Upcoming Projects

Posted on March 5, 2021 by - Blog, My Writing

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 Dawn
This Irish/English language project will be released in May/June 2021. You can find a little more information on this at: HERE.  

(2) Liath Luachra: The Metal Men
Given that this completes the story in ‘The Seeking’ I’m keen to get this finished and released as soon as possible. I’m feeling pretty confident about getting this out as five chapters are already in ‘close to final’ draft (i.e. they’re written but haven’t yet been touched by the red pens of partner K (my first ‘rough’ reader) and editor Madame Palamino Blackwing.   

(3) Fionn: Stranger from Mullán Bán This novel has been sitting patiently in my drawer for well over a year now. The first six chapters are done and dusted so this will be the immediate priority after ‘The Metal Men’. As usual though, its completion will depend on the intensity of my freelance work and how much publishing time I have available. The first chapter/short story can be found here on the Irish Imbas website (Fionn: The Twisted Trail)

New and Potential Projects

From past experience, I know it’s just impossible to foresee what I’ll be prioritising once these initial three projects are completed. Every year for the past five years, some major event has unexpectedly slammed in from the side and thrown all my well-laid plans to the winds. At present, these are the projects on my work table. Hopefully by the end of the year, I’ll have a better idea which ones I’ll be working on.   

(1) Irish Mythology Project
This is a substantial non-fiction project I’ve been working for over two years. Basically, it’ll explain – in a practical manner – how Irish mythology works, how you can use it apporpriatey and effectively and how you can make it personally relevant (or not).    

(2) Smaller Irish Mythology Project
This is a fiction-based mythology project. Possibly another Short Story Collection – I’m not entirely sure yet.  

(3) A Liath Luachra novella
A prequel-novella based on an event in Liath Lauchra’s life during her first year with Na Cinéaltaí.

(4) Beara 2 and Beara 3
This is a substantial piece of work given the size of the existing book but I’m keen to get this story finished.

(5) An Irish Battle Series 
This is a short, three-book series based on on the events leading up to a major Irish battle and the people who took part in it. 

(6) Cú Chulainn
I’ve also recently been thinking of doing a series on Cú Chulainn (i.e. from an Irish/Gaelic perspective as opposed to the anglicized fantasy stuff that’s usually served up). The Cú Chulainn story is actually one that’ll be very difficult to adapt for a contemporary audience while keeping it culturally authentic. I suspect this will probably take a lot of commitment in terms of time (for research, scoping and actual writing).

Please feel free to let me know if any of these projects sound of interest to you.

LIATH LUACHRA: THE SEEKING has been released (kinda)

Posted on March 1, 2021 by - Blog, My Writing

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, it’l lbe relased wider.

Part of the reason for this apporach is that the story’s a two-parter to be completed in Liath Luachra: The Metal Men, which I’m hoping to finish and release in the next 4-5 months or so. I’m not overly comfortable putting out a completely unfinished story but people were demanding something be released and this seemed like a good medium.

It’ll be interesting to see the reaction the cover gets when it’s released wider than this website. As covers go, it’s a bit confrontational and controversial (given the naked – albeit desexualised – woman on it). Those who know the character or who’ve read the book will ‘get it’, of course.

Brian Mahy – an artist who I really enjoy working with – was given the task of designing a cover that represents a scene from the book where the character is naked. To do this, I asked him to make the protagonist clearly recognisable as feminine while also ensuring it wasn’t sexualised. I think he did an excellent job of that and also in reflecting the ferla nature of the character. You can find more of Bryan’s work at Bryan Mahy Artstation or Bryan Mahy Behance.

Where Can I Get IT?


You can get the digital version HERE.

The paperback version on Amazon is available HERE but note that this link may change depending on which country you’re living in. If you search for it, it’ll probably only appear if you look it up in the ‘Books’ section as oposed to the ‘Kindle’ section. If you’re based in Great Britian – the whole Brexit mess menas a lot of books don’t appear on Amazon UK.

I have to admit, it’s not my preference to make the paperback available uniquely on Amazon, unfortunately most other paperback distributers have made it too expensive to go through them at the moment.

By the way, you should also be aware that there appear to be delays with the shipping of paperback products from Amazon. I ordered several paperback copies recently for review purposes and probably won’t get them until mid- to end- March. If you’re downloading through the Bookfunnel system meanwhile, remember that it can take up to two hours (admittedly rare) to receive the file and if you have a gmail address the email may end up in one of the more obscure folders.

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.

