David Rory O'Neill's Blog, page 10

The circle closed.

Trial

 

The circle is closed now as the last of the Daniel series is finished and published on KDP.

I’m sad to see familiar and loved characters leave my imagination for good, but it’s been great getting to know them.

A new cast are assembling now for Leotie.

South African overload.

Images crowd one upon another. A vivid mind film replayed before sleep every night. The ones that stick are not always the big screen panoramic vistas.

Tortoise

A tortoise under a bush,

Penguins Stoney Point

a group of resting penguins and their smell,

Don’t mess with us!

 

 

 

the fierce intelligence and menace of a pair of baboons at the roadside.

Road back in time.

A sandy track leading back in time to the first settlements and farms. The scale and majesty of the place.

In Cape Town

The diversity of people and the beauty of faces in a city filled with excitement and potential. Energy and drive and dignity, even in the new shanty settlements so shocking to our comfortable eyes. The satellite TV dishes on the little cardboard and tin and ticky-tacky self built houses shouting of priorities we find odd but are they?

Fynbos-flowers

It goes on and the images pile up making a visit with years worth of replays and sifting.

On and on.

Wine Country

South Africa.

 

Cape Town from Table Mountain

South Africa is both familiar and at the same time intensely exotic to anyone educated in a British school of the fifties and sixties, as I was.  We were taught more of the British colonial adventure in that far away land than we are about the history of the land we were intimately connected to – Ireland.

Being here now, has been exciting, profoundly thrilling and horrific too. This nation is in flux and there are still vast problems to solve before Nelson Mandela’s dream of ‘the Rainbow Nation’ is made real. However I will not dwell on that since I’ve been here only a week and can’t pretend to understand the cultural complexities faced by our overwhelmingly generous hosts.

Nelson Mandaela bust in the Botanic gardens Cape Town

The images here are largely self explanatory and give a very small glimpse of what we’ve seen in this past seven days.

Table Mountain from the Botanic Gardens.

I will need to have been at home and have bubbled this experience for a few weeks before I offer any meaningful views of our time here.

Cape Town Township

Township spread

Our hosts home road in Stellenbosch.

A work in progress.

This is the cover for the next novel: Leotie Flower of the Prairie.

Leotie.

With thanks to Stefan Gesell photographer. http://gesell.deviantart.com/

Trial of the ‘Trial’ cover!

This is the first Trial of the ‘Trial’ cover!

Trial cover.

Levity aside, this the final novel in the Daniel series ties up the various strands of all the previous work, including the West Cork and history trilogies. It represents an end and a begining for I’m now free to explore new themes and let my creative imagination run riot on the next project. This will be done concurrently with completing ‘Beloved Warrior’ and ‘Forgotten War.’

The new novel will explore the spirit world and sensibilities of the native peoples of the North American plains. The working title is: “Leotie – Flower of the Prairie.” I’ve made a exploratory start and am excited by the possibilities.

Trial should be edited and published by the end of February.

I’d really welcome your feelings on this cover. As the last in the series, it departs from the previous six by having a dark blue band rather than black. I’m not sure about that.

MACBETH: on Genre writing.

 

I’ve been at it again, messing with the bard.

Genre writing sweeps all before it, Vampires and badly written soft-porn passing as fifty shades of erotica, bandwagons stuffed with cliché and publishers and gatekeepers undignified grasping at fast passing fashion. Literary Fiction spurned, boring! Too thought provoking. God forbid a reader might be provoked to thought or have their spirit stirred by the poetry of shared human experience.

Escape through empathy is not good enough, only fantasy and vampire lovers, cheap sexual thrills, gore violence and above all only fashionable in-thing-celebrity will get the gatekeepers slavering.

Bitter, me? No, just a little saddened by the state of the commerce driven world and so:

From Macbeth.

Is this a genre which I see before me,

The rules toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee!

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation

Proceeding from the vampire-obsessed brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I write.

Thou marshall’st me the way that I was not going,

And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o’ th’ other senses,

Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,

And on thy page and dudgeon gouts of cliché,

Which was not so before. There’s no such in great literature.

It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one publishing world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtained sleep. Agents-craft celebrates

Random House’s offerings; and withered murder,

Alarumed by his sentinel, the gatekeeper,

Whose howl ‘s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With Penguins’ ravishing strides, towards their design

Moves like Joyce’s ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my doubts

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives;

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

[A till-bell rings.]

I go, and it is done. The bell invites me.

Hear it not, Smashwords, for it is a knell

That summons thee to Times top 100, or to hell or

to genre writing and serving the monster

public or better, to literary obscurity with pride.

New year plans.

I am starting the new year with the first step in a campaign to get some sales action this year. I have put most of the books on Smashwords so they are now available on all eBook readers and will be in Barnes and Nobel and Apple’s iBook store. This needed new formatting from me, a laborious process but well aided by Smashwords free style guide.

I’m taking the opportunity to re-format and re-issue the mobi books on Amazon KDP at the same time, a small improvement. I’ve also changed prices a little. The economic climate demands a reassessment so most books now cost $3.99.   The Prairie Companions introduces my back catalogue at $1.99.

The next step will be producing films featuring the novel’s locations and inspirations. These will be professionally done by Creativefluxmedia and should be shot in early spring – Irelands’ flaky weather permitting! A big media push will follow.

