Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Through the Wardrobe to be Reissued

Benbella is reissuing Through the Wardrobe: Your Favourite Authors on CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia in November, with this gorgeous new cover. It will be out in honour of the third Narnia film, Voyage of the Dawn Treader (can't wait!) The book is edited by my dear friend Herbie Brennan who also wrote an article for it. I really enjoyed writing about my favourite author, CS Lewis, and I thoroughly enjoyed the other articles and essays. The pieces are not academic (thank Aslan) but are more of a love fest, with everybody talking about the books and characters from different angles. A great read!

Thursday, June 03, 2010

One Down, One to Go and Then ...

Well, that's the edited draft of The Celtic Princess (Book One) done and dusted and off to Canadian and American publishers. It has also gone to UK and Australian/New Zealand publishers who requested to see same, so stay tuned for more news. Now I am taking June off to catch up on the gazillion things that haven't been done due to deadline, i.e. clean house, tend to overgrown garden, see friends, catch up on emails and correspondence, plan research trip to Isle of Erraid (more about that anon), de-clutter house (this is a biggie, I am chucking out the old to make room for the new!), head out to Co. Clare to visit friends and then up to Co. Donegal for annual pilgrimage to Lough Derg ('extreme prayer' as Finn calls it), then it's the whole month of July in a Buddhist retreat while also completing the final draft of my new adult work, People of the Great Journey. I'm half-way through it and looking forward to getting back to it. THEN, when that's done, I'll take another break before getting stuck into second book of The Celtic Princess series. It's called The Celtic Princess and The Dragon King. The storyline is already plotted and notes made, but it is early days yet. The first book was originally called The Celtic Princess and the Stone of Destiny - a totally appropriate title referring to the plot - but I decided to just begin with the series title, also it sounded a bit too like a certain other book, if you know what I mean.