Jagged C Press

Jagged C Press is the independent publishing imprint of author Liam Howley.

Author Liam Howley

Liam Howley was born in 1977. Upon receiving a bachelor's degree in Forestry from University College Dublin, he disappeared into the sea of green that is Amazonian Peru. Emerging with the first leaves of The Absurd Demise of Poulnabrone in hand, he returned to his native city of Dublin, where he lives with his wife and daughter. He loves... "the curl and turn of well wrought words. The wrung out meaning." And literature from the Americas. And when the night is young and the world sleeping, the solitude of the page.

Fonts

The Jagged C Press logo, as with the Jagged C Press header, employs the elegant sans-serif Junction typeface, and overlays an outline of Dublin bay. All other text are set with the commanding and humanist Goudy Bookletter 1911 typeface. The Absurd Demise of Poulnabrone uses Sorts Mill Goudy throughout, with League Gothic on the spine and front cover.

Acknowledgements

The Jagged C Press project has been from conception a one man affair, with the following notable exceptions:

For editorial services on The Absurd Demise of Poulnabrone, Katie Cox. Both meticulous and dedicated, she spared no red ink. All credit is earned.
To the many designers and developers of the open source community, who remain for the most part anonymous, but provide countless hours of labour on their various projects. When they're not busy coding, they often appear on various forums offering invaluable advice and expertise. They are immense. They include, but are not limited to:
- The powerful and professional desktop publishing program Scribus.
- A drawing program with which I have yet to scratch the surface Inkscape.
- The outstandingly versatile image manipulation program Gimp.
- For the creation of Epub e-books: Sigil.
- For the conversion of e-books: Calibre.
- For Libre Office or indeed open office, both of which I have used with satisfaction.
- To the people at Wordpress, and all who sail in her. And in that vein the creators of the Starkers theme. This site is a derivation.
- For a beautiful and easy to use Linux desktop Linux Mint. Linux seems to scare a lot of people. It really shouldn't. I have found it to be everything I needed it to be and more. Make the switch!

To Thomas Tom Oberbichler, for his aptly named Sigil Walkthrough. Stay wonderful Tom.
To the good folk of The Four Courts Hostel. There's no finer hostel to be found in Dublin. But be nice to the night-porters if you should enjoy a night or two there.

There are many more to thank I am sure. Not least the wonderful people who share my life. I love you all.

Submissions

Thinking of submitting a manuscript. Please reconsider. Jagged C Press has an exclusive list, with no plan for expansion. It truly is an independent imprint, in the strictest sense of the term. If however, independent publishing is an option you would like to pursue, feel free to drop in on the Jagged C Blog where advice and links may sporadically appear, or alternatively, send me an email. I will be delighted to hear from you.

The Jagged C

I stood watching from the side and,
felt the ground shift as I waited,
the sand packed tight between my toes, being
pulled, towed away,
the ground cratering,
forcing me to bunch my feet
as each sheen of tide withdrew.

I watched one foreland face the other,
two rocky crags marking this Jagged C,
two ends of a torc,
being bent towards each other,
and me on the strand
with the seals braying,
urging them on,
wondering when one would strike and the other fall.

To my right as I stared over this watery patch
lay the Bull Wall,
the haft of William Bligh's scian
catching the currents swirling turn.
Running south the hills of Wicklow
from which the Liffey dodders along,
and so the Dodder.
Ah, no matter when they merge.

Tales are fattened here;
trickle down to engorge the sea,
their myriad voices a meld that is never silenced,
until the page is turned to the last.
That day will come, but not... not...

She was born from the sea, this imagined city.
Viking born.
A merchants place.
From slave trade to finance,
wearing tattered rags
and ragged seams.

This is the Jagged C.
Torn.
Open.
Two headlands squaring up to each other.
Howth.
Dalkey.
And us in the shallows,
minnows in between.