Tir na Nua means the new land.  That is appropriate, as I work out both detail and the craft of writing here on these pages.  New can mean rough and unrefined, but it can also mean fresh.  I hope, more than the former, that my take on Celtic myth and legend and in particular Irish lore, is a fresh take on a fascinating people and time.  The why and how of what I’m doing on these pages are on my Author’s page: HERE

I have in mind several novels, but I had made little progress putting them on paper in a traditional manner.  A friend encouraged me to write a blog and I decided to do it when I realized that I could write fiction in a blog format instead of engaging in the usual navel gazing that populates my conception of what a blog is (in particular one that I might write.)

SO, to begin writing, I have taken breaks and lunches at my current J.O.B. to fictionalize.  I think of these stories as my writer’s note-book, writing exercises, process, and I confess that they are rough because they are not well thought out AND because it has been a pretty long time since I’ve done much more than think about writing.

Anyway, here is a page that gives access to some of these Stories.

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Free CELTIC Fiction

My hope is to create fiction that speaks to the Celtic Heart.  I have enjoyed the journey of discovery that I’ve taken starting with the name of an ancient Irish King, Niall Noigillach. 

I’m a little nervous that my current skill does not do it justice, nervous to present what I have done so far.  I found myself writing about Eskimos and Ismaelites and the Elven instead of what I really intend to present.  Well, that should not be.  Warts and all here is a new story that I rip from Celtic legend and set in my new world, Tir na Nua, the Red Son of Concubar.

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   Rough Draft Fiction Free Online

After all, I’m a man with a story. Even my name, O’Neill, has tales attached to it (like this one of the Hand Gules that is prominent in our heraldry,) but don’t we all? I love old tales, tales of heroes, tales of real people in strange times and strange people in real times. I have wanted to write such tales and, prodded by my friend, Jeffery, I have.

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My Polished Stones

Since this is my process, a good deal of it is rough here as I begin.  My hope is to get better and better at writing Celtic Fiction so that reading it free will become a bargain and not a chore.  I plan to work on a few of my stories to make works of fiction closer to my potential.  That is, I plan to polish them by rewriting them for your reading pleasure and in particular the reading pleasure of those who might come across this sight and have little patience for my early fumblings unfiltered from my imagination?

Recently I’ve realized that I should not.  My first goal was to get something, anything here, secondly I NEEDED to write because it had been a long time since I had.  I have courted your opinion to no effect, but then why should I expect it?  Do I read other’s work and offer up my opinion, my help?  Not recently and can I help? 

So, I intend to polish up a few of the stories that have accumulated.  The raw novelization of the Abbott and the Djinn will continue, undoubtedly I’ll put up more unfiltered imaginings like the Deer Riders and Child of Moss.  Then, in a section before those unpolished stones, I will begin to offer some that have had my attention and effort so that you can judge me or at least have a better chance of being reliably entertained.  Some may read on to the raw.  HERE is the page that will list the more polished work. (it is currently empty <sigh>)

I hope this explains some of the why of me.  For now, welcome, and please tell me what you like or you don’t.  I value your insights.

LSO

I have needed to establish a timeline of the events in the socio-political development of Tir Na Nua.  I continue to do research to aid me in creating a world that is both interesting and informative.  By interesting I probably mean entertaining and enjoyable.  By informative I mean that it should seem realistic, internally consistent, in the world of Tir Na Nua, and should echo names and themes from Earth’s Celtic History.

In order to accomplish that, I have been digging onto a little bit of History.  I’ve been searching for names and stories that I find interesting.  If the interest that brought you to my site is Celtic legends, lore, or history you might like this site: Ireland’s History in Maps.  I’ve taken note when something of interest comes up that seems to bear on this subject. 

An example of something I’d put into the “something of interest” category might be a book like Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.  It has been awhile since I read this book, but if I remember right, the main idea was basically that societies grow and advance based on the resources that they have available, initially the type of food plants and animals and later mineral and other advantages.  Anyway, part of the fascination I have with imagining a technology loss and imagining how a society might begin again with what they have at hand comes from thinking about this book.  At least it was informed by it.

Recently I heard about another concept that I’d like to incorporate.  The book is The Fourth Turning by Neil Howe and William Strauss.  Sadly, I had to return the copy I borrowed from the library, but my initial perusal built on an interview I heard on Coast to Coast AM.  

The subtitle of the book is “an American Prophecy”  because the authors lay out their belief that we are on the verge of potentially catastrophic events that will be dealt with by a heroic generation of people who will be forced to more or less recreate our society in response to the challenges of this catastrophe. 

They base this expectation on the fact that there have been seven such heroic remakings beginning in the late Middle Ages that shaped America.  This is an idea that Greeks and Etruscans and Romans all recognized, this rhythm in history.  The rhythm is close to a century, but is actually tied to the length of a long human life. 

