Category Archives: Novels
Some News on Novels
It’s been a while since I published a new novel.
I hope to have a YA set in Ireland out in the new year.
Meanwhile, some news: I’ll shortly be getting my copyright back on the five novels published with Tirgearr Publishing.
Once I do, I will do my best to get them back up for sale on Amazon, first as Ebooks. I am considering publishing them in print as well, and I have to admit I am in two minds – if you have an ebook, then it’s best to just download them. But if not… well, I hope there are folks out there who’d love to read them in print… I will get back to you on that. If anyone wants to comment either way, feel free.
As we see the fall of Twitter, and the fact of Meta failing and the Facebook basically falling also into disuse by at least a large proportion of folks in my friends lists, I am thinking of where to actually connect to readers and friends, apart from just here.
It’s true that the life of a writer is always hard, and getting readers to pick up our books never easy. The social media space has made it possible for some of us to sell some of our work.
And yet, at the same time, the whole selling scape is not often our favourite space. I personally rarely go on Facebook now – and I am one of the few people on the planet who legitimately need such a space to stay in touch with all the lovely people I’ve come to know over the years in my real life travels round the world. I feel the threads tying us together getting slacker, though, thinner. And in some respects this is inevitable, It would happen faster without the internet, but eventually it will happen anyway, as the years stretch on and we all get older.
In other respects, writing is something I will do regardless of who reads the work, and I will do it (am doing it because of constraints of real life) in my own time, despite the marketing mantra of getting new books out in front of folks’ eyes and having series to pull them in.
If anyone reads my poems you’ll see that it is out in the real world of Nature that I am happiest, and the writing comes when I am not there, from ideas I get while I am.
Those writings will come, as long as I live, and if the history of art has taught us anything, it’s that fame and life are not necessarily concurrent. We can only enjoy the work, and worry about everything else after. Nor is financial return any indication of merit.
I will continue to post my blogposts to Facebook, but you’ll not find me there much otherwise, so if you want to get in touch the best is to comment on these posts here on WordPress, and to write me at davidjmobrienauthor@gmail.com
For when Twitter dies, I have joined Mastedon, and I here’s my page for anyone to follow: @David_J_OBrien@mastodon.ie
Meanwhile, here’s a poem I wrote a few years back. I think I might have posted it before, but it came to mind while writing this.
Enjoy
Threads
As we walk our world, we weave
A kind of tapestry about us:
Threads spread out, linking our lives
With those we meet.
.
Wonderful, a wheel of whirling strands
Swirling about us like glinting gossamer
Whipped on morning breeze across sunlit fields;
The thoughts and talks and memories
Shared and cared for across continents
Over centuries.
.
But ultimately bitter-sweet,
For they inevitably wear thin over time,
We often fail to keep all attended to
To stop them breaking,
Trailing, frail, forgotten in the tangle,
And even the strongest spun silk can snap:
Stretched taut across landscapes,
When we walk too far.
.
Those we best attend to, too,
Weaken, and fade to invisibility
Eventually, severed, taken from us
When their own weaver leaves this ether.
.
How long will our own cloth survive,
When we’re not here to hold it?
As those that know us no longer
Hold memory of what we told them,
About our many connections, never
Mind our own names, and actions,
Faint after just a generation.
.
No wonder some strive to stencil
Their names in stone set into cathedrals,
Or indelibly upon a novel, poem or play
Which will carry on without us
When we’ve gone upon our way.
Last Light on the Sage Flats
So I finally went and done it.
I published a collection of short stories.
Something I’d had on the long finger for a decade thereabouts.
And it’s out now and available in digital and paperback versions.
And the cover is a photo I took a few years ago now, on the Eastern Cape, where springboks bounded past just moments before the sun began to set. It’s one of my favourite photos, and it’s the background for my blog homepage (behind the cover of Unleashing the Pack ) and my youtube channel, as well as my personal facebook page.
And it’s part of the inspiration for the title story of the collection – 23 of them, all from various points in the places I’ve visited and lived in over the past thirty years, from home in Ireland, to Scotland, Madrid and other parts of Spain, to the USA. Of course, many could have been written anywhere you find humans.
Sometimes short stories are perhaps more prone to being analysed for signs of the writers own life and ideas. When writing a novel there’s always a little incident from life you can put in – usually only a few people pick up on them, and they’re like Easter eggs, in a way. With short stories the incident is most of the plot, and so some of these might seem like they’re just me putting down pieces of my life I considered worth recording. But they’re not. There might be a germ of an idea engendered by something that I saw or heard, but the rest is pure speculation on my part, putting my ideas into the being I created on the page, or more often, imagining what ideas such a person might have.
