Welcome to Vóg - Mark II
A new platform, new mistakes, fresh literary outrages ... yadda, yadda, yadda!
Here in the Land of the Long White Cloud, the close of March is sliding in like a long forgotten hangover. Meanwhile, summer’s dwindling to a vague memory, something like a partially recollected one-night stand at the end of a heavy drinking session.
Over the past two weeks, when I rise in the morning, Father Sun’s been increasingly reluctant to join me. I sip my coffee at the kitchen window, staring miserably out at the dark and wondering where the hell he’s got to.
But that’s autumn for you, I guess.
Existing subscribers might be a bit thrown by this month’s email, freshly dispatched via Substack. I know I certainly am. One of the major downsides of independent publishing is the constant requirement to learn new digital tools and, to be honest, I’m really only starting to get my head around this one. Here’s a picture of me on Otaki beach, trying to work it out.
Obviously, that wasn’t particularly successful.
You’ll probably notice that some elements of this newsletter are now ‘paid subscription’ only. Those are mostly articles on Irish culture, history and mythology or early news and insights to various mythology/culture projects I’ll be working on over the course of the year. That section will probably be growing over time and may become a separate newsletter. The main part of the existing newsletter however, will continue to relate mostly to books and writing.
Hopefully, I’ll get better at it.
But enough of all that.
Welcome to Vóg!
Liath Luachra: The Great Wild
A persistent virus and various other interruptions meant I lost 3 weeks in March, something that had an unhelpful impact on my writing. As a result, I’m now well behind on where I want to be with Liath Luachra: The Great Wild. At this stage, the draft is sitting at over 30,000 words and although I had planned to keep it around that length, the final product is looking more like 50,000 (in other words, it’s about 3/5 complete).
Once the final draft is done, the experimental nature of it means it’ll require some ‘separation time’ (probably two weeks) to look at with fresh eyes and make sure it works. If the worst comes to the worst, it’s possible I could dump the lot but, at that point, I don’t think it likely. True, it’s a bit unusual in structure and it’s an odd kind of prequel, but it does seem to be working at the moment.
This means that the final version it won’t be released in April as intended. I’m now postponing release until the start of June (although Patrons and paid subscribers will get it earlier). In that regard, I’ve now put it up as a pre-order for Amazon which you can find here: The Great Wild Preorder
The image above is one of the cover concepts we looked at early on in the process but didn’t proceed with. You’ll see how my artist (the very talented Bryan Mahy) keeps getting the comma on ‘O’Sullivan’ wrong, even after all these years. This has become something of an in-joke between us.
Bloody foreigners!
Next Projects (2023)
Most Vóg subscribers will already know that, after Liath Luachra: The Great Wild, the next project on the block will be FIONN: The Betrayal which completes the story commenced in FIONN: Stranger at Mullán Bán. This book finally reveals the identity of the traitor causing so much havoc for the occupants of Ráth Bládhma over the previous sixteen. As its a reveal I’ve been building up to over the last four books in the series (and the last eight years) I’m very keen to get it right.
What I haven’t really mentioned was that I’m also pulling together a new product that provides far more context around the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series in terms of the cultural background, the individual characters, the creative process etc.
I still don’t have a name for this project and I don’t want to reveal too much yet, but I’ll probably be testing it on paid subscribers in a few months. I’m hoping to launch this with (or, possibly, before) the release of FIONN: The Betrayal.
Book Review: The Chalk Circle Man
With some detective genre writing planned for next year (the Beara Series – more on that before the end of the year), I’ve been doing a bit of research to stretch my mental mystery muscles. Mostly this involves reading books by some of the more famous detective thriller writers (Dana French, David Baldacci, Lee Child etc. etc.). The genre and the writing quality is quite broad so, despite the big names, I found myself enjoying some of them whereas others were barely bearable.
In the end, the only trend I found was that I tended to prefer stories with interesting protagonists over stories with interesting plots. I was fortunate therefore, with Fred Vargas’s (the nom de plume of French historian and writer Frédérique Audouin-Rouzeau) ‘The Chalk Circle Man’ to get both.
