan (where Queen Maeve first assembled her army to obtain the Brown Bull of Cooley) and terminates at Bush in Cooley, Co. Louth on the June bank holiday. The march follow Maeve’s route across the rugged terrain over three weekends (and 12 walking days) with a number of events taking place at various towns and villages along the way.

There was an amusing report in a local newspaper of the festival from back in 2012 which goes as follows:

“Brothers Eoghan and Sean Whelan made for a convincing Cuchulainn and Ferdia as they fought each other at the centre of the refurbished Market Square, where the water was turned on for their final battle at the ford of the River Dee. Members of Dundalk Red Cross administered first aid to a dying Ferdia while Cuchulainn was arrested and led away in handcuffs!”

A quick shout out.

Posted on November 27, 2022 by - Blog, My Writing

A quick shout out to the Irish Field Archery Monthly Magazine which is running a copy of my article on “Bows and Chariots in Ancient Ireland – The Facts and the Fantasies” in their latest edition.

Kudos to the creators and their work- I know how difficult it is to produce a regular publication while struggling to ensure appropriate content and quality. You can find a link to the free PDF’s of their magazine here: Irish Archery

And interesting side-effect wrt to this article is that it always tends to draw at least a number of ‘Cardboard Celts’ out of the shadows. After republishing, I usually get at least 2/3 emails or social media comments from outraged readers who refuse to believe that history and physical fact doesn’t align exactly with events in ‘An TĂĄin’. It’s also interesting to note that, generally, most of these outraged individuals aren’t Irish.

FIONN: Stranger at MullĂĄn BĂĄn – First Reviews

Posted on November 26, 2022 by - Blog, Folklore/Mythology, My Writing

The first reviews from the paperback are just starting to trickle in. Usually, by the time I release a book I’m far too close to tell if its any good or not. As a result, it’s always a bit of a relief to find the reviews are positive.

The digital version gets released on on 15 December.

The first review from Padraig O’Mahony can be found here:

The second review, from Wayne McAuliffe is here:

Huge thanks to Wayne and Padraig. Go raibh mile maith agaibh!

Another Fionn mac Cumhaill Book

Posted on November 20, 2022 by - Blog

I’m currently in the process of outlining the next book in the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series, which will finish up the adventure commenced in ‘Fionn: Stranger at Mullan Ban‘ (but not the series).

All going well, I’m aiming to have this out in Oct/Nov 2023.

This current arc develops the ongoing direction of the series a little further. Demne/Fionn – the titular hero – is growing up and takes a more proactive role in the adventures but his three guardians (his aunt Bodhmhall, the woman warrior Liath Luachra, and the gregarious Fiacial mac Codhna) have their work cut out for them as they try to identify who’s behind the latest threat against their charge.

Cue more adventure, betrayals, and violence with a sprinkling of friendships and romance.

Liath Luachra III Cover Image

Posted on November 12, 2022 by - Blog

One of the early variations from artist Brian Mahy when developing the cover for Liath Luachra: The Seeking.

This was at a point where we were still playing with the colour palette and we hadn’t reached the final ‘look’. I’d asked Bryan to get me a somewhat shocking/bracing cover that reflected the anger/frustration of the character and his final version image certainly delivered.

So much so, that Facebook banned the image from its shop front (one of the many reasons I don’t bother adding anything new there). Hilariously, the initial reason given was because they didn’t permit the sale of animals (the screening programme thought she was a zebra). When I appealed that, the decided the image was too lewd.

That’s why I love running this on their newsfeed (where such apparently lofty regulations appear to be dispensed with)!

Wilding ‘The Great Wild’

Posted on November 6, 2022 by - Blog, My Writing

With ‘Fionn: Stranger at Mullan Ban’ now sorted and ready for release next month I’ve been focusing more on ‘Liath Luachra: The Great Wild’, which I’m hoping to release in the first half of 2023.

Usually, when I’m starting a new book, I play around with the first chapter for a time as this cements the overall mood and theme of the story. I’m currently on the fifth or sixth rough draft of ‘The Great Wild’ and although I’m still shifting various sequences and descriptions around, I’m getting close to locking it in.

This work was always going to be something of an experimental piece as you can see from the attached mood/theme images I’ve been working with (mostly from artist Leila Amat Ortega but also from Reza Afshar and Julie Cherki).

Because I tend to feel my way intuitively with a lot of this stuff, I can never really tell whether the final product is going to work or not. Fortunately, the process seems to have worked so far with other books.

