Celine Kiernan's Blog, page 29

Don't Forget to Vote For The Rebel Prince :)

Vote for Rebel Prince!

There's one week left in the Goodreads Best of 2010 poll. So still time to vote for The Rebel Prince which has been nominated as best in YA Fantasy (Yeay!)

It's up against some very stiff competition so please, if you enjoyed it, do vote!

You can also vote for Wyn as best heroine. And Christopher as best hero (or you could nominate Razi, if you prefer)

Either way get voting

 

The Risk Of Tuppence

I'm off on my holidays now and won't be back until the new year. For anyone who missed my link over at Smugglivus, I thought I'd share a Christmas short story with you guys. This story was first published in The Irish Independent in 2008 and features one of my new main characters – Joseph. I drew did this little gif of him, especially for the Smugglivus post. (I chose to draw Joseph as the seventeen year old he is in the book, even though this short story takes place six years before the book starts and he is only eleven in it.) If you fancy having a gander, just press the gif. It will take you straight to the short story ( it really is short btw! Only 1000 words!) I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy your holidays too. In the meantime slán, happy holidays and happy New Year!

In which I get passionate about publishers… and war actually.

Natter natter natter

The second half of the Skiffy and Fanty show.

In which I get quite passionate about publishers, and Shaun and Jen and I somehow end up discussing war  :)

 

 

Over at the Smugglers…

The magnificent BookSmugglers are hosting their annal Smugglivus, which means a riotous feast of all things book oriented  - including reviews off all their favourite reads of 2010 ( The entire Moorehawke Trilogy was luck enough to be included! Along with  a draw to win all three books! You can find both review and competition HERE)

As part of the Smugglivus celebrations Thea and Ana invite guest bloggers over to chat about their best reads of 2010 and whatever other little bits and pieces tickle their fancy ( you should tune in! Some of the best writers in fantasy and YA are popping in and out for the whole month of December.) I added my own tuppence worth, in which I wittered on about how much I loved World War Z among other things. I also put up a drawing from and a link to my Christmas short story which features some of the characters from my current work in progress. Come on over and say hi.

Skiffy & Fanty & Me

Natter natter natter

I spent some time chatting to that crazy duo over at The Skiffy and Fanty Show, and the first half of the interview is up online now if you fancy having a listen.

Much to my suprise, I had a pretty awesome time with these guys. I'm not a fan of doing interviews, me, I always feel very weird prattling on as if I was someone to be listened to – but Jen and Shaun are so utterly cool and so into their subject matter that being on the show is more like chatting with fellow geeks than being interviewed.

Actually, we talked each other's ears off to such an extent that the programme had to be split in two. This first half is mostly about how analytical YA readers tend to be, how I feel about violence in YA, the difficulties of marketing these books and also a little bit about my career in animation

If you do pop over, maybe think to leave a comment? The guys there put a lot into the shows and I think they deserve a pat on the back for being two of the warmest and most interesting interviewers I've yet to work with!

Vote for The Rebel Prince!

Vote for Rebel Prince!

The Rebel Prince has been nominated as Goodreads Best YA Fantasy 2010!

If you are a member of Goodreads you can cast your vote by going HERE Just type 'The Rebel Prince' into the menu at the bottom of the page, chose it from the drop down menu and press VOTE!

THANK YOU!

I wouldn't say this if I didn't mean it…

…believe me. Though it is, of course, in my best interests to plug anything and everything to do with my own work – I'm not the kind of person to endorse any old thing just because it is related to my writing. So you can take it from me that I mean every bloody word of it when I say, I Love Kate Rudd.

Kate Rudd at work in the Studio.

You might recall how happy I was when Brilliance Audio chose her to narrate the Moorehawke audio books. And you may have got as big a kick out of her guest post as I did, when she described her work on the trilogy. But none of that prepared me for just how terrific her performance would turn out to be.

I was at the Wexford Literary Festival last week, and I so spent quite a bit of time driving/ sitting about in hotel rooms/walking around waiting for events to start. This gave me ample opportunity to listen to the audio books. I must confess to being blown away. Kate's acting is incredible.