So I hope you enjoy them for what they are, a sketch of a growing body of prose sculpted by an amateur who aspired for self-teaching to reach pinnacles he hasn’t quite attained yet.
Library Books
So I’ve been quiet recently – working on finishing my WIP before Xmas! And it looks like I might get there, if I ignore everything and everyone else around me! So, no. I might get there before the end of the holidays!
I have been enjoying the early autumn here. We have finally had some rain, and leaves are falling fast now. The cranes have flown past, one flock right over my house at low altitude, which was quite the experience!
Halloween was wonderful this year. I went collecting mushrooms and chestnuts up in the beech woods, and had a brief encounter with a huge red deer stag, which swiftly did an about turn upon spotting me between the trees.
And what wonderful trees.
This one, an old, old, chestnut, was just perfect for the night that was in it, though I’d not like to hang around after dusk here, just in case it woke up and wondered if an Irishman might fit in that maw!
Meanwhile, my YA paranormal novel is available in paperback now! It, and my young reader novel are also on the shelves of my local library (and in Deansgrange, for those in Dublin!) Thanks to the folks in Yamaguchi Library, Pamplona!
They put this photo up on their facebook page, and when I was in there a few days ago I was delighted to spot it on this shelf, with the other new books.
I also met this charming young lady there, who gave the book her utmost praise (especially after Chapter 6!), though she’s too young to post a review on the internet, unfortunately!
She has given me permission to post her photo, and I have at least one parent’s permission too. Hope I don’t have to ask for the aunty’s!
I have a few teachers reading both books and it looks like they’ll make their way into a few school libraries, too, here in Pamplona.
A few of my students have also bought the paperback of Adam Short and brought their copy in for me to sign, which is a real honour.
Unfortunately, the original reviews have been wiped with the re-publication, so I’d really appreciate anyone who can post one anywhere they can. Thanks! and Enjoy the Autumn!
It’s for the Kids!
Saving the Next Generation
.
Wherein comes the urge to chastise
Children chasing chaffinches, ducks;
Picking wildflowers for bunches just
To steep in water and later pour it out?
.
These innocent actions seem almost
Painful for some of us to see, since
It seems every seedling, even insect, is
Particularly precious in this sinking era.
.
Now we need to encourage kids to
Lie down on a lawn, plucking daisies
As they please, ripping leaves and
Flicking petals to the breeze, immersed
.
In the verdure that surrounds us. Thus
They will in turn appreciate the wonder
Of these tiny treasures of orchids, clover,
Cornflowers as especially as do we mourners.
I’ve been offline to a certain extent so far this summer. But I’ve been outside a lot, enjoying the nature left to us, as you can see from these photos ( I don’t publish anyone’s face in this blog), and with my kids in Ireland.
But I have republished Peter and the Little People, and it’s out in paperback!
It’s for the Kids!
Of course, anyone of any age can enjoy it, so go ahead and pick up a copy. It’s perfect for reading aloud, too.
Like everything we do, it’s for the kids who will have to visit places much changed and degraded unless we stop what we’re doing.
I don’t let my kids pick some wildflowers, like orchids, but then the local roads authority or the farmers come along and strim or spray the ditches and hedgerows…
The news this summer is of course pretty depressing, with the IPCC pretty much saying we’re in big trouble unless our so-called leaders act like we need them to…
So have a read of Peter and the Little People, and then help your children write some letters to the Taoiseacht or whoever supposedly leads your government telling them they’ll have a place in history – good or bad is up to them.
The End of the Rainbow…
Peter and the Little People republished!
And a poem that the Little People would understand from a longer term perspective than humans seem able to take…
I hope summer is going well for everyone and the new (for us fifth) wave of infections is not affecting you.
I have some news: I have republished my children’s novel, Peter and the Little People, since the original publishers have sadly closed recently. I took the opportunity to re-edit it, so it reads a lot smoother, especially in the first chapters.
It’s available on pre-order now, and will download automatically onto your kindles etc. on the publication date which will be August 15th!
AND it is available in Paperback! So you can pre-order it now and it will pop in the post for you, too.
Till then, here’s a poem that was inspired by a different book written and set in Ireland.
Children of the Rainbow is a book from decades ago, but it’s well worth reading if you have any connection with the Island.
