Faerie War or Discussion?

For anyone in the vicinity, I will be speaking at the CBI Summer School, Saturday, May 20, 2006 at 12:00 p.m. Venue: Belvedere College. For more information see www.childrensbooksireland.com. Here's the fun part. I am sharing a panel with Herbie Brennan. Now I've just started to read his Faerie Wars and I am enjoying it, but there's no question about it -- we definitely see fairies differently! The discussion should be lively. For more information about Herbie see www.herbiebrennan.com. Oh, and there will be a booksigning at 5:00 p.m. that same day.

From Don De Delillo

This was the infalling trap, the source of art's private involvement with obsession and despair, neither more nor less than the artist's self-containment, a mental state that led to storms of overwork and extended stretches of depression, that brought on indifference to life and at times the need to regurgitate it, to seek the level of expelled matter.

All fiction takes place at the end of this process of crawl, scratch and gasp, this secret memory of death.

(From Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star)

Working

working working but not really getting anywhere ...

Annaghmakerrig

Here's a pic of the house and garden of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre (www.tyroneguthrie.ie). This has been my heart's home since 1985. A very special place.

Annaghmakerrig Magic

Just back from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre where I got seriously going on the revision of The Light-Bearer’s Daughter. I picked apart the seams of the old version and inputted ideas for new scenes and deeper character development. Then I went in search of the flip chart which I used last year to outline the chapters for the previous book. (The outline helps me thread new story- and character-lines through the book.) I finally located the flip chart in the big music room and look what was on top of the page just waiting for me! Definitely a boggle. So I’ve taken him home to help me work, as no one in the house could say who had drawn it and indeed the chart had not been used since last year! Coincidence, you say? Not at all. It’s magic.