You might think my favourite Irish myth would be the one I used to start the Modern Irish Myth series. You would be wrong.
While I love the story of Balor of the Evil Eye, it's not my favourite. No, my favourite is the Salmon of Knowledge. Not only does it tell the story of a young boy become a veritable genius, not only does it break down the stereotype that the old man in a story has to be wise (after all - it's wisdom and knowledge he's looking for), and not only does it demonstrate that short-cuts to knowledge and power aren't always as simple as they might appear, it's also full of little twists that make it more memorable.
The young Fionn MacCumhaill, the namesake of Balor Reborn's protagonist, is sent to serve the poet Finn Eces, who proceeds to capture the Salmon. Fionn is told to cook the fish - because Finn cannot possibly do that for himself - with instructions not to eat it. Whomever first eats of the Salmon of Knowledge, the story goes, will gain all the knowledge in the world.
Fionn, in doing his job, prods the fish with his thumb to see if it is cooked. When he burns his thumb on a drop of fat that comes off the fish, he sucks his thumb. From that moment on, the Salmon's knowledge is within Fionn!
When the poet realises what has happened, he instructs Fionn to eat the entire fish. Some stories tell of the poet growing angry from Fionn instead, when he realises that he isn't experiencing any of the so-called wisdom that should have been his when he ate the Salmon himself.
The end result is the same, though: whenever Fionn MacCumhaill bites his thumb, he gains access to the knowledge of the world. This allowed him to become the leader of the Fianna, a band of heroes in Irish mythology, and ultimately defeated the fire-breathing fairy Aileen.
He was a hero of good-standing, and his "origin story" is one that has amused children for years. (And, it seems, grown men.)
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Friday, July 11, 2014
Why Irish Mythology?
Before I wrote Balor Reborn, I wrote up a list of options for myself, books I could see myself writing but hadn't yet planned. I emailed that list to three people and asked for feedback. Two out of three responded in favour of the Irish myth story that was Balor Reborn (the third didn't have a preference).
Out of that brief email exchange, I committed myself to the idea.
But why Irish mythology? Out of everything I could have written, Irish mythology is fairly unknown. Greek mythology is much more well known. So is Norse mythology, and Egyptian mythology.
And here I was, turning to the Irish. Yes, I'm a native and a resident, but that doesn't mean much these days. Rick Riordan is American and writes about Greek mythology. Alan Early is Irish but writes about Norse mythology.
The stories of Irish folklore and mythology just weren't touched upon that much, and I saw a sense of excitement in that. Here was Balor, a murderous, giant invader with a single eye and an army behind him. Or the literal black dog that, as in many stories, is a symbol of death. Here were fairies and gods that slipped away from general knowledge into ancient history, and heroes with magical powers and objects.
I could have written an urban fantasy series. I could have written about bullying and abuse of power. I could have written about alcoholism and the Irish way. I could have written about mutants or the powers of Heaven. Instead, I chose Balor. I chose to tell the story of an unlikely hero. I chose to give the world magic again. I chose the wonder of the old meeting the excitement of the new.
Out of that brief email exchange, I committed myself to the idea.
But why Irish mythology? Out of everything I could have written, Irish mythology is fairly unknown. Greek mythology is much more well known. So is Norse mythology, and Egyptian mythology.
And here I was, turning to the Irish. Yes, I'm a native and a resident, but that doesn't mean much these days. Rick Riordan is American and writes about Greek mythology. Alan Early is Irish but writes about Norse mythology.
The stories of Irish folklore and mythology just weren't touched upon that much, and I saw a sense of excitement in that. Here was Balor, a murderous, giant invader with a single eye and an army behind him. Or the literal black dog that, as in many stories, is a symbol of death. Here were fairies and gods that slipped away from general knowledge into ancient history, and heroes with magical powers and objects.