I suspect that these are no easy books to narrate. Especially in The Poison Throne, there are so many emotional scenes, so much interaction which could be turned to melodrama  if the performer chose to overdo it. In the wrong hands the entire narrative could have been oversold. Kate, however, seemed to just get it. She is portraying very controlled characters in an almost uncontrollable situation: people used to horrors, and used to repressing their feelings, caught in a situation which is almost crushing, and viewed through the prism of their most intimate and unguarded moments. Their dialogue needed the most delicate of touches – especially Wynter's.

In the wrong hands, Wynter's voice could easily have been misinterpreted as a tremulous wavering whine – but not by Kate. Kate portrays her as reserved, tough, sometimes almost cold, yet also warm and loving and kind. And Razi! Kate so perfectly captures the firm, almost hard tone of Razi's voice; softening, in his most vulnerable moments, to tenderness. Beautiful. It took me a few scenes to get past my own internal Christopher voice before I totally got where Kate was going with him – a terrific choice that over the course of the first book really grew on me until he was as endearing as I could have ever wanted him to be.

is amazing to me how Kate did this with each and every one of the very strong characters in these complex books. They just work. In The Crowded Shadows (and The Rebel Prince) I adore what she did with the Merron*. Embla, Ashkr, Sólmundr and Úlfnaor are so strong, so individual and so similar to how I imagined them. Take this scene for example, where our heroes have just met the Merron. Listen as all those distinct voices and personalities shine through in a scene which must have been a nightmare to get right ( most especially as these types of scenes will often also include quite a spattering of Merron (Irish)) This scene in particular, I think, really shows off Kate's talent.

Section of \'Smoke\' from The Crowded Shadows.

And this scene too, is one of my favourites and one that really demonstrates how well Kate gets the characters. Listen to this exchange between Lorcan  and the ghost of his old friend Rory as they recall bad memories. (I love what Kate did with Rory's voice! Very unexpected and brilliant!)

Section of \'Old Songs Best Left Unsung\' from The Poison Throne.

I'd love to play you my favourite sections of Rebel Prince – but it is so difficult to find a section of the book that isn't just laden with spoilers! Suffice it to say, the characters are everything I could have wanted and more.

Kate, if you are reading this, I know you were nervous that readers (especially Irish ones) wouldn't take to an American accent narrating what is such a European story. I know you were nervous that you wouldn't do justice to the areas of dialect; the Irish language; the Merron's twists of syntax; cat voice; ghost voice; Christopher's voice. I'm telling you now, Kate, no-one could have done a better job. I love your performance. I love it. Thank you.

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For a person who possibly never even heard a word of Irish before this project, Kate's use of the language is remarkably good. Due in no small part to the amount of time and hard work she put into her research before hand. back

Sigh…

A, C, B, E, D, F, U

Well, since I had the gall to start this conversation about piracy, I've had a small amount of pot shots taken at me. That's ok, I expected a bit of a backlash and most folks have been more than kind and supportive. However, there is one particularly ugly little snipe that has (once again) lifted it's head and, much as it wearies me to have to address it again, here goes…

I can not spell. Ok? I've been very very open about this, I've mentioned it many times online, I've mentioned it in radio, TV and skype interviews. I've talked about it with my fans. I always make a point of discussing it when I visit schools. It is not a secret.

I'm forty three years of age and I know I will never be able to spell properly. I suspect that if I were a school child now, they would tell me I was mildly dyslexic; this is just a guess on my behalf, because in my day teachers reacted by making me stand up and recite the spellings I couldn't understand or cope with until I was inarticulate with stress, until the very thought of spelling something made me want to puke. Not very constructive, eh? Then, as I got older, they would simply deduct entire grades from my history, geography and English results based on nothing but poor spelling.

Nowadays spellcheck is my beloved friend. Unfortunately, if spellcheck doesn't catch something, or if it makes a wrong choice, I'm screwed. Why? Because I can't see the mistake. This leads to the occasional mistake on my blog/in my newsletters/in my replies to fan mail.

