Ceallaigh's Blog

My next offering in the series of free spoken audio for The Ruin of Beltany Ring: A Collection of Pagan Poems and Tales is now available here and on SoundCloud. Check it out!

My next offering in the series of free spoken audio for The Ruin of Beltany Ring: A Collection of Pagan Poems and Tales is now available here and on SoundCloud. Check it out!

I think I finally have our family recipe down to a science for this hugely delicious and nutritious hot beverage, so I thought I'd share it. I use a Vitamix to both blend and heat it, but you could easily substitute that for a saucepan and whisk, though you'd have to figure out your powdered ginger proportions in that case.

Ingredients

2 Cups Almond Milk
1 TBSP Agave Nectar
1 TSP Turmeric
1/2 TSP Cinnamon
1/8 TSP Cardamom
Thumbnail-Sized Chunk of Fresh Ginger
Pinch of Black Pepper

Directions

Toss everything into the Vitamix and blend on high until it's hot. Easy-peasey.

My next offering in the series of free spoken audio for The Ruin of Beltany Ring: A Collection of Pagan Poems and Tales is now available here and on SoundCloud. Check it out!

My next offering in the series of free spoken audio for The Ruin of Beltany Ring: A Collection of Pagan Poems and Tales is now available here and on SoundCloud. Check it out!

After many months of planning to release a second edition of The Ruin of Beltany Ring: A Collection of Pagan Poems and Tales, I began work on the publishing end of the project this week and then promptly dropped the idea. Originally, I had thought to unpublish the first edition and replace it with a second that bore my own ISBN. But this week I realized that was a more cumbersome and imperfect process than I cared to undertake for a body of work already so long in the tooth (some of these stories and poems are a decade old). So I dropped the ...

Heathen professor of mythology Karl E. H. Seigfried was recently asked to appear on BBC Up All Night, hosted by Dotun Adebayo, to discuss the new Pagan temple under construction in Iceland. Dr. Seigfried was presented with a specific list of topics beforehand, which were mutually agreed-upon, but when Adebayo began the live interview, he went off-script. In a tone that dripped smirking condescension, he called Northern European Paganism a violent fantasy and asked Dr. Seigfried a series of insulting questions designed to trip him up and tittilate listeners.

I thought Dr. Seigfried handled the man well, but this is exactly the sort of behavior Pagans and Heathens sometimes encounter when they make efforts to engage the public. For example, a couple of years ago a prominent member of the Gaelic community here - who by his own admission only knew about Paganism from YouTube - led me into just such a...

Note: If you haven't read the previous installments, you can find them here:

The Vegan Pagan: Introduction
The Vegan Pagan: Interstice the First
The Vegan Pagan: Interstice the Second
The Vegan Pagan: Your Health
...

I wrote the other day about the possibility that I might serialize Twilight of the World Sea People, and I've decided to hold off on that a while, for a few important reasons. First, it would be much harder to build a readership entirely from self-publishing now than it would be later as a traditionally-published writer with one or two novels under my belt. This is a well-known downside to self-publishing; that no matter how good a book is, finding readers for it is harder for people without the reach of a traditional publisher. Second, the book I have outlined and ready to write now (Motherland I) might genuinely be a better first book in the series, and it would represent a second opportunity to introduce a traditional publisher to this universe. Third, I would have the opportunity to revise TWSP in light of further storytelling in the series and present it as a possible Book III (Motherland is a duology).

Yes, I'm frustrated about TWSP. It's tough to sit on a...

I finished the recording for "Grandmother Mælkevejen's Belly", and it sounds good. However, I didn't get all the way through The Ruin of Beltany Ring, so I'll need to head back up to my friend's cabin sometime in the next month or so to finish, if the space is available. After this experience, and because I'll be doing spoken audio for the rest of my career, we're considering sound-proofing part of the attic. It would save time and money in the long run, and there are enough artists in the area that we might be able to rent the space from time to time.

