Ceallaigh's Blog

I was so busy last week at the storytelling conference I had no time to write and mention that two of my poems were published in the latest and final issue of Astropoetica online.

"Sol Prayer" is among my favorites and a Mythic Delirium reprint. "The Cradle" is new. Hope you enjoy them!

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!

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.

I'm thinking about doing this, for all the reasons she's stated. I've been professionally published, but the market is nose-bleed competitive. I have stories in my head that I want to get out of my head, and I'd like to make money on them. I might even serialize a novel or throw in an audio version of a previously published story from time to time, but I might charge a teeny...

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.

Two years ago, I was visiting Toronto for the World Fantasy Convention and met with another friend in Dundas square; a Pagan Celt and hospital chaplain who wears a torc I don't believe he ever takes off. Like me, he's a graduate of the Celtic Studies program at the University of Toronto, and he introduced me to two other graduates who went with us for chips and a pitcher of beer. We talked about the intersections of our educations and our spiritualities...

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.

And the truth is, I was a better writer when I permitted myself a healthy dose of suspicion for social networking. When I didn't...

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. Hyperpulp editor Alexandre Mandarino is planning to publish the tale in...

Many of you will have already read that long-time Pagan leader Kenny Klein was recently arrested for possession of child pornography. If you have not yet read this news, you can do so here. I was already aware of certain allegations against him stemming from a problematic incident in the 1990s, but the information came to me third-hand, and so I was reluctant to credit it. However, the way the information came to me - via someone who said she was breaking a coven oath to impart it - left me thinking about secrecy in the Pagan community for a long time afterward. More recently, Kenny himself posted a blog entry to the PaganSquare community about the issue of secrecy in...

Greetings Everyone,

Welcome to Issue #11 of my quarterly newsletter, posted to csmaccath.com and e-mailed to subscribers on Beltane 2014.

Appearances

The Baddeck Public Library has graciously invited me to participate in its Thursday evening reading series. I'll be there on June 12th from 6:30 to 7:30 reading my forthcoming story 'N Is for Nanomachine', which will appear in the A Is for Apocalypse anthology.

Interviews

The lovely Jolene Dawe recently interviewed me for her Celebrating Pagan Fiction series! You can check out the interview here. Many thanks to Jolene for her thoughtful questions and for offering me...

Today Sean and I went to capture a wounded seagull who was hobbling around the hospital parking lot in Sydney. It was a back lot and not salted, so we slid after the bird while she ran from us, dragging a wing. At the veterinary hospital, I assisted in her examination and x-ray, as I recently did with the eagle, and we discovered that her wing joint was shattered. There was nothing anyone could do to help her to heal and live a normal life. So I assisted again while Dr. Nicholson euthanized her. It was perhaps the saddest experience I've had thus far as a wildlife rescuer; chasing a strong, but injured bird and later feeling her heart slow and stop under my hands.

Euthanasia is the fate of many injured seagulls...

Creideamh a' Bhata Bhuidhe: The religion of the yellow stick. A Coll priest of former times was accustomed to drive recalcitrant natives to church by a smart application of his walking stick, those who yielded were thus said to come under “creideamh a' bhata bhuidhe.” Another version says Hector, son of Donald Maclean of Coll, was the one who applied the yellow stick. Hector was laird in 1715 and as the religion of the yellow stick was introduced into Rum in 1726, it is beyond dispute that Hector was the author, or propagator of it. He was dignified in appearance and stern in manners and could no doubt wield the yellow stick gracefully and with efficiency. - Dwelly's Illustrated Gaelic to English Dictionary

I was raised a Jehovah's Witness and forced by my parents to attend Kingdom Hall three times a week. So you'll understand if I confess a visceral reaction to the prospect of being beaten with a stick for the sake...

Monday and Tuesday, I outlined the endings of Books 1 & 2 in what I'm presently calling the Motherland Duology, though that name might change as time passes. Today, I plotted the protagonist's thread through Book 1 in Freemind using the end to beginning technique I wrote about here in the comments:

This...

