The Echoing Green and Other Stories

So, the time has come to announce the imminent release of my new short story collection, The Echoing Green and Other Stories.

What can I say about it?

Well, the stories are stronger than my previous efforts. They are more focused and thematic and have the confidence of a writer who has found his voice. Although mythological beings are still present in the stories, there are more creatures of pure imagination. The plots are as ingenious and inventive as The Chronicles but, again, there is more focus and less rambling. Because they are more thematic, the stories are, I hope, more thought provoking. There is also more of a social conscience present, especially in the stories, ‘John Frost and the Angel’ and ‘Home’. This is something that was missing from The Chronicles.

The Echoing Green and Other Stories was written in a very short period of time. I always write fast as the stories seem to flow through me. The process was the same as for the other books: I’d cook up a few ideas in my imagination before sitting down at the computer and getting to work. I never have trouble coming up with ideas. It seems like I can turn them on and off like a tap. It’s a very deliberate process: there is thinking time and there is writing time. I’ve never had writer’s block.

So, altogether a more mature, confident and controlled effort that will, hopefully, satisfy most readers.

I should also mention the cover art. This time, instead of the easy option of finding a design on Shutterstock, I’ve gone with an original work of art by the very talented Diana Muller. ‘A Head Full of Hills’ is most fitting for both the title and content of the book. The cover is classier than the previous books, and I hope the content lives up to it.

In what way is the collection similar to the previous books?

Well, the influences are the same: the early work of Yeats, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker and Stephen King. And the strangeness and originality of the ideas is still there. As in previous books, the dialogue is probably the strongest aspect of the work. There is the same playfulness and humour about the stories.

So, altogether, I’m very pleased and proud of the way the stories in the collection turned out.

I hope you enjoy reading them.

The Echoing Green and Other Stories will be available to download or order as a hard copy, right here, next week.

Writing A Bhikku’s Tale

A Bhikku’s Tale is steeped not just in mythology but story. Anyone who enjoys a good tale well told will find it satisfying, I hope.

Every day we encounter many stories: newspaper stories, TV and film stories, stories we hear from family and friends. We need stories to shape and understand both ourselves and the world in which we live. Stories take us on a journey, even if it is just a song heard on the car radio or a joke. Like all good journeys, the getting there is more important than the destination. Those are just some of the reasons why I am a fan of stories and mythology.

In writing A Bhikku’s Tale I wanted to play around with elements of Irish myth and ideas from my own imagination. The notion of play is often associated with the term Postmodernism but I wouldn’t hold it down to just this. In my book, all art comes from play. Always has and always will. There is plenty of work involved too but, essentially, it’s about play. I had such fun writing A Bhikku’s Tale! I hope that the reader will have just as much fun.

Two writers who have had a strong influence on my work are Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker. Both are master fabulists and both are Brits. I wanted to write a book about fantastic and mythological creatures, putting them into a modern context. A modern Irish context. I am 100% honest when I say that I have never heard of such a book being written in mainstream Irish fiction. Irish mythology is an absolute treasure trove of stories, ideas and characters that appeal to the imagination. Some people might frown on the way I use Irish myth and legend. They might see Irish mythology as sacred and not to be touched in any way. I believe that, like all other mythologies, Irish myth and legends have survived and grown through people retelling and rewriting them. Mythology is something that should be shared by everyone and all artists and writers should be free to use them in any way they want, in order to say what they want to say.

As mentioned earlier, I put quite a few original ideas and characters into the book. I’m a big fan of imagination. I believe that it is important not just for art but also for solving social and environmental problems, amongst others. I strongly believe the imagination can change the world or, at least, change the way we see it. But, getting back to the book, although there is lots of Irish and other mythology in there, you really don’t need to know much about it to enjoy the work. All you need is imagination and a love of story, two things we are all blessed with, even if you don’t know it.

Getting to the ‘Good Stuff’: the Art of Creative Writing.

They say there is prose and verse and you can have poetry in either. This strikes me as true.

Literature is an art, not a science. Living is an art, not a science. This is why the term ‘Arts’ is often associated with, and even interchangeable with, the term ‘Humanities’.

The American poet, Jim Morrison, was once asked about the cross he wore around his neck at the Doors’ famous gig at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968. He said, ‘it’s just a symbol. It doesn’t mean anything.’ At first this might seem a contradiction: you might argue that a symbol is all about meaning. You might say that a cross is a symbol of suffering. That is its meaning. I think what Morrison was trying to indicate was the difference between a fact and a symbol. Facts have an exact meaning. They are scientific. Symbols don’t have an exact meaning. In fact, they don’t say anything at all. They suggest. They have multiple aspects. Symbolism is at home in verse but it should be present in prose also, or any prose that sees itself as literary.

Yes, there is logic and science in literature, only it should serve the symbolic, the imaginative and the poetic. I believe a writer achieves maturity when he comes into awareness of the symbolic. When he begins to manipulate symbols in order to suggest and play with possible meanings. The mature writer knows how to strike a balance between symbolism and logic. The concrete nature of symbols allows him to play with them in his art. You can’t play around with abstracts because they can’t be visualized or imagined. That is why too much abstraction is a flaw in literature – it goes against the imagination and the imagination is paramount in literature in all its forms.

