J.M. Lane is an Amazon #1 bestselling and award-winning Irish author, best known for The Setanta and the Lady by the Water: The Raven Chronicles Book 1 and Setanta and the hungry ones.
Originally from Ennis, Co. Clare on Ireland’s west coast, Lane moved to Sligo at nineteen to work as an artist. Before turning to writing full time, he worked in many fields including art, social care, digital design, policing, and even chimney sweeping.
After a cancer diagnosis, he decided his dream of writing could wait no longer. That leap of faith led to the creation of The Raven Chronicles and to Setanta and the Lady by the Water receiving the Five Star Award from the Open Book Awards.
J.M. Lane has since become a bestselling author in both Ireland and the United States, writing stories that blend Irish myth, family, and the quiet magic of ordinary life. He continues to write from the northwest of Ireland, where Atlantic winds and old legends guide his words each day.
J.M. Lane is an Amazon #1 bestselling and award-winning Irish author, best known for The Setanta and the Lady by the Water: The Raven Chronicles Book 1 and Setanta and the hungry ones.
Originally from Ennis, Co. Clare on Ireland’s west coast, Lane moved to Sligo at nineteen to work as an artist. Before turning to writing full time, he worked in many fields including art, social care, digital design, policing, and even chimney sweeping.
A boy of two worlds. A famine that walks. A demon that never died.
Setanta never asked to be the son of legends. His mother is the Morrígan, goddess of battle and fate. His father is Cú Chulainn, the Hound of Ulster. But when famine spreads across Ireland and the dead rise as hollow, briar-filled husks, destiny will no longer wait.
Setanta and the Lady by the Water A mythic coming-of-age novella rooted in Irish folklore and shadowed grief.
Setanta knows only this: his mother vanished, his father is a ghost of a man, and something ancient is following them. From haunted towns to forgotten hills, they chase the Lady by the Water, a banshee whose song marks the doomed. But when...
The blend of Irish mythology, danger, and heart made this book impossible to put down.
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Ronald Betta
The writing is lyrical and atmospheric, steeped in Irish myth and raw emotion.
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Jon Burrows
This takes you to the heart of Irish folklore. Beautifully written. A heartfelt story of love, good verses evil, banshees and fae. I can’t wait to read more from this author. One to watch
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...
The wait is nearly over. On March 30th, the next chapter in the bestselling, award-winning Raven Chronicles arrives on Kindle, with the paperback landing April 1st—and this time, the story does not hold back. Setanta is no longer the boy who stood at the water’s edge. The world has opened, and what waits within it is older, darker, and far more violent. Villages fall silent. The land itself feels wrong. And at the centre of it all is a name whispered in fear—the Blood King. This is a story of...
When I first began writing The Raven Chronicles, it started as a much smaller story than it has become today.
At its heart, it was simply a tale about a family. A father, a mother, and a boy trying to understand the strange world he had been born into. The first book, Setanta and the Lady by the Water, follows that quiet beginning. It is a story about discovery, about a young boy slowly realising that the stories whispered in Ireland’s hills and rivers may be far more real than anyone ever...
While the world of the Raven Chronicles continues to grow, I’ve also been quietly working on something very different. My upcoming novel, Where the Curlew Sings, steps away from Setanta and the world of myth to tell a darker, more grounded story set in the Irish landscape itself. This is a crime-horror novel rooted deeply in Ireland’s ancient past, its folklore, and the quiet places where history and belief still linger in the soil. It explores how the old world and the modern one often sit...
