Saturday 22 December 2018

Winter Solstice 2018

The Celts brought much to Ireland but the Old Irish always celebrated Solstice to mark the turning of the year. Newgrange is proof of this.

Constantine 1st of Rome integrated Christianity into many older traditions by having Christmas coincide with the more widely celebrated Solstice.

Since Hope for the future is the prevailing message of both, Christmas for me begins at Solstice. That's how I tune out most of the rabid commercialism that threatens to destroy it.

Gina's roses come in all shapes and sizes but this common or garden yellow specimen is the very last of this year's outdoor crop. That however doesn't make it any less perfect and the fact that it arrived on Solstice makes it even more special, like herself I guess. So I thought I should capture this last natural gift from 2018 and share it with you.

My new novel is well underway and I hope to dedicate a page of my Website to it in the new year. 2019 WoW! It even sounds like a date in a once dim and distant future yet it arrives imminently. The new book will be a standalone work dedicated to a rather unusual future that must remain tenuously attached to today in order to happen.

However, those who populate that future want to sever all ties to reduce the risk of contamination from us, from here and now. At Solstice and Christmas it is my earnest Hope that this particular work will remain fiction and that all our futures are as bright as we want them to be but we need to work at that.

We need to emulate our little ones by trying to be good for Santa/Father Christmas. All that means is that we try to be a little more considerate of just one extra person during this festive season. One is enough because there are more than enough of us to make a huge impact on the future. That's how seeds are planted but this kind of giving is also a selfish thing. That's because we and our children will ultimately benefit from a very natural gift by return and in due course.

We wish you a very Happy Holiday and an Extra Special and Peaceful New Year.

                               Denis & Gina




Wednesday 12 September 2018

Skellig

 3 Chapter Preview (E-Pub)3 Chapter Preview (E-Pub)


This 3 Chapter preview is guaranteed virus free so please enjoy. Skellig took longer to write than planned because technically, it's far too big to be a Novella like the other 3 of my 'Thin Places' Series, but that's good news for anyone buying it because the outlay is the same. This is the last of that series because a new project calls, though I can't say I didn't enjoy creating these incursions through the fabric of what we call reality.


The name Skellig is derived from the old Gaelic word Scelec, which means simply a splinter of rock. About a thousand years ago, a ‘new’ church building on Skellig was dedicated to the Archangel Michael which is where it gets its better known name. But Scelec was a very special place long before the modern era, and it went by the name of Tearmann or refuge. Further, it has always been an extremely ‘Thin Place’. Celebrated Irish Poet and Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, offered his own suggestion of what a ‘Thin Place’ might be when he declared that Skellig "- does not belong to any world that you and I have lived and worked in. It is part of our dream world."


When he is brutally reminded of his mortality but considers himself quite literally god forsaken, a Jesuit Priest, the Reverend Father Ignatius Moloney reacts by abandoning god in return. The Jesuits agree that he be taken on a day trip to Skellig as part of his treatment to rediscover his lost spirituality. But Skellig will always be Tearmann, and was more than ready to accommodate him.