Ceallaigh's Blog

I was doing some database maintenance this morning and noticed that a few folks had signed up for my quarterly newsletter but hadn't confirmed their subscriptions. At least two of these folks are people I'm acquainted with, so I added them to the list manually, but I thought it might be a good time to remind everybody that newsletter signup is a two-step process. You need to put your name and e-mail address in the box on the right sidebar of my web site, and then you need to click on the link the system sends you in a follow-up e-mail.

When I was troubleshooting this, I realized the follow-up e-mail is a little unclear (That's what I get for trusting the default settings, eh?). So I cleaned it up to make it easier for people to understand.

As always, it's super easy to unsubscribe if you don't want to receive the newsletter anymore. You can either put your name and e-mail in the box on my web site again, or you can click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any...

Introduction

Here are the promised links to resources for help in structuring your novel along with the three charts presented in the panel. Best of luck in your writing projects!

Links

The Hero's Journey Outline
How to Structure a Story: The Eight-Point Arc
The 4 Story Structures That Dominate Novels
Top 10 Tips to Increase Tension in Your Fiction Story
Rising to the Occasion...

My next Activism Updates post isn't due until next weekend, but with Thanksgiving on Monday, a trip to Bangor on Tuesday and Wednesday and Celtic Colours after that, there's little chance I'll be posting much of anything at all next week. The following week I'll be finishing up the panels I'm writing for Hal-Con, completing a course of spiritual training I've been undertaking for many years and attending a two-day Shambhala meditation workshop, followed by my nephew's birthday. The week after that is Hal-Con, shortly followed by World Fantasy Con, likely followed by my collapse into a pile of coffee-saturated goo for a couple of days before I leave the researching/marketing/submitting/conventioning part of my writing career behind for a long spate of actual, honest-to-goodness story-writing.

So, the next Activism Updates post will be up on the weekend of November 10th-11th, when I'm planning to review Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism. I'll...

You heard me. Vegan french toast.

Why is it activism? Well, the vegan part is mostly self-explanatory. Being vegan is better for us, better for the animals and better for the planet. The french toast part is mostly because it's a rainy, autumn Saturday, and I'm thinking about the good we all try to do every day, online and offline.

For instance, some of my online friends post regular alerts about GMO foods. Others care about the bee blight. Still others are vegan grandmas who post delicious recipes. I have LGBT activist friends, too, and friends who are dedicating their lives to sustainability. I have friends who step in to care for companion animals while their humans are away, veterinarian friends whose good work cannot ever be over-stated, friends who are studying for the ministry and friends who are teaching their children Gaelic. I have a husband whose vegan activism is the brilliant crystalization of an engineer's mind with a compassionate heart.

I am so...

Introduction

Language construction is a complex task, requiring a basic understanding of biology, linguistics and culture. Because of that, the ConLangs 101 panel was necessarily abbreviated to cover as much material as possible in the hope that it might point you in some good directions. This resource sheet complements the panel by providing additional charts and links to help you get started.

A Departure from English

In this section of the panel, we talked about the Dothraki language constructed for HBO's Game of Thrones and discussed our own experience with languages other than English.

ConLangs 101 Blog Series Entries

ConLangs 101: A Departure from English

Articles and Learning Materials

'Game of Thrones' linguist: How to create a language from...

In this edition of Activism Updates, I'm delighted to host my friend and fellow blogger, Lance Frizzell-Reynolds, who writes on Humanist Pagan, sustainability and LGBT issues, among other things. I have always found his work erudite and inspiring, and I'm honored he agreed to write for my blog.

Veganism, It 'Ain't' Nothing New But It Has a Big Impact!

Before I jump into my guest blog post, thank you C.S. for this awesome opportunity. I thought I would introduce myself and of course thank my incredible host for coming up with this cross-blogging idea.

My name is Lance Frizzell-Reynolds, I am 34, gay and married, and live in Massachusetts, USA. I am currently a graduate student at Marylhurst University in the Green MBA program in Sustainable Business, specializing in Government Policy and Administration. Essentially I am working towards becoming a sustainability expert that focuses on ensuring businesses, communities, and...

This edition of Activism Updates will introduce you to the issue of fracking in Nova Scotia and empower you to protest against it.

What Fracking Is

Fracking is the extraction of shale gas and other hydrocarbons held in dense rock formations using modern hydraulic fracturing techniques, including the combination of toxic chemical slickwater, high pressure fracturing and horizontal drilling. These extraction techniques come with serious risks, including:

∗ Risks to drinking water, including the use and contamination of huge volumes of water with toxic chemicals, and risk of well contamination from methane and other substances.

∗ Risks of contamination of streams and rivers and soil from fracking fluids and fracking waste through accidents, extreme weather, or poor practices.

∗ Risks to human health from exposure to airborne toxins at multiple stages of production, exposure to toxic waste, and exposure to toxins through drinking water or soil....

After experimenting with several social networks over the last few years, I've come to the conclusion that I'm spread too thin and that my social networks aren't serving me anymore. Rather, I'm serving them. So in an effort to streamline my networks, I'll be implementing the following changes in the next few months.

