Patricia Keneally-Morrison

[digs]

I've seen a couple of small mentions of Patricia Keneally-Morrison around the Chron, but I haven't seen any threads devoted to her, so I figured I'd start one. Surely there must be other people who've read and enjoyed her books as much as I have!

For those who aren't familiar with her, Keneally writes novels that probably fit best into the genre of "space fantasy" (although I generally hate categorising books in so few words): her protagonists, the Kelts, are pagan offshoots of the human race who fled Earth after being driven out of their homeland (ie the "snakes" that St Patrick drove from Ireland). Their society is based around a mixture of technology and magic. There are two main trilogies in the series as well as a few stand-alones (which in my opinion aren't as good) - the trilogy written first (beginning with The Silver Branch), which chronologically occurs second, concerns Earth's first contact with Keltia sometime in the future, while the second (beginning with The Hawk's Grey Feather) looks at Keltia's past, reinventing the Arthurian cycle in the setting of space. The entire series of books is called The Keltiad.

Obviously my words can't do it justice, but Keneally's books really are fantastic - she has quite an old-fashioned writing style, which I would usually dismiss as pretentious in other novels, but it seems to work for her. Her books also seem to be quite polarising - some people seem to love them, others hate them (or can't get into them in the first place). Definitely not for everyone, but I'm sure someone out there will try them and love them.

Anyone else read her? Thoughts?

 

[Riselka]

I've got all eight novels she wrote in her Keltiad series, but I just haven't gotten around to reading them yet.

My understanding is that the two trilogies she wrote are quite good, but the two stand-alone novels are rather riddled with her own angst towards life. Considering her rather grand plans for this series, and the fact that she hasn't written any more in it for many years now, I'm wondering if her life hasn't become so riven by anger that she can't write anymore. She's even removed her website from the internet.

For anyone who wants to read a little of what the books are about, here is a link to the web archive's copy of her old website:

http://web.archive.org/web/20020803160156/www.lizardqueen.com/html/keltcomp.html

It's too bad she didn't write more, because her original plans for the series looked quite impressive.

 

[floodgater]

Patricia Keneally-Morrison is now self-publishing at Lulu.com. Ungrateful Dead: Murder at the Fillmore, is her first self-published novel (part 1 in the Rock & Roll Murders mystery series, published under the shortened name Patricia Morrison) available beginning today on Lulu.com.* It's available in print for $22.95 or electronic version for $6.25. There will be more novels based on the success of this one, including (hopefully) more installments of the Keltiad.

I know it's not science fantasy for now, but I'd urge you to purchase the print or electronic version of her latest novel. A high-profile author like Patricia doing self-publishing (and on-demand publishing at that) is big news, it's good for content creators, and you'll be planting the seed for several more installments of the Keltiad.

For more information, check out one of PKM's blogs, linked in the Wikipedia article for Patricia Keneally-Morrison.

Best,
Floodgater

P.S. Sorry I can't post links yet. Just go to Lulu.com and search for "Ungrateful Dead" or "Patricia Morrison".

* - The novel will also be available shortly from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble (special-order or via BN.com), probably by Wednesday. I'd recommend ordering directly from Lulu.com.

===== Press Release =====
Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead: The Rock & Roll Murders

Death is her groupie...or she's his.

Sex, drugs, rock&roll---and murder. A slightly different side of the Sixties.

She's a newspaper reporter whose beat is rock, not a detective, and her best-friend sidekick is a blonde bisexual superstar chick singer, not a cop, but murder rocks their world, following them through the heart of the Sixties, from Haight-Ashbury to the Hollywood Hills, from the East Village to Abbey Road....

In the hip, funny, contemporary style of modern mystery queens Margaret Maron, Sharyn McCrumb, Janet Evanovich, Marcia Muller...

Seamlessly blending the fictional with the real: the stars, the bands, the music, all the excitement of the most incredible decade of the last century...

Full of rockworld dish and attitude, created by someone who was not only there for it but made some of it happen herself, and who took just enough drugs to get into it and not so many that she can't remember it...

And with murder to sit in and jam...

The Rock & Roll Murders.

It is a time when things are happening that have never happened before...when artists like Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin and Mick Jagger are doing stuff onstage that people never dreamed of when listening to Perry Como...when rock is the hottest thing on the planet and the people who make it their life and love and work are the coolest people you could ever hope to meet.

The time when it was all NEW: the music, the hair, the clothes, the drugs, the sex, the politics, the revolution in society that stopped a war and changed the world.

A time often imitated, always envied by those not lucky enough to have been there for it, certainly never surpassed...

Over the course of the series, which will run from 1964 to around 1972---the real if not the chronological Sixties, kicked off by the Beatles' arrival in America and ending with the beginning of the end of the Vietnam conflict (with possible extensions into the rise of heavy metal, up to 1975 or so)---smart, tough, pretty rock writer/social commentator/amateur crime-solver RENNIE STRIDE will move back and forth between San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and London.

Everywhere she goes, it's the heart of rock and roll: She's a player in classic scenes like Woodstock, Monterey, the Fillmores East and West,the San Francisco ballroooms, the Greenwich Village rock and folk clubs, LA's Whisky A Go-Go and Troubadour, England's tiny blues club and huge pop festivals.

As notorious for her affinity for and proximity to foul play---the "rock albatross," as she calls herself, a murder magnet always around for, or connected to, a string of music biz murders and counterculture crimes---as she is famous for her journalistic talent and style and personal dash, Rennie is not only a hip rockworld Miss Marple but the friend of superstar PRAX McKENNA and dozens of other Sixties movers and shakers, real and fictional: musicians, painters, photographers, clothes designers, record company execs, other writers.
Not to mention the lover of some of the rock deities who are making musical history.

And eventually falling madly in love with one in particular, an English guitar hero named TURK WAYLAND, leader of the hugely famous blues-rock band Lionheart, and he with her. The relationship will have its ups and downs over the course of several books, mostly due to the huge personal secret that Turk, as he insists on calling himself, is carrying around. But everyone, including themselves, can see that Rennie and Turk are made for each other, and they get together and stay together and move on together.

"It's ONLY rock and roll"? No way. So...let it be. Let it bleed. Let it roll, baby, roll. And rock on...

Patricia Kennealy Morrison is a retired rock critic and editor, a fantasy novelist (The Keltiad) and was married to rock star Jim Morrison. She lives in New York City.