I put out the call a few weeks ago for links to awards, blogs and other web sites for speculative fiction writers. My friends at SF Canada were quick to respond, and with their help I've compiled the following. Please note that this is primarily a short list of longer lists, since others have paved this road long before I came to it. Still, I hope you find the information useful.

Awards

Science Fiction Awards Database
The Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards (Phasing out and superceded by the the SFAD, above.)

Comic Awards (Thanks,...

Greetings Everyone,

Welcome to Issue #10 of my quarterly newsletter, posted to csmaccath.com and e-mailed to subscribers on Imbolc 2014.

Teaser!
A is for Apocalypse editor Rhonda Parrish has graciously permitted me to share with you a teaser from my forthcoming story in the anthology, entitled N Is for Nanomachine. As you might recall from the Samhain newsletter, I've written an epistolary tale, and this is the first correspondence in it:

VARDIGEN MEMORIAL ARCHIVE
ENTRY: Desans, Madame Chaell Gebares
COURIER: Gresetz, Jederen ID COU-045
CONTAINS: Text and Attachments

Dearest Readers,

There is magma in the music.

You will not understand this; the way it flows, bright and hot, through the cavern of the ear...

Before you read any further, and if you are so inclined, please offer a kind thought or a prayer that our eagle regains the sight in her eye so that she can be released into the wild and hunt again.

Thank you.

Saturday evening, Hope for Wildlife posted a message to its private dispatch group that a Cape Breton man had found an injured eagle near his cottage. It was dark by the time I saw the message, and we were in for some bad weather overnight, so there wasn't any way to rescue the bird until morning. I called the man, and we made arrangements to try and find the bird together the next day, though he was worried she might be dead by then. He said she looked as though she had been hit with a shot gun, and while she could walk, she could not fly.

Sunday morning, Sean and I followed him up the Kempt Road to a place where the pavement ended. Then we continued around the hillside on a narrow and...

I've just encountered an interesting point of confusion between my writing and its reception by readers that I thought it might be useful to discuss. In a recent blog entry, I defaulted to the feminine, third-person pronoun when discussing an animal because I wasn't certain of the animal's sex and didn't want to use the gender-neutral 'it' for reasons having to do with my vegan ethics. This created some confusion in my readership, so I subsequently footnoted the relevant passage to indicate that my usage was a default preference and not a specific gender identification.

I often default to the feminine pronoun and list the feminine first when I need to offer pronoun options (e.g., her/him, hers/his). Failing the widespread adoption of a gender-neutral...

2013 was a year of forward progress in my writing career, often self-directed. I began receiving the sort of rejections from top-tier publishers that validated the quality of my writing, the 'this isn't right for us, but we like your voice so please keep submitting' personal notes that mean my work is sufficiently professional to compete in the traditional marketplace and to make a proper showing of itself in the independent marketplace. I learned the term 'hybrid writer' from Kristine Kathryn Rusch's blog and became one, selling my work to traditional markets and also publishing it myself. It was a learning curve, both emotionally and...

I've just received word by post that I've been accepted to the council of the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia. Requirements for membership on the council can be found on the membership page, which includes the following:

Members who meet the professional writing standards defined in the By-Laws of the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia may apply for Writers' Council membership. Only Writers' Council members may participate in the Writers in the Schools program, serve as workshop instructors, and feature in our 'Writers in NS' listing.

Applications for membership in the WFNS Writers’ Council must...

The Star: What To Say When You're Asked to Work for Free

As a writer and the CEO of a technology company, I found this article incredibly helpful. I'm often asked to write for free because it would be 'good exposure' for me, and I do blog for a Pagan magazine and sometimes write fiction for little or no money. However, I'm quite selective about those projects I undertake for the sake of exposure because I do expect my writing to reach a sufficiently large audience and/or an audience specifically interested in my work. It was the whole reason I self-published "The Ruin of Beltany Ring" and gave so many copies away (which, incidentally, helped me to achieve the level of exposure I hoped it would). However, my default position is payment for my work, and I reserve the right to choose what constitutes that payment.

I'm also...

Please Note: This article has undergone a revision since it was first written. Two footnotes have been added.

