Debut author, Barry Loftus, presents his remarkable debut book, ‘Baby Dara And The Sahara’, a compelling story that delves into the poignant exploration of difficult pregnancy, Edwards’ Syndrome and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity. This heart-warming story offers a unique perspective on the indomitable strength that love and family can provide during life’s most difficult moments.
I invite you to open your heart, dive in and find yourself in these words. Moving from fear to trust is not a one-off, single event in anyone’s story, It’s an ongoing exercise of being human, one in which we must reevaluate and reinvent ourselves on an ongoing basis, when faced with any of life’s challenges. May this book give you the courage to move from fear to trust every single time.
People In Glasshouses began as a result of my travels around the UK, Ireland and beyond. When, as a chartered surveyor, I would diligently explore restored Victorian glasshouse structures of differing levels of scale, scope and complexity. Fascinated by the sublime detail-rich architecture, the social history and the diverse multi-functional end use, my initial plan was to develop a chic coffee table book. Filled with stylish black and white imagery and low on narrative, it would be a book that the ‘discerning reader’ would be proud to feature in their homes. However, I would quickly discover that wasn’t to be God’s plan. For He had an entirely different plan in store for me.
For much like many of the magnificent and modest glass houses that I would survey, there was a time when I, too, was in a state of obsolescence and desperately in need of restoration and transformation. Using a self-formative function, this aide memoir provides a chronological testimony that confesses not only my own failings but to those various vices and primary demons that attacked and tempted me throughout my life. It highlights my struggles with the flesh and with the world but in doing so, this book also brings with it the promise of purificatory value.
People In Glasshouses offers a unique and innovative approach to writing. By cleverly punning with glasshouse/ glass house, it combines beautifully the personal and the professional; the worldly and the spiritual. This book is a thematic literary diptych offering two stories juxtaposed, depicting key moments in one man’s life. It is about experientialism, paradigm shifts, and judgements shaped by conditioning, cultures and historic perceptions.
It is a delightful book, about conservation, heritage, preservation and restoration. But it also about a future born of the past, and all with the over-arching aim of highlighting the risk of judgementalism in life. It is about our spiritual struggles, but it is also a Christological exhortation to white martyrdom and to a life of higher morals and of virtuous improvement.
People In Glasshouses is more than a memoir or a testimony. For much like the wonderful Victorian glasshouses that have been restored for the enjoyment of future generations, so too will this book be enjoyed, by those who are currently with us and by those who will come after us.
Promised by Heaven is a story of love, loss and healing – a spiritual adventure that questions everything we understand to be true. From commencing with the dead, predicting global events, and seeing spirits, the book is an unforgettable account of one woman’s path to her true calling.
-Debut Book from James Mahon,
– First book of it’s kind to examine role of “Irish millennial emigrant”, 400,000 have left Irish shores in the last 5 years.
– Focus on American society and life, looking at guns, politics and division between 2012-2015.
– Addresses role of Irish identity in 21st century.
– Story about stories, as a reporter/journalist covering news at 22 years old in a trying and harsh environment of college campus lockdowns, mass shootings, terrorist attack and tornadoes
– Preface written by Peabody and 50 time Emmy winning journalist Brendan Keefe
http://www.11alive.com/about-us/team-bios/brendan-keefe/7194763
Blurb on book Below
“This first book from James P Mahon is a journey, looking at one journey of an emigrant from Romania to Gort, to Dublin, to Galway, New York, Sheffield, Tennessee back to Gort now to Glasgow. The autobiographical aspect of what defines emigration at 25 for 400,000 young Irish and the profiling of one journey away and returning home and away again. It speaks to Irish identity, looking at the Celtic Tiger Cubs, the Bebo Generation and what makes a person ‘Irish’. How do you become Irish or represent Irish identity overseas, who are the 21st Irish emigrants? And finally, it is storytelling at its best, Examining journalism and the stories that are all around us and how we tell them as journalists. It looks at what makes good journalism and the role life experience plays in being good at telling stories for and with others.”
The only sound was that of the waterfall cascading down the sheer rose quartz cliff and exploding into a million microscopic droplets of pink, lilac and turquoise which sparkled with tiny specks of silver and gold. The air was headily infused with an aromatic symphony of lavender, rose, jasmine, geranium and honeysuckle, each breath melting me deeper and deeper into the surrounding bliss.
Me and My Backbone is written by Connolly native, Siobhan Mungovan and journalist with the Clare Champion, Carol Byrne, tells Siobhan’s story living with Spina Bifida. It was formally launched in Clare County Council Offices in Ennis on 7.11.2014 with hundreds of people coming to help celebrate this truly amazing story of hope.