BLATHER DAY2

Posted on June 26, 2020 by - Blog, Folklore/Mythology, My Writing

On the 27th of each month, I post a few independent reviews for one of my books, essentially letting other people describe their thoughts about that particular book instead of blathering on about it myself (we all dodge a bullet, that way!).

Today’s ‘Blather Day’ choice is FIONN: TRAITOR OF DÚN BAOISCNE – the second book in the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series. The reviews I’ve chosen were randomly pulled from different ebook sites so some are short, some are more in-depth, but at least they’re all from people who’ve actually read the book.

As ever, I remain very grateful for those who made the effort of leaving a review.

Go raibh maith agaibh!

—————————————————-

Ireland: 198 A.D. Six years have passed since the brutal attack on the community of Ráth Bládhma. The isolated valley of Glenn Ceoch is at peace once more but those who survived still bear the scars of that struggle.

Now, new dangers threaten the settlement.

The warrior Liath Luachra has discovered troubling signs of strangers in the surrounding wilderness. Disgraced druid Bodhmhall fears a fresh attempt to abduct her talented nephew. A summons from the fortress Dún Baoiscne sets them both on a perilous traverse of the Great Wild where enemies, old and new, await them.
And Muirne has returned to reclaim her son.

Come what may, there will be blood.

Based on the ancient Fenian Cycle texts, the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series recounts the fascinating and pulse-pounding tale of the birth and adventures of Ireland’s greatest hero, Fionn mac Cumhaill.

————————————-

Just click on the image to read the review!

 

 

 

 

Pirates of Ancient Ireland

Posted on May 8, 2020 by - Blog, My Writing

I was amused the other day to find a Russian-based pirate site offering free downloads of one of my books – “Liath Luachra: The Seeking” – the only copy of which, sits on my desktop, awaiting the last few chapters to be written.

Obviously, this was one of the many false ‘pirate’ sites that are actually scams intending to obtain a person’s credit card details.

That said, I was actually tempted to download a copy to see how it ended!

Arrrrr!!

Escaping The Chains Of Genre

Posted on March 2, 2020 by - Blog, Folklore/Mythology, Mise (Me)

It’s hard to believe that it’s almost four years since I published FIONN 3: THE ADVERSARY – the book that completed the first three-book arc of the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series.

The above image is an alternative cover for that book (developed from a series that the artist went off and created predominantly to satisfy her own creative urgings).  An incredibly talented cover designer, she had the whole fantasy genre down to a tee and, hence, thought I’d love what she sent me. And I did – anything this artist does is amazing!

Unfortunately, by then, I’d also been feeling increasingly uncomfortable with having my work locked into the ‘fantasy’ genre, predominantly due to my growing understanding around the confusion between genuine mythology and ‘fantasy’ (particularly where it relates to anything Irish). The over-sexualised imagery that tends to accompany the fantasy genre was also wrong for the kind of books I produce.

In the end, we used a different variant for the cover (using the original photostock – you can see the final here) but I ended up paying the artist for the additional set of images as well. She’d done some amazing work for me in the past and, frankly, she deserved it. Although I’ll probably never use any them, its nice to pull them out on occasion and appreciate the great skill she put into them

Six Years Ago Today

Posted on February 20, 2020 by - Blog, Folklore/Mythology, My Writing

I received one of those social media reminders today that it’s been six years since I first published FIONN: Defence of Ráth Bládhma, an anniversary that’s triggered some quiet reflection for me.

FIONN 1 was actually the second book I ever published (Beara: Dark Legends being the first). It was my first attempt at producing a genuine (as culturally authentic as I could make it) Irish historical adventure/fantasy novel and, to be honest, I had no idea whether people would like it. I’d never written anything similar before and given my insistence on using Irish cultural concepts and – occasionally – language, I assumed most people would be scared off.

Six years later there are four (by December) books in the series as well as a spin-off series (The Irish Woman Warrior Series) which will have three books by the end of the year. It still amazes me that people buy them, even more so when they leave positive reviews.

When I finish a book, it goes from my head and even a few months I struggle to remember even writing it.  I reread this book about two years ago and it was a slightly bizarre experience in that it was actually just like reading a book someone else had written. The weirdest thing was that I really enjoyed it and, overall, I thought it was great (!!?). I’m not really sure what that says about me. People often say you can be your own worst critic but I clearly run the other way.

I’d like to say ‘thank you’ to all of you who took the time to read this book and a particular thanks to those of you who were kind enough to go so far as to write a review. For any writer that will always be a buzz, no matter how old the book or how many books they’ve written.