The Romans in Ireland (and how to interpret them)

Posted on November 3, 2022 by - Blog, My Writing

There’s not a great amount of evidence about early Roman interaction with the island now known as Ireland but there are a few tantalising items.

Unlike Great Britain and most of the European Continent, Ireland was never controlled by Roman interests, although the Roman Empire was almost certainly aware of its existence even at that time.

Writing in the sixth century B.C., for example, Himilco the Carthaginian, made vague references to an enigmatic island he called ‘Iernei’ and to ‘Celtic’ tribes based on the North Sea. In 50 B.C. meanwhile, in the account of his campaigns in Gaul, Julius Caesar referred directly to the distant land of ‘Hibernia’.

Around the same time, Greek philosopher Strabo marveled at the shadowy country of ‘Ierne’ located on the limits of the known world, and the stories he’d heard of the savage, man-eating inhabitants and their sexual practices. This latter reference highlights some of the problems with early 
 er 
 ‘historians’.

Ptolemy, the famous geographer and astrologist, produced the first map of ‘Hibernia’ in the middle of the 2nd century A.D. This listed native tribes said to live upon its distant shores, which included the Erdin, the Nagnate, the Menapii, the Iverni and others.

A few decades earlier however, in his book ‘Agricola’, the Roman historian and politician, Tacitus, famously described how Gnaeus Julius Agricola, a governor of Roman Britain from AD 78-84, considered conquering Ireland. In that book, Agricola apparently claimed that the island could be held with a single legion. The number of soldiers in a legion tended to vary over time but it’s generally estimated at somewhere between 4000 to 5000 legionaries, and auxiliaries (non-citizen troops). Agricola was Tacitus’ father-in-law however, and Roman politics was a dicey game, so just because Tacitus wrote this, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

What most historians and academics do seem to agree on, was that at least some interaction (predominantly trade) existed between the island of Ireland, modern day Great Britain, and the European continent over the first and second century. Given the huge social disruption caused by the expansion of the Roman Empire over this time, it’s almost certain those tribes on Ireland’s eastern coast would have heard of the Romans, even if they weren’t directly affected. It’s also likely that at least some of the displaced people in modern-day Great Britain would have fled across the waves to escape the impacts of Roman invasion and colonization.

Interpreting Romans from an Ancient Irish Perspective

Most ‘Irish mythology’ presented through English language media tends to reflect a very Anglocentric view of ancient Irish culture. When it came to creating an Irish story that introduced culturally foreign ‘Roman’ elements therefore, I was keen to try and present the events from a more authentic perspective of ‘native’ people in first century Ireland.

When I started working on the book (one from my ‘Liath Luachra’ series) however, this proved something of a challenge. When you’re describing the impacts of a non-Irish culture on Ireland at the time, I knew it would be a mistake to start thinking of the ‘foreigners’ as ‘Romans’. If you start off with that concept, that immediately blinkers any further interpretation from a native Irish perspective and you end up with the usual monocultural, English-language tropes.

Given the lack of records from pre-fifth century Ireland, we don’t know how Ireland’s early inhabitants would have referred to the people of the Roman Empire – but they certainly wouldn’t have called them ‘Romans’. We can surmise however, that they would have referred to them using terms that articulated key behaviours of these new arrivals, behaviours interpreted in a way that made sense from the native Irish cultural perspective.

Like all authoritarian regimes, to fulfil the ambitions of its leaders (and the greed of its politicians), the Roman Empire had a constant need to subjugate other cultures and appropriate their wealth and resources. This predominantly meant taking control of their lands and other natural resources but it also meant using the subjugated populations for slave labour.

Other cultures would have looked on this behaviour – the ‘Great Roman Dream’ – and the scale of it, with a mixture of astonishment and horror. As a result, I opted for the name ‘The Hungry People’ as I felt this captured how this distressing cultural characteristic of the Romans might have been expressed from a native Irish perspective. This, however, is really only a best guess on my part as the truth is we’ll never know. In the final book (Liath Luachra: The Metal Men), I haven’t used the Gaelic term as I felt the book (and the series) was already sufficiently loaded with Irish concepts/language for a mainly English-speaking audience.

The naming of the ‘The Metal Men’ – the military forces of’ ‘The Hungry People’, uses the same creative approach and is, I think, self-explanatory.