Let me wish all who stop by here a happy and creatively productive new year.

May your dreams come true.

Island re-charge.

I’ve just spent eight days away from routine on the island of Madiera. No emails, no FB, and very little writing. Well, a little writing, I was staying in a place I intend to use as the closing location in the final Daniel series book ‘Trial’,  so I had to make notes didn’t I? Trial is nearing completion. I will despatch it to my editorial angel for her magic touch and then aim to publish on my birthday, the 24th of Feb. That seems a nice way to close the door on Daniel, Lauren and Bonny.

Funchal on the Atlantic island of Madeira has become a regular bolt hole for us. B has been three times but last year was my first time. We have a week’s timeshare. The timing is perfect, as Christmas approaches, we are in need of rest and above all sun! Last year at the same time, we had six days of sun, this year we had seven. The temperature was a comfortable 22c -74f.

The view from the apartment.

The Residence Porto Mare, is located on Rua Leichlingen in the Lido area at the edge of Funchal. It is a big complex that includes the Porto Mare and Eden Mare Hotels, all within the Vila Porto Mare resort. I would normally run a mile from resorts of any kind and was very sceptical about taking a share here. But the apartment is located perfectly on the top floor on the end of The Residence block; completely private and silent apart from the sea sounds and an occasional loud voice from the bars nearby.

The Lido area.

That is rare, since Funchal seems to attract mostly older people and there is therefore more decorum. No loud clubs banging out music into the night. The place is clean, well kept and has an air of understated luxury that is very restful.

One can cook for oneself or eat in one of three restaurants in the complex. There is a bewildering variety of cafes and restaurants nearby. Everything cost less than here in Ireland, even though we do share a currency, the Euro. It makes one see how heavily taxed we are here in Ireland. It’s possible to eat well and very inexpensively. The local speciality is a deep sea fish called Scabbard. Black skinned, long and sword like, it is ugly to behold and to my taste would be better left in the dark depths they drag it from. Not the best choice. Tuna is plentiful and a much better bet. Grilled meats are popular. Beef is served on a hanging steel spit like a rapier and cooked over wood. It comes all the way from Brazil but it is tasty and succulent. Vegetarians will struggle to find much other than salads here. The rich barrel aged wine for which Madeira is justly famous is wonderful, as either a sherry-like drink or better still, for cooking.

In the centre of Funchal the marina restaurants are elbow to elbow. They have waiters outside hustling and that gets tiresome. The further from the sea one gets, the fewer hustlers there are. They are polite but they don’t seem to get the idea that many are put off by the hustle. I’d never eat in a place they tried to hustle me into. We found the best places to eat to be in the narrow lanes of the old town, beyond the cable-car station. (The cable car ride up to Monte is a must.) They’ve let artists loose on all the doors here and the area is now a delightful walk-through gallery.

A big drop into the Nuns Valley.

The island is worth having a hire-car for but you’d better be good with the clutch and low gears. Hills, hills and steep hills everywhere. The roads up the many gorges are fascinating and provide stunning views back to the sea.

A typical south-side costal town. Camara de Lobos.

 

The south-side of the island (Funchal side) is lush and semi-tropical, covered with either Banana plantations hacked into improbable terraces or wild Eucalypt forest. The north-side of the island is wilder, with dramatic sea cliffs and big drops if you misjudge a bend.

One warning we didn’t get before we went: They have had an infestation of African mosquitos, which may be carrying Dengue Fever. Precautions are needed. Insecticide sprays were provided by our hotel a few days after we arrived! Too late for B, who got badly bitten.  We are counting the days till she is past the incubation period for the virus.

 

Me feet up, enjoying the sun set.

We came back refreshed having had more sun than we got during all our so-called Irish summer! I’d highly recommend Madeira  – if you are of a certain age and in need of a gentle recharge.

Now for Christmas with my daughter. I’m looking forward to that.

Merry Christmas. (To all who do it.)

The latest KDP giveaway dates.

Pyramid

Pyramid is without doubt the most accessible of the series novels and the most contemporary. Set mainly in Rome and Nice it deals with the then modern terror threat and governments’ often shady ways of countering such threats.

That provides the excitement and thrills but the main theme is love and the unconventional family that Lauren, Bonny and Daniel call: “Our pyramid.”

It is now on the Kindle lending library and will be free on these dates: 24th 25th and 26th of December. (Season’s greetings)

Then 1st Jan 2013 (Happy new year) and finally: 6th Jan.

To Amazon or not to Amazon?

 

To be read, or not to be read, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous obscurity,

Or to take arms against a sea of gatekeepers

And by opposing end them. To dream—to hope,

No more; and by a rejection slip to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That writers are heir to: ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To self publish, to print;

To be in print, perchance to be read—ay, there’s the rub:

For in that print of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this old publishers way,

Must give us pause—there’s the respect

That makes calamity for those who wait acceptance.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of agents,

Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d rejection, the publishers delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a Kindle Fire? Who would rejection slips hundreds bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary keyboard,

But that the dread of something after failure,

The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather print our self and sell

Than fly to booksellers that we know not of?

Thus rejection does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of endless waiting

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of Random House for the devil that is Amazon.

This was done for a friend who was worrying about publising wars that so many are fretting about now.

With only mild appologies to Will.