“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Friday, May 9, 2008

“And Now For A Little Comedy Sketch …”

An interesting little digression away from our usual flummery, people, courtesy of Scamp. Fintan Taite was … no, let’s allow Fintan tell the story. Fintan, you rascally drawing-type scamp, sir? Take it away …
“Hodder Headline commissioned me to do an illustration for the cover of Twenty Major’s first book, THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX PARK, based on characters from his profanity-filled popular blog: twentymajor.net.
“At the time of commissioning there was no text from the book available so I was sent a description of the characters and a brief outline of the plot. They also supplied me with a rough sketch their cover designer had put together as a guide. The illustration was to take up about 50% of the available cover space.
  “The first thing I noticed about the rough was that all the characters had their backs turned, which I immediately had major reservations about … I felt the coarse humour of the book and blog would be much better served by establishing what the characters looked like at a glance … and to be honest, much more fun to draw from my point of view. I did a quick character sketch of Twenty and sent it off to the art director to show how I was thinking …”
For the rest, and to see how the cover art was built up frame-by-frame, jump on over here. Or here. We’re not fussy …

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