Ceallaigh's Blog
Hello, and welcome to the May 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 852 "Lying Contest." This month's discussion is all about lies and the liars who tell them, so let's begin with a folk tale featuring the Ash Lad, that underestimated but entirely too clever Norwegian character.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in April 2021.
Hello, and welcome to the first Animism, Folklore, and Storytelling supplement of the Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In late February, I mentioned to followers of my Facebook page that I was planning to explore intersections between folklore, ecological activism, animism, and climate change, all with the needs of storytellers in mind. Animism, Folklore, and Storytelling is part of this plan; a sandbox for testing these intersections before I write the Folklore & Fiction material into a book series. Not everything in my queue is a good fit for the supplement, so sometimes I'll release a whole dispatch and podcast, sometimes I'll tack a paragraph or two onto the monthly offering, and sometimes I won't include anything at all. That said, folk narrative is a rich repository of motifs, plots, and themes related to these topics, so I hope you'll find the discussions interesting, if irregular.
Hello, and welcome to the April 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 780 "The Singing Bone." This month's discussion is all about subversion, so to kick it off, I'll be singing my own subverted rendition of Child Ballad #10, "The Twa Sisters," which is itself listed in the ATU index as an example of the tale type.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in March 2021.
About three years ago, Rhonda Parrish wrote to ask me if I'd like to submit a story for a tarot-themed anthology featuring a tale for each card in the major arcana. I was stoked and pulled the major arcana cards out of one of my (many) tarot decks to ask which card I should write about. I drew The Moon, so I wrote Rhonda and asked for it. She later told me she was at lunch when she received the email, said to her friend that she had never been asked for the moon before, and then replied to me that I could have it. Who knew it was so easy to actually get the moon?
Today, I'm thrilled to announce that Arcana is nearing publication, filled with a deck of stories by a host of talented authors. Rhonda herself writes that:
Tarot card decks have twenty-two major arcana, filled with symbolism and imbued with meaning. Explore the greater secrets and ideas behind those cards with the stories and poems of Arcana. Discovery awaits in tales such as a grasping king struggling with his legacy, an alchemist setting a golem out on a mission of revenge and a woman finding what she didn’t know she was looking for.
Each story is like drawing a card from the deck–you never know what it might reveal.
Featuring stories by Sara Dobie Bauer, Greg Bechtel, Beth Cato, Eliza Chan, Kevin Cockle, Sara Cleto, J.G. Formato, Chadwick Ginther, Joseph Halden, Gabrielle Harbowy, Jim C. Hines, Diana Hurlburt, L.S. Johnson, Dan Koboldt, C.S. MacCath, Susan MacGregor, Cat McDonald, Annie Neugebauer, Alexandra Seidel, Angela Slatter, Sarena Ulibarri, Brittany Warman and BD Wilson.
Hello, and welcome to the March 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 365 "The Dead Bridegroom Carries off His Bride." I'll also be providing an exercise designed to help you adapt the tale type's plots and motif for your own creative purposes. This month's example comes from the Child Ballad collection, and I should probably tell you now that any time I can include a Child Ballad in this series, I will do it with the feral joy of a little girl. What's more, because I love these ballads and because including another person's performance in a podcast can be a copyright headache, I'll be singing them for you myself.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in February 2021.
Congratulations, Nathan!
Folklore & Fiction subscriber Nathan Waddell reached out to me today to tell me that he had sold a story with the help of F&F materials. I'm over the moon for him and can't wait to read it. Meanwhile, he wrote a lovely testimonial. Here it is:
Now that the Folklore & Fiction newsletter has successfully transformed into a dispatch and podcast, I have a bit of news to share with you and a bit of housekeeping to do for you. On tap, news about an upcoming theatrical production and a professional webinar, a handy list of the Folklore & Fiction genre series editions, a question about podcasting the archives, and a new copyright statement posted to my website.
