Search results for ""Author Jan Fortune""

Saoirse grows up hearing the extraordinary stories of family members who died before her birth or in early childhood. Her aunt Miriam, who believed she had lived across a thousand years to be with her lover in each generation, the Moorish Princess Casilda. Her grandmother, Daireann. more than a healer and wise woman, and her father, Oisin, an alchemist and magician. But who is Saoirse? I was Casilda's mother more than a thousand years ago, she tells her mother, Sarah. Tucked away under a mountain in Roscommon in Oisin's family home, Saoirse meets Faolan, a local boy lost in their garden maze. As they play out stories from myth, Faolan's loyalty and love grows, but Saoirse craves adventure and is not easily won. As their paths diverge, one momentous event threatens everything, leading Saoirse into a maze from which she might never emerge and taking Faolan on a quest on which their lives depend. Spanning back into the mists of pre-history; travelling from Roscommon to Paris, Prague to Brittany, Budapest to Nice, Zaragoza to Tromso, and bringing together Celtic mythology from Ireland and Brittany, Saoirse's Crossing asks questions of identity as contemporary as they are ancient, exploring the lengths we will go to for love.

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When the darkness rises again, the light will return wherever people stand their ground. Two years after the events of The Standing Ground, the tiny outpost of Y Tir in North Wales becomes a refuge for those who want to live without implants—permanent links to government surveillance that are threatening to dominate people’s lives again. But can Alys, Luke and Emrys thwart the growing threats of the new tech-giants whose offers of enhanced memories and virtual lives mask the erosion of privacy and even humanity? As new enemies threaten Y Tir’s existence, and old enemies emerge to sew seeds of destruction, Alys’ and Luke’s lives are put under increasing pressure. But there are also allies, not least Alys’ and Luke’s daughter, Iris, who appears to have fallen out of the mists of Greek legend and into Celtic myth. Can Iris, more strange and powerful even than Myrddin Emrys, also known as Merlin, save the day for Y Tir? Skilfully combining near-future technologies of surveillance and immersive media with Arthurian legend and Greek mythology, this story of suspense is full of convincing and extraordinary characters. A breath-taking conclusion to The Standing Ground trilogy. But does this story ever end?

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In this prequel to The Standing Ground, we travel back two generations to the origins of the oppressive E-Government state that infiltrates every aspect of people’s lives in the decade following Brexit and a global pandemic. But, as the darkness overtakes Britain and other areas of Europe, the light of resistance wakes in a community that spans the Celtic outposts of Brittany and North Wales. And in a strange child, Myrddin Emrys, also known as Merlin.Weaving together Arthurian legend and exploratory fiction of the near future, The Roots of the Ground explores the human cost of a monoculture that tramples freedom and privacy and asserts with Carl Jung that:'As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.'

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Post-pandemic, a tiny forest community gathers, bringing their ghosts and fears, hopes and secrets. And theirs are not the only voices. The forest also has stories of grief and resurrection, asking us what we mean by a life well-lived, human or non-human.

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In a near-future world without privacy or freedom, life is unravelling for Luke, a teenager whose questions and individuality have no place in surveilled society. A virtual encounter with a girl who claims to live beyond the all-controlling grip of E-Government sets him on a quest not only for answers, but for escape. But is Alys real? Why are there echoes of her world in his father, Nazir Malik’s home, especially since Nazir is a celebrity artist trusted by E-Government? And what role can characters from Celtic Arthurian legend possibly play in saving the future? Most urgently, can Luke overcome the threats that surround him and find the Standing Ground?"A wonderful novel… a fresh rendition of the future that draws on technologies that are currently emerging… and on Arthurian legend… akin to Philip Pullman’s street-smart, other-worldly creations, complete with convincing, humorous and likeable characters… a gripping read."Anna Kiernan

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What is the connection between the tenth century Moorish princess, Casilda, and a young Jewish woman, Miriam, completing a Masters degree in contemporary Toledo? What links both to the Spanish singer, Casilda Faertes and to her mother, another Miriam, born in Budapest and raised in Nice? Spanning a thousand years and bringing together the stories of three generations of women in North-east England, Budapest and Spain, For Hope is Always Born, follows on from This is the End of the Story and A Remedy for All Things to ask huge questions about identity and the nature of love and loss.

