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
