Posted on January 28, 2023 by - Blog

Some readers might find this image a little familiar.

That’s because it’s remarkably similar to the layout of the ‘Crannóg‘ used in the book ‘LIATH LUACHRA: The Metal Men‘.

In fact, this is an early image of the ráth at the Irish National Heritage Park. It has a very similar layout to the fictional crannóg as, in general, there wasn’t major differences in terms of structural designs back in the day. People used the natural materials available and the fundamental designs of what worked were easily adapted to many structures.

Our ancestors were eminently practical as, a lot of the time, their lives depended on it. 

Oirish Obbits!

Posted on September 1, 2022 by - Blog

I’ve yet to see the new LOTR series but the initial Irish Times review is actually quite funny and they summarized it with the following tagline:

“De Lord of de Rings: The new hobbits are filthy, hungry simpletons with stage-Irish accents. That’s $1bn well spent“

I’ve always seen ‘Hobbits’ as having more of an upper class English accent! 🙂

‘I say, chaps. We seem to be having a spot of bother with that Sauron chap. Bit of a cad, in my opinion!’

Interestingly, when I shared the above post as a joke on a number of fantasy sites, some people started trying to explain and defend what’s really a kind of veiled hangover from colonization, with rational pulled from Tolkien’s fantasy literature canon

“Well, they are not really hobbits. They are harfoots!”

“The series is set 5000 years before Lord of the Rings, so accents, cultures and races can change a lot over this period, depending on who they breed and associate with.

Etc. etc.

Absolutely nuts!

Paperback Books

Posted on November 30, 2020 by - Blog, My Writing

I’m pleased to announce that nearly all of my books can now be ordered through bookshops anywhere in the world (while recognising many of them are still closed due to the pandemic).

For the last six years or so, there’s really been only three paperbacks available in print outside of the Amazon system (Fionn 1, Fionn 2 and Beara 1). That’s mainly been due to the administrative complexity and the costs associated with placing books into the Ingram system (that’s the company who hold the ‘Print-On-Demand’ files and supply copies to the bookshops on request). After several years, I finally found time to get this task done. Sheesh!        

Anyway, if you order a copy through a local bookshop let me know how it turns out as I’m curious to see how this works in practice from the other side.

DARK DAWN: A New Kind of Irish Adventure

Posted on October 11, 2020 by - Blog, Folklore/Mythology, My Writing

This week I’m recommencing work on Dark Dawn/ Camhaoir Fuilsmeartha, a new kind of Irish adventure which I’m hoping to release in Janurary 2021. At this stage, I can only say that it’ll be quite different to anything I’ve produced so far.

Unfortunately, this project dropped by the wayside as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic (the associated lockdowns and the mad workload that resulted directly as a result of that). Given the amount of time I’d invested in it, that was something of a disappointment but it’s nice to think I can now start the ‘salvage’ process.

My preference is for the Irish title (Camhaoir Fulilsmeartha) which means ‘Bloodspattered Dawn’ as opposed to ‘Dark Dawn’. You can find the Goodreads link here: Dark Dawn/ Camhaoir Fuilsmeartha

Forthcoming Projects at Irish Imbas Books

Posted on July 31, 2019 by - Blog, My Writing

Part of the problem with doing creative work on a part-time basis is that there are always more projects than you can actually complete. Personally speaking, I always have at least ten projects on hand at different stages of development. Some may never see the light of day but most of them will. In any case, this is a list of the top five projects we’re working on at the moment.

FIONN: Stranger at Mullán Bán
Six chapters into this fourth novel of the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series and we’re looking at a release date around the end of 2019. I’m still not wiling to give much away but the series does follow the Fenian Cycle narratives and we’ll be finishing up with book six.

LIATH LUACHRA: The Seeking
At present I’m working on a short story which will set the scene for the third Liath Luachra Series novel. At this stage, the wider plot is well established with some returning characters, some unique antagonists and an interesting slant on the period that Irish mythology hasn’t taken before. To be honest, I’m champing at the bit to get into this and it’s a struggle to pace myself so that can complete FIONN 4 first. The short story will be out in the next month or two. Development of the potential television series based on the first book may stymie this of course.

Project Scéalta:
Project Scéalta (a side-project based on FIONN: Defence of Ráth Bládhma) has so many components, it’s been one of the more frustrating pieces of work I’ve done to date (two steps forward, one step back). It’s now sitting on the back burner for another three weeks but once time frees up in August, I’ll be almost at a point where I have a working model.

Attached is the first conceptual image for the project. Some of you may recall that this initially started last year with the great line “It’s raining and my arse aches”.

As you can see that’s changed a bit. Some might say, for the better!

Project Tobar:
This is a non-fiction, Irish mythology-based project and it’s going into initial design stage later this year. This is going to the biggest project we’ve done so far so it’ll probably swallow our full capacity for 2020. That’s why we’re not going to do any actual development work until at least two of the previous projects are completed. Watch this space.

Celtic Mythology Collection 4
After a lot of consideration and redesign, we’re finally ready to kick off a new Irish Imbas: Celtic Mythology Short Story Competition next year (all dependent on completing Project Tobar first, of course). The plan is to launch the competition in September 2020. We’ll be commissioning illustrations for that at the start of next year. Until last month, I was convinced, we wouldn’t run another of these.

Beara 2 and Beara 3:
Probably the two most books I still get most emails about. These are sequels to Beara: Dark Legends and they will come. One day

Ah, that’s nice – Our Books Available for Half Price on Kobo

Posted on October 28, 2015 by - Blog, Uncategorized

Sale-sign

We’re not really that fussed one way or the other about different devices or ebook platforms but a recent sale announcement from Kobo took us a bit by surprise and we thought we’d share. Obviously this is really only of interest if you have a Kobo reader or similar ePub device.

Essentially, Kobo are supporting small and micro publishers like us by making our books half-price. The announcement we received is as follows:
————————————
On the heels of our successful 50% off promotion in August–which was fully supported by us–we’re excited to announce we’ll be holding a second 50% off sale.
Customers will be able to redeem 50% off of any title published by KWL using the promo codes below an unlimited number of times—so please, let your readers and fans know about this incredible opportunity to stack up on eBooks while they can! Unlike last time, the sale runs in different dates by territory, and each territory has it’s own promo code. See below for the full details.
Canada: October 28th – October 31st
Promo Code: CA50SALE
United States/Australia/New Zealand
October 27th – October 30th, Promo Code: GET50SALE
United Kingdom
October 30th – November 2nd, Promo Code: UK50SALE

Promo code is valid for 50% off select eBook purchases from this list. Discount will be confirmed at checkout. Offer valid from October 28, 2015 at 12:00 AM EST through October 31, 2015 at 11:59 PM EST. This offer is not valid in conjunction with any other offer or promotion and cannot be used to adjust amount paid on previous purchases. Promo code must be entered at time of purchase to qualify for this discount. Discounts cannot be applied nor the discount value refunded once a purchase is complete. Rakuten Kobo Inc. reserves the right to change or cancel this offer at any time without notice
————————————————————-
Normally we wouldn’t even bother mentioning this but it does seem like pretty good deal. And there are plenty of other books out there apart from ours.

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!