There are many introductions I might make to this post. I might discuss the accusation that vegans are privileged city-dwellers subsisting on a First World diet who don't understand how animal agriculture works. I might relate the conversation I had with a Buddhist friend last week when I told him we planned to attend a cattle auction. I might use any number of tried and true vegan inroads to conversation (Meet Your Meat, etc.). But we didn't do this so that I could answer vegan criticisms, tell personal stories or fill this space with received language. We did it to see and to tell you what we saw.

This is what we saw.

We attended the auction with two other vegan activists from Halifax, and some of the photos below are theirs. The auction was held at Atlantic Stockyards Limited, where the animals are temporarily housed in...

As I write this entry, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia is in full, autumn glory and the Celtic Colours International Festival is well underway. For those of you who don't know, Cape Breton is a Gàidhealtachd, a place where the Scottish Gaelic language is still spoken and taught, a place where Gaelic culture still lives. Every year in mid-October, people come from all over the world to celebrate the rich heritage of this place with concerts, classes, discussions and demonstrations rooted in the Gaìdhlig language that traveled here when so many of its native speakers emigrated from Scotland.

Cape Breton is also my home. An American by birth, I immigrated to Canada three and a half years ago after twenty years of Celtic Paganism and a Celtic Studies degree because I wanted to become a fluent Gaìdhlig speaker and advocate. My local Gaìdhlig learning began in Halifax, where ...

I'm delighted to report that I've been asked to contribute to a forthcoming anthology of fantasy and science fiction entitled A is for Apocalypse and edited by Rhonda Parrish. This themed anthology will feature twenty-six stories, one for each letter of the alphabet, all apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic.

I have been randomly assigned the letter 'N', as in 'nanomachines', 'never', 'night' and 'noodle'. (♫ One of these things is not like the other... ♫) =P

I dearly love apocalyptic fiction, and I have decided to write an epistolary tale, which is a form I also love and used to write The Longest Road...

People. I wrote my first puirt à beul tonight. I was in a song class, and we had this awesome ethnomusicologist, and she was teaching us how to write songs in Gaelic, and I was like, wow. And I wrote this:

Duilleagan dearg 's duilleagan gorm -
Na bidh thusa dubhach an-diugh!
Duilleagan dearg 's duilleagan gorm -
Tha duil agam as t-fhoghar.

Fosgail an doras, fosgail an doras -
Na bidh thusa dubhach an-diugh!
Fosgail an doras, fosgail an doras -
Tha duil agam as t-fhoghar.

It's a jig, by the way. I wrote a haiku too, but it wasn't as good.

Here's what it means:

Red leaves, green leaves -
Don't be gloomy today!
Red leaves, green leaves -
I'm expecting in the autumn.

Open the door, open the door -
Don't be gloomy today!
Open the door, open the door -
I'm expecting in the autumn.

It'...

As we were leaving the farmer's market today, we stopped to say hello to a woman we've had pleasant conversations with before and to ask whether or not her fruit tarts were vegan. She had said in the past that she might try to make them vegan a time or two, but our attendance has been spotty at the market this summer, and we've missed the few times she's veganized them for us. One of her customers asked if we were allergic to gluten, and I quipped that no, we were allergic to death and suffering. I meant for it to be funny, and I underplayed the comment right away. But it was clearly the wrong thing to say, and in the woman's defense, I can understand why it might have seemed confrontational.

The woman in question told us that she believes all life is sacred but has spoken to the vegetarian society about the reasons why she isn't vegan. I countered that I agreed with her about the sanctity of life but had concerns about the antibiotic load inherent to factory farming and the...

From August 30th to September 1st Sean and I participated in a group retreat at the Tatamagouche Centre called "Crossing Stony Ground: Earth Spirit and Justice for Challenging Times" led by Starhawk. For those of you who don't recognize that name, Starhawk is a longtime Goddess worshiper, political and social activist and permaculture expert who has been and continues to be a seminal influence in Pagan, activist and farming circles. In fact, her book The Spiral Dance brought me to Goddess spirituality when I was sixteen, and I've had a great deal of respect for her work since then.

The focus of the retreat was activism grounded in spirituality, specifically Pagan...