Do Stories Even Matter?
Thoughts and an unabashed promotion on my NEW book
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My friends! Spring is long into her work here on the sunrise-side of the Appalachian mountains. We are foraging widely for food and fill our plates daily with fresh nettles and chickweeds, topped with floral arrangements of mustards, penny and winter cress, dandelions, alliums, redbud, and so much more. Life is aliving and we are blessed and honored to sit daily with her.
Yesterday, we celebrated the world’s acknowledgement that Spring is here … and we also welcomed into the world my latest book, The Plain of Pillars: A Celtic Story Retold.
It is a strange thing to release a book. It is a strange thing to write one at that. Like a small slick of your inner-self is flicked and now floating in some thin wind like a dirty booger. But, unlike your crusty nasal mucus, it is pretty, or pretty enough.
This time is no different. The Plain of Pillars is my fifth book and I am no stranger to the grief and glitter of a book launch. The build up, the drama. The blurbers, the reviewers, the literary critics, all holding thoughts in some secret and dark publishing passage for months on end. The camaraderie. The loneliness. The excitement. The loss.
It is from this space that I am writing to you this morning.
The world feels as though she is on a precipice. She is holding something in her arms and wonders what she should do. This is the vision I see. Below her feet lay many cliffs that once hemmed us hither. Today, they provide no limiting power. Further on and far beyond lays a plain of sun-bowled grasses and meandering moors that rise into minor swells and broken rolls of jagged rocks. Even further, sleeps a world less comfortable but more satisfying. It is there she is looking. There, from the many and moist vales of this farther land issues a ceaseless smoke that mutters now from the few warm hearths that climb the cliff and winds around its near-shear face into a curling grin of vomit. The smoke drifts about Earth as she stands on this precipice. It is a grey murk that pales into a soft trundling of ash like loosed leaves. Earth meets the smoke and ash, the vomit, high in the heights. She stands there, perched on the edge and is thinking, feeling, dreaming.
It is here that the decision must be made. I am convinced, like so many others, that stories matter. Not tropes, not genres of literature, not even classics that behest their recurrent and white-tower readership. Story. It is the storyteller that Earth is holding. It is the storyteller that she will blame. It is the storyteller that will be the first to fall or the first to rise.
It is out of this conviction that I decided to write my latest book, what I am calling a Kincentric Mythological Fantasy. It is my debut novel, if you like. An animistic and deeply polemic work for a new future carried in a thrilling retelling of ancient myth.
If this interests you, I would be honored to get a copy in your hands! You can purchase on our website or Amazon. It is a blessing to sit with you in this way and it is a true joy to share this pretty booger with you :D
The book is narrated by the amazing and wonderful
and is available on Amazon’s Audible.
Description:
An ancient people discover the brutality of peace in The Plain of Pillars, a sweeping mythological (Irish) fantasy and climate sci-fi series that “weaves a vibrant tapestry of hope, resilience, and magik” (Literary Titan), and interrogates the roots of colonialism and heritage.
A melody once existed. It created the Rim of the World where life lives humbly and as the limbs of the land’s many colors. It was primal, untamed, and boundless. A boy, born from the yellowing mane of a horse, enters a world where gods walk with mortals, trees whisper secrets to stones, and stones morph into glistening tapestries red as blood. But it did not last…
The People of Síraide’s bond is tested in the fires of slavery and war, and together they must uncover an ancient secret held in the heart of them all.
Blurbs and Reviews:
"The Plain of Pillars retells Celtic myths and revitalizes ancient folkloric traditions, weav[ing] a powerful critique ... of colonization, apathy, and individualism. Griffith demonstrates a mastery of genre fiction and mythology, employing narrative techniques that are both lyrically impressive and philosophically engaging.”
– INDEPENDENT BOOK REVIEW
“A captivating retelling of Celtic mythology that will resonate with modern readers…with compelling characters, intriguing dialogue, and evocative descriptions, Griffith keeps this folkloric tale alive and vibrant…the novel itself feels like a form of resistance against colonization and cultural extinction.”
