David Rory O'Neill's Blog, page 5

New York Icon Stories

I intend this blog to be more personal now I have my website up for the books.

I have been putting off writing about our extended US visit to Virginia and New York City. Now I’ve had time to digest that trip, the next few post will be devoted to those visits. All posts will be brief from now on, as I try to resist my temptation to let the creative juices take control. I’m told blog readers have a very limited attention span for posts! I’m not sure I agree with this social media accepted wisdom – I read all of a post if it’s interesting and can’t believe my literary minded readers are any different, however I will be doing this as a series of short essays rather than a young novel.

 

New York Streets

New York, New York it’s an icon. All the English speaking world knows New York or they think they do. Since birth we have been presented with images both visual and literary of this city. In film, song, books and later, TV, the streetscape are familiar and often better known than our own capital cities so when Brigitte and I had the chance of a week there we were excited and looked forward to seeing , smelling and pounding the sidewalks of this iconic place. We found an apartment for short term rent just off 2nd Ave in the shadow of the UN building. Lets say nothing about that other than it was a great location. The apartment its self was tiny, dirty, ill-equipped and expensive but it served well as a base to explore, mainly on foot.

Our arrival from Newark by bus, left us near Grand Central and we had what I suspect was a typical bad tourist experience with a New York Cab – he ripped us off for a three block journey. I learned quickly that if a cabby says he has no change you say ‘Not my problem’ and do not make the mistake of handing over a twenty for an eight-buck fare! He was gone before I could do anything. On our return to the same bus stop on leaving, we walked or in my case staggered with a suitcase with broken wheels – I thought I’d die! That arrival and departure were the only low points in an otherwise packed week filled with delights and strained necks from all the looking up.

New York was a deluge; a flood of impressions, an overload of stimulation and it left us breathless and excited but at times uneasy. Not fearful, the unease was a philosophical thing. Big cities and the life of big cities with populations much greater than the whole of little Ireland, are a shock to the system. One question kept circulating: “Why do people choose to live here?” There are many possible answers and many of them are based on the income of the people you are considering. Those near the top of the scale can have escape from the hustle and speed and I guess some have bolt-holes elsewhere to go and slow down. But for those in the lower reaches – it seems a grind. A relentless grind to make ends meet and to climb a ladder that may or may not be there in reality.

All cities offer that promise – the promise of an income, a living that does not depend on the weather and the earth and the strength of your back. But all cities also grind up these seekers and trap them and use the big promise to keep them working and supporting the beast – the beast of consumerism that must be fed low income workers to survive. Why do so many people live in New York? I still don’t know the answer.

Next time – a food rant and first impressions of the cultural icons.

Win in draw.

The West Cork Trilogy

All email subscribers to my new website at: http://davidrory.net/news.php  will be entered in a draw to be held on the 31st Oct ’14 to win three signed copies of my best selling West Cork Trilogy. (Or the omnibus edition for eBooks.)  I promise no spam or sharing, just an occasional news email about new books.

New site on-line

My new website is up at http://davidrory.net Do stop by and subscribe and let me know what you think of the site.

My new website.

My new website will be launching at the end of this month.  It will replace this blog for all book related things. This blog will be personal stuff from now on.

The site will be: http://davidrory.net

Keep Calm, It’s Only Creative Evolution.

Creative DNA

The process of writing has one characteristic that most writers will know; it evolves over time and can be frustratingly unpredictable in how that evolution plays out.

Sometimes there is the dreaded block as a contrast to the good times when the flow is easy and satisfying. There is the tooth pulling one sentence at a time grind. There is the inspired spark that brings a smile that strengthens the will to write.

This process of change over time can bring fear and worry as we struggle with real or imagined deadlines or try to maintain our daily word count. There is much advice both free and purchased to help us cope but the truth is there is no need for fear or worry. Just accept the changes. Accept the inevitability and indeed the benefits of this evolutionary process.

If one writes formulaic cliche ridden pulp fiction, one can expect to face fewer such changes. Just churn away and try not to hear the whispers of creative guilt nagging in the background.

If one strives and constantly reaches for ever better prose and ever richer depth and imagery, then the evolution will be jerky and at times painful. Fret not, this is as it should be.

Relax and let it happen. Be patient and kind to yourself. Accept the dry days when the words won’t be found and the plot escapes. Don’t panic and cherish the overall desire to keep writing. The flow will come back when it’s good and ready and the imaginative juices that bubble away in the background have done their cooking. Then we will get the smile again.

So keep calm and let evolution work it’s magic.

 

The Midi-venture.

