Monthly Archives: August 2014
Cover of Five Days on Ballyboy Beach
This is the cover of my second novel, published 19th September 2014 – I don’t want to reveal too much about what the plot is – best to just follow the path and see where it ends up…
Available now at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk and lots of other places via the book’s Tirgearr Publishing webpage.
You can read some of the reviews on the Tirgearr page, or here on this website:
The Island Children learn to leave could be the same the tourists start to flock to?
I talked some time ago about rewilding Islands, and pointed to a few places in Ireland and Scotland that would be prime areas to try bring back a few of the former fauna (and flora) of Europe.
A recent article in the Guardian newspaper shows just how much at least Achill needs some lateral thinking on how to keep the island’s ecomomy going – and stop the few kids left there from going away.
Why not give rewilding a chance on the island?I remember once, going to Achill. We crossed the bridge and drove for a half an hour or so, but there was nothing really to keep us driving out toward the western edge. We’d seen all the sheep we wanted.If the blackfaced sheep are not a tourist draw, and are not keeping farming going in a way that makes the population think of it as a viable option to return to after they’ve been away at college, why not bring in some deer, let the forests grow and prepare the land for the iconic fauna that would make many tourists do more than just cross the bridge and turn back?With hotels closing down, what have they got left to lose?
On a par with Hemmingway?
I’ve just finished the first draft of my sixth complete novel, and I have to agree with Hemmingway when he said that “The first draft of anything is shit.”
I look forward to a lot of editing over the next few months, but the first, giant step has been taken.
The first draft is the hardest. It’s where most people stumble. I have five or six other novels in various stages of progression through a first draft. But if you don’t get the first draft done, you don’t have a story. It has to have a beginning, middle and end.
The first time I showed one of the earlier drafts of Leaving the Pack (I have lost count of how many that went through, but twenty is a round number) to a friend, he said he was impressed because it had a beginning, middle and end, and that was more than he could ever do.
This draft has all three. The beginning is too long, the middle too boring and the ending didn’t turn out quite as satisfying as I’d hoped.
But it’s a draft. It’ll get better over the second, third, fourth and whatever number of versions it’ll take to get better. I don’t want to predict, since I am the (checks quickly) tenth draft of a novella that has yet to be even accepted, so that’ll easily get to fifteen before it sees the light of day, if it ever does.
The Treachery of August
I haven’t been very active these last few weeks – been trying to finish my current work in progress, and I am glad to say that if I stay up till 2 am tonight, I’ll have a first draft!
Meanwhile, since all my plans of editing a selection of my short stories and having another novella completed as well as Silver Nights ready to start come September first, are beginning to look like they might not come to fruition, I was reminded of a poem I wrote this very day last year….
The Treachery of August
Ah, it seduces so well: entices one into
Almost awaiting until it arrives before
Beginning a novel, starting a book,
Executing all those excursion plans
With its beguiling promises of long empty days
To fill with what pleasures we would imagine:
Hours of quiet reading, silent writing,
Early morning swims and afternoon naps,
Eternal evenings upon a porch as glare softens to glow.
But it’s all so much illusion:
The days pass faster than counting;
The mornings disappear in groggy-eyed stupor;
Afternoons sweep by, and swims are just splashing
With children upon surfacing from siesta after five;
A walk is too much exertion in extreme heat;
The book interrupted by screaming, questions, requests….
Until September looms as soon as looking up
From our newspaper, to see another summer swept by
With nothing firm to fix it in our memory.