The countdown goes on: it’s now only *three* days until AMID THE CROWD OF STARS is officially released (though I know of at least one person who pre-ordered it and has already received their copy…)I talked about Dingle yesterday and how I essentially ‘borrowed’ that town for Dulcia in AMID. Today, let me talk about the Blasket Islands and how they became the Inish Archipelago in AMID, and how they were the initial spark of inspiration for the book. The Blaskets sit just off the very end of the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland—in fact, they are the westernmost point of land in Europe. The Blaskets also have a strong literary tradition and I was fascinated by the story of the place (enough that I bought a handful of the books the various islanders had written and read them all). To quote from the afterword section of AMID:
“It was during a trip to Ireland in 2017 with my sister Sharon and her husband Dave that I stumbled upon the story of the Blasket Islands while we were exploring the gorgeous Dingle Peninsula. The Blasket Centre is well out on the peninsula’s Atlantic head, a delightful museum dedicated to the history of the Blasket Islands and the Blasket’s literary tradition. I was immediately fascinated, bought several of the islanders’ books, and the more I thought about the islands and their relationship to the mainland of Ireland, the more I found myself inundated with potential story ideas. This book is a result, even if the connection to the Blaskets isn't immediately apparent.
“In our world, the Blasket Islands were well-known in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for being the place to go if one wanted to study the Irish language as it was spoken, as this was one of the few places in Ireland (like the Aran Islands or parts of the counties in the west of Ireland) where Irish remained the primary language they both spoke and wrote. But the lure of the modern world and other countries along with difficulty competing with new fishing technologies and regulations caused the residents to slowly leave the island until there were too few of them left to sustain the settlement. The last permanent residents of the Blaskets were finally evacuated from Great Blasket Island on November 17, 1953.
“It was the sense of disconnection and the resulting escalating tensions within the Blasket culture itself and between the the Blaskets and the more ‘modern’ society of the mainland that provided the initial spark for AMID THE CROWD OF STARS.”
The map of the Blaskets I scanned from the book “The Islandman” by Tomás O’Crohan, one of the several books I read written by the Blasket Islanders, translated from Irish by Robin Flowers in 1929, who came to the Blaskets to learn the Irish language and became a friend of the author.
Essentially, then, the historical Blaskets provided the basis for the Mainlander/Inish conflict in the novel. Mind you, that initial spark morphed and expanded greatly, reflected in additional conflicts as I began figuring out exactly what I wanted to explore and how to best do that. But seeing and learning about the Blaskets was what started things roiling about in my head, even if there were other influences and inspirations for various aspects of the eventual finished novel.
When we first drove out toward Slea Head of the Dingle peninsula, though, we weren’t looking for the Blaskets specifically, but more to see the Sleeping Giant -- more properly, Inishtooskert, northernmost of the Blasket Islands. The Sleeping Giant is also known as “An Fear Marbh”, Irish for “The Dead Man.” I’d seen a few photos of it before, and knew that according to local legend, this rocky giant is supposed to one day rouse himself at Ireland’s call, when the country needs him most. I was thinking that might be an interesting story sometime down the road. In the photos below, you’ll find a few photos we took of the Sleeping Giant (one by my sister Sharon and one by me), and you can easily see how it rather looks like a person reclining on the water.
But we stopped at the Blasket Centre at the tip of Slea Head, and that changed the trajectory of everything. The more I learned about the Blaskets and especially about Great Blasket, which is where most people lived, the more I wanted to use some of that history (metaphorically) in a novel. Alas, the photo I took of the island from our car as I was driving is blurred and not very good. But I found a lovely photo of Great Blasket Island in Creative Commons taken from Dunmore Head by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen. He retains copyright to the image.
Of course, transplanting the Blaskets to another world as I eventually did meant changing everything, since on Canis Lupus—the world I put together for AMID—the geography is very different. Canis Lupus is tidally locked to the red dwarf star Wolf 1061: one side always facing its sun, one side always facing away from the sun, just as our moon is tidally locked to Earth, always presenting the same side to us. This means one side of Canis Lupus is too hot to be habitable, the other too cold. Instead, there a broad band of temperate climate wrapping the planet from pole to pole, where conditions are right for life like ours. In the photo section below, I have a map (which is in the book) of Canis Lupus immediately around Dulcia.
As you can see on my map, the Blaskets became the Inish Archipelago (and migrated; they’re directly below the town of Dulcia); the Sleeping Giant became the Sleeping Wolf (a pencil sketch of which is included below); Great Blasket became Great Inish, and so on -- and given Canis Lupus’ configuration, the compass directions have changed also. On that map, what we’d think of as North is Dorcha (Spaceward) and South is Solas (Sunward). East and West are Ar Chlé (Left) and Ar Dheis (Right).
I confess that I always draw maps of my worlds, because it helps me visualize where the characters are in the world and how they might need to move to go anywhere else. If you’ve read my books, you’ve undoubtedly already seen a few of those. And honestly, I just love maps in general—on the wall in my office there are maps of imaginary places in the world I created for role-playing games, as well as a map of London in 1835. Denise has bought me books of maps. I’m just weird that way.
Anyway, if you’ve already pre-ordered your copy of AMID THE CROWD OF STARS, it should be arriving in just a few days. And if you haven’t, then you can order your own copy in the same few days. I hope you will!
The pics for this post are here!
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