God, I love Christmas/New Year in New Zealand!
Through a pure twist of timing and climate, the Christmas celebration here falls at the very start of the summer holiday season. As a result, holidays in this country can stretch from 24th December, all to the way through to the end of January. That’s not to say you don’t work over that period – most people do – but the cities are definitely a lot emptier, people are more laid back and there’s a great holiday vibe that just keeps rolling on (when the weather and earthquakes allow, of course).
This year, given other responsibilities, I’ve had to spend a lot less time at the beach to catch up on writing projects that have lapsed throughout the year. The main pieces of work coming through over the next few months are as follows:
Fionn 4: The Adversary
I’ll be starting the last chapter (plus epilogue) on Fionn: The Adversary next week. It’s been something of a struggle to complete this book given workloads last year, the length and the structural approach I’ve taken with it. Essentially, this book ties up a number of loose ends, reveals the identity of the mysterious Adversary, the reasons for Bodhmhall’s expulsion from her tribe and of course it sets up key elements for the last 2-3 books in the series. It currently sits at about 110,000 words.
I’ll be leaking bits and pieces on this over the next 1-2 months prior to the launch (planned for some time at the end of February 2017).
Audiobooks
We had some bad news with audiobooks last year as a result of the November earthquake. Naturally this all happened at a time when we’d just started the preparations to finish three audiobooks (short stories from ‘The Irish Muse’) before Christmas. Now that the building we used for recordings is no longer available, we’re holding off until we can find a suitable alternative to complete the final touches.
The Celtic Mythology Collection 2017
I’ll be releasing a more detailed update on this shortly but submissions are currently being read and selected for the shortlist (which will be released by January 31st). The final collection will be released in March 2017.
Meanwhile … once more unto the beach dear friends!!!
