I love mythology, all kinds of mythology, anyone who has dipped into the world I created in The Even won’t be surprised to read that. I have well-thumbed copies of The Heroes’ Journey and The Masks of God by Campbell on my shelves and I am fascinated by the similarities and even more by the differences in myth cycles. If I’d known it was an option when I was a child I’d have told people I wanted to be a mythologist (instead I told them I wanted to be a jockey).
Irish mythology though, that has a special place in my heart. Amidst all my promiscuous myth loves, it’s the one I always come back to. It resonates with me, my ideas and my narrative aesthetic.
So when the editors approached me to write a story for this anthology I wasn’t lacking in ideas, if anything I had too many of them. Partholon and his sorry fate? Fercherdne’s homicidal loyalty to his lord? How could I choose? In the end, and again no one who knows me will be surprised, the story I picked is one of the less heroic of the heroic tales: the fate of King Bres.
It was the pragmatism that appealed — there is a surprising vein of it running through Irish myth. Once I had that idea in my head, the rest of the story took shape around it. My shabby, seedy world of drug dealers, mother’s grief and compulsion. I hope you like it. I certainly enjoyed writing it.
Irish mythology though, that has a special place in my heart. Amidst all my promiscuous myth loves, it’s the one I always come back to. It resonates with me, my ideas and my narrative aesthetic.
So when the editors approached me to write a story for this anthology I wasn’t lacking in ideas, if anything I had too many of them. Partholon and his sorry fate? Fercherdne’s homicidal loyalty to his lord? How could I choose? In the end, and again no one who knows me will be surprised, the story I picked is one of the less heroic of the heroic tales: the fate of King Bres.
It was the pragmatism that appealed — there is a surprising vein of it running through Irish myth. Once I had that idea in my head, the rest of the story took shape around it. My shabby, seedy world of drug dealers, mother’s grief and compulsion. I hope you like it. I certainly enjoyed writing it.
Edited by Gerard Brennan & Mike Stone
Requiems for the Departed
Irish Crime, Irish Myths.
Requiems for the Departed
Irish Crime, Irish Myths.
Requiems for the Departed can now be pre-ordered on the Morrigan Books website.
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