The blurb for ‘The Chalk Circle Man’ is as follows:
When blue chalk circles begin to appear on the pavement in neighborhoods around Paris, Commissaire Adamsberg is alone in thinking that they are far from amusing. As he studies each new circle and the increasingly bizarre objects they contain - empty beer cans, four trombones, a pigeon's foot, a doll's head - he senses the cruelty that lies within whoever is responsible. And when a circle is discovered with decidedly less banal contents - a woman with her throat slashed - Adamsberg knows that this is just the beginning.
The Chalk Circle Man is probably one of the more unique mysteries I’ve read in a while. I was already familiar with the quirky protagonist, Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsburg, when I first started reading it, but that didn’t detract from the story. In fact, I found that his character worked extremely well within the equal quirkiness of the premise and the plot.
Vargas shows a deft hand introducing the characters and building the mystery slowly and, in typical French fashion, she allows plenty of time for intervening meals, drinks, and wide-ranging chats between the various characters. The chalk circles appear at first as a bit of an eccentricity, an innocuous joke with chalk circles appearing around oddities such as an old handbag, a dead cat, a one-franc coin, screwdrivers and so on.
Adamsburg, however, with his own sense of logic has already sensed an evil association with these circles and when the first murder victim is found inside a chalk circle, his suspicions fall on three charmingly eccentric local characters. The first of these suspects is Mathilde Forrestier, an oceanographer with an odd habit of following people she sees in the street and who claims to have seen (and followed) the Chalk Circle Man. She comes to Adamsburg's attention by organising a meeting with him in relation to the Chalk Circle Man. The other two suspects are Mathilde’s lodgers, Clemence Valmon, an old woman who obsessively seeks love through personal ads in the newspaper, and Charles Reyner, a blind man with a bitter streak.
Somehow, Adamsburg can sense a connection between the chalk circles and this trio of individuals, but he doesn’t know what it is or why, exactly, he suspects them (and neither, thankfully, does the reader). An unusual detective, Adamsburg doesn't do much actual detecting, but prefers to allow his mind roam, channelling insights from the ether instead.
The detective and his eccentric technique have an admirable foil through his colleague Inspector Adrien Danglard, a by-the-book detective with a penchant for overindulging in white wine (during work hours) and a single parent who discusses his murder cases with his children. Adamsburg’s eccentric process drives Danglard absolutely crazy as it makes no logical sense to him and, yet, he can’t deny the success rate of his superior’s previous cases.
The great difference in personalities and the individual flaws of both men, means the interplay between them is particularly entertaining. Adamsberg, a ‘cloud shoveller’, is so emotionally distracted, his previous girlfriend walked out of his life without any explanation he can think of and he struggles to connect with his current girlfriend (while also sleeping with his neighbour). Danglard, meanwhile, is lonely and unconfident and hides behind professional police procedure to give his existence the structure that’s missing from his personal life.
To say much more about the plot or the characters would be to detract from your own enjoyment of the mystery, but the denouement is twisty, exciting, and logical (despite Adamsberg’s approach). It’s also satisfyingly human.
Book Sale
For followers of fantasy, the SPFBO FINALIST SALE 2023 is starting on from 1-4 April with a number of the the finalists from the last 5-6 years of that competition on sale at 99c/99p. You can find the link HERE
If you’re looking for a good read, these are some of the best fantasy books of the last 5-6 years, all available at a ridiculously low price. I’ve read four or five of those listed here and the quality is pretty damn good. Fionn: Defence of Ráth Bládhma is in there as well although I’ve been shifting further and further away from fantasy these last few years.
The End
That’s all for March. Having got over the initial hurdle of the new format, I’ll be back at the end of April, hopefully with a more balanced version. Until then …
Slán go fóill!
Tinkering with An Táin
Why is An Táin such an attractive story for publishers? Is it genuinely Irish or something else entirely? Which is the definitive version?
In many respects, An Táin Bó Cuailge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley) is considered Ireland’s version of the Illiad and there’s a pretty good reason for that. Fortunately, we now know that the early medieval Irish writers (including the authors of An Táin) were very much influenced by other classical literature that had made its way into Ireland at the time.
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