In this approximately 100 years, there are 4 generations.  Each of these generations seem be typified or led by four archetypes that Howe and Strauss called Heroes, Artists, Prophets, and Nomads.

Paraphrasing and laying it out hot from my fevered memory, the hero generation comes of age at this fourth turning, when there is a sense of unease and then WHAM! the catastrophe hits.  These children of a Nomad generation tend to be pampered and valued maybe as a reaction to the abandonment the Nomads received at the hands of their Prophet parents. These Prophet generation people were too busy righting “wrongs” and rejecting the previous social order to take care of the next generation.

That leaves only the Artist generation to speak about.  The Artists are the refiners of what the hero generation hath wrot.  That is to say that after the crisis is averted (or perhaps not) this follow on generation, children of the Heroes refine and systematize things to an increasing degree that eventually seems to make people so crazy that when they are done polishing their father’s edifices there follows Prophets who will oppose and reject what has been made to the degree that the seeds will be laid for the next horrendous catastrophe, perhaps because the Prophets neglect their children.

I suspect that I’m getting some of this wrong so I really need to get that book reserved again, but you get the jest of it.  Four archetypes moving through the seasons of life that seem to cycle through a series of transitions that usually leads to a big war if there isn’t another disaster to occupy the heroes.  Neat!

So it is definitely a Big Picture sort of thing.  I found it intriguing.  I plan to find some way to weave it into Tir na Nua, probably in the Background.

LSO

Little enough of what I’ve been able to assemble on these pages so far has any basis in the reality of Earth.  I have bent my will and my efforts toward Tir na Nua. 

That is not to say that there are no mythic figures worth looking into.  In Ireland the line between myth and reality is as thin as the line between the living and dead at Samhain.  There are figures, men and women, who bridge the gap between the real and the fantastic.  Whether they approached such legendary status in life is open to debate, but some few have attained it in memory, in lore.

One such real figure is Niall of the Nine Hostages (Noigiallach).  If nothing else, this particular Niall’s story had much to do with my later fascination with things Celtic.  Niall, it appears, was a king and so fixed in memory and genetics that many count him among their progenitors and as many as twenty-five percent of folk in the North of Ireland, and their descendants whether they know it or not, seem marked by his genetics, True Story.

You can read a little more about The Niall Nine Hostages That Was and a little less about me.

I discovered my association on the back of a clan tie at a highland games in Gresham Oregon.  Again, true story.  I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned how I first came across bagpipe music in a small high-school radio station in North Dakota.  I played “Mul of Kintyre“, by Paul McCartney and the Wings every day for the rest of that semester.  But I discovered IT again on a summer day in Oregon when it came through my window and lured me into another world.

Certainly it was different from the run-of-the-mill day in Gresham Oregon, different than North Dakota too.  But the music drew me to the event and the event led me to a small blurb on the back of a MacNeill clan tie.  There I first read anything at all about Niall Noigiallach. 

With only a very few little words on a bit of paper the writer chose to mention this fellow, Niall of the Nine Hostages, High King of Ireland.  Obviously, it was effective marketing, I bought the tie along with some bagpipe music and a banger. 

Truth to tell, though the O’Neills and the MacNeills both have Niall Noigiallach as a progenitor, they are really named after Niall Glundub (Black Knee).  Still, selling ties is easier with Noigiallach than the closer relative Glundub.  I’ve got to forgive the inaccuracy for its impact.

But that is not even near the end of the story.  No dear reader, looking into Niall exposed me to such wonders as a genealogy that stretched back (thanks to dutiful monk scribes) past Noah to Adam himself.  I learned that legend names a grand-daughter of Noah as the leader of the first settlement on the Emerald Isle.  I ran across names like Nuada Silver Hand, and Finn MacCool, and Conn of the Hundred Battles. 

Recently I found links through geneologies back to those three notables in Legend to my heritage (fictional or not).  Isn’t that a wonder?  All this found through Niall Noigiallach.  True Story.

LSO

Lugh ran after, hampered by the shaking ground.  He glanced back over his shoulder to see what was happening and nearly fell.  He saw ground cascading off of what looked like stone pushing up from the earth. 

The girl, Oatey, had reached her goat.  He hadn’t seen she was armed, but she took from the waist of her loincloth a knife.  She tossed away her bundle of items and approached the goat.  The goat was already struggling at the tether and Lugh expected that she would cut the goat free. 

Oatey used her body and one hand to shorten the lead, moving up the line until she could grasp the goat.  It was struggling madly from the shaking ground.  The girl expertly grasped it by one horn with her free hand, wrenching it around she plunged her knife into the goats neck and then twisted it as she jerked it out.