I could have written an urban fantasy series. I could have written about bullying and abuse of power. I could have written about alcoholism and the Irish way. I could have written about mutants or the powers of Heaven. Instead, I chose Balor. I chose to tell the story of an unlikely hero. I chose to give the world magic again. I chose the wonder of the old meeting the excitement of the new.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Writing About Writing
At the time of writing this - on a sunny Monday afternoon - three of the seven books in my Amazon store are about writing, with one more almost ready to go live. That's half the books I have published, focusing on some aspect of writing. The big question is, Why? Why write about writing at all?
It's not for the money. Really. There's not a huge amount of money to be made from writing, and I can't exactly boast huge royalties from my sales. It's a niche market, and each book addresses a different aspect of it.
I write about writing because no one ever taught me about it. I had to figure things out from books by people I'd never heard of, people who were twice or three times my age, and who didn't know what it was like to be in school anymore. I only ever had books to read that treated books like an entirely alien object, with many of them stating the obvious: if you want to write, you have to read.
So, I decided I could do better than just a standard book on writing, with a $20 price tag to go with it. I decided to write books about things that would help people with different aspects of writing, and make them more approachable and affordable than what I'd read growing up. The far-away best seller of the books I've published is Planning Before Writing, which shares the techniques for planning book and stories that I've used for years.
Why do I mention that? Because it highlights that there was a gap in the market for a book that would deal with precisely that one problem, of how to plan a book. I don't just offer one option, because that one option would never be enough for everyone. I don't just offer the how to plan information, either. The book is as much about why to plan as it is how to plan, and that's the information that people need to focus on first.
I realised that a long time ago, and wrote and published 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block as a result. Why? Because people always look for advice on how to beat it. Not just writers, but college students, too. There's are a lot of people who need help with it, and few people out there who can say not just what to do, but also why to do it, and how it benefits to do it.
That's what I wanted to focus on. I could have written a blog post with just the table of contents, and that might have helped some people. Except it wouldn't have been beneficial to them in the same way, just like the methods in Planning Before Writing are useless without some guidance and reasoning behind them.
I write about writing because I'm a writer with experience with problems, and a teacher with the insight to find solutions to them. I write about it because I enjoy combining my professional practice with what used to just be a hobby.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
My Favourite Character
Since I wrote my first book, I've created a lot of characters. Aside from the ensemble of a dozen or so characters in What Lurks Through the Mirror, I've had characters from a sequel, and several planned sequels, the cast of Meet Sam, of Geneticide, or Bliss, and of the Modern Irish Myth books to add to the list, with over a hundred different characters in all of that. (Caveat: Geneticide had dozens of characters in written or planned stories, to its detriment. It's part of the reason I abandoned the project after completing the first draft.)
Those are just the books I've finished. There were many started-and-failed books over the years, and some I haven't written or, as is the case of my Operation Overdrive novel, are still being written. There are too many characters to keep track of, at this point.
I like to think of my earlier writing as necessary failures. Through the first books I wrote, I was able to focus on creating many (too many) unique and entirely human characters. I didn't have the time to tell most of their stories, or the inclination, focusing too much on plot. However, there have been some favourites.
Of them all, Ogma from the Modern Irish Myth series stands out. He's a poet, from Old Gods Returned, and with planned appearances in the later books in the series, as well as being the star of a few flash stories, who guides the dead to Otherworld. He struggles with the new language of Ireland - that is, English - and with the customs of the twenty-first century, and he's every bit a hero and a warrior, despite facing anxiety and panic at every corner. Ogma is an old hero, one of the last to disappear from the world of magic, and a prophet for the people.
While Bliss has some really fun characters in it, and while I like the other characters in the Modern Irish Myth books, I think Ogma presents an exciting opportunity. He's a god, with power over the dead, and his greatest power is limited by his lack of understanding of the language he's forced to speak.
(For the record: I love the protagonist of my Operation Overdrive novel. She's sarcastic and empathetic; she has to deal with trauma and anxiety; she's uncertain, and she doesn't realise she's intelligent and beautiful, and she doesn't treat people like she's better than them. She's not unnecessarily witty, and she doesn't want anything special from life. She makes writing the book a lot of fun.)
Those are just the books I've finished. There were many started-and-failed books over the years, and some I haven't written or, as is the case of my Operation Overdrive novel, are still being written. There are too many characters to keep track of, at this point.