– KIRKUS REVIEWS
"The prose itself is a triumph, a stunning reinterpretation of Celtic mythology. The lyrical tone lends a dreamlike quality to the narrative, beautifully blending the mythical and the emotional. Griffith bridges antiquity and the present, weaving a vibrant tapestry of hope, resilience, and magic…[with] thematic undercurrents infusing the story with urgency and depth, creating a tale as reflective as it is captivating. The Plain of Pillars will leave you with a sense of wonder and a renewed appreciation for the delicate, eternal balance between creation and destruction."
– LITERARY TITANS
“Griffith’s wonderful work, The Plain of Pillars, transports the reader into ancient Ireland, a misty dream like world through the genesis story of a people who come from the stars. Set in an ancient land after the last ice age, the story introduces the epic battle between the People of the Síraide and the Oceaners, where life must struggle as a tribe to survive on the island known as Ériu-land (Ireland). The god-king Balor brings the world of the Rim to a seeming unavoidable apocalypse, except for the hero’s journey of Long Arm, the son of Pryderi and the reincarnation of the leader Luchta. It is his love of Mother Earth matched with the nurturing and teaching of Bacharigu, the youngest of The Mothers, who can together save the world, if only heeded. Griffith has retold an ancient, Irish story that is strikingly like other ancient narratives that proves to me that we are all indeed related.”
– TAYLOR KEEN, author of Rediscovering Turtle Island: A First People’s Account of the Sacred Geography of America.
"Griffith’s unique use of the crow as a narrator of war and destruction, as well as community and unity, aligns with the diverse belief across many cultures that the crow is a symbol of destiny and power as well as associated with darkness, evil, death and war. Written in stunningly beautiful, descriptive prose, The Plains of Pillars uses ancient myth to illuminate modern day issues."
– JANET ROBERTS, author of What Lies We Keep
"An extraordinary book, The Plain of Pillars enchanted me into silence. A great many people should read this book and become just as enchanted. It is potent and activating, a stirring, a remembering of ancient bones and so much more and I feel this is a part of it all, it’s timing is without a doubt divine."
– CHELITA Kahutianui o-te-Rangi ZAINEY, indigenous Māori storyteller and healer, mokopuna of the Waitaha nation.
“As the old system crumbles, the new will be built out of the stories we tell ourselves and each other about ourselves, each other and our place on this animate earth as conscious nodes in the web of life. If we’re going to build new systems, we need old myths told in new ways and Griffith’s outstanding book, The Plain of Pillars, offers us a grand, beautiful, enchanting story, winding back and forth through plains of ideas and being: new-being and old-being, being as a part of becoming, being something greater than we imagine until it’s upon us. This is a beautiful book in all ways, and an essential step in our exploration of who we could be if we really cared about transformation.”
– MANDA SCOTT, author of Any Human Power and host of the Accidental Gods podcast.
“Shivers across the body, palpitations of emotion, struck by thoughts of awe, captivated by words—this book is felt! Weaving from a space before time, The Plain of Pillars is a poetic blueprint for reverence and morality. A great gift for a world in need.”
– DANE SCOTT, indigenous Māori storyteller, Taonga Pūoro musician, and filmmaker.
“Griffith weaves an epic, dreamlike mythopoesis - a powerful, deeply inspired, animist folktale for our imperiled times.”
– MAREN MORGAN,
P.S. This post has not been edited through the proper channels and could have some spelling mistakes or grammatical oopsies. I am running late to sit the sunrise with the horses and, frankly, I dont care. Off I go with a ceremony of thankfulness.
stories are the way we build and create and carve and shape and become.. but you know that. Thank you for continuing to bring them alive to us
Stories matter to me!! And thank you for sharing your stories, this book was fantastic on my first read, and I am excited to revisit it again, as you continue your storytelling journey. You have added so many books to my reading list, you fascinate me and I feel called to read every book you speak about in your podcast. Thank you for your gifts.