I’ve always had a clear idea in my head where this series was going (and the Liath Luachra Series of course) and although I’m keen to move onto other projects it feels good to be edging closer to the completion of the story, the characters, the twists and the plots I wanted to reveal. Given the growing interest in a television version, this could of course end up going on in a way or a direction I’d never even envisaged but, to be honest, there are a thousand other things I need/want to do.

I think some stories never end.

Note: The above image shows the development of the cover since my initial amateurish introduction. The current cover is the image seen below.

Book News on Irish Mythology – A Summary for 2019

Posted on November 15, 2019 by - Blog, My Writing

Stories based on Irish mythology and culture have been bowdlerised quite a lot over the last two hundred years or so, often to the point where, now, many people struggle to differentiate genuine Irish history and mythology with commercially-produced “Celtic” fantasy. That’s something that, as an Irish fiction writer (non-fiction, on occasion), I’m regularly confronted with. It’s also why I’m so pedantic in telling stories that are as historically and culturally authentic as I can make them.

Telling stories based on authentic elements of Irish mythology can be something of an effort, however. Not only do you have to get the history right, you also have to introduce ancient Gaelic concepts into the story in a way that a contemporary audience can (a) understand them and (b) enjoy them. That takes research (a lot), it takes language skills (Irish) and of course, the ability to put a story together in a way that allows those elements to shine.

Creating those kinds of Irish mythological stories was a bit exhausting over 2019, fortunately for all the right reasons. The key reason was the recent sale of the screen option (and the subsequent  adaptation) for Liath Luachra: The Grey One which took up a major proportion of my year.

 

There’s still a long path to travel before any decision is made on whether this appears on a screen near you, of course.  There will be a post about it all  at some stage in the future but, until then, here’s a little teaser (ironically, made before we had interest from Hollywood).

 

 

But, screenwork aside, here’s a little update on the other projects currently taking place.

Fionn: Stranger at Mullán Bán

Book number four in the popular series (the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series) concerns the growing pains of the young Fionn (Demne) who’s struggling to solve the mystery of his father’s death, supported as always by this three guardians; his aunt – the bandraoi Bodhmhall, the woman warrior Liath Luachra and the eccentric womaniser Fiacail mac Codhna. This story is maturing quietly in our office drawer like a potentially fruitful wine.  There are six books  in total planned for this series. We had intended to release this volume in December 2019 but, for reasons explained above, this is now delayed until the first half of 2020.

Fionn mac Cumhaill Series

 

Liath Luachra: The Seeking.
This will be the third in the Irish Woman Warrior Series and follows on directly from book two (Liath Luachra: The Swallowed) with the woman warrior Liath Luachra returned to help a comrade rescue his sister from a mysterious group of raiders. Needless to say, this turns out to be far more complicated than expected.

This book returns to many of the themes and characters in Book 1 but also commences the overlap between this series and the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series. Originally, we had planned three books in total but that’s now likely to expand to four.

We’re hoping to release this book in the first quarter of 2020. The current cover is undergoing revision so this is a standby cover until its completed.

 

Dark Dawn:
This is a bit of a trial project I’m currently working on and involves the story of a dying warrior attempting to protect a settlement. The settlement in question is Ráth Bládhma.
Expect to see an announcement on this sometime in the first quarter of 2020.

 

Despite all the excitement over 2019, we have actually released a few items, mainly the following short stories. Note, however, that these are currently only available through the Irish Imbas website:

 

Fionn: The Twisted Trail

While hunting with two children in the depths of the Great Wild, the woman warrior Liath Luachra becomes involved in a pursuit she’d rather have no part of.

 

Liath Luachra: The Winter Cave

After completing her ‘tasking’ in the Lonely Lands, the woman warrior Liath Luachra retreats to spend another winter alone in the bleak Luachair valley.

It’s by no means certain she’ll make it through to Spring.

 

The Cut:

In ancient Ireland, a mother seeks a boon of an old lover, now the most ferocious and feared chieftain in the land.

Probably one of the most well-known stories from the ancient early Irish literature, the fascinating tale of Labhraidh Loingseach (Labhraidh is pronounced ‘Lowry’ in English), has never been accurately portrayed for a contemporary audience.

This, then, is the story of the mythical Irish chieftain, the founding ancestor of Na Laighin (a major tribe in Ireland’s south-east for which the province of Leinster is named) and the man to which a very strange attribute is associated.

