A few months ago Usborne brought their debut authors for 2017 together in London to learn about promoting ourselves from a company called Author Profile. It was great to meet others in the same boat and to hear their stories. I really enjoyed the day and learnt so much, now I just have to put it into practice uh oh!!!
Anyway three of us in our book form 😉 are in the picture above. Being Miss Nobody by Tamsin Winter and The Amber Pendant, the first book in The Rose Muddle Mysteries by Imogen White were both released the 1st of June. A Place Called Perfect is available for pre order now but will be released on the 1st of August.
I think we’re all looking well, if I do say so myself.
This is a new series I am working on, it’s for Artsweek 2015 in Kilkenny, where I will, for a second year, take my summer holidays outside our famous Castle. This series is a work in progress but fingers crossed will have a few more pieces for August!
I’m looking out on a Cork summers day, thinking about a Kerry one. I couldn’t write this post yesterday, it wasn’t possible to sit at my desk you see, my arse just wouldn’t allow it!
In fairness I had pushed its cushioning to the last having spent most of Saturday cycling the Ring of Kerry. AMAZING was my repeated word of the day because, apart from the complaints of a blistered bottom, the cycle exceeded anything I had imagined.
The adventure started on Friday night, I got to the hostel late and checked in with an angry Kerry woman.
“You’re in the Penguin Suite,” she snarled.
I thought she was joking until I searched out my room. Kangaroo, Buffalo, Guinea Pig, Lizard, Snake, Giraffe…ah ha Penguin. I pushed in the door and was greeted by an Arctic welcome.
“You’re late!” Dee my cycling partner snapped (she didn’t really say that but Arctic and penguin go together so I’m taking artistic license!)
After a quick snoop of the dorm to assess our fellow sleepers…
“Oh I bet they’re taking part.”
“Look at size of their pump! I’d say they’re fellas.”
“Imagine if they were gorgeous!!”
…we headed down to get our bikes. Then it was bed for the night, our plan to go early, Enda Kenny was heading out at 7.30 and we couldn’t let him beat us.
The next morning, sleep still sticking my eyes, I was in Killarney race course without a notion of how I got there. We found our numbers, I took my first Instagram and we were off, out under the start line to join the mayhem. And it was mayhem and madness and all good words like that. The roads were filled with cyclists, most wearing luminous yellow jackets, like a brigade of pedalling council workers.
Chatting easily, we meandered back roads through breath taking spots, I haven’t seen the whole world but I imagine there’s not much to surpass Kerry’s offering. I had been nervous about the day. Would I be fit enough? (a pointless question when I hadn’t trained, training for events is a downfall of mine, it takes away the surprise!) Would the place be full of Armstrongs in lycra, syncing gps to rps to mps and muttering about splits as they careened round hair pin bends?
But it wasn’t like this. All sorts of people sat ontop all sorts of bikes. I passed a man with one leg as he persuaded his steal replacement to take on a steep hill, another for charity rode a bike with no gears and no brakes, I presume he got home. I played cat and mouse with another man well in his 70’s, he wore knee high wool socks, brown brogs and an aran jumper and would easily fit on the front of any postcard. At every stop there was music and banter, a festival feeling, even the sun made the odd appearance.
At the finish, bikes and cyclists covered the Gleneagle lawns. The atmosphere seeped into town and that night Killarney was packed with tales of the road. The best I heard was the line of male cyclists following a woman up Molls Gap.
“Sure she was wearing a thong. Surely she knew her pants were see through!”
“She must have been out for the ride.”
“Jasus it worked though, a line of us, I’d say at least 50, what do ya think lads, followed her up that gap. I didn’t feel the hill at all!”
It felt as though everyone was on the road that day, all in it together, pedaling hard for Killarney. And it didn’t matter when or how we got there, whether we struggled up the hills or pulled on brakes the whole way down, it just mattered that we got there. It was the experience, the people, the craic and the countryside.
I’d do it again, without question. Next time I might even wear see through shorts and a thong!
“A Load of Rubbish” was selected by the editorial board at Harper Collins for review yesterday. I’m delighted and want to thank everyone for their support!”
I just picked this up today on google alerts, Mick Rooney of POD Self Publishing and Independent Publishing has written a lovely blog about my story and its plight on Authonomy. I’m really happy about the article, reads really well and I want to thank Mick, which he’ll see if he happens to stumble past this post.
Prudence magazine wrote an article on Held Design in this months (March) recessionistas section. I have uploaded the spread and article above but if your in the shops grab this issue, it’s a good read (not just cause i’m in it!)
Held Design got a nice write up on the Sunday Business Post yesterday, I have pasted the article in below…
Striking out alone provides impetus for success 28 February 2010 By Jenny Hauser
Graphic designer Helena Duggan used to work for a company which catered mostly for corporate clients, and felt her creativity was being stunted.
When she was let go as a result of the economic downturn, it gave her the impetus she needed to follow her dreams and set up her own graphic design company.
‘‘I was let go the Christmas before last because of the recession. I always said I would set up my own business and this way I was pushed to do it,” said Duggan.