Strangford Narrows

We have three classes of adventure: Mini-venture, Maxi-venture and Midi-venture. A mini is confined to one day. Midis are up to one week and Maxi any more than that. Maxis tend to involve long plane trips and hire cars such as our recent three-week trip to Virginia and New York.

This most recent Midi was the first trip in our new toy: A Peugeot 306 Cabriolet that has acquired the name: Prim-pretty-pug. A convertible or soft-top car is the supreme gawping tool here in Ireland – when it’s dry. Too hot and the hood must go up to protect the fair skinned but fortunately too hot isn’t something we do here often.

Cottage and new toy.

 

 

View of narrows from cottage.

We booked three nights in an Airbnb cottage on the shores of Strangford Lough in County Down, Northern Ireland. It proved to be a perfect retreat; comfortable, beautifully located and close to some stunning scenery best viewed from a slow driven Prim-Pug. The weather was mostly kind-we had only one day when the top had to be up.

Audley’s Castle on the shore walk.

Those are the facts: here are the impressions.

Both tense and work worn we needed this to be good and it was. The first day cruising through the Mourne Mountains, we chilled and felt the tension melt from our bodies and blow away in the gentle heather scented breezes. Memories of my youthful time spent in an ancient semi-derelict farmhouse in the midst of these lovely soft low mountains, tripped from me in a Joyce stream. B smiled and wished, as I wished, that we’d known each other then. I let the bad memories out too, the violence that stalked this land then and that scars it still, leaked from me in words of events made more dream and less nightmare now with times dulling. The village flags and buntings celebrate divisions and distrust at this time of year and I try not to see what that means and B tries to understand why such pretty places still have ugly memories for me.

Later we walk in the pristine and prim village of Strangford and watch the ferry battle the fastest tidal rush in Europe. The Terns screech on the near island with their young, fluffed and begging for sand eels dived for in the shallows.

People look at the bright yellow Pug with eyes of envy or Calvinist disproval of its shouty thereness but kids love the primal colour and shout quick approvals.

Next day we walk the long shore walk through history and nature and art in the woods. B’s not-right shoes give her stumbling grief on the lose rocks shore but the sea weed tang and Curlews pipe mend her little hurts with smiles and sighs, as more tensions lap away in the sea washed beauty. This goes down as one of the great midi-ventures to add to our storehouse of memories and mendings.

Woodland arts

 

Hibernation.

I’ve been in social media hibernation for almost six months. But I’ve emerged from my chrysalis: The Butterfly Effect Trilogy is reborn with a whole new plot line and new energy. This will be my ‘East of Eden’. My big book, my last big push to get all that’s in me, and all I have learned into a big book. (Well, three books but in my mind it’s one 400,000 word body.)

I intend to use my familiar characters Bonny, Lauren and Daniel to scream my indignation at the world. The themes will be huge and will include all the dangers and threats of East v West. Fundamentalism v Rationalism. Individual v State and above all, the tricks and political veil used to blind us will be lifted for any who cares to see. This will not be a political rant – but rather a subtext in an exciting espionage/ romantic/thriller, literary fiction trilogy.

My hibernation was a deliberate decision and enabled me to recover. It was not a health issue but rather one of creative energy .

In February this year I posted about the crisis I suffered and the drastic solution: http://wp.me/p18yK8-rG. I called it ‘Creative Infanticide’; a rather dramatic title admittedly but it was a dramatic moment in my writing life. I threw away an almost complete novel and stopped the ongoing processes for the two that were to follow in the Butterfly Effect Trilogy.

I was forcing myself down a path in order to keep writing, to keep producing. In the pervious seven years I had been prolific and effective – twenty novels and novella produced. I was trying to get commercial on the last few and write what I thought there might be a market for. I was searching for niches to occupy and I produced a few short things that were worthy but… they were not me. They lacked the passion that usually fuels my writing and drives me forward.

So I went into hibernation. I kept ticking over by working on a commissioned piece that will be out in a few months, ‘Rachel’s Walk.’ It is an erotic romance thriller. Progress on this has been painfully slow by my standards. I can usually do 100,000 words in three months or less (before editing).

Last night an angry rant about the situation in the Middle East and a comment on friend’s post led to one of those bright-light revelations that has brought me out of hibernation. The big book will start soon. I’m back and I will be posting and engaging with my readers while seeking new ones.

 

Skellig Inspiration

Skellig Testament.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The body of this post was first put up more than a year ago. That trip inspired me to write a new novella based on a question that I had then: What makes a man choose to go live on a rock on the sea? Out of that rose Skellig Testament, my latest work. It was designed to be sold in the Skellig Experience Visitors Centre on Valencia Island.