Here's the trailer I made for the story. I should point out that the incredible, black-and-white art in the piece is the handiwork of artist Nancy Farmer, who was commissioned by Murky Depths some time ago to illustrate my epistolary story "The Longest Road in the Universe". That tale takes place five hundred years before this one in the same universe, and it is...

2014 was a good year for my writing. I had the opportunity to read my work at the Baddeck Public Library and the World Fantasy Convention, was accepted to the council of the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia, was interviewed for Jolene Dawe's Celebrating Pagan Fiction series and received positive reviews for "The Daemons of Tairdean Town" and "N is for Nanomachine", which also garnered a Pushcart nomination. I also had several pieces appear in print:

In Print

Poems

"Sol Prayer: by the Oracle duality Chang...

As part of my final edits for "C is for Change" (yeah, I let the title slip the other day in social networking, ah well *grin*), I needed an easy-to-follow means of revisiting the story's magic system to make certain it was consistent throughout. So I flow charted it. I probably should have created something like this closer to the beginning of the drafting process, but I did find it helpful in edits, and I'll likely create a similar flow chart for future storytelling processes of this kind.

There aren't any spoilers in the chart, so I thought I'd share it with you in the hope you might find it helpful to your own writing. I used an online service called Gliffy and found it helpful, but I'll likely look for a Linux or MacOS solution going forward.

Here's the chart. You can visit the image page and view a larger version by clicking on it:
...

It is best for man to be middle-wise,
Not over cunning and clever:
The learned man whose lore is deep
Is seldom happy at heart.
- The Hávamál

It seems I always come back to this quote from the Hávamál when I consider the possibility of furthering my formal education. As a person with a Master's degree, I feel solidly middle-wise by modern standards; I've made a respectable academic effort, and yet the esoterica offered by a terminal degree program are outside my frame of reference. I've considered this degree or that; a MA in Ethnomusicology, Icelandic Studies or Celtic, a MFA in Writing, a PhD in English, a Bachelor of Science in Physics, and all of these are within my grasp if I want them enough.

Yet there is more to knowing than knowledge, and there are processes to the acquisition of that knowledge that shape the mind in specific ways. For instance, because I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, and because I...

I'm delighted to announce that "N is for Nanomachine", my epistolary short story for the A is for Apocalypse anthology, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Details here.

In light of recent Pagan conversations around the blogosphere on the topic of animal sacrifice, I thought I'd skip ahead in the Vegan Pagan series to offer the animal-centric perspective I had scheduled for January. I'll be back on track next month.

Good Samhain to all!

- Ceallaigh

Modern Paganism has more than a few bloody roots. The early Celts practiced both animal sacrifice and human ritual killing...

I'm in the middle of a long Linux HPLIP installation, so I thought I'd write a quick catch-up post. Last weekend, I attended the gala event and Saturday workshops of the Cabot Trail Writers Festival and had the privilege of learning from Canadian writer Anne Simpson. She facilitated two excellent workshops; 'The Image at the Heart of the Poem' and 'The Story in a Box', which I used to practice my realism skills, having not participated in a literary writing workshop for some time. Here's the little poem I wrote for the first workshop:

clipped from a cooling body
black raven feather
fanned on a wing
moments ago
in flight

This...

Note: If you haven't yet read The Vegan Pagan: Introduction, The Vegan Pagan: Interstice the First and The Vegan Pagan: Interstice the Second, I encourage you to do so before moving on to this entry.

This is the least intersectional and least spiritual of the entries I'll be writing on veganism and Paganism. The reason is simple. If a vegan diet is bad for your body, this...

I've been following the Facebook conversation around my first post in this series, and I'd like to address a few things here that I hope will help to facilitate a more congenial conversation around this topic going forward.