Now it is just ‘‘myself and my computer – we’re great friends’’, according to Duggan.
She said that graphic design was a hard profession to follow when working for someone else. ‘‘When I went out on my own, I actually did better than when I was working for a company,” she said. ‘‘I was able to go out and find work that I wanted to do.
‘‘When you own a company, it seems like people listen to you more and go with your ideas more.”
Duggan completed her degree in graphic design at the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology in 2004.
After two years in the world of employment, she packed her bags and went travelling for two years.
However, her creativity was not put on the back-burner during that time. In Melbourne, she enrolled on a creative writing course.
She is only 28 years old and always on the move, at least creatively.
Her latest successful project was a line of illustrated postcards and posters for Kilkenny.
The cards flew out of the door and Duggan is now looking to expand to other counties.
Other projects included designing brochures, t-shirts and flyers for a charity event, Aids Partnership in Africa, as well as designs for the Kells Comedy Festival, a knitting shop and a hair salon.
Held Design celebrated its first anniversary last month, and it has had a busy year. But despite this, Duggan also has her sights firmly set on publishing her own children’s book, which she wrote while travelling in Australia.
What started with a notebook given to her by her sister, ended up as 400 pages about the perils of a shoe called Seamus who finds himself on a rubbish-dump.
Currently, the book (A Load of Rubbish) is on Authonomy, a community site for writers, ranked in ninth place of around 8,000 books by aspiring authors. Each month, the Harper Collins editorial board reviews the top five books and publication is then within reach.
The ambitious designer has her sights set on being in the chosen five, and already has chosen the illustrations for the book on her desk.
Hello All, thought you might like these. I was looking at TV last night after a match which I almost broke my finger in (but that’s another story altogether). Anyway yes, so there I was, snug on the couch watching “Run Fat Boy Run” and laughing out loud (it was very funny, I rarely laugh when something is not funny) and what should pop up during the break only an advert for the new Alice in Wonderland film. I jumped out my seat, hitting my finger off the table (the almost broken finger but again that’s another story altogether) and ran to the telly (bad eyesight).
It’s by Tim Burton and although I’m not as well up on directors as I should be, he is by far and away (he didn’t direct that) by favourite. I love his style, his sets are so dark and quirky and absolutely brilliant. He favours Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp in most of his work and they’re great, both mad actors. Anyway so Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton what a combination, went straight online today and pulled up these visuals (brilliant).
Anyway, I’m sure you can guess by now, can’t wait for the film. Enjoy the pics. Helena
PS a lot of blood, sweat and tears has gone into these few paragraphs. It not easy to type with a broken finger and a dead athletes foot!
Yes it’s story time again. As some of you may already know, I wrote a childrens book and uploaded it onto a website run by Harper Collins publishers to spot new talent. At the end of each month the top 5 books on the editors list are put forward to editors in Harper Collins USA and UK for consideration. There are over 6000 books on the site and mine is currently no.7 it’s popularity really surprised me and I am now a few steps away from the editors desk. I would love to make it but I need help to do so.
I have pasted the synopsis in under the instructions to try and entice a few people to register on the site and back it. If you like what you read please follow these few steps…
2. Click on register in the top right hand corner.
3. Fill in details eg. email and password
4. You will land on a screen called edit profile, don’t bother with it unless you intend to use the site. Just go to the bottom right and press save.
5. Your set up on the site. Now go to the books button in top menu. Click on the “Editors desk” book list and scroll down to no. 7 “A Load of Rubbish”
6. Click on my book, read it if you like but please put it on your shelf, using the buttons panel on the right.
A Load of Rubbish Synopsis
Seamus is an ordinary school shoe who through his own silly curiosity finds himself thrust from a truck into a world of rubbish he never knew existed.
Although inherently shy and lost without the aid of his outgoing Brother Charlie (right shoe), he must find his feet, so to speak, in this wasteland.
Through friends and mentors he gains along the way such as ‘Nelson’, an old mahogany door who doubles as a hostel on Lodgers Lane, and Tess, an eccentric English dictionary and thesaurus who resides on Joyce Avenue, he begins to pick up snippets about his unfamiliar surroundings.
From Credit Limits, the only means through which rubbish can aspire to be recycled, to the Triple R Treaty, and the undercurrent of hostility towards the Breeders, Seamus has a lot to take in. However, with the aid of a repertoire of colourful friends, a new job and a comfortable home in The Couch, he begins to settle.
It is only when KP, a beautiful newspaper who has journalistic aspirations, reappears mysteriously the night of Sam’s going away party and hands Seamus a cryptic message that things begin to go askew. Seamus must take a dint to his pride, find Jack and open himself up to a world of deceit.
The dump dream begins to disintegrate around him as he discovers flaws in the apparent transparency of the credit system, makes dangerous enemies in high rankings of society and comes face to face with Adam and his army; a rat whose lineage can be traced back to the beginnings of creation, and whose lust for revenge has seen his ancestors put a paw in such dirty deeds as the Black Death and the Great Stink of London.
Seamus is an ordinary shoe but it is going to take an extraordinary courage to fight for his friends and stand up for the dump he now calls home.
25.06.2017