At the same time, I was reading Barry Lopez’s Horizon, which was quite impactful, too.
So the poem that came out is not quite as hopeful as Peter and the Little People regarding our planet. But I hope it’s still beautiful.
For there is yet beauty all around us if only we appreciate it and preserve it.
The Fading of the Rainbow
.
Our grandparents grew up under the bow of wonder
Shades of beauty forty-fold and more, so vivid
The colours were within reach, like the hand of God,
Life bursting out of every bud and bloom, butterflies
And bees humming just one tune in Nature’s symphony
.
But today, we stare across a broad sweep of fields, all
Furrowed into one with faint lines left where once
Grew hedgerows; rooks caws accompany cows now,
Gone the curlew call and corncrake, cuckoo only
Heard on distant hills: a sound of childhood, half
Remembered. The skylark leaves a faint line upon
The heart where before flew nightingales and chorus
Of dawn songbirds, silenced like the wolf and other
Wild animals swept away before the sheep browsing.
.
Now even that centrepiece of pristineness, poster
Child of evolution in isolation and archipelagos lies
Lessened, the frenzy of breeding becoming bare as
Feral goats graze the spare seedlings, dogs attack
Basking iguanas, cats and rats run riot, into ruin
One of the last remaining untouched outposts upon
.
The vast planet, pinched a little smaller each season,
Swept into sameness, as only colonisers cling to barren
Land. If these distant places are as doomed as our city
Streets, what place has hope this side of the rainbow;
Faded, bleached, and ragged, can it even hold any
Hidden at the end, like a crock of leprechaun gold?
My first Self-Published Book!
So I haven’t been all that unproductive, really. It’s taken many months to write – actually more than a year, which is pretty sad for a novella! – but I have completed a dystopian novella set in our future – sixty years down the line.
It’s called The Logical Solution.
It’s something I think is appropriate to our own time – as in all the best dystopias! – so I have decided to self publish it, on Kindle Direct, and have it out there asap for everyone living through this crisis – the pandemic: let’s take things one step at a time, but there are more crises to worry about later (and that’s everyone on the planet, bar the bastard politicians and the rich who pull their strings) – can have a look and see how much worse things could get!
Seriously, it’s supposed to be funny, too. Things might not get that bad…
It’s on pre-order right now, for 99 cents! a steal. and it will come out on September 1st.
You can hit me up for a review copy if you can’t wait that long – but the review needs (please!) to be ready by publishing day so you can post it on Goodreads and Amazon and anywhere else you reckon the readers of the world will see it!
And since the novella talks about computer algorithms and whatnot – a small heads up: if everyone I know buys this book before Sept 1, then it will become an automatic best seller on Amazon. Seriously. It’s that simple to fool the computers. Then it gets on adverts from Amazon and more people see it and buy it. And then you get to say you know a best-selling author, instead of saying that one of your mates writes books, but you’ve never read any of them (yet).
Take a peak at the blurb here:
https://davidjmobrien.wordpress.com/the-logical-solution/
Loch Ness Mystery Solved! Perhaps
Well, it didn’t take the New Zealand Scientists very long to reveal their findings after all.
But then again, it wasn’t very exciting, or inspiring, so why hold back?
Their DNA sampling of the water of the lake showed no sign of genetic material from a Jurassic era reptile, or a shark, or a sturgeon – the latter being my guess…
But there were lots of eel DNA, so they reckon the mysterious creature might be a giant eel…
Spot the eel? Neither do I…
Really?
Not very impressive deduction, in my opinion. Of course there was lots of eel DNA, just like there was lots of trout DNA if they were looking for it. Eels are common fish in such catchments. But do they grow to the size where people might see one from a great distance?
I’ve no idea how long a freshwater eel can actually grow, but this story shows a near-record size, caught in Australia, and it’s less than two metres long. So the adjective giant is hard to be precise about….
So, if there is one or two really huge eels in there, they might leave their DNA, but so would all the small normal sized eels we expect to find there with or without any giants or monsters….
The findings haven’t really found anything, other than they’ve not found anything. You can’t prove a negative, as they say.
It does add one more plank to the argument that there is nothing big enough, at least not a population numerous enough, to produce the quantities of DNA that makes it simple to find in the mass of water that is Loch Ness…
Still waters run deep, as they say, and Loch Ness is one very deep lake.
Latest look at Loch Ness
it’s amazing to say that in 2019, there are still questions to be asked about the Loch Ness Monster
But there are.
