J.M. Lane’s haiku appear in Rain and Roots: A Nature & Earth Haiku Anthology, a new international collection celebrating the natural world through one of poetry’s smallest forms.

The anthology brings together writers from different countries and backgrounds, each capturing brief moments of landscape, weather, memory and place in just a handful of lines.

For anyone who enjoys haiku, nature writing, or simply discovering new poets, Rain and Roots is well worth a look. It is also a lovely way...

Night Waters
I am getting older.
My prostate has swollen
in sympathy with my belly,
So now I drink less water
before bed,a peace offering
For the body.
Still, sometime after midnight
comes that little dart
low in the stomach.
Up.
Bare feet on cold floor,
quick little steps
to the bathroom,
and there,in the dark,
I sit down to pee
like a lady.
Women are clever.
Why have men spent centuries
standing up for this?
Then back to bed,
careful not to wake herself,
which means, naturally,
pressing both freezing feet
against...

The following is a poem to honour the love my uncle Pa Malone has for his partner , Annie, my Aunt who sadly passed away.

The church is hot.
The smell of cut grass
Flows through the open doors.
Inside, the heat has drawn something sweet
from the mahogany pews.
That is what I remember.
And the quiet, broken now and then
by a cough, a child being shushed,
shoes scraping the floor,
the pews creaking when somebody moves.
There are no seats left.
My feet hurt.
I stand at the back, shifting my weight
from leg to...

A quick update for everyone following Setanta’s journey.
I’m delighted to say that Setanta and the Blood King will be released April 1st.
To celebrate, I’m giving away a free...

A quick update for everyone following the journey of Setanta.
I’m delighted to say that Setanta and the Blood King will be released April 1st.
This is the third book in the Raven...

Who’s There? is the first directing work from Irish writer J.M. Lane, a short horror film made with almost nothing except a small room, a phone and the idea that sometimes what you cannot see is far worse than what you can.

Running at under four minutes, the film follows a terrified man who rushes into a confined room and hides from something outside. The camera never moves. Whatever is hunting him remains largely unseen, and as the film develops another possibility begins to creep in: perhaps...

The Gardener

When Martin Byrne came down from Dublin, the people in Glenamaddy all thought he
was a poor example of a man, and the poor fella should be left alone. That was how
they said it, even to Martin himself.
“Ah, poor lad.”
He was not poor in money. Martin had always had plenty of money and had bought the
old Burke place in Glenamaddy outright, along with a new jeep with Dublin plates and
leather seats.
Poor they meant in the other way, the more meaningful poor. The way a man is poor
when...

I have always liked stories in whatever form they come.

Books obviously, but also paintings, podcasts , film, photography amd more than anything somebody sitting at a table telling you something that happened to them thirty years ago or thirty seconds ago.

Recently I decided to try telling one through film. Not in any grand way. I had a phone, a tiny space, myself and an idea for a short horror film called Whose There?

That was pretty much the production budget.

There was o crew or fancy camera....