Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the October 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and it comes to you with a rustling of autumn leaves, a memory of sweet linden tea, and the sharp intake of breath before a sharing of good news. Onward!
Dispatches from the Word Mines
The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore
I've received an offer of contract for The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore. I can't share any more just yet, but the contract process is moving forward at good speed, and I anticipate being able to make an announcement soon.
Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the September 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and it's another brief missive. Onward!
Dispatches from the Word Mines
The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore progresses apace. I'll finish the Curse chapter by the end of this week, which will mean the book is two-thirds completed. I'm aiming for a draft in the late autumn and completed edits by Yuletide, but this will depend on the demands of the Folk Life section of the book, which I'll be writing next.
Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the August 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and it's a short one. Onward!
Dispatches from the Word Mines
My peer reviews are in! I can't really discuss them right now, but you can trust that no news is good news. That said, I am getting closer to a contract, so I need to redouble my efforts to finish The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore. This will entail a change to my monthly offerings, at least for a while. More on that below.
"Passion, Empathy, and Action: A Critical Introduction to The Climate Fiction Writers League" Presented at the International Society for Folk Narrative Research Interim Conference Titled "Nature(s) in Narrative" on June 13, 2026.
In a 2023 article for Esquire magazine, climate fiction author Jeff Vandermeer asks: "Should or can fiction be a manual for useful change?" As the author of the successful eco-horror novel Annihilation and subsequent novels in the Southern Reach Series, and more recently the dystopian climate change novel Hummingbird Salamander, Vandermeer is certainly qualified to discuss the usefulness of climate fiction to instruct and persuade readers. However, he also writes:
Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the July 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and I'll begin it by welcoming the new students assigned to explore the Folklore & Fiction archive! I understand that part of your assignment is to learn about folklore using various resources, so please let me know if you need help with mine. I'm glad to know you're making good use of it.
Dispatches from the Word Mines
I'm back from the International Society for Folk Narrative Research Conference. My paper "Passion, Empathy, and Action: A Critical Introduction to the Climate Fiction Writers League" was well-received among many good papers in my panel, which itself was titled "Narrative Ecologies: Folklore, Fiction, and Cultural Response to Climate Change." It will be your Special Dispatch later this month, so I won't discuss it here.
Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the June 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and it comes to you a week in advance of my departure for Iceland and the ISFNR conference in Reykjavik. Iceland always captivates me long before my feet hit the ground there, and this time I'll also be travelling north to Ásbyrgi Canyon again for the first time in nine years. So part of me is already, inevitably gone as I write these words.
Dispatches from the Word Mines
I'm nearly finished writing the "Superstition" chapter of The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore. Folklorists understand the genre in a few distinct but overlapping ways, and I've included the most critical of these, but I couldn't cram everything I wanted into the chapter. So here's a bit of scholarship that hit the cutting floor:
This Special Dispatch is a meditation upon imagined pasts and their relationship to folklore. In some respects, all pasts are imagined, even the ones we help to create. As individuals, our pasts are constructed by the events we experience, the ways we chronicle those events (journals, letters, photos, etc.), and the objects that stand as reminders of them (heirlooms, memorabilia, etc.) For example, we might go for a walk on a spring day, journal about the leafing trees, and press a flower between the pages of a book. Years later, the memory, journal, and flower might remind us of the walk. But memories can be faulty, journals only capture the highlights of an event, and the pressed flower is only one of many delights we saw that day. To fill in the blanks, we might imagine sunlight or bird song even if we can't exactly remember them.
Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the May 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and I'm writing it on the heels of completing the paper I mentioned last month, which I'll be delivering at the ISFNR conference in Reykjavik this summer. I'm planning to make that paper my Special Dispatch offering for July, so keep an eye out for it then.
Dispatches from the Word Mines
The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore is out for peer review, and I probably won't hear back from my prospective publisher until sometime in June. FYI, this publisher sends robust proposals - and not completed manuscripts - to reviewers, but because the book is over half written, I had plenty of material to provide my peers. I'm so looking forward to signing my contract and sharing my publication news with you in full. Look for it sometime later this year.
On the day I toured Luss and Rossdhu House in Scotland, I also toured the grounds of the Bannachra Estate, which has historical ties to Clan Colquhoun and is presently being renovated into a twenty-first century educational facility complete with solar panels, water collection, gardens, and other sustainability features. I met Dr. Liz Barrett and her husband Rob Lenihan, owners of the estate, and it was Rob who took me on the tour. At one point, he showed me a deep ravine along the edge of the acreage and said that historically, this was the place Clan Colquhoun threw women accused of witchcraft. I was horrified. I wanted to walk to the edge and place myself in the shoes of women whose bodies might still be lying on the ravine floor, even as I recognized the narrative for what it was, a local legend.
Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the April 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and I'm writing it as I begin preparing an academic paper titled "Passion, Empathy, and Action: A Critical Introduction to The Climate Fiction Writers League," which I'll be delivering at the International Society for Folk Narrative Research conference in Reykjavik this year.
Dispatches from the Word Mines
Well, the "Religion" and "Ritual" chapters of The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore are beasts, coming in at over 4500 words each. This is unsurprising, given the subject matter, but I was still sad to cut the material below from the "Ritual" chapter. Long-time subscribers to the Folkbyte newsletter and before it, the Folklore & Fiction dispatch and podcast will recognize the material from the November 2019 edition of the latter, titled "What is a ritual?" It's revised for the book here, so I thought I would share it with you.