Counting down…

When I started writing, back in 2019, I didn’t really know where it was leading and how it would turn out. There was no plan to write a book and every week I’d wonder if the ideas would dry up and it would be left unfinished, half a tale, soon to be forgotten.

One notebook after another became filled with scribbles and notes, questions and quotes, as day by day the story poured out of me and onto the page. There was no chronological sequence to it, my imagination flitted about; a butterfly going from flower to flower, free for the first time in years.

It didn’t take that long to get the whole story down, a matter of weeks but it was a mess. I cobbled it together, had a quick read through to correct the most obvious inconsistencies, and sent of off to my sister, a much more experienced writer. Her feedback was hugely positive and from that I had an inkling that perhaps there was something here worth sharing.

By the time The Key of Ornoss gets released on an unsuspecting world we’ll be almost two years down the road from the day I first took up pen and pad. It’s fair to say that back then I had no idea what lay ahead on the road to creating this thing called a book but I have enjoyed every minute of it. I love learning new things and this has certainly been a learning curve.

In just ten weeks, the Key of Ornoss goes live for sale, initially through Amazon and then, if all goes well, through other platforms too. I genuinely have no idea what the future holds, whether anyone will buy it, read it, like it, and I guess I have very little control over that. One thing I do know, I love writing and that’s not going to stop. One way or another book two in the series, The Rod of Xerus is going to be edited (it’s already finished to first draft) and prepared for print, probably next year. I just hope it’s as much fun as this has been, I’m sure it will be.

And so, let the countdown continue!

2021-03-31T11:24:00

  days

  hours  minutes  seconds

until

The Key of Ornoss book launch!

Field research – literally

As a child I often visited my uncle’s farm in Fermanagh and stayed for a few days at a time. One of the jobs my cousins and I had to was take the cows from their grazing pasture to the milking parlour and back again. This usually involved a very early start but I didn’t mind.

I remember one day, we’d just reached the top of the lane and the cows were making their way along the little country road leading to their field when by chance I happened to look over the hedge into the field of the neighbouring farm. There, near the corner of the field was a series of raised earthen rings. I think my cousins called it a fairy fort but looking back it was the remains of an ancient ringfort perhaps from as early as the Bronze Age.

Apart from that farmer and his family and my Uncle’s family, I doubt anyone knew it was there. The land was just pasture and it wasn’t bothering the cows so there it sat and probably still sits to this day.

To say Ireland is littered with such sites is an understatement, they’re all over though like this one, I suspect many go unrecorded and uninvestigated. I’ve always been fascinated by them and by the many standing stones and stone circles found in Ireland, the Isle of Man and all over the UK. The one in the picture is Ballynoe, not far from where I grew up. Although it dates back to Neolithic times, no one really know who built it, why or how it was used. Now, isn’t that a wonderful mystery to set our imaginations roaming?