Celine Kiernan's Blog, page 16

Places I’ll be this week…

I will be nattering away in several locations this week if anyone fancies coming along:

Tues 5th 10am -11am I will be in Lucan Library at  celebrating the launch of the ‘Voice’ exhibition with the Palmerstown students who’s work will be on display.

Wed 6th 11am -12 I will be in Dubrays on Grafton St reading from Into the Grey.

Fri 8th March 1pm I will be at Johnston Library in Cavan Town, attending a talk by Catherine Dunne an author & teacher to whom I owe much.  Come along if you can and hear her discuss her body of work.

Luis’ Pie

If you follow me on twitter or FB you’ll know I had a fair mess of computer trouble this week and that I went on twitter this morning to have an empty little whine about it. TO MY EVERLASTING GRATITUDE one of my lovely readers – the eponymous Luis – turned out to be a computer technician, and he spent his precious time talking me though the solutions to my problem!

Luis, I said I’d bake you a pie. Unfortunately you are in Colombia and I am here in sad wet boggy old Ireland. I hope this wee Poison Throne based cartoon goes some way to expressing my gratitude instead…

More Moorehawke fanart

 

I just found this in a folder clean-up session. I’ve no idea where I got it or why it’s not on record who sent it to me, so please accept my sincere apologies for the uncredited art.  I have an idea it has something to do with online role playing or some similar thing?

Anyhoo, it’s a pretty lovely interpretation of Wynter and Lorcan Moorehawke. (if anyone knows the artist let me know and I’ll give them credit)

Niggle niggle niggle… AH!

I’ve been poking at and prodding, and returning over and over to this particular tiny section of dialogue in the WiP knowing that something, somehow was just not working. I knew the scene itself worked in terms of the traits it revealed about the characters involved but that somehow the dialogue jarred.

I was turning it over and over in my mind this morning, and finally, I worked it out. In a world where men and women are considered utterly equal – and in which all sexual preferences are acceptable – the sentiments my character was expressing were completely off. I had been placing my own world’s associations and prejudices onto the words ‘man’ and ‘girl’ when in the context of this (imaginary) world those connotations would not even have crossed my characters’ minds. I needed to express jealousy and disdain, yes. But in a way which was reflective of the societal rules which I had established and not those within which I had been raised.

Fixed. At last. And now I can move on.

Mostly editing today…

…going over what’s come before before moving on. I’m a slow writer, always polishing, polishing as I go. Sometimes that’s frustrating but mostly it’s satisfying. Here’s a small section from today’s fiddlings:

I thought about her all day – as I was pounding the dye, as I was listening to the evening’s telling, as I was taking my bath. That night as I climbed to the sleeping hollows, my wet hair pleasingly heavy against my back, my skin still cool from the water of the reed pond, my thoughts were filled with her. As I lay in my nest of moss and blankets, I turned her over and over in my mind: Valentina. Valentina and her child. Valentina and her child walking the upper canopy. I fell asleep thinking of her and I dreamed we were there together: she and I on the wicker roof of the world, under a broadness of moon. She was dancing, her spear in her hand, her baby on her back. Lithe in the simplicity of her harvesting costume, she leapt and sun-wheeled and spun in a lovely solo performance of Primo’s dance. I watched on, no longer angry.

‘Isn’t she glorious?’ said Salvatore. I turned, and he was standing there, a full grown man resting his weight on a beautifully carved spear. He smiled down at me with the kind of calm, grave dignity that spoke of depths of self knowledge and understanding. ‘Isn’t she perfect?’ he said.

Epic Con, Maynooth 22nd -24th Feb

I’ll be a guest speaker at Epic Con in Maynooth this weekend, if anyone fancies coming along to say hi. The con runs from Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th and is family friendly. It has all sorts of cool stuff such as Cosplay, corset workshops, discussion groups, tardis building. Unfortunately I can only attend on the Sunday – my panels are highlighted in orange in the timetables below – which is a shame for me. I’m going to miss so much good craic!

See below for timetable. Guest speakers will include Peadar Ó Guilín & Ruth F Long

 

In future I shall have her bake a cake.

