Here you will find information on my books, both from Siopa na nDearmhad/Shop of Forgotten Things, and from Amazon. There is a weekly blog, mostly on Irish, Gaelic and other Celtic language literatures, but also on the craft of fiction. You may also contact me, if you like.

As of May 15, In a Dark Wood and Sixties Novel are available through Amazon. Two other novels, Underground and Another Country, will be published on June 12.

The Blog is self-explanatory, but the novels...A thousand novels are published every month or is it every week? Does anyone really need these nine?

The world goes faster every day and we’ve got no choice but to sit back and try to enjoy the movie because we’re headed to some good place and once we get there, everything will be fine. It might be nice if life was a little less, I don't know, brittle, but, hey, you can’t have everything, and think of all the people who lived before our time and never knew anything about the internet, even. Maybe they had interesting ethnic foods (the ones who weren’t starving), but today we can go anywhere and see anything, right here on my phone right now.

Yes, well, but the trees and mountains and grasses watch still, and all the rest, and behind our lives' rush and noise, there is stuff worth paying attention to: stuff to do. There is still something about building a stone wall, say, or figuring out a hard problem of scholarship or about learning what works best in gardens around here or relaxing with neighbors outside at the end of the day: a joy and satisfaction you won't find online. There are old things that still have a lot to offer us once we notice them, and though the last two or three generations in North America, Europe, etc. have grown up assuming that this dream of endless childhood and adolescence will last forever, it probably won't. All people walk a sword's edge every moment. and the world requires we meet it with attention and presence. Scary, yes, but exhilarating.

The novels touch on this kind of thing, and though they grow from Irish soil and more recently, Vermont soil, some are 100% Modern American. Sounds grim.

Welll, this what I'm writing here is, yes, pompous and solemn, but the books are not. Siopa na nDearmhad will be publishing them over the next three months. (It's pronounced Shopa na nyerood (accent on the final syllable in the Munster way).

The blog touches on many aspects of Celtic (mostly Irish and Scottish Gaelic) literature, history and culture. I think this stuff is uniquely interesting and maybe a very specific antidote to the maladies of the age, for reasons I will go into later.

There you are.

(Ahem...In some northern dialects, "dearmad" translates not as "a thing forgotten" but as "mistake," but those people up north there are odd. and I choose to ignore their view of the word.)

Teacht an Fhomhair, a’s na laethanta ‘dul gairid,

Crannaibh loma, a’s an ghealach ina h-áird-sheol,

I riocht an ghéoidh ghlais, ean na gárthaibh gairbhe,

‘Taisteal na bóithre a rith eadrainn, níorbh mhoill dom.

Glas iad na tonnta ‘briseadh ar tránna na hoileáin,

An ghaoth measc crainn coll, ‘caoineadh a cluintear ann;

Ní thaise den róin, a’s an damh ag buirigh ann;

‘S ann fós tógann a sheolta an t-éan seo deirim-se.

Ach is fada ó’n duíche sin ár lá duinn ‘fograítear;

Measctha le radios ár solas-ne, a’s is curam-lae duinn memos’

An seabhac méar, an ghé ghlas, insan bhall seo, ní fheictear iad;

A’s géar cráite fós fágtar i dtaobh leis an gcleite mé.

Autumn coming in, and the days run short,

Bare trees and the moon sailing high.

In the shape of the wild goose, that bird of the harsh cry,

I would not be long travelling the roads that lay between us.

Gray the waves breaking on the strand of the island;

the voice of the wind among the hazel bushes;

There the seal gives cry, there the stag bells;

there still the bird that I speak of stretches out his wings.

But it is far from that country that the day announces itself to us now:

Our morning light comes to us mixed with radios, and we fill our time with memos;

The vehement hawk, the wild goose, do not come into this place;

And with sharp sorrow, I turn to take up my pen.

The literature in the original languages derive much its power from the relationship between patterns of images and the changing formal sound patterns of the verse or prose. Indeed, the subtle incantatory word music itself builds very definite “meanings” over time, through its often subconscious effect on the listener. It is as essential to the overall effect and meaning of the poems and tales as are the more prominent movements of image and utterance, and works secretly on the listener’s consciousness, in conjunction with the more overt elements like imagery, to subvert the reader/listener’s inattention to our astonishing world.