Consider Homer, the first poet of Western Civilisation and then consider Seamus Heaney, one of the greatest poets of the last fifty years or so. They both worked with concrete. With that which can be visualized and imagined. They worked with symbols.

Life is mysterious and writers can only capture a portion of that mystery through symbols. Life is messy and mixed up and confusing an only the mirror of art can reflect this. A good story, just like a good poem, shouldn’t have a precise meaning. It should only give you something to think about. It should suggest, allude and indicate. It should never impose itself. It should never enforce. It should never moralize except in the most general of senses e.g. it’s wrong to take another life. Good literature is an invitation to play – play with the intellect, the feelings and the emotions. Only when you master this will you become a good writer. Some of us master it at a young age. Some of us have to wait a few years and some never master it at all. It is a mixture of imagination and intuition, two terms that are alien to science and even craftsmanship. No matter how much you read and discover, there is no formula for it. You must simply write to get to it, to get to the ‘good stuff’, and, if you are lucky, you will.

The Citizen

 

By David Jordan

I swear these long nights

Stir my blood

And steer my spirit northward

Like a long boat headed home.

 

For the imagination feeds

On the darkness like a flame

And tonight I imagine myself as

A man of the North:

Cross countenance, long bones.

Leaping on to the sandy shore.

 

Bringing alien gods to the natives:

The loquacious Gael.

The nature loving, melancholy,

Aristocratic Gael.

 

After a thousand years

Surely the stranger is gone from the house?

 

Tonight, I swear I am a citizen

Of the imagination:

Emancipated.

In flight.

Irish Mythology and W.B. Yeats

If you are interested in Irish mythology and you haven’t read the early poetry of W.B. Yeats, you really should. Through his early volumes of poetry such as The Rose and The Wind Among The Reeds he re-invented Irish mythology, making it more accessible to anyone who could read.

There is an animism to his early poetry – he brings the natural landscape to life better than any other ‘Celtic Twilight’ poet. There is also danger. His Sidhe or Danann are amoral creatures and there is the suggestion that if you hang out with them too much you run the risk of going insane.

And there is the sheer escapism of his poetry at this stage. Or maybe escapism is the wrong word. Transcendentalism might be more accurate. The early Yeats sees art as separate from reality. It exists in its own transcendent realm and this is reflected strongly in the work. The natural world stirs the imagination and allows us to enter a place where the troubles and toils of daily living can be left behind. This kind of escapism is best demonstrated in the poem, Who Goes With Fergus?

Who will go drive with Fergus now,

And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade,

And dance upon the level shore?

Young man, lift up your russet brow,

And lift your tender eyelids, maid,

And brood on hopes and fear no more.

 

And no more turn aside and brood

Upon love’s bitter mystery;

For Fergus rules the brazen cars,

And rules the shadows of the wood,

And the white breast of the dim sea

And all dishevelled wandering stars.

The early poems are also heavily symbolic and intuitive – they have no precise meaning, which is how all poetry should be. You get the sense that this is a world that exists in the poet’s imagination and not based on experience. The poet William Blake was a huge influence on Yeats, especially in his celebration of the imagination. For both poets, there is more to life than what we take in through the five senses. There is something we all own which is unique to all of us and we can access it through the imagination, something that is ours and nobody else’s. In Yeats’ early work there is a strong sense of a deeply private world been depicted. Because Yeats was so young, he didn’t have much else to draw on except his intuition and imagination, but what a body of work he gave us!

His early work far surpasses the other ‘Celtic Twilight’ poets such as Samuel Ferguson and Thomas Moore. You will find no leprechauns and fairies in Yeats’ early poetry. His work harks back to the old, pre-Christian mythology of Ireland. To the Tuatha De Danann and the Book of Invasions. To the hero, Cu Chulainn and his epic, The Tain. Yeats recognised what a treasure trove of imagination the myths are and how they could provide a framework with which to express his own unique vision of Ireland.

The Art of Good Content Writing

Writing good content isn’t easy. If you disagree with this, then the content you are writing probably isn’t any good. I like to quote the lines from the film, A River Runs Through it: ‘All good things…come by grace. And grace comes by art. And art does not come easy.’ By this I am not claiming that good content should be a work of literature, only that it should tap into the same resources as literature to win the reader’s attention and interest.

One of the major resources of literature is music. We all share a sense of rhythm and melody, whether we know it or not. People know instinctively when a sentence isn’t right musically. Many websites suffer from tone deafness and a lack of rhythm, simply because not enough work has been put into the content. It makes reading more difficult and less pleasant than it should be. People tend to put their trust into well written content, so if you can’t get the basics right many of them won’t hang around.