LiveJournal

My LiveJournal is the weakest link right now, since my web site blog is robust, comment-ready and available for RSS through Feedburner. I also don't check my LiveJournal very much anymore for friends' posts, since these are usually cross-posted to other social media sites, where I'm notified of them. So in the next month or so, I'll stop posting teasers of my blog posts to LiveJournal and leave a static forwarding message there that directs readers to my web site. I'll likely still check my LJ f-list from time to time, but I expect this activity to be infrequent.

Addendum: I've just added all my LJ friends to my RSS...

The last time I practiced my faith in the company of like-minded people was in 2003, when Sean and I were attending and occasionally leading an open circle of diverse Pagans in Bangor, Maine. Since then, I've been largely solitary, except for my correspondence with OBOD tutors in the Ovate and Druid grades. Part of the reason for this was Sean's education, our subsequent moves to Michigan and Nova Scotia and my immersion in both my writing career and the Gàidhlig community. I'm just busy. However, my primary reasons for solitary practice have had to do with the community itself; the lack of welcome I received when reaching out to local Pagans, the pervasive negative behavior I found on message boards, the open groups and rituals riddled with co-dependency and problematic practices. Because I'm so busy, and because I've been Pagan for so long, I just don't have the time or the energy for anything that doesn't meet my spiritual needs in a healthful way. Unfortunately, that meant...

This edition of Activism Updates is of the link spam variety, containing opportunities for activism in Canada and the United States.

Canadian Residents and Interested Friends

Senator Mac Harb reports via the Huffington Post that he has received a humanitarian award from PETA for introducing Bill S-210 to end Canada's commercial seal slaughter. He writes:

As a result of overwhelming support, my bill was seconded, and the Senate recently unanimously consented to continuing this debate in the coming months. This is historic, and every single person who has taken action has made a difference.

I encourage you to contact members of Canada's Senate and call on them to support my bill to...

Today is for planning the next six weeks of my writing life. I've been fortunate enough to sell nearly all the stories and poems in my inventory, so while I'm waiting to hear back from agents about my novel, I thought I'd take a break and create some new things to share. One of the stories came to me whole cloth in a dream, and while the dream logic of it will likely need tweaking before it works as narrative, I'm still excited to finally be giving it some attention. The title came to me in the dream as well; Sing the Crumbling City. Another story is rooted in my distaste for the pseudo-philosophical concept of metanorms and my desire to write the evolution of a female anti-hero. It might be called Chachalmeca, but I'm not sold on the title yet. I also need to unearth a few unfinished poems from the journal I jotted them down in and polish them up.

Today is also the second day of the regular Kundalini yoga practice I've been trying hard to establish for...

After a six-week hiatus of the domestic goddess variety, I am officially back at the keyboard tomorrow, with business, blog entries and story outlines a-plenty to sort, and not necessarily in that order.

I've been looking for a Neverwinter Nights clip that expresses my feelings about this return to creative productivity, but I can't seem to find it online, and I don't have the game installed, so I can't pull it from the dialogue. At first I thought it was a Deekinism, but now I think it belongs to that goblin I rescued at the entrance to Undermountain, the one that gets hired to work at the inn and complains about it all the time. All I remember is this gravelly voice grumbling "Baaack to wooork!" every time I climbed up out of the dungeon and back into the inn's basement.

You know, if you have to explain a quip that thoroughly, it just isn't funny anymore.

Anyway, I did find a montage of Valen and Deekin's best moments that made me wax nostalgic for the game...

Greetings Everyone,

Welcome to Issue #4 of my quarterly newsletter, posted to csmaccath.com and e-mailed to subscribers on Lughnasadh 2012.

Forthcoming Reprint
I am delighted to report that my short story entitled, Yundah, which originally appeared in the December 2005 issue of PanGaia, will be reprinted in The Shining Cities: An Anthology of Pagan Science Fiction.

Forthcoming Anthology
The first review for Scheherazade's Facade is in, and Publisher's Weekly...

I've been puttering at my Ancestry.com family tree this afternoon to put off the housecleaning and finding little new information in the way of support for my Gaelic heritage. Of course, my father's people were Suhres of North Germany and Sweden (MacCath isn't my maiden name), but I've never felt connected to my father's fathers, and my Ancestry.com researches haven't yielded much beyond my great-grandfather's generation. My mother's people are Patricks, and I have quite a lineage for her father's fathers, but I've had to delete several generations of Patricks and their antecedent Kilpatricks from my family tree because the public tree I took them from many years ago was sloppy the farther back it reached. What I've been left with is the relative certainty that a Robert Patrick emigrated from Edinburgh to New England in the early 1700s and thereafter died in Maryland. Before him there might have been a Hugh and another Robert in Edinburgh and before them a John and a Thomas...

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power
reconstitute the world.1

This weekend, I attended the Spiritual Activism: Soil and Soul retreat held at the Tatamagouche Centre and facilitated by Isle of Lewis native Alastair McIntosh, who is perhaps best known for his work that advanced land reform on the Isle of Eigg and helped stop the proposed Harris superquarry in a National Scenic Area....

