• In Dublin and Maynooth

    Later today I’m taking the road to Dublin, as Stephen Byrne, Robert Curley and I will be signing copies of Róisín Dubh in the Library Bar in the Central Hotel, Dublin from 7pm onwards. Tomorrow the three of us will be attending Epic-Con in Maynooth, where we’ll be talking about the project and appearing on a few other panels. This week I’ve also had a couple of reviews appear on ComicBuzz.com: first was a review of the graphic novel Hector Umbra, written and drawn by Uli Oesterle, and published by Blank Slate Books. The second was a review of Underwire, a collection of cartoons by Jennifer Hayden, and published by…

  • winter morning

    For a dog that’s camera-shy – Minnie hates me taking her photo – she’s beginning to creep her way into a lot of my nature shots lately. I don’t mind as it often adds a spot of interest to the image. As you can see it’s cold today with wintery fog. I won’t say anything else about that image because it’s doing all the heavy-lifting. I’ve been churning away at the novel, and it’s over the 30K mark now. I had a couple of missed days for a variety of reasons but I’m in the swing of things now. I need to be because I have WexWorlds this weekend. I…

  • end of summer round-up

    Golden Blasters

    I’ve never had such a long gap between blog posts before, I guess that means I’ve been busy. Time to herd some news stories across the prairies. I sold my sf-horror story, “Empty Mind Came Back With the Pearl”, to M-Brane SF a while ago. It will appear in issue 9. I’m delighted this story will get to an audience. I wrote it at Clarion West, during the week Nalo Hopkinson was our teacher. She described it as the love child of Clive Barker and Brian Aldiss I believe. I’m co-writing a three-issue comic book, called Róisín Dubh, with Rob Curley of Atomic Diner publications, and the fabulous Sub City…

  • less blood more fear please

    With the advent of 30 Days of Night on the big screen I thought it would be a good idea to read the original graphic novel, which was written by Steve Niles and drawn by Ben Templesmith. The problem when approaching the vampire myth is how to do something new with it. The focus needs to come down to an original execution of a story about the blood-sucking monsters. As someone who has read and watched a great deal of vampire canon there are few permutations that I consider genuinely fresh. It can be done, but in many ways the story cannot just be about vampires. There must be an…