 

After a year’s hard slog, I’m certainly ready for a break. In the meantime, all our books can be obtained through THE IRISH IMBAS BOOK SHOP of course. Updates on the latest releases will be made available through our newsletter Vóg (last one for 2019 will be end of November).

The Trouble With Liath – Aar, me hearty! Pirate Irish Books

Posted on July 21, 2018 by - Blog, Uncategorized

Anyone who’s anyway capable with Irish (the language), or familiar with my work, is probably aware that  ‘Liath’ is the Irish word for ‘Grey’ (although it can also mean a grey-haired person). ). Like most Irish adjectives, the word is pretty flexible: Sioc liath is a ‘hoar frost’ for example. Bainne liath is a kind of watery milk whereas arán liath means bread that’s gone a bit mouldy … and so on and so forth.

The word doesn’t tend to turn up too often on the Amazon website so you can imagine my surprise when I went to check one of my books the other day (Liath Luachra: The Swallowed which I released about a month ago)  and found a whole slew of  “Liath-themed” Irish books as follows.

These are just a small selection. There were actually quite a few others (all with ‘Liath’ in the title, all claiming to be  an “Irish Edition”) Interestingly, when I took a closer look at them I found that, not only were they all at ridiculously high prices (none of them are less than $65),  the interior sample content of each one was complete garbage, meaningless Irish words scooped up with some app and combined together in nonsense form.

I did a quick google image check for ‘Gaoth Liath”- the first pic above and found it had been nicked from a wallpaper engine site. When I searched out the authors, they were all pretty much empty – a single name, a single book, nothing more.

So obviously, someone has gone to a bit of trouble to create a whole bunch of faux Irish Edition books (I’m assuming the common word ‘Liath’ was included so that they’d be easier to find).   I have seen other reference online to books like these appearing and disappearing and most of the theoretical discussion seems to suggest these books are use for fraud purposes (where someone steals a credit card, orders hundreds of hugely-inflated price books and scoops up the profit for example). They’re certainly no use as books.

To be honest, finding this has pissed me off a bit. Getting decent Irish language books on places like Amazon is pretty hard as the larger ebook stores tend to focus on the English-speaking mass market only. Most Irish-language books tend to be published for the home market by specialist publishers (I’d like to rectify that one day) and frankly, An Gaeilege simply isn’t large enough or profitable enough for them to care.

Crap like this though, is hardly going to help.

Needless to say, I raised the issue with Amazon over a month ago and their response was the usual …… meh!  This morning I looked again and, lo and behold, those gorgeous Oirsih Books continue to be shine brightly from their shop screen.

Anois tá fiamh agam leo!

(Now, they’re in my bad books! Boom-boom!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Quick but Important Update

Posted on January 26, 2017 by - Blog, My Writing

Wellllll, I think I’ve finally got the message that the summer holidays are done and dusted although, to be honest, it’s been something of a working holiday this year. For over a week, we were ensconced at a beach in Australia with temperatures hitting 35°C and over. The holiday dips consisted of a dash to the (lukewarm) water and then another rapid dash back to shade. There was really no way of remaining out on the beach in that temperature unless you were wearing a radiation suit.

In some respects, that was probably a good thing as being forced indoors meant a lot of work was actually completed. Of course it never actually stops! These next few days are going to be pretty hectic on the work front as we’re running a special offer on Fionn: Defence of Ráth Bládhma, I’m going hell for leather finishing the next Fionn book (Fionn: The Adversary) and then, of course, there’s the Celtic Mythology Short Story Competition.

I’ll start off with the special offer on Fionn.

Fionn: Defence of Ráth Bládhma

It’s very hard to believe but there hasn’t been a contemporary version of the Fenian Cycle (written by an Irish person) professionally published for almost one hundred years.

For those of you with an interest in Irish historical fantasy, Irish Imbas Books is making Fionn: Defence of Ráth Bládhma available for 99c or 99p at all the major ebook outlets over the next two days (possibly three – I still haven’t worked out the time differences!).

Currently a finalist in Mark Lawrence’s SPFBO 2016 competition, this first book in a contemporary series of the Fenian Cycle has probably been our most popular over the last two years. Just be aware though, it really is a very different take on the sanitized Fenian Cycle tales we grew up with as kids, far grittier and more realistic (i.e. it’s not Celtic-Lite). I’d be particularly keen to hear what other Irish readers think.