I like to think of my earlier writing as necessary failures. Through the first books I wrote, I was able to focus on creating many (too many) unique and entirely human characters. I didn't have the time to tell most of their stories, or the inclination, focusing too much on plot. However, there have been some favourites.
Of them all, Ogma from the Modern Irish Myth series stands out. He's a poet, from Old Gods Returned, and with planned appearances in the later books in the series, as well as being the star of a few flash stories, who guides the dead to Otherworld. He struggles with the new language of Ireland - that is, English - and with the customs of the twenty-first century, and he's every bit a hero and a warrior, despite facing anxiety and panic at every corner. Ogma is an old hero, one of the last to disappear from the world of magic, and a prophet for the people.
While Bliss has some really fun characters in it, and while I like the other characters in the Modern Irish Myth books, I think Ogma presents an exciting opportunity. He's a god, with power over the dead, and his greatest power is limited by his lack of understanding of the language he's forced to speak.
(For the record: I love the protagonist of my Operation Overdrive novel. She's sarcastic and empathetic; she has to deal with trauma and anxiety; she's uncertain, and she doesn't realise she's intelligent and beautiful, and she doesn't treat people like she's better than them. She's not unnecessarily witty, and she doesn't want anything special from life. She makes writing the book a lot of fun.)
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Writing Achievements and All That Jazz
While looking up topics I could write about this month, one question that seemed to pop up in many interviews asked writers about their greatest writing achievements, as if there's a scalable way of determining what's good and what's better. I think it all comes down to how it makes the writer feel, which is why I don't have one - I have three.
The first should be obvious: the writing and publishing of Balor Reborn in a week. It was a tiring week of trying to keep everything on camera, writing and editing a book, creating a cover and a book trailer, setting up the sales page, and sending out a press release.
The main thing is, I managed it. I managed to write the book, and it was my first step into the land of independently published authorship. It's set a precedence on my writing, of what I can accomplish in a short period of time, and it's been the standard to which I try to work as a bare minimum since.
That week led to the second great writing achievement: having an article published in Writing Magazine, about the process of writing the book. While the actual article didn't take long to write, and while I was perfectly happy writing it, it was a professional stepping stone, and it showed me that I can write something that someone would actually want to publish.
The third achievement happened way before that, and rather than being a work-standard achievement, or a professional achievement, it changed the way I look at the word. It was the writing and performance of my first play, The Rest is Silence, a play that dealt with depression and suicide at a university level, performed by my friends in the Drama Soc, with two of my best friends taking on the lead role(s).
The actual writing of it meant a lot to me, to get to tell a story that highlighted what depression could feel like, but the consequences of the play were huge in a different way. From ticket sales - and some merchandising - we raised over €750 for a suicide charity in Ireland, Console. It was the first play I'd seen in my college to sell out, and it was the first original play to hit the stage for as long back as anyone could tell me. As far as I'm aware, it was the first time an original play had been performed by the Drama Soc, and not the last.
I can't pick any one of those three achievements as being greater than the other two. Each meant something different to me, and to different people, but each one shaped the way I write and work today. In the six months following the staging of The Rest is Silence, I became a published author, with a book and an article to add to my credits.
The first should be obvious: the writing and publishing of Balor Reborn in a week. It was a tiring week of trying to keep everything on camera, writing and editing a book, creating a cover and a book trailer, setting up the sales page, and sending out a press release.
The main thing is, I managed it. I managed to write the book, and it was my first step into the land of independently published authorship. It's set a precedence on my writing, of what I can accomplish in a short period of time, and it's been the standard to which I try to work as a bare minimum since.
That week led to the second great writing achievement: having an article published in Writing Magazine, about the process of writing the book. While the actual article didn't take long to write, and while I was perfectly happy writing it, it was a professional stepping stone, and it showed me that I can write something that someone would actually want to publish.
