‘Life Is Just One Damn Thing After Another’ - that’s a quote that still sits with me. I heard it first about fifteen years ago, bizarrely enough on New Zealand National Radio. For a while, on Saturday mornings (or Sundays - I honestly can’t remember), that New Zealand radio station used to play episodes of ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ and the expression popped up, much to my amusement.
I’d only ever heard one or two episodes of that show but a year later, the expression was cemented in when it turned up again, this time during a viewing of Allen Bennet’s ‘The History Boys’. On that occasion, it came out as “History … Its just one damn thing after another” … which, to my ears, sounded even better.
I’ve been mulling on that these past few weeks when all my best-laid plans got blown away in the latest series of physical and metaphysical storms (mostly related to my freelance workload but also to my family responsiblities). Ironically, for someone whose professional life consists of specialised strategic thinking, for most of my life I’ve been the kind of person who couldn’t tell where he’d be from one year to the next. More recently, that timeframe seems to have shrunk to less than a week.
I should have known another period of instability was coming, of course. Three weeks back, I was standing outside as the evening slipped in, sipping tea on my deck while I watched purple clouds stream past and raucous seagulls screeched a warning of the incoming storm (they fly inland when a bad storm’s coming). Sometimes prescience can actually be quite beautiful, you just need to recognise it for what it is.
Or … as Bodhmhall says in the upcoming Fionn: The Betrayal: (yes, I’m still blatting away at that):
"Incoming storms are nothing new. You just need to recognise the signs."
Welcome to Vóg!
In Production
Not much to tell on current projects at the moment. Four of the items I’m working on won’t see the light of day until next year and even FIONN: The Betrayal looks like it might be delayed until the first quarter of 2024 (I’ll be releasing that in connection with another related project).
I’m hoping that I’ll be in a position to share at least some detail of what I’m doing, next month.
In the meantime, if you’re an Amazon reader in the UK, just be aware that I’ll probably be halting the sale on Liath Luachra: The Great Wild in the next week or two.
On the Home Front
Here in Wellywood, my family ended up going along to a book fair at one of my kids’ old schools, a few weekends back. Most of us are dedicated readers so it wasn’t really that difficult to convince them to take the short drive out to the suburb where the school was located.
I’ve always loved rummaging through boxes of old books, particularly at large scale sale events like this where’s there’s an impressive range of discarded and second-hand books. Generally speaking, you always tend to find patterns in the donated books that reflect the population from where they’ve been sourced. This time around, I came across at least six copies of Peter Høegs’ Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, over ten copies of Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth and five copies of Eragon by Christopher Paolini. What does that tell us about the happy book-readers of Wellington? I have no idea, but it’s an interesting pattern to observe.
For me, I prefer these types of book sales as I can find a lot of the more obscure, forgotten stuff that I really enjoy, and which occasionally ends up inspiring me with my own writing. Bestseller fiction, you can pick up anywhere but these obscure gems … they’re like gold.
Interestingly enough, I was happily rummaging through various cartons when I came across this:
For those unfamiliar with the cover, that’s the very first version of FIONN: Defence of Ráth Bládhma (published back in 2014, I think, back at a time in any case, when I didn’t have the funds to afford a good designer or artist).
When my daughter spotted me looking at it, she had waaay too much fun teasing me but, truth be told, it wasn’t a big deal. I’ve seen one or two of my books in second-hand shops over the years and, in my experience, most other writers aren’t too bothered either. Sure, you could go down the route of thinking someone didn’t value your work enough to keep it (my babies!!!!) but, to be honest, finding your work mixed in there with Follet and Høeg is something of a compliment in itself. It basically means that, in a sense, you’ve ‘made it’, that you’ve produced enough work or sold enough books to the point that they’re ‘rebounding’ back at you. That’s a pretty nice feeling.
Needless to say, I bought it.
C’mon! It was a bloody bargain!
The Review: Silence
There’s No Cure for Silence.
Irish people aren’t exactly renowned for silence which means that this interesting film by Pat Colins is something of an oddity. Originally released back in 2012, it was a hit on the arthouse circuit but didn’t do particularly well in commercial centres, no surprise given the subject matter.
In terms of plot, the story is pretty basic and really serves only as a premise or set up for the real story - a consideration of silence and what it means for different people. The film starts in noisy Berlin where an Irish sound recordist called Eoghan (played by Eoghan Mac Gilla Bhríde) tells his girlfriend he’s leaving and returning to Ireland after a fifteen-year absence. The reason? A job offer to record landscapes that have been unpolluted by man-made sounds.
Back in Ireland, Eoghan’s quest takes him away from towns and villages to the deep rural west and northwest of the country. There he seeks to capture and record the elusive absence of sound and becomes drawn into a number of conversations with random strangers before eventually returning to his island home of Tory.
‘Silence’ is not, and never was, going to turn up at your local multiplex and some people will certainly struggle with the long periods of … well … silence. That said, the film is quite gorgeous to look at, its quite a meditative experience to watch it alone, and the last section of the film (on Tory) is quite touching and sobering in terms of a life left behind.
I’ve always had a soft spot for this movie but you can judge for yourself with the trailer below.
The End
A short newsletter this month as I rush back to work. I’ve just set up an audio recording spot in the home office but I still have a lot of technical stuff to sort out before I get to producing any work from it. Meanwhile, I have a lot of writing and planning and two different interviews next month so I suspect it’ll continue to be full on for the next wee while.
Those storms, they keep on blowing through.
Until next month …
Slán go fóill!
Paid Content
This month’s paid content section includes an article on the ‘Plastic Paddy Werewolves’ and how I attempted to address this ‘Oirish Mythology’ concept in Liath Luachra: The Swallowed.
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