Yesterday Brigitte and I had a wonderful drive round the ring of Kerry in beautiful sunshine to deliver the first books to the centre.

The Skellig Experience.

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan the manager there, made us most welcome and will be offering the book exclusively in his bookshop.

The centre is well worth a visit if you are ever on the ring of Kerry or are planning the sea trip out to the island of Skellig Michael. The ancient monastic settlement is a world heritage site and is jaw-droppingly deserving of the distinction.

The original post:

It was a steamy tropical land south of the equator; swamps, mountains, high rainfall, a primal jungle teaming with the land-pioneers – insects. Amphibians came ashore to harvest the vegetation and insects and some evolved to stay on land. They were the very first vertebrates to colonise the land; lizard-like Tetrapods crawling and slithering through the mud. The high rain fall brought floods of silt from the mountains, quickly filling and burying the tracks of the Tetrapod.

Grandads foot prints.

Over the millennia those tracks became encased in sedimentary rocks and those rocks moved. The great planetary upheavals that saw tectonic plates pull  the land apart causing it to drift across the mantle north and east and west until the earth-shapes we know now, were created. Erosion and more upheaval revealed the place where the Tetrapod roamed. His tracks exposed to the curious eye of one of his distant evolutionary off -spring. Another vertebrate, very recently evolved upon the earth, stood and gazed in wonder at the track in the rock and saw that this was special. Experts descended and applied their science and with awe they proclaimed: These are the oldest known in-situ footprints on this earth.

Tetrapod sign

Now on the most westerly tip of the old-world, the edge of Europe, Valencia Island, County Kerry, Ireland – I stand and gaze at these tracks and am awestruck by their significance and puzzled by the fact that on a busy holiday weekend in August, in glorious sunshine, B and I are alone. There is no line of people waiting to see this wonder. There are no others here to see the marks of our ancestor and wonder at the passage of such a vast amount of time – 385 million years!  We are always alone when we come here.

Skelligs

The island crawls with visitors and tourists but they are here to see much more recent marvels; the monastic building on the remote Skellig isles; the site where Saint Brendan the navigator baptised islanders; the place where the Great Eastern set sail to lay the second attempt at a transatlantic telegraph cable; the radio and metrological site where Marconi’s work bore fruit.

Blooming hedgerows.

Valencia and the Skellig coast are truly beautiful and full of history. We come here to recharge out batteries every few years. It’s an easy two and half hour drive from home but we usually stay over in some friendly B&B.

View from guest house.

This time it was the Calafont with it’s wonderful views over the sound from Portmagee to Valencia.

The Fitzgerald chuch. Knights of Kerry.

Lived and died for empire.

As we wandered in the old church yard, where so many who served the British Empire on the remote Valencia radio and cable station worked and died, I was struck by the thought that this island should be world famous for the awesome Tetrapod tracks. The evidence in rock of the miracle of evolution that lead to the birth of creatures that could span the earth with first their cables, then radio and now the instant medium carrying these words – is that not truly awe inspiring?  Where are the queues of keen young minds wanting to see the wonder of their distant ancestor’s tracks? They are instead marvelling at the work of monks who built a doomed edifice on a sharp rock in a hostile sea to escape earthly things and there to worship myths and legends that violently divided people then and still do.  Those monks didn’t look far enough back in time to find the majesty and awe inspiring works of creation in this place.  They couldn’t see. We can, so why do we not see? Why do we stand on the edge of the old world and gaze with wonder at the great ocean and the new world beyond and prefer myths and legends, man-made from ignorance, to the wonder and majesty of life here at our feet?

Look again at the 385 million year old foot prints.

The American Dream

We recently returned from a much anticipated three week trip to Virginia and New York City. I’ve tried to do a blog post about it since we came home but found I could not do it. This is my very emotional response to both the trip and my reactions since. I make no apology but there are powerful sentiments here and I hope my US readers will be as generous as their natures usually are and see these words are written with love and concern.

Thomas Jefferson and I.

 

These feelings first rose in me as I stood beside a life size Thomas Jefferson at his historic home, Monticello, near our base at Charlottesville.

The American Dream.

We dreamed of John Wayne tall, James Stewart laconic, Gregory Peck noble in iconic places.

Places filmed by Hollywood factory dream makers. Dreams of cowboys and Indians and Sitting Bull Custer battles won by the good bad guys with bigger guns. Seas of buffalos destroyed so Sioux starved and fought battles they could not win against railroads and Gatling guns.

The great western myths John Forded on screens to make the nasty truths pretty and scenic and the genocides swallowable by the great penny-seat boys of far-away lands where our grandfathers brothers sail to seek the dream and the nightmares of Ellis Island and the Bowery and the fleeing west to manifest destiny.

