Update on Forthcoming Productions: Irish Imbas Books

Posted on August 22, 2015 by - Blog, My Writing, Uncategorized

It’s all been a bit quiet on the communication front from my end as there’s been a lot of changes going behind the scenes with the Irish Imbas Books website at the moment. Anyway, here’s the update since March 2015.

The Fionn Series:

For once, I actually  seem to be holding to schedule (on some books at least). I’m on the last chapter of Liath Luachra – The Grey One which is on track for release in Oct/Nov 2015. I’ve been spread pretty thin these last six months so I haven’t completed any further progress on Fionn 3: The Adversary but I’m still looking to release that later this year – probably in December now, given the delays.

Beara 2:

Still only three chapters in. Given the complexity of the storylines, I am seriously going to have to commit to taking a large segment of time aside to make a further dent in this. Because of family and other commitments, I’m not really free to do that yet.

Fionn: The Stalking Silence – Audiobook

I had great plans for an audiobook and although providing information and books through audio is something I’m keen to do, this has now been postponed until late next year. Too many other pieces of work to finish first.

Another Book:

Yes, I know. Considering all the whinging above, you’re absolutely right. Whys the hell am I even looking at producing yet another book?

The truth is, I was going through my files the other day and came across some old short stories I’d put to one side at least seven years ago. Two were relatively decent drafts which don’t require too much work to finalise. A third is a longer and more complex story that I wrote more than ten years ago but which I was never able to finish in a way that satisfied me. Last year, I finally developed an ending that works (yes, it’s been mulling around in my head that long) so I’ve decided to make this into a minor collection of stories – a bit like Leannan Sidhe – the Irish Muse. All three stories are set in Kinsale – a coastal town in Cork – so I’m probably going to call make it a specific Kinsale-themed book. I’m having a cover drawn up at the moment under the title ‘Sleepwalking at Altitude.’ This probably won’t be available until mid- to late next year.

The Non-Fiction Book: Project ‘Tobar’

I first mentioned this book back in March and explained that its something I’ve been wanting to write for several years.  Aaaaaaanyway, I’ve finally decided to get off my butt and do it. I now have the structure I need to use pretty much sorted out so I’m hoping to get the bulk of this out of me and into draft form by Jan/Feb next year. Given the title ‘Tobar’  (the Irish word for ‘well’ – as in a source of water), you may be able to work out what it’s going to be about but I’m only going to offer vague hints for the next wee while at least. I think it’ll be mid next year before this is available and given that it isn’t really something that will work well as an ebook, I’m looking at different options for publication. Possibly, I might just distribute this in some form from my own site. Speaking of which …

Selling Directly from the Irish Imbas Books Website:

In a week or so, I’m hoping to be able to sell some books direct from this site. This, essentially, allows me to get around the whole DRM issue (which for those of you who don’t know what ‘DRM’ means, stands for ‘Digital Right Management’ ). DRM essentially establishes monopolies for large companies.  In a practical sense, it means that if you download a file for Kindle e-readers, you can’t use it on another e-reader such as Apple or Kobo etc. (and vis-versa). This essentially locks readers into a particular device and prevents sharing of files. By selling them on my site, I can make works available in different formats so that nobody is locked out. More importantly, it means I have more control over my own work and I can actually make new work available on the website that isn’t available elsewhere.

Cover, covers covers:

I went a bit mad on covers this year and produced, or commissioned quite a few different ones. To my surprise, the one I liked most was one that my designer Marija sent to me out of the blue yesterday. Basically, she went off and rejigged the covers for the Fionn series and sent me a number of associated wallpapers – all of which are stunning (I’ll probably make those available on the website for anyone who wants one when I actually work out how to do that).

I really love Marija’s work and have also commissioned her to do the ‘Sleepwalking at Altitude’ cover. I’ve added the new look of Fionn: Defence of Ráth Bládhma in this post. What do you think?

Defence of Ráth Bládhma minor

Newsletters:

Finally learning how to do these. I feel a bit guilty as these were supposed to start going out earlier this year. At the moment, I’m assuming they’ll be quarterly only, have a section on folklore, news from me and some pieces of what I’m working on so people can add feedback or comment if they want to.

Righto!  That’s all for me. I’m off for a beer!

 

 

Final Cover for Liath Luachra – The Grey One

Posted on July 26, 2015 by - Blog, My Writing

Liath Luachra cover

Some months ago I mentioned that I was writing a prequel to the Fionn mac Cumhaill series entitled Liath Luachra – The Friendly Ones. The latter part of that title referred to the mercenary group Na Cinéaltaí (The Friendly Ones) originally mentioned in FIONN: Defence of Ráth Bládhma and to which the character Liath Luachra had at one point belonged. After some feedback from various people, the title name was changed to Liath Luachra – The Grey One and the final cover completed (at last!).