CON MÓR

Posted on October 29, 2022 by - Blog

Macnas have put together another impressive art creation for the Halloween celebrations in Galway (down at Fisheries Field, on the banks of the River Corrib) this year. It’s accessible on Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th October. [Images from Macnas]

The blurb is as follows:

Inventors and explorers from all over the world are baffled by startling evidence of an ancient giant living underneath the Fisheries Field in Galway city. Professor Marjorie Morrigan, an expert on “Giants & Where They Come From”, reported – â€œThis giant seems to have been here for centuries. There is a very large iron nose, so big and rusty, you could park a car in one of the nostrils.”

Professor Marjorie Morrigan went on to confirm that this big giant is called Con Mór and originates from the ancient ‘Island of Giants’ off the coast of Connaught. Con Mór was so famous across Ireland for his love of birds and nature, his friends used to call him ‘The Bird King.

Some of the fantasists are probably going to miss the fact that this is a production with kids in mind, so I’ll just clarify here 
 This is not true!  

But it’s still worth a visit!

The Stone Of The Yellow Truth

Posted on October 23, 2022 by - Blog, My Writing

I really enjoy making landscape and topography part of a story but of course in ancient Ireland you also have neolithic structures and other features that add a new level of resonance to the land.

When writing the Fionn or Liath Luachra series, this kind of inclusion is critical, not only for imbibing the landscape with a character but also to add atmosphere or when setting up a plot.

This short segment from ‘Liath Luachra: The Grey One’ is the first mention of Carraig An FhĂ­rinne BuĂ­? (The Stone of the Yellow Truth), an ancient standing stone of importance to the ÉblĂĄna tribe. This particular scene sets up some of the background context for later plot development but also allows a bit of dialogue to further develop the characters of Liath Luachra and her band of mercenaries.

It was quite fun to write.

Liath Luachra grunted. ‘And Carraig An Fhírinne Buí? Does this hold significance for the Éblána?’

Flannán shook his head. ‘No particular significance. Although there are some who say the stone is a marker.’

‘What does it mark?’

He shrugged. ‘Boundaries. Spaces that are different. I don’t know. You’d have to ask the draoi.’

There was a snigger from the others at this and even Liath Luachra had to wonder at the Éblána man’s obtuseness. A draoi was the last person anyone would approach for information. Jealously possessive of their restricted knowledge, they resented any efforts to make them share their secrets. Powerful in terms of magic and tribal authority, everyone knew they were best avoided.

Flannán bristled, misunderstanding the reason for their laughter. His lips formed a thin line and his forehead furrowed so deeply that the circular tattoo halved in size. ‘You can laugh but I tell you sites like Carraig An Fhírinne Buí are best avoided. That stone marks the entrance to a pretty little valley and yet none of the Éblána dare to venture there.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Sean Fergus, scratching his beard with thick fingers.

‘What?’

‘How do you know there’s a pretty valley? You said your tribe do not venture there.’

Flannán looked at him askew. ‘A kinsman of mine entered the forest beyond the stone by accident, when he was hunting and veered astray. He saw the valley through the trees but he was too fearful to go there for he swore it was haunted.’

‘Haunted?’

The Éblána man paused, as though struggling to recall something he’d been told a long time before. ‘He said the air was wrong. My kinsman is not a man prone to false embroidery of a tale. Neither is he one to panic easily so his words bear the weight of truth for me.’

‘What did he see?’ asked Canann, his eyes bright with nervous curiosity. ‘Your kinsman. What did he see?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Hah!’ roared Conall Cacach.

Flannán tossed the large warrior a heated look, infuriated by his blatant disrespect. ‘My kinsman did not see anything but he felt something.’

‘He felt something? What did he feel?’ Canann was leaning forward eagerly now, like a child hearing a ghost story for the very first time.’

‘He felt a coldness, an unnatural texture to the air. It frightened him deeply.’

Conall Cacach snorted. ‘Your kinsman must shit himself every time the wind shifts to the east.’

Flannán reddened. ‘If you are a man of such courage perhaps you would spend the night at Carraig An Fhírinne Buí by yourself.’

Conall Cacach sneered. ‘I have better things to do than sit around a piss-coloured rock, Éblána man.’

‘Of course, of course. You are so very, very busy.’

The bickering continued until Liath Luachra growled at them both to shut up. Furious, FlannĂĄn retreated into himself and said nothing more. Conall Cacach, for his part, led a fresh discussion on a subject that was the fĂ©nnid’s unfailing favourite: their plans for their newfound wealth and reputation following the completion of their service.