Lugh gasped, the sudden violence was not what he expected

Oatey released the bleeding goat that bucked and plunged to escape this new danger.  The girl slid back along the lead line and after wrapping it several turns around her arm stretched it tight from the peg and cut it loose.  She stuffed the knife into a sheath and gathered her things, all the while holding on to the plunging goat.

The girl glanced at Lugh, a fierce smile on her face, and then she let the goat have its head, letting it pull her along toward the treeline.

“What is that?” Lugh asked, looking back at what appeared to be stone ripping free of the sod.  He turned back only to see that the girl and the bleeding goat were nowhere to be seen.  Lugh shouldered his pack and settled his weapons for pursuit, then began to run toward where he had seen the girl and goat heading before he’d stopped to marvel at the geologic wonder that still shook the earth.

It was no difficulty to follow the blood trail that the goat was leaving.  Lugh decided that perhaps that was her intent, but he couldn’t help feeling disconcerted.  Oatey Moss, whatever else she might be, was unpredictable and likely dangerous.  “Why am I following her?” He thought to himself, but he already knew the answer to that.

Tir na Nua

Primarily Tir na Nua is the setting for my Epic Celtic Fantasy.  This makes it your home for development ideas, short stories, and information about the world of Tir na Nua created ( or rather in the process of creation) by L. Stephen O’Neill.

But What is Tir na Nua Really?

Tir na Nua, the New Land, is a world far from the Earth we know.  Three stars light it, three moons circle it, and there are three worlds associated with it.  Tir na Nua might look like Earth, there are trees and rivers and seas, there are beasts, and monsters, and men, AND these all live together in varying degrees of harmony. 

Yet there are differences.  The South is warmed by the sullen glow of a brown dwarf star, Ember, that the planet of Tir na Nua cartwheels around.  Much of the weather of this world of necessity comes from that most important and close relationship. 

The north draws rain from the South, but it never sees Ember’s light save painted on the world’s satellites.  There is ghostly blue light that shines from blue/white dwarf, Spark, that dances closest to Ember, but the world’s most Earth-like light comes from distant Sol na Nua, it marks the day, sharing it in the North with Bright and brightening the South as well.

Tir na Nua is a world that is marked by cataclysm.  The violent genesis of the planet is painted on its moons as well.  Nearest is the Wanderer, a blasted lump that hurtles around Tir na Nua, racing across the sky.  The Stranger is next nearest, but it is not very reflective, making a ghostly shape in the night sky.  Farthest of Tir na Nua’s moons is Bright, truest reflector of the three suns of the world.

I have several stories, likely novel length, that I am in the process of writing.  Most if not all are set in the world of Tir na Nua.  This new world is a world apart from the Earth that we know and has been, there are names and situations that may seem familiar, but though they echo the world we know they are not from that world at all.

The People of Tir na Nua

Human habitation has diffused from the center of the Gaellic Plain, over the Western Mountains, across the seas, to the South and the East until it has met its opposite in isolated islands like the volcanic island group of the Losterlies.  Man exists on the top of the world, on the ice sheet above the Iron Mountains of the Rus and man also inhabits the misty hot forests of the South.  He lives on and in the mountains and he exists and even thrives on the islands of the seas.

Here are some of those peoples:

The Gaels of the Central Plain .  (A Story of these folk “The Red Son of Concubar“)

The Monsters who ravaged the Plain, The Gobli.

After the great hordes sweep the Gaelish Plain, the Norfolk, the people of Oatey Moss and of Jella, still live where the Great Ice Sheet ended and now on the Plains to the South the horse folk, the Scythians, rule unchallenged. (CPSL to continue these stories.)

In the Far North, The Rus and the Ice Folk.  For a bit about Ice Folk culture read an Anuniaq Tale.

In the Inner Sea, South of Sliebe na Gael, The Eirelanders.  In the scattered islands of the inner sea, the Fae Islanders.

East over the Saffron and driven down into the great isthmus and the mountains there called Scotia.

Above Scotia is a land of Slave camps and warring city states often called the Disputed Lands.  Before the Hordes of Gobli and Darklings ravaged it the land was controlled by Balor and his Slave Raiders who became the Fomor.

North of the Disputed Lands and East of the Norfolk are the Cold Forests of the Darklings.  The Sinoese live above them on the pinnacles of hard rock that stand after the lighter ash of that volcanic lowland was washed away and overgrown with rainforest.

The Great Mountains to the West of the Great Gaellic Plain are ruled by  the Lokians.  Some call these folk Dwarfs, they are dark and stocky in general, they are miners and workers of metal who live in the continental ridge that divides all the east from Umircea.

Across the Mountains to the Western Seas is Umircea, but in the North of that land is the Ribbon Wood, from whence come the Ui Uilsen, the Ribbonwood Elves.

