A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran

Ciara O’Dwyer is a young woman raising a daughter alone in the Five Points slums of 1870; Johnny McCormack is a struggling actor drawn to the nascent folk music movement in Greenwich Village 1960; and Lewis Healy is a successful Irishman who’s come to present-day Manhattan on his wife’s anniversary-present promise to reveal the connection between him and them. The mystery originates with Ciara’s runaway husband, who disappeared after promising to join her in America, and carries into midcentury when Johnny, devastated by an unexpected romance and a lost shot at musical fame, gets a supernatural visitor.

Gone to Amerikay will be out in March. That is only two months from now. Have you asked your store to order it? Please do. Here is our lovely cover.

The graphic novel Gone to Amerikay is written by Derek McCulloch, with art by me. Our handsome colors are provided by Jose Villarubia.

For more information on Gone to Amerikay, click on the tag below.

The book is now at the printer, and preview copies elicited this fine response.

“Ghost story or detective fiction? History or
mythology? Drawing on the freewheeling spirit
of Irish and Irish-American popular culture,
Gone To aMerIKaY is all of these. A tale that
takes place simultaneously in 1870, 1960 and 2010,
it recognizes that though enormous changes have
taken place over time in the relationship between
the New World and the Old Country, some things,
like love, justice and respect, are timeless and
imperative. With thrilling illustrations, rich with
the color and mood of these passions, you will find
yourself unable to avoid lingering at length on them
before picking up the story again.”
— Philip Chevron
The Pogues

“Gone To aMerIKaY’s a wonderful story, lushly
illustrated, full of music and passion, twists and turns,
beautifully evoking the Irish immigrant experience
in three different times and sewing them all together
brilliantly at the end. A real treat, for those who
love New York history, or just a great story.”
— Kevin Baker
(Paradise Alley, Dreamland, LUNA PARK)

“Gone To aMerIKaY is not just a great book,
it’s an important book. It uses the immigrant
experience to talk about us, who we are, how and
why we came here, with some echoes of where we
might be going. The art is superb, containing some
of the best and most evocative images of the period
you’re ever going to see, and the story is wide in
scope but intimate in its details as it flashes forward
and backward in time. Forget the hype, this is going
to be THE book of 2012.”
— J. Michael Straczynski
(SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE,
Babylon Five, Changeling)

Thank you, gentleman, for your very kind words.

Please ask for Gone to Amerikay at your local bookstore. If this book does well, publishers will make more of them. And they will hire Derek and I to make them. That would be wonderful. I loved doing this book. Projects like this are why I got into comics. There aren’t enough projects like this, though. We should fix that.

Listen to a nice discussion of Gone to Amerikay, featuring Derek and me HERE.

Here is a handy order Amazon link button, but please always consider your bookstore first.

Thank you.

This is quite a nice interview by Bob Bretall about our upcoming graphic novel Gone to Amerikay, the book I should have had finished months ago, but a small handful of work remains on my lap. And I whine, knowing I will not get to see a damned thing in the weeks I’ve been in Australia because I’ve been working and enjoying a bout of food poisoning. Which is one way to keep from gaining weight while eating obscene amounts of sugary junk food for drawing energy! I was up until 3 AM, because every page of GTA is actually two days worth of work, and if I want to finish this monster, that means 18 hours days.

For three more days.

I pity me.

So, go listen to this fab interview.

I land in New Zealand next week.