Celine Kiernan's Blog, page 19

Page 14 Webcomic, Cleanup

I won’t annoy you with any more of this until it’s fully penciled and painted, but I had a good time with this today and thought I’d share. This is the cleaned up drawing of page 14 of the Moorehawke webcomic. It’s part of a two page spread ( you can see the roughs of the entire spread, with dialogue, here.)

Sól’s Bear Bracelets

I’m just using the last few days of my holidays to catch up on my backlog of drawings. This is the tied down design for the Merron bear bracelets that Sólmundr, Hallvor and (eventually) Christopher wear in The Moorehawke Trilogy. When I finally get around to drawing in the webcomic roughs, Sól and Chris’s bracelets will look like this. (Christopher’s original bracelets, of course, look like this )

Next I owe two very lovely young ladies a drawing each. Emily, you will get your drawing of six-year-old Wynter and her cats very soon, and Eleanor you’ve been so so patient but I promise there’ll be a wee something winging its way to you soon!

Five Sleeps til the Australian Landing

My beloved Aussie ed, Elise Jones.

See this woman? See her? Do you know who that is? That, dear friend and heart, is my beloved, my darling, my I’m-never-letting-you-go-as-long-as-I-have-finger-nails-to-cling-with* Australian editor Ms Elise Jones.

I may have mentioned her before** but in case you don’t know, Elise and I have worked together since 2009. Since then, we’ve pummelled four very fat, very complicated books into shaped, and we’re just about to launch ourselves into our fifth (possibly the fattest, possibly the most complicated) when we start edits on Resonance this Autumn.

Elise is incredibly dedicated, amazingly astute, and beautifully creative (especially when it comes to accommodating my rather kinky use of language) Moreover, she’s MAD AS A BAG OF CATS. We never cease to make each other laugh out loud (even right at the end of the editing process, when the two of us have our eyeballs hanging out on strings, and are stressed out on coffee and too much work and have reached the point where we’re arguing over whether or not ‘a day ago’ means ‘yesterday’ (ha ha haaaa! Irish speak vrs Aussie speak – will our differences know no bounds?) )

This is why I am so excited to FINALLY GET TO MEET HER! Yes, despite having e-mailed each other daily for four years, we have never once laid eyes on each other. In fact, I’m not certain we’ve ever even talked on the phone! But not for much longer, for it is only five sleeps til Elise-Time. Soon the Antipodean Lunatic and I will be sitting in the sunshine sipping white wine and nibbling cheesy wotsits (or more likely – given the summer that’s in it – huddled by the fire covered in blankies and sipping hot chocolate) EITHER WAY I’M GOING TO MEET ELISE JONES!!!!!

Now excuse me, I have dust bunnies to evict and a camp bed to root out from its hiding place.

-0-

*There are all kinds of editors, most great, some OK, a few monstrous. You take what you’re given as a writer and you try and get the best out of the situation, no matter what it is. It’s rare (especially nowadays) that a writer gets the chance to develop the kind of ongoing, exploratory and creative partnership with an editor that I’ve had with Elise. Long may the publishing Gods shine on our partnership.

** forgive the hacker defaced appearance of the old blog.

Lloyd Shepherd’s Pirating dialogue

back orf, ye curs!

I know, I know I’ve said all this before. But the piracy problem hasn’t gone away – though I have noticed a slight upsurge of sympathy from the public now that more of us writers are giving our side of the problem ( as opposed to the ‘shut up you greedy bitch’ (actual quote) and ‘congratulations on kissing your career goodbye’ (actual quote) response to my 2009 request that folks please stop pirating my work*)

Regardless of how often its been discussed, or how tired you may be of it, Llyod Shepherd’s article in the Guardian about how he opened dialogue with the pirates of his latest book is a very very interesting read.

* have linked to the 2010 repost as the original is so defaced by hackers (though you can still read it here)

Very rough pages14&15 webcomic

OK, so it’s be, like, a FOREVER ago since I got the chance to work on the webcomic. I was jonesing, man. So I blew off work yesterday and today, and sketched out the next three pages. Thought I’d share the super extra very rough stage of pages 14&15 (because ye’ve all been so patient and probably thought I’d given up entirely!) I need to get some writing done now. But I hope to have the pencils done for this by Friday…

So here you have it – super super rough rough blue pencils of Wyn and Christopher the night after his bad dream*.