T. Thorn Coyle's Crafting A Daily Practice: a simple course on self-commitment is a survey of techniques designed to introduce spiritual practice to the beginner. Supplemental readings are suggested from Coyle's book Kissing the Limitless, but these aren't required, and I didn't undertake them. I should also mention that I'm not a beginner to spiritual practice but rather a lapsed practitioner seeking tools for reshaping my daily routine, and while I read the book in its entirety, I switched from the suggested practice plan to my own once I had reshaped it.

Coyle begins with a discussion of daily practice in her own life along with observations about the fear that sometimes motivates people not to practice. She lays...

Our wine appreciation experience at the Muir Murray Estate Winery was really great last night. We began with sangria on the deck, where the Annapolis Valley and the Bay of Fundy provided us with a beautiful view. Then we were taught to pair wines with food based on complimenting and contrasting flavors, something I've always wanted to learn about but have never taken the time. The chef prepared thoughtful vegan counterparts to the tasting hors d'oeuvres, and the wines themselves were lovely (I'm especially fond of the Gilgamesh Port, in part because it's delicious and in part because it's a Port called Gilgamesh).

Anyway, I can't recommend their wines too highly, and if you ever have the opportunity to attend an event there, you should!

I received a notice from my web host yesterday that there have been some technical problems with our e-mail service in recent days. So if you've sent me an e-mail since Sunday, and you don't hear back from me by tonight (I'll be answering emails later today), please send it to my Gmail address. You should find it in the signature line of any correspondence I've sent you.

I bought two beautiful new books at An Là Mòr yesterday and won a third in a door-prize drawing. Very exciting! Am Mabinogi is a mid-level hardcover book in Gaelic with full-page illustrations, Gaelic Folk and Hero Tales from Argyllshire is primarily comprised of Fenian tales in Gaelic with English translations, and the book I won, Brìgh An Òrain is a history of the great Nova Scotian singer and storyteller Lauchie MacLellan, with songs and stories both in Gaelic and English.

Please Note: My work on the next ConLangs 101 entry is ongoing, but it will probably be another week before I post it, and I'll be moving to a monthly posting cycle for that series going forward. The research and writing for those entries is somewhat time-intensive, and there has been some minor movement in my efforts to place my novel series (though certainly nothing reportable as yet), so I'm eager to stay on that task. Thanks for understanding, and I hope you enjoy this Activism Update. ~ C.S.M.

In this edition of Activism Updates, I'm reviewing Will Potter's book Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege. Potter is a journalist who begins investigating the "Green Scare" after being...

Responsible Ceallaigh: Well, I've ordered copies of Batman #1 and Batgirl #6 to complete my collection. Now it's time to get to work!

Organizational Ceallaigh: You know, if you finished that unread stack of comic books on your desk, you could put them in the read stack and bag and board them all together this morning.

Geek Ceallaigh: (whispering) That's right! You tell her!

Responsible Ceallaigh: (eyes the stack) Well, I *am* collector as well as a reader, and I *do* want to keep them nice...

Geek Ceallaigh: (with pom poms) Read the comics! Read the comics!

Responsible Ceallaigh: No, I can read them after I finish my edits, and they're not going to suffer any damage where they are.

Geek Ceallaigh: (pouts)

Organizational Ceallaigh: I tried.

Last night's Na Sgeulaichean "The Storytellers" was a great success and tremendous fun. We had fiddle tunes, songs and stories aplenty along with homemade, vegan oatcakes (Thank you, Norma!), tea, coffee and other treats. We gave away an awesome basket of Gaelic goodies that alas, I didn't win, a 50/50 pot and a music CD. Doug and I weren't completely awful as emcees, and both Cathy and her daughters worked tirelessly before, during and after the event to make certain everyone else had a good time. Today, therefore, I am content.

I'm happy for another reason, as well. I didn't need the English story translations to understand them, and I spoke Gaelic at least a third of the night. I had a breakthrough moment about a month ago in my studies while listening to a band called Mànran. The song was "Latha Math", and it was all about a good day on the island and how great it was to be alive. I was halfway through listening to it for the first time when I realized I...

I'm past-due for two blog entries; the Activism Updates series post, which will be up tomorrow with a guest article by activist, engineer, scone chef and husband Sean MacCath-Moran. The other is the ConLangs 101 series post, which has been delayed by the slow death of my laptop and the setup of my new computer. I plan to have that one up by Monday next.

It's becoming increasingly difficult for me to format posts that look good on my web site and on LiveJournal at the same time, since LiveJournal imposes certain restrictions on formatting that I find somewhat limiting and difficult to work around. With this last conlangs post, these restrictions crossed the boundary from limiting to flat-out time sink, so with rare exception, I'm only posting teasers to LJ from now on. You'll be able to follow a link on each teaser to the full entry on my web site, where you'll also be able to comment, if you like. I know it's an extra step, but my web site is comment-friendly now, so I hope you'll feel comfortable there.