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Blood Point Folklore

Lughnasadh: the first harvest

August 1st marked the festival of Lughnasadh (loo-nasser if your mouth mangles those Irish phonemes). It’s the beginning of harvest season and a key date in Blood Point, my Irish Nightmare Vacations novel. Named after the pagan god Lugh, it’s another of those Irish festivals that sits between a solstice and an equinox. The big […]

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Folklore

Light a fire for Litha

June 23 marks Litha, the ancient midsummer’s eve celebration and the night when horror rises in my new novel, Blood Point. The quiet Irish village of Kinnity hides a dark history, from the brutal killing of a young woman in ancient Ireland to the mad 19th-century landlord building a pyramid tomb. When widower Josh and […]

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Blood Point Folklore Horror Nightmare Vacations

Happy Bealtaine! Summer is here?

The weather might not agree yet*, but Lá Bealtaine is the beginning of summer in Ireland’s ancient Celtic calendar. It’s also the beginning of the countdown to launching a new horror story, Blood Point. Sign up to my newsletter for exclusive previews. Sandwiched between the spring equinox and summer solstice, Bealtaine, or “bright fire”, is […]

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Blood Point Folklore

The National Leprechaun Museum

TripAdvisor’s top Dublin museums might include Guinness, whiskey, and Kilmainham Gaol, but no writer or lover of good stories should visit the city without a stop at the National Leprechaun Museum. Ireland’s storytelling tradition goes back to the dawn of Irish history, and the National Leprechaun Museum is a tribute to the nation’s wild oral […]

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Folklore

Happy Halloween: the meme that reinfected Ireland

Happy Halloween, or Oíche Shamhna shona duit. This ancient Celtic pagan festival is a big deal in Ireland, where the Monday before is a bank holiday, houses are decorated and children dress up to trick or treat. Some say Ireland is the home of Halloween, although it’s celebrated as far south as Brittany and there […]

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Blood Point Creative writing Nightmare Vacations Novels

Horrible folk: mining Irish folklore for new horror

Irish folklore is horrible, and I mean that in the best way. Violence, sex and the supernatural entwine in epic tales of ancient history and everyday stories of ghosts, fairies and ordinary folk. Wry humour and dark twists are never far away. Despite Walt Disney’s best efforts, there’s nothing twee about Ireland’s fairies. There are […]