BTW, I will be in Waterstones Drogheda on Sunday at 1 o’clock as part of their Summer Spooks Programme. I’ll be talking about writing, reading from Into the Grey ( and possibly Moorehawke, depends what folks want) and answering questions. Come long if you like, I’d love to see you

*For a high res version go to my DA site

German edition of Rebel Prince!

Well hello, Konigspfade! Is that a map in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? (I do so love how the German maps are actual individual wee maps! SO COOL! )

(Photo taken in an excited rush on my kitchen table! Forgive!)

Dublin Pride Parade Saturday

Unfortunately Ireland is still a country where teachers, doctors and members of the armed forces (to name a very small few) still feel very uncomfortable coming out as gay*. Many folks, especially of my generation and older are still convinced they’d be better off in the closet. THANKFULLY THIS IS NOT THE CASE FOR EVERYONE. The Gay Pride Parade is a fun, bright, happy way of showing that living in the dark isolation of a lie is not the only way to spend your short time on earth.  The 10th(?) annual  LGBTQ Pride Parade is on in Dublin this Saturday, and it’s great craic altogether. So come along all ye loud and proud LGBTQ folks, all the friends and allies come along too. Have some fun. Make some noise. Be happy

* Unfortunately often with good reason

Newstalk Interview now online

At last, here is the recording of an interview I did on the 14th of June with Chris Donoghue on the Newstalk Breakfast Show. There were some kind of technical problems which delayed my being able to share this until now. HOWEVER all is well, and you can now download the interview and fall asleep listen in leisure as I blather on about the publishing business and ‘churning out’ a book a year and writing for children etc etc.

Many thanks to Chris and all at the Newstalk studios for making me feel so welcome, if you’d like to check out more of the breakfast talk interviews you can find regularly updated podcasts HERE

Into The Grey/Taken Away Podcast now up :)

Many thanks to Gráinne Clear over at RTE’s Little Pages children’s book review program for this post awards interview. I love book shows that are actually about books and interviewers that are genuinely interested in the medium. Little Pages is one of those shows & Gráinne is so terrifically engaged and informed – it makes for a great interviewing experience.

So we talk here about many things, among them my detestation of war-nography, my desire to write an entertaining tale beneath which you can – if you want – find many many layers, the imagery in Into The Grey/Taken way, and how I think we must trust YA readers more than we currently seem to. I also read a little from the book.

PLEASE DO BEWARE: there are some spoilers in this interview for Into The Grey/Taken Away, but I don’t think they’d ruin the reading experience in any way.

YOU CAN FIND THE PODCAST HERE: Little Pages – Into The Grey by Celine Kiernan

THANKS GRÁINNE!

You won’t find me stepping out from behind you in the cinema queue

Yesterday, as part of the comments thread in this post, Maeve from Yellow Brick Reads linked me to the above video. I think its hilarious – but it also sparked a reaction from me that I’d like to move from the comments section into the more open arena of an actual blog post. Here it is:

That Woody Allen clip is hilarious. You know I don’t read my reviews and haven’t for years*? Much against the current trend in social media where we have authors tweeting all their great reviews and freaking out over the bad, I just can’t do it. I don’t think reviewers should have to look over their shoulders for fear of authorial comment while they are working their way through an analysis. I feel they should be given the space to explore a work as they experienced it, and not as the author hoped or intended them to.

However, if a reviewer has a desire to work their way through a piece of writing using the author as reference or contrasting their actual reading experience with the author’s intentions, that’s another thing altogether. When the author is invited into the discussion in that manner, I think there is room for wonderful conversation and discovery. But (for me anyway) to engage with reviewers on a casual basis would feel intrusive. (I’m also not too sure that wide scale authorial interaction with reviews won’t lead to a whole new type of selfconscious reviewer who maybe heightens the negativity or positivity of their reviews with an eye to nothing more than an entertaining engagement with the author. This would be good for marketing maybe, but for the art of reviewing itself and the genuine discussion of books for books sake? I don’t know. I doubt it.)

*(at the beginning of my career I was advised to read all my reviews so that I could ‘learn from the criticism’ This is bullshit advice. Every new author is told this by at least one person. Every new author should ignore it.)