The Irish banknotes are an interesting litmus test for the progression of Irish self-identity back home. Prior to the late 1970s, Irish banknotes consisted almost exclusively of the ‘Lady Lavery issue’ banknotes (also known as the ‘A Series’) which had been printed by the Bank of England in London and circulated in Ireland since 1928.… Read more »
I came across an interesting project last week by artist Zhaochen Vincent Wu (based in the States) who was working on a cross-cultural proposal merging Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ with the Fenian stories. He explains it as follows: “This set of design is for my project “Seven Fianna”, which is an adoption to the classic… Read more »
‘FIONN: The Tightening Trail‘ goes out to ‘Paid’ newsletter subscribers in the next two weeks (once the final edits are done). This – the penultimate book in the series – will be released wide, later this year (in June or July). There’s a link to it in the comments below: Much of the story in… Read more »
Demne (Fionn) and Liath Luachra traversing The Great Wild. This is a scene from “The Tightening Trail’ – the forthcoming story from the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series which I hope to release within the next 6-8 weeks. Number five in the series, its slowly bringing the story towards its culmination in Book Six – FIONN:… Read more »
This is a scene from the upcoming novel ‘FIONN: The Betrayal‘ (although that title is likely to change). Set in the settlement of Ráth Bládhma, in this scene, the woman warrior Liath Luachra, is attempting to plan a dangerous trip to the distant Tailte Méithe – The Fat Lands. To do this however, she needs… Read more »
I’d just started the process of redesigning the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series book covers this week when these arrived in yesterday as part of a historical post. About eight years ago, I’d commissioned some covers and the artist came back with the attached images. At the time, although I was really impressed with her design… Read more »
Monoliths by Jonan Booth Remmers. Obviously, we have many variations of these back home, particularly around the Cork-Kerry area. People tend to forget however, that what we see today are little more than the ‘bones beneath the skin’. Most of these structures are the remnants of something that existed thousands of years ago. They don’t… 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’ or a false promise of mystic wisdom, rather than actual ‘knowledge’. When it comes to ‘mythology’, one of the biggest mistakes people tend to make is an enthusiatic and… Read more »
It’s almost four years ago now, since the pre-production work started on a television series based on ‘Liath Luachra: The Grey One‘. The series (to be produced by Graisland Entertainment) was renamed ‘Liath: Celtic Warrior’ and I confess I wasn’t particularly enamoured with the new name – it simply doesn’t make sense from an Irish… Read more »
After a hectic, but production poor 2023, I’m proactively returned to creative mode. At the moment, my key focus is on finishing ‘FIONN: The Betrayal’ – the fifth book in FIONN mac Cumhaill Series and, probably, the second last. This particular work has been a lot harder to write than most other books in the… Read more »
It’s hard to believe but it’s now coming up to ten years since I first started publishing books on Irish culture and Irish cultural belief systems. Back in 2013/14, I’d originally planned to write (and publish through a mainstream publisher) a non-fiction book related to Irish Fenian stories. What I ended up discovering through my… Read more »
A lot of people tend to forget that Fionn mac Cumhaill also held a reputation as a talented poet (which has a whole bunch of relevant associations) and the Fenian narratives are strongly linked with what’s generally referred to as ‘nature poetry’. A number of ‘nature poems’ are actually attributed to Fionn (and I’ve a… Read more »
