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Writer's pictureJeh Bruce

Inspiration

Updated: Aug 28, 2019


Jack B. Yeats' woodblock print, "Road to the Night Mountains'. I bought this small print at W. B. Yeats' home, Thoor Ballylee, in County Clare, Ireland, in July, 1976. While unassuming to most who happen to see it (it can be easily missed), this print is one of my most prized possessions, as I am a life-long fan of the work of W. B. Yeats and once introduced, became a fan of his brother Jack's work as well. I carried it all over Europe that blazingly hot summer, carefully rolled up and stowed in my backpack, then once home (it suffered no damage, not even a slight fold of a corner, or foxing around the edges, which is amazing considering how much stuff I had stuffed in that backpack), I framed it and it has been my companion ever since, moving from home to home, and finally finding its final spot above an antique, carved oak Irish side-table. To me there has always been something magical about this image of the Night Mountains, something deeply melancholy in their quiet beckoning, and at the same time, hopeful as to what one might find on the other side. The image, and the meanings it held for me, was also inspiring. Two of my novels, so disparate in their settings, one a hard military SF novel, "Path to the Night Mountains", and the other, "Borrowing Trouble", a near future murder mystery set in part on Jupiter's moon, Io, can trace their origins directly back to this woodblock and in W. B. Yeats haunting tales of the Fae.

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