Little Victories

Well, this is a little victory in itself.

This book took a long time to get here.

I had the idea way back when I published The Soul of Adam Short, thinking about a YA novel set in Ireland, and the part of Ireland I know best is obviously South County Dublin and North Wicklow.

The problem of fires and farmers and the protection of nesting birds was something that started back then, and of course has kept going years later….

It merged with an idea I had when I was around 17….

The characters came separately, from a different inspiration.

It took a while to get the pen to paper, but my first typed document has a date of June 2015.

Then the first draft was done in 2018.

Yes. I can be 3 years on a book that’s only around 60k words!

I gave a copy of the third or fourth draft to my family – the younger ones – asking for feedback.

Crickets.

For a couple of years.

I got on with writing my long novel, Paul and the Pyramid Builders.

Then I asked my ex-publisher of Adam Short to have a look at it, and see if it was for the drawer.

She says it’s not.

So here it is. Edited and proof-read and ready for reviews.

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Here’s the blurb….

Nicky and her two new friends, Mark and Ash, spend spring racing their mountain bikes through south Dublin – both down hillsides and hitching rides from HGVs – and exploring their feelings towards one another. They’re aghast to one day find an illegal fire on the mountain, just set by a farmer. When the police say they can do nothing about it, the three determine to catch the culprit red-handed. But life is as complicated as love, and as Nicky comes to terms with this, she discovers that sometimes you have to accept whatever little victories come your way.

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It’s dedicated to my good friend Phil, no longer with us, who was a great man for the biking round south Dublin and Wicklow, though more on a road bike than mountain bike.

It’s on Pre Order now, and will be published before my birthday – Paddy’s Day to be exact.

March is when this novel kicks off, when the fires that beleaguer the Dublin and Wicklow mountains should be stopped rather than started.

Anyone who’s interested in a review copy can email me at davidjmobrienauthor@gmail.com

Happy St. David’s Day, everyone.

Don’t forget, if you see a brush fire in Ireland from today, it’s illegal.

A Bird’s Eye View…

          A Bird’s Eye View of Dearth

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A kestrel watches from its perch aloft

Through the wheat stalks, sunset yellow,

A cat to the corner, treading soft,

Seeking game in shadowed hedgerow.

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It’s fur gleams golden in the sun,

Sleek lines lie wide by several ounces:

Fast as the raptor flies, it couldn’t run,

But furred predator prefers pounces.

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A lizard flickers in crinkling grass.

The hawk would swiftly clutch the prey

To feed last nestling, but alas:

The cat clenches its quarry today.

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Blinking as the fed feline bites,

The bird scans the straw for insects

Sooner left for lesser hawks and shrikes;

Still, scant life of any size it detects.

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Turning attention to the trees,

Tinged brown by fire fuelled by snow

Fall felling boughs, then heavy heat,

Finds as few pickings as down below.

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Frogs diminished by the dryness

Since even before spring arrived:

Only two eggs laid, to cry less

As sibling ensures one survived.

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Now, itself barely clinging to perch,

The raptor would wonder, as declines,

How only scorched earth left to search

Seems still to fill so litters of felines.

  I write a lot of poems, and a lot of my poems are inspired from what I see outside in Nature.

However, I rarely take a photograph of what inspires me – if I am thinking of the poem, it usually never occurs to me to take a snap. I don’t think of posting the poem at that stage, and then I realise I’ve no photos to illustrate it. Of course, going back to get a photo of a kestrel along the wire where I saw it is next to impossible, though I do see them when I’m driving in and out of the village.

So the two photos in this post are clearly not of a kestrel. One is a bird of prey, yes, but the other is a bee-eater, a species which I’ve been trying to get a decent snap of for years, because they really don’t hang around when human’s are near, despite the fact that they are to be heard over head delighting with voices as colourful as their plumage, which is to me, the best in any bird in Europe.

Both were taken while cycling near the village, where there’s still a huge abundance of birds of prey, such as hen harriers, booted eagles, red kites and golden eagles, to name just the ones I can identify!!

And there is an overabundance of feral cats, too…