New video ad for The Truth, It Lies

I have released a new video ad for The Truth, It Lies on Youtube.
To see it click on the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_9ZQRU_E7A

Dickens with a twist

The other day I was on a train in Sydney and saw something which was straight out of a Dickens novel. A man of about 50ish got on with a young girl who I'm guessing was about 16 or 17. Now this was just before 9 in the morning and it was obvious he was not bringing her to school. He was balding, bearded and had a bad ponytail. She was wearing a hoodie and looked like she had been/was/will soon be on drugs. There was a real Fagan/Artful Dodger thing going on. Of course, it could have been a totally innocent situation and that I misread the whole incident. I didn't stay on the train long enough to find out. But I'm fairly certain the odds are that they were up to no good. I'm guessing the girl was a pickpocket, he was her handler and they were 'riding the trains' during the morning rush hour looking for a score. What I found fascinating was that they stood out so obviously to me when their body language suggested they were trying to be inconspicuous. You've got to love amateur crooks, sometimes they really don't have a clue.

I don't need a shrink, I need poems

I recently entered a poetry competition - don't get excited, it would be a miracle if I won! - and a couple of days later came across a blog in the New York Times entitled Does Poetry Matter?. It's an interesting question. I'm no poet, I'm a writer who happened to have a few poems in the locker from when I did my masters. Most of them were awful but a few were quite good so I thought I'd give this competition a shot, you never know what'll happen. Now I'm not doing to debate Gregory Cowles excellent blog, but I will reference one of the replies it received. EKSwitaj of Belfast said: "Who cares if poetry matters? Poetry is." Well said. I don't have fond memories of studying poetry in high school and until I did my writing masters a few years ago had no real interest in poetry. But reading back through some of the poems I wrote at that time I could feel the energy I was trying to create and wished I could get some of that raw freshness into my fiction. One of these days I'll go back and write some new poems and see what happens. I certainly think writing poetry helped unlock some creative juices at a time when the mind was struggling to create large pieces of fiction. So there you have it. I won't be forking out $100 (or whatever the going rate is) for therapy when all I need is a pen and paper to write a poem.

From the big screen to paperback

The Truth, It Lies started life as a movie about a movie that would never be seen. Now it’s a book about a movie and nearly became the book that would never be seen.

Why Hollywood?

The Truth, It Lies was the title of a short movie script I wrote for a course I was doing back in 2002.  At the time I wanted to pursue script-writing rather than novel writing. I had an idea for a movie about a movie and as Hollywood is the epicentre of the movie industry this naturally brought Los Angeles into the story. The script was set between the present day and the past. A very difficult thing to achieve in seven minutes! The main character was researching a movie star who had fallen from grace and died in mysterious circumstances. 

Why the 1950s and the witch-hunt era?

In looking for an era in which to place the movie star character the early 1950s jumped out. The Communist witch-hunt turned the movie industry against itself. McCarthyism became a byword for the era. Fear was a very potent emotion at the time and it seemed like a good idea to drop a character into this situation and see what happened.

From big screen aspirations to paperback, why?

I spent the next couple of years writing and re-writing treatments to turn that short script into a feature length movie. However, I was never able to find the right formula to make the jump between the two timelines work. Then in late 2004 the opportunity arose to turn the script into a book instead. In re-plotting the book I stripped away a lot of the story and set it all in the 1950s. The book was written, edited and a cover designed by early 2006. However, by this time I had severed my relationship with the original publisher due to circumstances beyond my control and decided to publish it myself using a subsidiary press.

Why publish a new edition independently?

The book was published in late 2006. It sold a few copies but not enough to get it noticed. In the meantime I started work on a follow-up Hollywood novel and completed an MA in Creative Writing, as well as starting work on a further two books. But over time I became unhappy with how The Truth, It Lies turned out. The large format of the book was too big for a book of about 250 pages. Also, I was unhappy with the writing itself. In late 2008 I decided to give it an overhaul and rewrite it. Once finished I found a new editor and after some further plot alternations it was finished. By late 2009 the revised book was available to the public. But I had developed a sense that the subsidiary press wasn’t a user-friendly solution to my printing needs. So after some research I decided to set up a new company to publish the new edition myself. I had used the name engano books informally for some years but now it officially existed. Crucially the printer allowed me to select a smaller print format which suits the book better. At the same time I made the decision to give it a new cover, which ironically enough was a cover that I rejected during the initial design process five years ago.

The new edition of The Truth, It Lies will be published by engano books in 2010. For more information visit www.enganobooks.com

A temporary solution

Welcome, 
It's been three months since my main website www.eoinhennigan.com went offline. The reasons it was offline are too complicated to go into here as it was beyond my control. I had rebuilt the site and was ready to go live again when I discovered that the domain had been taken over by cyber squatters. I've reported it to ICANN but haven't heard anything as yet. Hopefully it will be sorted out soon. This blog is both a temporary solution, and part of the long-term plans for the new site.

In the meantime, the business at hand!
The Truth, It Lies will have a new smaller edition with a new cover coming out in the next few months. The book was relaunched late last year but I decided I wanted greater control over the overall product so I've set up a new company to publish it. I've been using the name engano for several years but up until now it's been nothing more than a name. When I have more news I'll post it here.