Grrrr. I’ve just tolerantly smiled my way through an e-mail lecture on how Wynter ‘betrayed’ Christopher by concentrating more on politics than on his feelings, and how she ‘doesn’t deserve his love’ – only to find I wasn’t, as I thought, reading the passionate ramblings of a romantic and inexperienced young girl, but the depressing witterings of a middle-aged woman with two grown daughters (who, btw, she would disown should they ever treat ‘their men’ in such a ‘coldhearted’ manner)

Yes, dear, Wynter SHOULD have ‘slapped Razi’s face’ and ‘left the camp’ instead of trying to get to the heart of things. Heaven knows, men are small and delicate flowers completely incapable of self-worth without a woman’s total attention and unrelenting physical presence. You are absolutely right, Wynter should have devoted her energies to comforting her man and kept her nose out of all that other meaningless business going on at the negotiation table. After all, there was only a kingdom hanging in the balance.

I shall try and do better. In future, when present during delicate political maneuverings my female characters will abandon all subtlety and diplomatic skill in order to throw a strop at perceived slights to their lover’s honor. They shall then dismiss themselves from the heart of political discourse in order to hold his hand – and possibly bake a cake. Men like cake, right?

SQUEEEE: UK Cover for Into the Grey!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been waiting to share this with you guys for AGES!

LOOK AT THIS COVER FOR INTO THE GREY! LOOK AT IT!!

*comes over all fluttery*

I actually do not think I’ve ever loved a cover more (and that’s saying something)             rock

Dear Internet Reviewers of a Certain Type

In light of yet another friend having received a link (this time via twitter) can I ask what it is that certain reviewers hope to achieve in linking an author to an execrable review of their work? What is it you are hoping will be the outcome of e-mailing an author (as I have been) or @ing them in a tweet (as several colleagues have been) or pinging their blog with links to your bad review?

Is it that you hope to influence us into changing the contents of the book? If so, too late, the book is written. Quite often it has been accepted by a publishing house; it has been edited by professionals; it is – as you poke and prod at its creator – being distributed by bookshops and placed on library shelves. Nothing you can do or say will influence its contents. It is there, forever, in the form you read it, regardless of what you do or say to the writer.

Is it that you hope to enlighten us as to your very special understanding of how next we may approach our craft, in the hopes that our next work might suit you better? If so, take a look around you – yours is a voice among many. Which voice should we listen to? Our five star reviewers? Our four star reviewers? Three? Two? One? Yours? Why? Because yours is the very very bestest very most correct one? Get over yourself. Any writer worth their salt does not create in order to please a committee. They create to express something important to them – something relevant to them. And they can only hope that out there in the sea of many potential readers someone somewhere will feel a resonance.

As a reviewer you get to examine your opinion on the book: to dissect the book, to disassemble it, to fill notebooks of pages on its social impact. You get to speak as loudly and as clearly from as many venues as you like, to as many other readers as possible, so that your opinion on the book might be heard by them – so that you might enlighten them, or be enlightened by their responses to you. You get to sit in your own corner of the internet grumbling quietly about having wasted your time on such trash.  Or, hell, you get to have fun filling a blog post with puking cat gifs to express how much you hated it. It’s up to you. That’s the joy and freedom and social power of reviewing other folks’ work. You get to shape opinions, you get to express opinions, you get to discuss opinions, you get to play with puking cat gifs.

But there can be no purpose whatsoever in linking those puking cats or pages of dissertation to the writer. The writer is gone. They’ve moved on. They are probably already two books down the line. Your attempt to draw them into commenting on your opinion piece can only be seen as an attempt to troll for internet author meltdown.

Cut it out.

Wynter/Iseult fanart

Many thanks to Teoclio over at DeviantArt for this lovely drawing of Wynter (Iseult) Moorehawke. Teoclio has depicted Wynter as she is in The Poison Throne on her first night back in Jonathon’s palace, wearing her mother’s dress, and ready to attend that fateful banquet.

Thank you, Teoclio! I love your vision of Wyn!