Some of you will have recognised An Grianàn Ailigh (the Grianán of Aileach) there in the background. An ancient stone structure up in Donegal that’s believed to date back to around 1700 B.C.,  I passed it by on my way to visit the ever-amazing Mel and Ruairidh last year. For the purpose of the the story, I actually transferred the Grianàn south and east to northern Leinster. It’s a pretty amazing place with spectacular views that I’ll write about again at some stage.

This particular book basically came about about as I was keen to explore some research I’d carried out on tribal dynamics and on the use of fian (the original word for a ‘war party’ but also the word that later became ‘fianna’) in pre-fifth century Ireland. I was also keen to provide some additional background context to the character of Liath Luachra in the Fionn mac Cumhaill series.

The book currently has it’s own page on this site and although it won’t be released until September/ October this year, I will be putting a sample chapter up in the next two weeks or so.

The back cover blurb reads as follows:

Liath Luachra – The Grey One
Ireland 188 A.D. A land of tribal affiliations, secret alliances and treacherous rivalries.
Youthful woman warrior Liath Luachra has survived two brutal years with mercenary war party “The Friendly Ones” but now the winds are shifting.

Dispatched on a murderous errand where nothing is as it seems, she must survive a group of treacherous comrades, the unwanted advances of her battle leader and a personal history that might be her own undoing.

Clanless and friendless, she can count on nothing but her wits, her fighting skills and her natural ferocity to see her through.

Woman warrior, survivor, killer and future guardian to Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhail – this is her story.

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To be honest, it always feels a bit weird doing the whole back cover blurb thing. Obviously, you want to give people some idea what the book’s about and try to make it sound interesting (with a limited number of words). At the same time though, it’s hard not to find yourself falling into cliché. To my ear, the blurb often rings wincingly melodramatic at times. I guess this was as good as I could make it without taking it all WAAAYY too seriously.

Hope you enjoy!

Creating the “Great Wild” in the ‘Fionn mac Cumhaill’ Series

Posted on December 20, 2014 by - Blog, Mise (Me), My Writing

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Given that most of what I write has a strong Irish element to it, people are often surprised to learn that I’ve been based in New Zealand for years, particularly given my strong views on cultural authenticity and respect for historical accuracy. To be honest, that’s not really a problem these days due to the broad connectivity of the internet and my own frequent trips back home to ‘draw from the well’.

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One of the things I do have to keep in mind when I’m writing however, is the Irish landscape. This is a very important characteristic – and sometimes a very dominant one – in many of my stories. Beara, for example, has a particularly characteristic landscape that you’ll never find beyond West Cork and thus forms a critical part of the overall Beara Trilogy narrative.

Because of its history and location, Ireland has been quite “tamed” or “domesticated”. The land has been occupied and has had its topography altered and managed by human activity for over thousands of years. New Zealand, however, with its much more ‘recent’ history, remains a very ‘physical’ country with a dramatic landscape that’s very different from home.

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Because my local landscape is so impressive, I’ve sometimes struggled to prevent myself from incorporating the drama of those landscapes into my own stories. One of those areas where the New Zealand landscape has been really useful however is in the Fionn series. In that set of stories, the narrative is based in a time period when Ireland was completely different from what we know today; very sparsely populated, covered in dense forest and teeming with wildlife. Hence the characters referring to it as ‘The Great Wild.

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Although from a botanical perspective, there’s very little commonality between the Great Wild and the New Zealand forests, I’ve found my tramps through the latter extremely useful when trying to imagine the Great Wild from a social/historical and survival perspective. In this respect, both are very similar; vast, impenetrable in parts and potentially dangerous for the unwary or the unprepared.

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Two weeks ago, I was visiting a South Island forest with friends, following the course of a tannin-drenched river (which gives the water the colour of diluted blood) to some local stone archways. Even at the time, I was struck by the creative potential of what at I was seeing – in terms of the “Great Wild” and ended up taking hundreds of shots for later inspiration.

Much of the third Fionn book takes place over the course of a violent pursuit along the forested banks of a waterway in a constricted river valley so, from that perspective alone, the visit was very opportune. In any case, I thought I’d add these in here so you could see what’s going through my mind at the moment. At some stage, when I get time to draw breath I’ll put up a pin board of images so people can see this story development more easily.

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