These mistakes do not make me a bad writer. They are no reflection on my vocabulary nor my understanding of language or my ability to construct a narrative. Neither do they mean that I am sloppy, disrespectful to my readers or in some way stupid. Anyone who assumes those things about me or my work based on a few misspellings is an idiot.

Enough said.

Uniquely Human Heroism of Grace

Glasnevin Cemetery

It is a warm day in October, the sun laying slantways across the new paths and ancient monuments of Glasnevin cemetery. The wind is tossing the dark branches of the close-cropped yews, and scattering bright leaves from the many trees which overhang graves both old and new. My friend Maria and I have just finished the guided tour and have drifted off alone – deep into the old and mostly unrestored heart of the graveyard. We walk for quite some time, wandering happily among the leaning stones, the graceful statues, the ornate vaults. We read the many inscriptions. Some are clear and sharp as the day they were carved, some so faded and worn as to be nothing but shallow undulations on the weather pocked stone. We laugh at how self important some of the tombs are, we wonder how long it took for folks to stop laying flowers at them. We stop at one particularly frothy marble concoction and wonder if the nameless bones beneath are miffed that they have been forgotten.

There is something, I don't know what, that makes us pause then, and in that pause the vastness of this place makes itself known. We stop chatting, suddenly aware of how quiet it is, of how distant the sound of traffic has become. Over one million people are buried here. When the guide said this, it was easy enough to digest. Now, standing on a relatively clear grassy patch, listening to the wind murmur and the birds make merry in the last of the summer's sunshine, we are aware of it as fact. Gravestones jostle each other as far as the eye can see; shoulder to shoulder in chaotic tumbling rows they march away in all directions to the edges of a hazy horizon. We stand amidst the bones of over a million dead.

Maria and I say nothing for a long moment – this is rare for us, we have been friends for over thirty years, we are rarely silent in each other's company.

We have been discussing our children: her boys are in primary school, mine in college and facing the leaving cert, poised on the brink of flight. We've confessed to being amazed by these things, and by the two women we see when our teenage selves look in the mirror. We have been laughing at our stiff knees and new-found love of dahlias ( hitherto regarded as 'granny' flowers) We have been joking about the relentless march of time.

Maria's grandfather was a gravedigger here. His father was a gravedigger before him. The guide had some cheery stories to tell about the gravediggers; about their fondness for leaving anniversary pints on Brendan Behan's grave, about their merry relationship with the The Gravediggers Pub. We all chuckled.

'It's a strange reminder of your own mortality, isn't it?' Maria says now. 'Digging graves in the place where someday, somebody else will be

digging yours?'

'They say we're the only animals who are aware of our own mortality.'

Maria nods.

We are no strangers to death, she having lost her much loved brother at too young an age, my father living as he is under the ticking shadow of the cancer we know he shall not beat. I think of my Dad, that voluble, intelligent, handy little man. We are great friends. I love him dearly. He's someone who knows what it is to seize the day. He's someone who has truly lived.

I'm not talking about extreme sports type living, or leaving your spouse and kids to backpack the Himalayas type living. I'm talking about small moments that have made big memories. Like dragging two small kids out of bed in the middle of the night and driving them to the beach so they can watch a lightening storm come in across the sea, or taking the same kids, now teens, fishing in a stream out the back of some railway tracks and discovering Kingfishers and fox cubs in the heart of a city where most folks wouldn't believe they existed.

Maria and I begin walking again. We descend steps and walk passageways lined with crypts. It is not long before we are laughing and sticking our cameras into broken sarcophagus lids, taking flash photographs. We hope for skulls, but find only startled beer cans and plastic bottles.

We walk back in search of tea and cake, and I think of my Dad again. Of how he greets each day with joy. Of how, even now, after the cancer and the painkillers would have turn most of us to stone, he is still the kind of man who can look up and say, wow, isn't that a beautiful sky.  His is a uniquely human heroism, a uniquely human heroism of grace. It is not to be forgotten.

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An edited version of this article appeared in You Magazine, Sat 13th Nov 2010.

Wells and Welles

Speaking of HG Wells, here is that terrific interview between Orson and HG that Kate Beaton references in the blurb for her cartoon. Wonderful stuff.