Then the John Wayne heroes came East to save us in the wars that they won alone without us. They wrote the history in the films as they made new truth and fed it to us on flickering screens and our fathers said, “You’d think they did it alone. My war was myth. My war didn’t have the blessing of the screen heroes.”

And my mother stabs at him with her broken dream: “I could have married a Yank and gone with him back to…”

And I think: “ Why didn’t you. You silly fifteen year-old swept away by the stockings and chocolate GI wealth that got your knickers off so easily.”

The dreams of America, all Eliot Ness all Capone tommy-gun blood soaked streets and the dollar is God King and Queen.

The dollar beckons the failed out the skyscraper windows to crash into Wall Street ruined and crushed, but JP Morgan builds empires and collects all the great books of the world with his mighty dollar.

Henry Ford builds a new way for men to be slaves and fills them with desire to be that so they can buy a Ford and another and another every year new, never old. The old are for the other slaves free in name but not free – the clan and the burning crosses and the nobility of Paul Robeson ‘Old man river’s’ us on the radio and Nat King Cole croons so mothers swoon but wouldn’t want their daughters marrying one all the same.

The great divide remains and the blues and jazz cry to us across the seas and we glimpse the other dream – the Martin Luther King dream and the shattered dreams of Dealey Plaza and Dallas and the lies and cover-ups and the state machine that serves the dollar-King grinds on and wars and wars and Vietnam nightmares into our lives and changes it all forever and the invincible myth explodes and leaves the dream shaken.

I Love Lucy tells us all is well and Tricky Dicky Watergates into myth and another nail gets driven into the dreams and “These truths we hold to be self evident…” are not so evident and they never really were since Jefferson did not mean all men, only men like me, our kind, our class, our color and our race.

Manifest destiny and guns, lots of guns for sale in flea markets to anyone with the dollar. Guns to enforce manifest destiny on those who do not have the dollars or those who try to get them by foul means or those who resist or disagree or bully in school and create angry children with guns to kill their classmates and teachers or snipe at strangers but the dream says – we must be free to carry arms to protect ourselves from … the nightmare.

The dream has run to fat… so much fat, so much excess and troughs of self-service breakfast cafes with fat people and piled plates of fat food from factories that need people to be fat to sell them more fat palm sugar corn-starch saturated fats.

The dream is supermarkets stuffed with processed foods. Not real, not whole foods but products from factories with added value and added salt and sugar and added fats and added dollars.

They wheel their oversize trolley to their oversize SUVs and still their oversize children with DVD’s in the headrests and chips coke and chocolate stuffing their faces to silence, the hyperactivity fed by the sugars and E number colors and additives that the factories make while adding value to stuff no human needs.

The dream is cheese that is one molecule away from being plastic spread on burgers that are ten percent whole meat and ninety-percent ears cock asshole and saturated bleached fats hydrogenated and added as value to burgers costing two cents to make more dollars for Ronald to add a bigger grin to his smirking manifest destiny.

The dream is rush rush, rush hyped on coffee rush to work and making dollars for more, more more, more what? More SUVs stuffed with stuffed kids and stuffed fathers with guns in their rack and pride on their John Deere caps and dreams of old west and cowboys that were real men.They hunt and they hunt bears but don’t eat bears but their cocks are made hard by the real-men cowboy myths and they try to forget the truth of the fat that stops them seeing their cocks over their fat bellies stuffed not with bear, but hydrogenated fat and pigs dick and lettuce.

The dream is shattered by the reality of what we see and we leave confused and sad and wondering how anyone can live with the illusion that the dream is real.

We leave happy with the warm people we met and the friendly brave folk who live the dream and see the dream and hope the dream may yet be made real.

We leave stimulated by the iconic enormity of it all and the art and the grandeur and we try not to see what made JP Morgan’s huge book collection or the commercial whore that is the 9/11 memorial.

We leave glad to have seen it and glimpsed the glory of what the dream could be if only the people could wake up from the nightmare.

 

 

Niche Marketing.

The cover

Some time ago while sitting on a sea cliff looking at the utterly astonishing Skellig Islands, I fell to pondering what motivated men to build a monastery on these remote rocks around the year 650. That fascination led to an imaginative story called Skellig Testament. An historically accurate but fictional first person account of one of the monks who built that monastic retreat.

It had always been my intention to market this book locally in the Skellig Experience Visitors Center and other local outlets. There will be no eBook version and I will not market it elsewhere although it will be available through Amazon and the Createspace shop.

I will continue to look for interesting niche markets like this to sell work aimed at a small audience. That audience may later read some of my back catalog and that will be an added bonus.