First, to my fellow vegan Pagans: If you've allowed yourself to be baited into flaming on Facebook, you're not helping the animals, the Earth or yourself. Difficult as it is to do, you need to remain calm when you address non-vegans in cyberspace, even when you're treated unfairly. Remember what you believe in, and let your ethics guide your...

In the next several weeks, I'll be discussing intersections between veganism and Paganism. As a long-time vegan, animal rights activist and wildlife rescuer, I believe I can bring a perspective to the discussion that might be helpful to vegans and non-vegans alike. But before I do that, I think it's important to lay some groundwork, and that's what this entry is all about.

First, I'd like you to check in with your body and your emotions right now. Take a breath and ask yourself if reading the last paragraph left your neck, shoulders or any other part of your body feeling tight or tense. Consciously release those muscles. Give 'em some love. Now ask your mind, heart and gut if they've thrown up any defenses to the topic at hand. Acknowledge those...

DATE: GCT 20:982:6:45:1:7:1

Been slingin' this camera for thirty years and never seen a show like the one I shot today. President Incien stood up in front of a bunch of kids and showed the UAP how bad it's gettin' here, how them nanomachines are makin' the world into something we can't live in. Then she said the kids were gonna try and cross the orbital barricade in a refitted fuel carrier, but we all figured she was sendin' 'em up to die. Hell, even they figured it. Bravest people I ever did meet, though. Broke my heart to watch 'em head off for launch prep. Great Mother, I hope they die quick, if it comes to that.

Speakin' of dyin' quick, I ain't got that luxury. The VCN dragged my arthritic bones out of retirement and stuffed this...

This is just a quick, interstitial post about a thing I found online today. The attached meme tells us that the word 'tenalach' is Irish and 'describes a relationship one has with the land, air and water, a deep connection that allows one to literally hear the Earth sing'.

According to my Irish dictionary and the researches of several Irish-speaking commenters on the original post, this word does not exist in the language. In fact, it violates a basic principle of Irish spelling.

Folks, this is what cultural appropriation looks like. It matters less that the spiritual concept is gorgeous and fulfilling than it does that Irish language and culture were inappropriately overlaid upon it to...

I'm working on a number of short projects right now; the next story in the alphabet series of anthologies, an ebook and audio release of "Grandmother Mælkevejen's Belly", a second edition of The Ruin of Beltany Ring and a possible science fiction and fantasy collection in the spring. I'm still a small player in the writing community, but it occurs to me that some of these short projects and the bigger projects that follow might find themselves on free download sites in the months to come.

That's okay.

There are a ton of reasons why people download free fiction, and it doesn't matter to me which reason motivates someone to download my work. It matters to me that it found a home. That's why I write the stuff to begin with. So download it, fill up your hard...

Last month, I wrote about the psychological dynamics behind the sacred spaces we create together and the ways we might utilize the power of sacred space to create a better world. This month, I'll be writing about what happens when the people to whom we have given power abuse it, and in doing so weaken both the internal and external cultures of the imagination we've worked so hard to build. Specifically, I'll be writing about the work of Marion Zimmer Bradley (MZB), its influence upon a generation of Pagan women and the destructive effects of the recent pedophilia allegations against her.

The younger Pagans among you might not recognize the name, but if you're a Pagan woman of a certain age, you'll remember that MZB is the author of a much-beloved novel called The Mists of Avalon. This novel tells the Arthurian story from the point of view of its women and follows the life of Morgaine, otherwise known as Morgan le Fay. It was released in 1983, just a few years...

I'm in post-production for the audio recording of Grandmother Mælkevejen's Belly and thought I'd share some insights from my first stint as an audio actor and sound engineer. As I mentioned some weeks ago, I'm recording from my attic using the iRig MIC Cast and iRig Recorder on my iPod and Audacity on Kubuntu for final mixing of audio takes.

The hardware/software combination is a good one. The iRig MIC plugs right into the iPod audio jack and is sensitive enough for small projects of this kind, but it's also sensitive enough to pick up the low-...