I came across an interesting graphic novel last week called Judge Dredd: Emerald Isle. Originally published back in 2002, it was written by Belfast comic writer Garth Ennis and drawn by Steve Dillon (as part of the famous ‘Judge Dredd’ series) and it plays with every possible cliché of Ireland and Irish people – to… Read more »
In a world dominated by ‘genre’ entertainment based on clichés and tropes, I’ve always been impressed by creatives that surprise me. That’s something I, personally, strive to do with my own work but, cynic that I am, it’s something I rarely experience myself. I was fortunate to have one of those rare events last night… Read more »
It’s interesting for me to look back on some of the older posts and articles in this site and see how my plans and intentions have changed over the years. I recently came an article from 4 years back where I’d outlined some of my book plans including Liath Luachra: Sons of the Land Bodhmhall:… Read more »
Producing and distributing a professional ‘product’ takes time and effort (or a lot of spare money!). One of the issues asociated with being a niche, part-time creator therefore, is that competing priorities generally constrict you from achieving the things you want to achieve (in the time you want to achieve them). Add in family, other… Read more »
Ireland: First/Second Century In the isolated valley of Gleann Ceoch, a dying warrior is assigned to defend the isolated settlement of Ráth Bládhma (future home of Fionn mac Cumhaill) from an incursion of enemy scouts. This experimental format story in Irish and English will be released in May 2021 – final date yet to be… Read more »
Galway’s Macnas are probably Ireland’s most innovative live ‘theatre’ group – they’re certainly one of the most visually spectacular. As an alternative to the plastic 2021 St Paddy’s experience (Covid-19 version) therefore, you might want to consider checking out their Galway 2020 commission – Gilgamesh. As mythological epics go, this one is an interesting narrative… Read more »
It’s always nice when a box of books arrives at the door, a delivery I tend to limit to once a year. Usually, this occurs only when I’m releasing one of my own books (Liath Luachra: The Seeking, in this case) or printing off a small number of books for presents/reviews, or treating myself to… Read more »
There’s a lot of rubbish online about Sheela Na Gigs. Carvings of female figures displaying an exaggerated vulva, there’s certainly a sexual reference in there somewhere, but the truth is that we still don’t really know what they were used for, or what they’re meant to represent. Although found across the European contient, the largest… Read more »
With the ‘soft’ release of Liath Luachra: The Seeking, I now have a slight breather where I can mull over future works in the pipeline and consider what’s coming up next. In terms of “Definitely Coming Soon”, I can confirm priority on the following projects: (1) Camhaoir Fuilsmeartha/ Dark DawnThis Irish/English language project will be… Read more »
I had a bit of fun with ‘Facebook Shops’ recently. A recent attempt by the social media company to break into the eCommerce market, I’d generally avoided Facebook Shops in the past as it was simply too difficult to load products onto it. Remarkably complicated and driven by a clunky algorithm, it always seemed to… Read more »
As promised, Liath Luachra: The Seeking is finally being released today. It’s something of a ‘soft’ launch however (in that you wont see much fanfare) as the book will only be available in digital form through the Irish Imbas Books website (and in paperback form through Amazon) for the next month or two. After that,… Read more »
Recently, the Cherokee Nation in the United States gave notice to Stellantic – the company making ‘Cherokee Jeeps’ – that it was time to stop using their name and culture for commercial branding purposes. This followed actions by other American tribes (e.g. pressures on the Washington Redskins football team to change their name, the Navaho… Read more »
Attached is a short but interesting video on Brian Boru from an old television series called ‘Ancient Warriors‘. This being an American series, much of the pronunuciation of Irish names and terms is pretty dodgy and the producers seem to have got their locations badly mixed up. That said, they do cover the inter-tribal discord… Read more »
It’s interesting when you use different languages for what’s supposed to be the same thing or the same word defining the ‘thing’. The problem, of course, is that langauge is culturally-based and, often, a word cannot be directly translated or even explained without a good understanding of the culture in question. In English, the word… Read more »
You can’t really understand mythology if you don’t have the culture and the historical context – one of the reasons Western-based “internet mythology” remains an ‘entertainment’ rather than actual ‘knowledge’. When it comes to mythology, one of the biggest mistakes people tend to make is an enthusiatic and frenzied focus on individual events and records… Read more »
Attached are some conceptual images we used during the development of the Dark Dawn project. Here’s a bit of the draft media release: The latest product from IRISH IMBAS is ‘Caomhaoir Fuilsmeartha/ Dark Dawn’. An experimental narrative project, told in both Irish and English, it relates the story of a dying warrior’s attempts to protect… Read more »
In terms of plot patterns, ‘Peaky Blinders’ is probably one of the best shows on television at the moment and I’ve had a lot of respect for the writer Stephen Knight ever since seeing his startlingly innovative series ‘Taboo’ with Tom Hardy. This interesting interesting post from the Irish Times shows some of the links… Read more »
This was a snippet from Liath Luachra: The Seeking which I first put online this day a year ago. Today I sent the completed manuscript off to my editor for a final check prior to its release in March so it seems apt to put it out again. ———————————- Emerging from the cave, the warrior… Read more »