Our sense of music also allows us to mimic, or adopt, certain voices and styles. This is very important when it comes to web content writing as it is extremely audience focused. Versatility is an essential for this business. In fact, it is so essential that you will probably never write in your own voice. Web content is shallow in this way but this doesn’t mean it comes any easier than other forms of writing, such as journalism or technical writing.

Another resource is imagination. Being an ‘ideas’ person will certainly help you to go far in this business. If you want to flesh out and expand on the five bullet points your client just gave you, you will need to be imaginative. If you want to put some vigour and originality into your blog post to capture the reader’s attention, you will need to be imaginative. If you want to think of new ways to generate business and promote your company through your content, you will need to be imaginative. Imagination is like the hook of a good tune: it will make people want to hear the entire song. Again, it doesn’t come easy but it is worth  waiting for.

A third resource is the drive to give shape to ideas, to give form to our words. This is related to the instinct for music but it goes beyond that. It is a need for logic, coherence and fluidity. From word to phrase to sentence to paragraph, everything must flow and cohere. A good content writer will cleave to his art until he achieves near perfection. This can mean taking hours on a single paragraph. However, the reader will probably skim over most content in seconds and this is the way it should be.

Of course a lot more has been written about web content than this and a lot more will be written about it in the future. But we mustn’t forget these three basic posits as they are the foundation of all good writing. Many people with ecommerce sites try to write their own content. Some get it right but most don’t. This is because it is an art and if you want it done properly you need someone who knows the art. So if you are building a website, ensure that it performs well and is something to be proud of by hiring a good writer and investing in some beautiful and effective content.

Writing The Chronicles of Dan Lee O’Brien

The Chronicles of Dan Lee O’Brien was written over a period of four to five months in 2015. It is fair to say that it flowed out of me. Reading it now I’d say the best quality is the dialogue. It seems to capture the rhythms of speech successfully as well as facilitating the discussion of ideas. One of my favourite creators is the film maker Quentin Tarantino. His dialogue is, above all, lucid and intelligent and I’ve tried to emulate that in the Chronicles. However, the writer I am most indebted to is undoubtedly Neil Gaiman. The whole idea of putting gods into a modern context comes from him, especially the Sandman comic and his novel, American Gods.

When writing the book my overall aim was to play with the Irish myths. To make them more fun and accessible. I also wanted to use them to talk about the power of the imagination which is, perhaps, the dominant theme of the stories. I tried to keep the stories clever and humorous and ensure they have a broad appeal. My favourite story is probably Gungnir, as the concept of the story is clever but it also has a strong autobiographical element, so it is close to me.

The character Dan Lee O’Brien came about as I wanted to create a protagonist or anti-hero who was both old fashioned and cool: a pipe smoking, bike riding old man who is a magician and investigator of the supernatural. He is like an older, more laid back John Constantine. I also tried to put in strong female characters, both goddesses and humans. This seems to have paid off as most of the positive feedback I have gotten has come from women.

I also wanted to give people things to think about e.g. the need for imagination to bring about social change, the power of music and the idea of being haunted by ghosts of the past. I tried to put a lot of ideas into the mix to create something complex and multi-faceted.

All books are a journey. I hope those who choose to take the journey with me will find it both entertaining and stimulating.

 

Reflections on the Imagination

For this writer the hardest part of creating is coming up with ideas. Imaginative ideas. It takes up so much mental energy that I have little left for the writing part. But when my energy is restored I find that putting words on paper and giving shape to my thoughts and ideas is a lot easier than that initial imagining. I usually lie down on my bed for the initial imagining stage and it is by far the hardest work you can do whilst lying down on your back. A line from Yeats’ Adam’s Curse comes to mind:

…and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisey set

Of bankers, school masters and clergy men.

The ancient myth about the birth of Athena is typical Greek brilliance, an insight into the nature of the imagination. The myth goes that Athena just popped out of Zeus’ head, suddenly, from out of nowhere. The imagination comes, seemingly, from out of nowhere and therefore it is a mystery on a par with music and wine. That the myth refers to the imagination is perhaps confirmed by the role given to Athena in Homer’s Odyssey. She gives Odysseus ideas for getting out of trouble and getting back to his home on Ithaca. She is like a personification of the imagination. In the poem she is often referred to as ‘the goddess of the flashing eyes’. What could be a better metaphor for the imagination, for the inner eye?

So the imagination is hard work and it is mysterious. All I can add to this is that it is stressful. It seems to come about by mental chafing in the same way that fire is started by rubbing wood against wood. We can bring in another myth here. The myth of Prometheus, who gave the gift of fire to man and was punished for it. Is fire another metaphor for the imagination? For the imagination in all its power and mystery must be the greatest gift that man possesses. All original thought comes from the initial spark of the imagination. Every invention, every great work of art is the offspring of the imagination. All civilisation and progress owes a debt to the imagination.

So the next time you are dreaming with your eyes open, remember that you are not an idler. Or if you are an idler then it is an important idleness. You are partaking in an activity which has lifted humanity to its very summits. You are partaking in something divine. For the writer who must come up with an original idea it is hard work but once it happens and the words begin to cascade and flow no writer will deny that it is worth it.