What is the Purpose of Tir Na Nua

On lstephenoneill.com I plan to gather research material, scene drafts, character development studies, back stories and perhaps short stories that contribute to each novel or at least flesh out this new land, Tir na Nua.

I want to write, fantasy stories, sword and sorcery novels, epic fantasy, you know, the whole lot, and Tir na Nua makes this possible for me.  But having the place to write, having stories to tell, wanting to do it, none of these things mean that I can do it.  I can put it out there, but frankly, I was never that good a writer, so says my report cards. (Sad to say I thought I did much better in English than I actually did. This was a bit of an unwelcome surprise. Still, I have these stories. . .) I guess my point is that I really need to practice.  I need to try to write and see if I can do a good job.  Perhaps most of all I need to get faster.

The reality of my life is that there isn’t much time to develop. . .    . . . or write.  So I’m going to jump on in and do it.  As such, these pages are intentionally rough (not because I’m trying to make them bad, I’m trying the best I can as quickly as I can) so that I get the ideas out of my head and onto the page.  I think I’ve mentioned that I think of these pages as something of a writer’s notepad.

SO, What’s in the Works?

I’m trying to write an online novel right here in front of you, the reader.  Firstly I plan to write a first draft, and I’m not being very picky.  I can’t, I’m trying to do it by my birthday.  Wish me luck.  You can follow my progress here at my progress page for the novel: The Abbott and the Djinn.

I’ve started a story that involves one of Dana Bailey’s children, Lugh, and a young woman of the Norfolk, Oatey Moss.  The third main theme of this story is giants.  Start to read Child of Moss HERE.

Currently I am focusing on a novel set in a island archipelago, the Losterlies, that is effectively on the opposite side of the world from where humanity was first established and from where it diffused. The working title for this novel is “The Man Who Forgot Himself.”

On the Losterlies are a people known as wanderers or gypsies who are descendants of a particular Inuit by the name of Anuniaq.  “Anuniaq Goes to Sea… …Again” is a tale from his life as is Anuniaq and the Storm Tossed Sea.

People groups converge on the Losterlies and one of the cultures that has great impact are the Inuit peoples, known by the Rus as the Icefolk,  who leave with the Russians and are later enslaved by them.  I want to develop a tale about one of these people, a whale talker, who’s people are annihilated by the iron Rus and who in turn gets revenge and then must rebuild a life afterward.  The working title for this novel is “The Poet and the Ice Princess”.

I have a few stories developing in an area of the world, Northern Umircea, that involves or evolved the Ribbon Wood Elves or UiUilsen as they are known. “the Lost Prince”, “Sasha and Faolan”, and a trilogy of stories, “the UiUilsen Cycle” will develop and expand both the peoples of this part of Umircea, the land beyond the Western Mountains of the Gaelish Central Plain.

I love the movie “a Knights Tale” and would like to write my take on the idea of nobility. I also like the idea of warfare as sport presented in that story (I’m an American Football fan) and think it has application, especially in the gaming community of today, but also to the Celtic lifestyle or my perception of what the Gaelic people were about.  I want to set my knights tale in Umircea, but I may move the setting to the cities of the Disputed Lands though nobility is much less a factor in that wild land.

An important part of the development of my fantasy world are figures who make a huge impact by virtue of their many talents and even more because of their longevity. The children of Dana Bailey are intended by Dana herself to be a Celtic Pantheon. These genetically altered super Celts make contributions both by virtue of their leadership, and also in just being a tie and a memory to a technological past that is being lost and replaced by new progress informed by the past but not dependant on it.  Among the characters stories will touch on: Balor, originally Llyr, who was first born and most willing to serve Dana Baily’s purposes, but came to work hardest against those goals as the leader of the Fomorians; Lugh of the long reach, a wanderer and a philanderer at first, godlike in his self-absorption, his many talents are at last turned to good when he learns responsibility; Bridget, maternal in truth and in temperament, she must learn how to be good at her role; Epona, but more her most impressive daughter, Scythia, who’s leadership gives the freedom loving horse folk of the Gaellic plain a name, an identity, and a mother; Loki the miner and technical genius who’s folk live under the mountains, and many more.

In the Disputed Lands life is cheap.  Warlords carve out kingdoms among the fortified city states of the broken and war torn landscape in a section of the northern continent east of the Safron River that drains much of the Great Gaellic plain, north of Scotia and the fortified wall that splits off the Scots Highlands from the rest, west of the Great Sea that has become dominated by the Fomor, and South of the lands of the Sinoese and most notably the Darklings.  Several stories will be set or will touch this volitile region.  Among them are “Icarus Flight”, “Kitsuniko”, “Led from the Dark or the Blind Deaf Mute and the Idiot” (a story about overcoming disability, frustrated revenge, and simple peace), “Fitch in His Majesties Service”