Ceallaigh's Blog
Our fearless leader Rhonda Parrish has organized a Facebook party for the release of the A is for Apocalypse anthology! Here's the link to the Facebook event and to my web site calendar event.
It will be ongoing throughout the day on August 19th, so I hope you'll drop by and say hello!
Yesterday, I wrote about Patreon, a service that connects writers, artists and other content creators with audiences willing to pay a small subscription fee for fresh, monthly content. With the help of friends and fellow writers on Google+, I've decided it isn't for me at the present time, and thought I'd share some of that discussion with you.
One writer mentioned that he doesn't use the service but knows several people who do because they remind him fairly regularly via social networking. That made me cringe a bit, since Sean and I moderate an online community of several thousand vegans and see that sort of spam nearly every day. It's annoying, and we moderate it out because nobody wants to be spammed. This brings me to an important point about the Patreon service; the audience doesn't come in the box with the rest of your membership. You have to pick that up separately. So if you don't already have an audience for your work, you're going to be advertising for it in a social networking environment where people frown on spam. I do have a small audience for my work via con appearances, interviews, reviews, regular blog posts for BBI Media and my quarterly newsletter, but I don't want to pester those folk into paying more attention to my work than their natural interest dictates. Yes, I do post about my writing life and the things that are happening in it, and yes, if I have a shiny new story out or a giveaway going on or some other such thing, I'll tell you about it. But that's a bit different, I think.
Take a look at this. G'won. I'll wait: Andrea Phillips' Patreon Account
It'a a pretty cool idea, no? You pay a dollar or two a month and get a steady dose of fantastical fiction from someone committed to the craft. She gets to write short stories for an audience who already likes her work or wants to like it.
Great reading last night at the library. Many thanks to Cora-Lee, Laverne and Kate for inviting me to come, and many more thanks to the people who attended. Finally, Sean was brilliant as a second reader for the intros and outros of my epistolary tale, and it was tremendous fun to read with him.
So, "N is for Nanomachine" belongs to the world now. "But Ceallaigh," you might ask, "why is the Clockwork Phoenix antho in the picture? Weren't you reading a story from A is for Apocalypse?"
What a great question! My story for the Clockwork Phoenix antho takes place in the same universe that "N is for Nanomachine" does. So if you like the one, you might like the other...
Recently, I saw a photo of an old, Pagan friend on Facebook. He was wearing a great kilt and a body full of blue paint, likely woad. His arms were crossed, and he was laughing at something off-camera. Behind him, a woman in jeans and a sweater walked down a garden path with a sword in her hand. There were tents and green trees in the background. I remembered his laughter as it had been when I knew him and missed the days when I could sit with kilted friends on American hillsides and talk of a Scotland that never was.
I'm pleased to announce that I will soon be releasing a Lodhuven novelette entitled 'Grandmother Mælkevejen's Belly' under the Triskele Media imprint! This story takes place several hundred years after 'The Longest Road in the Universe' and explores the lives of Lodhuven descendants whose broken genome forces them to seek salvation from near-mythical Bodhuven dissidents rumored to be trapped in the event horizon of a supermassive black hole. Here's a little something from the story to whet your appetite:
One of the problems I've faced as an irregularly published writer is an irregular output of words. It's been that way for ten years; sometimes because I allow my life to get in the way of my work and sometimes because I'm just a slow writer. I'm envious of people who can crank out 2000 words a day and edit only a little thereafter; that sort of output from me would end up looking like, 'All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy. All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy. All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy....' You get the idea.
What It Is
A is for Apocalypse contains twenty-six apocalyptic stories written by both well-known and up-and-coming writers. Monsters, meteors, floods, war–the causes of the apocalypses in these tales are as varied as the stories themselves.
This volume contains work by Ennis Drake, Beth Cato, Kenneth Schneyer, Damien Angelica Walters, K. L. Young, Marge Simon, Milo James Fowler, Simon Kewin, C.S. MacCath, Steve Bornstein and more!
I'm delighted to announce that my short, epistolary story "The Longest Road in the Universe" will appear in Hyperpulp, where it will be published in both Portugese and English. This story originally appeared in Murky Depths Issue #7 alongside Nancy Farmer's phenomenal illustrations.
This month and bho am gu am (from time to time) hereafter, I'll be sharing Gàidhlig music with you. Sometimes that music will have specific applicability to Paganism, but more often than not I'll just be passing along bits of song culture I think you might find interesting. I'll always provide Gàidhlig lyrics and their translations, and I'll always provide recordings of my renditions of the pieces.
Today I'm sharing a strathspey Port-à-beul* with you. 'Puirt-à-beul' is Gàidhlig for 'tunes from the mouth'; instrumental pieces sung to simple, sometimes nonsense lyrics often for traditional dance accompaniment. Strathspeys are in 4/4 time but are slower and accented differently from reels, which are also in 4/4 time. Finally, mouth tunes are usually sung in pairs, but I'll save the reel I learned with this strathspey for another entry.
Here are the lyrics, and you'll find my recording below. I hope you enjoy them, and Happy Beltane!