Other Updates:

The Celtic Mythology Short Story Competition – Bloody hell! The quality of the submissions this year has certainly jumped several notches. Thus far, I’ve read about 54 of the more than 70 entries. Only 20 have been identified and put aside as unsuitable at this stage (and I’ll be doing a post to explain that in the next 2/3 weeks). The shortlist will be posted on the website on Tuesday 31 January.

Fionn 3: The Adversary – Currently working on the first draft of the last chapter. The book will be released on 28 February.

Newsletter: We’ll be recommencing the monthly newsletter (after the Christmas break) this month but with the current workload it may be running two or three days late. That will contain a full update on what to expect over the next year.

Farting around with Covers: The Fionn mac Cumhaill Series

Posted on January 13, 2017 by - Blog, Uncategorized

For me, one of the real pleasures of independent publishing is having the opportunity to work with some incredibly talented artists and graphic designers. As someone who’s always wanted to draw or sketch (but had no talent for it), I’ve always been fascinated and a little bit envious of those people who could not only do so, but were very good at it. Since we started Irish Imbas Books almost three years ago, we’ve had some great artists working with us, some of whom we hope to work with again.

A few weeks ago, as a trial, we decided to run some ‘alternative’, more fantasy-based covers for some of the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series books which can be seen below.

The first one is a version of the original cover (by the same artist) but, at the time, we felt it didn’t reflect the look we were going for so we decided not to run with it. The Fionn mac Cumhaill series is very much designed for an Irish audience (as opposed to the international ‘Celtic’ audience) and we work hard to make it as historically realistic and authentic as we can. We felt this version just didn’t support that intent.

The second cover variation – for Fionn: Traitor of Dún Baoiscne – was in a similar vein and portrays the woman warrior Liath Luachra in an almost ‘model-like’ fashion. Again, although its a nice image, we felt it didn’t accurately represent the character or the mood of the series.

At this stage, the intention is to replace these covers next month. We had intended to play around with them for only a week or two but I successfully managed to screw up some technical details, preventing us form doing so yet. In February however, we’ll resort back to the original, more realistic and gritty look.

We also have a new cover for the hard copy version of Fionn 1 (Defence of Ráth Bládhma) which we’ll be using for books ordered through non-Amazon/Createspace routes and will probably be commissioning a follow-up for the second and third books. The prequel to the series (Liath Luacha) will remain as it is for the moment.

Cock Ups to Avoid in the Publishing Business

Posted on April 10, 2016 by - Blog, My Writing

irish-books-based-on-irish-mythology

This is kinda embarrassing so I’m not going to dwell on it.

Three months ago, in preparation for a sales event on St Paddy’s Day, I ordered a box of hard copy books from Createspace (over 50). During the online order process though, I must have been tired because I inadvertently selected ‘Niger’ instead of ‘New Zealand’ in the delivery address drop down box.

To be fair, I caught it almost immediately when I checked it the next day but by the time Createspace got my email asking them to amend it, the order had already been processed. Even worse, according to Createspace, it was simply not possible to change that address once something was dispatched (until the incorrect address was noted by the transporter and the box returned).

So there I was, watching online for over two months as I helplessly tracked my parcel of books doing a victory lap of the planet. The worst irony was that, having been initially sent from the States (?!) it ended up in … CORK!
At that point I was leaping up from my chair, screaming at then to leave it there, that I’d get my family around to the warehouse to pick it up.

But, on no (wagging of finger!). That simply wasn’t possible.

Sadly, following the inexplicable vagaries of international travel, the parcel was subsequently dispatched to London, then onto Germany then back to Amsterdam where it remained sitting in a warehouse for weeks. Needless to say, I was a tad … well, pissed, actually as I’d missed the deadline for St Paddy’s and had to cancel the event I’d been planning. Of course it was my own fault and I had no-one else to blame (dammit!).

On the positive side however, I think I must grown a little more mature because I started to get a zen-like pleasure from going online to see where that box of books ended up next (OHHHMMMMMM!). I really did have high hopes for Africa and was secretly hoping it might reach Capetown or Nairobi. Seriously, there’s still some smidgen of the exotic in international deliveries like this. It all reminds me a bit of when I was living back home and used to get those blue and red-striped international airmail letters from around the world. At the time, that was really cool! (no, really!).

Anyway, the whole caper came to an unexpected end this week when the box turned up unannounced. In fact, my son actually brought it in and it was sitting in the hall for two days before I actually noticed it!
It’s kind nice having a large selection of books at home an all but … Sheesh!

PS: If you really, really absolutely want to see what’s happening with the next Fionn that’s a draft of Chapter six off to the left that I was editing this morning.