Scientists are still seeking to uncover exactly what gave rise to the story, what was and is being sighted from the shore and from boats out on that lake that made people report a large animal – be it a reptile, mammal or fish?
Now it seems that they have discovered evidence to support at least one of the hypotheses of what exactly this phenomenon is – using DNA samples, to see what kind of species might be swimming around, shedding skin cells or scales into the water which might float around and be picked up by their collectors.
My guess, is that they’ll keep the news back for a long time.
If they do produce one, my guess is that it will be a sturgeon, or a small group of sturgeons, that have swum up from Moray Firth at Inverness. Though the lake has few nutrients with which to sustain a large population, it might keep one or two alive for a few years.
What’s your guess?
Could there be a large creature hiding out all these centuries, only to be betrayed by its own DNA trail?
Can scientists really hope to catch a few skin cells in all that expanse of water?
This is not a scientific work, but it could be
Things you learn from reading books
It’s amazing what you can learn from books.
Sounds silly, that sentence…
I love when I’m deep in a book and something stops me halfway through a paragraph and makes me say “Holy shit!” out loud – I never knew that! Or, “Wow. Who knew?”
And sometimes it’ll send me off to investigate further.
There are some writers, editors etc., and I suppose readers, who don’t like this. They don’t anything that makes you interrupt the story, that keeps your nose in the leaves.
But for me, a really rich book is one that makes you pause every now and then and think about what you’re reading, ponder the meaning of what you’ve read, assimilate the knowledge this piece of writing has given you over and above an entertaining read.
This is why people read fiction. This is why science indicates that people who read fiction are more empathetic.
Here are three examples:
I started reading Homo Deus, a recent non-fiction book, the sequel to Sapiens, which you might have heard of.
But before I go deep into it, I wanted to read a similarly titled novel – Men Like Gods, by HG Wells.
An interesting book. We are clearly still in Wells’ Age of Confusion, with our population soaring way, way past what Wells worried was too many (2000m), and our world yet being pillaged by the rich.
But what really amazed me, in a book about a crossing dimensions into new universes (where the telecommunications department knows where every human is at all times but the knowledge can only be used for the good of the individual!) was the fact that the main character commented on the fact that there were thrushes singing in July – that he knew these birds stopped singing by June.
This is a character who writes for a liberal paper in the centre of London.
I’m a zoologist – sorry, I have a doctorate in zoology (there are picky fuckers out there in twitterlandia who like to point out that there’s a difference if I no longer gain employment from zoology except by teaching biology, who I hope die when they’re on a plane and a retired doctor tells them he’s no longer qualified to give them first aid while they suffer cardiac arrest, but I digress) – though not an ornithologist, but I had no idea.
He also commented on the fact that nightingales could be found in Pangbourne and Caversham, both in Reading just outside London were great places for nightingales (I wonder if there are any there now) which was amazing knowledge for an average Joe, too.
Why don’t we all know such things now? Where is our general knowledge of the life of other species around us gone? I was only familiar with the Blackbird and Robin – aside from the magpies and seagulls – back home in my hedgerow.
How much we have lost, even from such busy, hedonistic, polluted and poverty-stricken times as 1920’s London.
Another book I recently read, and commented on in my facebook feed, is Point Counter Point, by the contemporaneous Aldous Huxley, who only predicted the future in this particular novel by talking about the fact that the world would run out of phosphorous, and other important raw materials and minerals due to unhinged addiction to progress, while politicians fucked around with petty, inconsequential nonsense that they hoped with get them elected over someone equally competent – or in competent, as the case usually is – while the problems that really affect us only snowball.
The third novel was Meridian, the second novel by Alice Walker, the author of The Colour Purple.
At the end of the book, Walker describes the main character in the following paragraph:
“On those occasions such was her rage that that she actually felt as if the rich and racist of the world should stand in fear of her, because she – though apparently weak and penniless, a little crazy and without power – was as yet of a resolute and relatively fearless character, which, sufficient in its calm acceptance of its own purpose, could bring the mightiest country to its knees.
And I couldn’t help but think of Greta Thunberg – a beam of light in our own dark times, who seemingly powerless, is nonetheless, so resolute in her purpose that she has an immense effect upon countries.”
It is so often the person who seems weakest who can stand the strongest.
I only hope that in contrast to how people treated people like Meridian in the era of civil rights, that we will appreciate Greta for the positive influence she is on global justice and the survival of our society, and protect her from the evils we know some amongst us would wish her.
David JM O'Brien 