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Y: The Last Man review
I should have mentioned this last week, but I was insanely busy and didn’t even have time to blog. I recently reviewed the first deluxe edition of the post-apocalyptic comic book series Y: The Last Man, for the UK Feminist web site The F-Word. It’s the inaugural graphic novel review for the web site, and I hope they will feature many more in the future. I cross-post this blog to LiveJournal, and for the past five days that platform was the target of a considerable DoS attack, which meant I couldn’t get any posts on the site. That appears to be resolved now, thank goodness. I’ve been hanging out for…
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roisin dubh 1 reviews
I realised that I haven’t been posting links to reviews of Róisín Dubh issue 1 on my own blog. I’ve been keeping the other social media updated so sometimes it slips my mind to mention such things on my own site. Here are the first reviews: Emmet O’Cuana on Tastes Like Comics James Bacon on The Forbidden Planet International Blog David O’Leary on Irish Comic News I’m happy and humbled by the kind words, and the support from the local community has been great. I’m feeling a lot of pressure to keep delivering good work in issues 2 & 3. Stephen Byrne will be doing all the art and lettering…
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new Irish Comic Book resource
After the Squarebound event in Dublin last weekend Irish artist Tommie Kelly realised that the Irish comic book scene could use a central resource, and in a splurge of sudden activity has put together a terrific site called Irish Comic News. It describes itself as “…a website dedicated to the Irish comic Scene. It contains interviews, a forum, event guides, tutorials and all news related to the Irish Comic Scene.” Tommie is being helped in his efforts by Patrick Brown, Hilary Lawler and Gar Shanley, with contributions from David O’Leary. Tommie has already been firing out a standard questionnaire to comic book creators in Ireland and hoisting their responses online…
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just the facts ma'am
I’d like to add a few observations based on my last piece of detective work, and other similar projects I’ve tackled regarding re-adjusting the representation of women in creative fields. I’ve often been frustrated at how difficult it is to discover basic information like how many women work in a certain field with any accuracy. Wikipedia, for instance, is very inconsistent with its category listings, and more importantly: Women creators are often not listed in Wikipedia, or their entries are insubstantial. This exacerbates the perceived ‘lack’ of women in a field. If someone can’t Google the information and get a quick answer in the top ten entries then an assumption…
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accumulating words
I took the above photo over a month ago, when we still had lush grass, and rainfall was gentle, not violent. We had a bad storm yesterday, which has left me with poor Internet access and no television reception (I get it from satellite, and the dish appears to have become mis-aligned from the winds). My Internet connection will not be restored properly until Monday, and the engineer will not be here until Thursday to fix the telly. All of this bodes well for my novel writing, but not so great for my sanity, since I live a rather hermit-like existence on weekdays anyway. I’ve already been strict about cutting…
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cresting the big wave
I’ve been working on the web site redevelopment of the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild for a long time. I do a lot of web-related work for the Guild, including managing all of its social media outlets, which every organisation needs to maintain these days. A big job like a web site overhaul requires large periods of allocated concentration, and that’s been problematic in regards to divvying up my few resources. Working with advocacy organisations means you’re always scraping the pan for those last scraps of funding, and this year the Guild absorbed several funding cuts: there is nothing lurking at the bottom of that pot now. Still, I’m glad…
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long live the new flesh
A year and a half ago I started a project to migrate my blog onto WordPress. This past week I got a tiny gap between projects that allowed me to turn my attention back to it, and the results are now live. I didn’t have much time to dedicate to the re-design, but I’m pleased with the results. As usual I owe a debt of gratitude to my husband Martin, who tackled the the most difficult job: the importing of six years of posts and comments from my old content management system, Bblog. He also added a couple of tweaks that will be entirely uninteresting to most people, but are…
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horrible happenings
I’m in London at the moment, but I’ll be heading to Heathrow for Eastercon later today. Some time after 2pm this afternoon I’m back on “Arts Brew” on the Internet Radio Z103, and I’ll be discussing the forthcoming Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway, among other things. World Horror Convention in Brighton last weekend was tremendous fun, if somewhat exhausting. The samples of the Roisin Dubh comic book arrived just in time for the convention on Friday morning, and it was a real joy to hold the 10-page preview. The panel I moderated about Women in Horror was excellent: our panellists were articulate and the audience asked questions and…
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graphic preview
I’ve established a web site for the Róisín Dubh graphic novel I’m working on. I’ve been blogging intermittently about the project for the past couple of months. There’s also a twitter feed and a Facebook fan page, if you like either of those media. Artist Stephen Daly has been working flat-out, lettering and making tweaks to the final cover of our ten-page preview issue. It went to the printers on Tuesday, and I’ll be taking copies of it with me next week to World Horror Convention and then on to Odyssey 2010, so those of you attending the events should be able to get a sneak-peek I’m looking forward to…
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p-con schedule
The science fiction convention P-Con is being held in Dublin next week, and the programme of events has been released. Here are the panels I’ll be on: Saturday 10:00 Red RoomIs it time for “Return of the Werewolves”?Nick Harkaway; Brian J. Showers; Laura Anne Gilman; Maura McHugh; R.F.Long 15:00 Blue RoomSocial websites: Bane or boon in the genre fiction world?Cheryl Morgan; Colin Harvey; Colin Smythe; Maura McHugh; Laura Anne Gilman 17:00 Red RoomPictionary Sunday 12:00 Blue RoomKeyboard or pen – Room for both?R.F.Long; Oisín McGann; Maura McHugh 14:00 Blue RoomHas the Internet become indispensable?Cheryl Morgan; Bob Neilson; R.F. Long; Maura McHugh Also, I’ll be chatting on the “Arts Brew” programme…
