Authors Electric

This month I'm sharing the info on my upcoming book launch. All are welcome! Here's the blurb from the Facebook event : Official launch of the Zombies v. Ninjas book series by R.A. Barnes, published by Kilkenny company Marble City Publishing and printed in Ireland. MC for the evening will be local author and Francis MacManus prize winner Patrick Griffith. This trilogy of paperbacks features characters that are surprisingly similar to the members of Evolution Martial Arts Academy as they battle to save Kilkenny, Ireland and the World from the Undead. Suitable for all ages from 10 to 110. Ruby Barnes and the Evolution Team members will be signing books on the night. All Marble City profits from the launch will go to Fundraising for Evolution Martial Arts Academy for the team to compete in America in 2017. More about the books here at rubybarnesbooks.com and I'll be writing a series of blog posts on that site about the background to the rise of the Undead i...

I'm not the most romantic person on the planet. I do try and remember to buy the long suffering Mrs R a card on birthdays, Valentine's, wedding anniversary and Christmas, but the finer detail of celebratory arrangements often passes me by. Meanwhile, my fictional characters are happily getting lovey-dovey and doing all the right things. But this year was different. I had finished book three of my Zombies v. Ninjas trilogy (which anyway contains minimal romance) and had no active WIP to distract me. So Mrs R was given a (modestly) better birthday deal this February. The celebratory dinner didn't involve the kids but just the two of us. The restaurant was the award-winning Zuni , her favourite in Kilkenny, and the choice was kept secret right up until we stepped out of the leather-seated taxi. The maitre d showed us to a quiet corner table which ideally suited our mood and we kicked off with a glass of Prosecco, as is our habit. Mrs R looked gorgeous and I had even remembe...

           February 12th 2014 on the island of Ireland. The January weather had battered the coasts and destroyed stretches of coastline enjoyed by countless previous generations. Unusually high tides, low pressure with rising sea levels and gale force winds resulted in crazed, crashing waves that ripped out miles of sandy beach, turning them to pebbles. Just before Valentine's Day the elements returned to attack the land. Storm Darwin brought hurricane force winds across the counties of Munster and Leinster.          We had forty shades of green long before fifty shades of grey, and there's a reason why the Emerald Isle is so lush - it's mostly raining. And we're no strangers to high winds with many a tree, shrub and bush habitually leaning away from the prevailing storms. But no one was ready for Darwin. We're not familiar with hurricanes - this is a temperate island off the north west of Euro...