The third achievement happened way before that, and rather than being a work-standard achievement, or a professional achievement, it changed the way I look at the word. It was the writing and performance of my first play, The Rest is Silence, a play that dealt with depression and suicide at a university level, performed by my friends in the Drama Soc, with two of my best friends taking on the lead role(s).
The actual writing of it meant a lot to me, to get to tell a story that highlighted what depression could feel like, but the consequences of the play were huge in a different way. From ticket sales - and some merchandising - we raised over €750 for a suicide charity in Ireland, Console. It was the first play I'd seen in my college to sell out, and it was the first original play to hit the stage for as long back as anyone could tell me. As far as I'm aware, it was the first time an original play had been performed by the Drama Soc, and not the last.
I can't pick any one of those three achievements as being greater than the other two. Each meant something different to me, and to different people, but each one shaped the way I write and work today. In the six months following the staging of The Rest is Silence, I became a published author, with a book and an article to add to my credits.
Monday, July 7, 2014
In Five Years
My friend Rebecca asked a question of people, sometimes, when she's trying to get them to really think about their lives. She asked them, Where do you see yourself in five years?, not just out of curiosity, but because of what their answer means to their current situation. If you see yourself married with two kids in five years, but you're currently single and childless, you either have high expectations for the future, or you need to really start taking relationships more seriously.
If you want to be doing something in five years - mothering, publishing, travelling - you need to be working towards that now.
For me, it comes down to a happy little mix of writing, publishing and travelling.
Don't get me wrong. I don't expect to become an overnight hit in the writing department. Writing books isn't how you make money from writing. The biggest earners, aside from the big bestsellers in the publishing industry, are usually screenwriters. Of the Average Joe variety of writer, screenwriters make the most from a single piece of work. (It's also the most competitive market - fun!)
But I'd love to be doing it. I'd love to be trying my hand at screenwriting, while continuing to write my books, and attempting something of a freelance career. It's a difficult life to get started in, nearly impossible to do while in full-time education as an Undergrad. student, but it's not outside of my reach at this point in my life. I have books for guidance on screenwriting and freelancing, and I understand the book publishing sector relatively well, and it's just a case of applying everything I have to that dream.
That's what this month is all about for me, with Operation Overdrive. I want to create my work-life balance now, with an over-the-top last ditch attempt before my Masters starts in September.
And that Masters is where the second part of my five-year-dream comes in: publishing. My Masters is in Multimedia, which will help build up a skill-set in digital image editing, video production, and audio production - among other areas - which I see as being vital for publishing in the future. I have my own plans, aside from wanting to work with a major publishing house in the UK or the US or even here in Ireland (though there are fewer publishers here), and I'm confident that once I get the ball rolling, I'll be able to sort out something big.
Obviously, my explanation here will be lacking in details while they're still being worked on, but I've already started working on what I want to do, and how I want to do it, and it's just a case of getting the background work in place before I fully commit to it all - including putting my energy into the Masters.
As for the travelling, that's where things get complicated. Conventional work wouldn't allow for travel, and neither would a low income, and I don't plan on living at home when I'm approaching 30. I could tell you all of the places I want to go - and I will later in the month - but that doesn't explain how I'm going to afford it.
The travelling aspect is where I get to see the world. I know I can't afford to do it now, not while I'm saving everything I've got for the Masters (because aside from the fees, I'd like to get my own equipment, like a new laptop, and a proper camera). But if I could make the travel part of my work, if I could use it as research, or as part of a freelancing job, then it makes the money put into flights and accommodation part of the necessary expenses.
It's a child's dream, I suppose, but growing older doesn't mean that those dreams have to go away. Growing older just means that I can make more sense of those dreams, and how to make them a reality. In five years time, I want to be doing just that.
If you want to be doing something in five years - mothering, publishing, travelling - you need to be working towards that now.
For me, it comes down to a happy little mix of writing, publishing and travelling.
Don't get me wrong. I don't expect to become an overnight hit in the writing department. Writing books isn't how you make money from writing. The biggest earners, aside from the big bestsellers in the publishing industry, are usually screenwriters. Of the Average Joe variety of writer, screenwriters make the most from a single piece of work. (It's also the most competitive market - fun!)