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In the dream she is not herself. Belief is Catherine’s gift, or it was once, growing up in the shadow of an extraordinary friendship amongst a cacophony of voices trying to tell her who to be. Now, in her thirties, Catherine knows what she has lost and what she has survived. Her professional life is on course and she has a new relationship with Simon, a writer who shares her imaginative and creative worlds. But when Catherine arrives in Budapest in winter 1993 to begin researching a novel based on the poet, Attila József, she starts dreaming the life of a young woman imprisoned after the 1956 Uprising. More disconcertingly, by day this woman, Selene Virág, is with her, dreaming Catherine’s life just as she dreams Selene’s. Obsessed with uncovering the facts, Catherine discovers that Selene was a real person who lived through the persecution of Jews in Hungary during WW2, but what is most disorienting is that Selene believed Attila József to be the father of her daughter, Miriam, despite the fact that József committed suicide in December 1937, eighteen years before Miriam was born. How do the three lives of Catherine, Selene and Attila fit together? Densely layered, constantly challenging the boundaries between fact and fiction, A Remedy for All Things is a disquieting and compelling exploration of what we mean by identity and of how the personal and the political collide. Spare, subtle prose and an innovative, original narrative combine with an accessible, moving story; an extraordinary follow-up to This is the End of the Story, the first book in the Casilda Trilogy. The final part For Hope is Always Born, is also published by Cinnamon Press.

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Writing Down Deep; an Alchemy of the Writing Life, has been a huge labour of love over the last three years. Many of the ideas have been trialed in blog articles and in online courses, and have been honed and rewritten for the book. There's also a huge amount of new material, reflections and writing prompts to help you become the writer you want to be with your own story and values. Writing Down Deep; an Alchemy of the Writing Life is a book for writers who want to dive deeply into their creative flow and into the extraordinary power of writing to affect individuals and the world. Whether you are a blogger writing articles, a memoirist, poet or novelist, writing is magical, it offers perspective shifts, leaps of imagination and connections that are vital to how we live at every level. The world is storied and those who tell stories of every kind, have a unique role and responsibility. The premise is that story (including poetry, fiction and nonfiction) is vital to human survival. It is so important that storytellers do well to become congruent with their tales. This book is for the wild idealists and alchemists of the imagination who believe that writing is so powerful that it should change us as we push the boundaries of our craft. This book is for those who see writing as an act of radical spirituality, in the broadest sense of 'spiritual' as the antonym of egotistical hubris, rather than as the opposite of 'material'. The book is a companion on the quest and, as such, you can read it straight through or slowly; make the rhythm suit you. It has five main sections that are interspersed around shorter, seasonal sections. The book is packed with prompts, inspiration and writing exercises. These are not mechanical or 'how to' exercises but aimed at challenging us to dig deeply into our writing processes and writing lives. Woven throughout are seasonal pauses to help you design your own writing retreats.

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How do we come home in a strange land? Moving to a remote forest hamlet in a new country in the midst of a pandemic, the only way to connect is to take the time to linger, listen and observe—to be with the land that is becoming home. From this observations a series of haiku arise, following the Japanese system of 24 seasons divided into 72 micro-seasons and interspersed with eight lyric poems that travel around the Celtic wheel of the year. And so a forest garden and its surrounding Finistère woodland slowly reveals itself, weaving together the lunar and solar, melding the Celtic shape of the year with the increments of the Japanese solar terms, each one unveiling a new aspect of change. Charting a life unmoored from the familiar, but permeable to the new the poems find their place at ‘the end of the world’, as the Romans called Finistère, but also in Penn-ar-Bed, the Breton name which is both the end and start of the world. Most endings are also beginnings and here in these precise, exquisitely observed poems, we find ourselves both unsettled and settling, exploring what it means to hold together being adrift and belonging; cycles and transformation and how we find a beginning at the end of the world.

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A Quixotic coming of age novel exploring the ways we enter the fantasy lives of those we love, This is the End of the Story is the first in a trilogy of new novels from Cinnamon Press founding editor, Jan Fortune.

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