But I'd love to be doing it. I'd love to be trying my hand at screenwriting, while continuing to write my books, and attempting something of a freelance career. It's a difficult life to get started in, nearly impossible to do while in full-time education as an Undergrad. student, but it's not outside of my reach at this point in my life. I have books for guidance on screenwriting and freelancing, and I understand the book publishing sector relatively well, and it's just a case of applying everything I have to that dream.
That's what this month is all about for me, with Operation Overdrive. I want to create my work-life balance now, with an over-the-top last ditch attempt before my Masters starts in September.
And that Masters is where the second part of my five-year-dream comes in: publishing. My Masters is in Multimedia, which will help build up a skill-set in digital image editing, video production, and audio production - among other areas - which I see as being vital for publishing in the future. I have my own plans, aside from wanting to work with a major publishing house in the UK or the US or even here in Ireland (though there are fewer publishers here), and I'm confident that once I get the ball rolling, I'll be able to sort out something big.
Obviously, my explanation here will be lacking in details while they're still being worked on, but I've already started working on what I want to do, and how I want to do it, and it's just a case of getting the background work in place before I fully commit to it all - including putting my energy into the Masters.
As for the travelling, that's where things get complicated. Conventional work wouldn't allow for travel, and neither would a low income, and I don't plan on living at home when I'm approaching 30. I could tell you all of the places I want to go - and I will later in the month - but that doesn't explain how I'm going to afford it.
The travelling aspect is where I get to see the world. I know I can't afford to do it now, not while I'm saving everything I've got for the Masters (because aside from the fees, I'd like to get my own equipment, like a new laptop, and a proper camera). But if I could make the travel part of my work, if I could use it as research, or as part of a freelancing job, then it makes the money put into flights and accommodation part of the necessary expenses.
It's a child's dream, I suppose, but growing older doesn't mean that those dreams have to go away. Growing older just means that I can make more sense of those dreams, and how to make them a reality. In five years time, I want to be doing just that.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Future Books and Future Plans
My friends poked fun at me when I said, in response to the challenge to come up with a book idea in thirty seconds, that I had a wall full of ideas, and I could easily pretend I just came up with one of them. I got the whole "Oh, I just have so many ideas..." line.
Well yes, yes I do.
I don't have plans, but I do have ideas. The ones I really like, I make sure to focus on. They're a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and I don't know how many of them are actually good yet. I have to see how they pan out when I try planning them, when I try to find the story around the idea.
My general plan for the next couple of years with books looks like this:
- I want to release the third Modern Irish Myth book. It'll require re-planning, and writing from scratch, but it's going to happen. Then, the series will be put on hiatus.
- I'll be releasing a series of books set in an Irish college. To put it really simply, it'll be creating a fictional world around my own college experience, inspired by events rather than people. I'm fleshing out a lot of it at the moment, but it's been exciting me for a long time, now, and it'll be appearing sooner rather than later.
- I'll be focusing on a couple more writing books in the future. Some will be specific genre-related titles, others more broad, addressing all writers. Without just giving away ideas, that's all I can say.
- After my Masters, I'll be turning my attention to researching and writing about mental health. I want to make the material accessible. If my experience on teaching placement in 2013 was any indication of the trend, even the people who should know about mental health don't. This is something I've been wanting to write about for a long time, and for the time being it'll remain in my fiction, but in the future I'll be taking on a more proactive role in the field in Ireland - and maybe even abroad.
That's just the books, of course. There's a lot else to focus on in the future, which I can't really discuss until I actually get started (I have books on mental health, and have read a bit of some of them, so I'm not breaking my own rule there). This isn't just a secrecy thing. This is a hype thing. As in, I don't want to create any hype in my own head over this stuff.
Being a writer can be a scary thing, especially when public announcements are concerned. It's with that in mind that I'm keeping a lot of things quiet until I'm ready to talk about them, and why I haven't given any indication as to what's actually going to happen in my new books. For now, you'll have to do with the vague answers I can give, and accept the fact that new material is on its way.
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