Ceallaigh's Blog

I've settled into my PhD program and thought I'd post about it. I haven't had much time to do more than keep up with my class work and release my collection, but today I'm taking a minor breather to get a haircut and go see Dr. Strange before the big push to write term papers begins. So I thought I'd post a quick update about my life so far in St. John's.

The Folklore Department and Discipline

I like these people, every one. They remind me so much of the U of T Celtic Studies Department in the late 90's; personable, invested in scholarship, interested in my education. I think I might really succeed here, and that makes me so happy. I also enjoy the discipline quite a bit. I learned in field school to conduct interviews, write field notes, and archive materials. Now I'm peering beneath the surface of ballads, legends, personal narratives, jokes, parables, and other kinds of folklore to see how they work, and I'm gathering the theoretical tools necessary to...

Release day is tomorrow, and this is my last post about the kind things other writers and editors have said of The Longest Road in the Universe: A Collection of Fantastical Tales. This one is from Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award finalist Mike Allen:

Brace yourself, reader – before you in these pages lie delightful, terrifying, uncompromising monsters, ready to claw wounds into flesh and soul. Drawing deeply from mythology to weave tales of hard-earned spiritual enlightenment, C.S. MacCath demonstrates an uncanny talent that crosses all genre boundaries. Whether she’s spinning the story of a witch who can speak to everyone’s demon double, a space traveler who sells pieces of his body in exchange for history's revelations, or a shape-shifting, guilt-wracked human bomb, MacCath brings their struggles and triumphs to fierce and...

I'm reading a science fiction trilogy right now which has begun to annoy me. It has a great plot and an interesting protagonist, but the story itself is told via a litany of social justice issues. It's as if the author had a list while she was writing and went down it, item by item, until she had thoroughly covered them all. I could play a drinking game to this series - "Drink a shot every time the author beats you over the head with her ideology," - but I'd end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.

Mind you, I'm good with fiction which has embedded messages, but I'm not good with message fiction. There's a difference. All fiction carries the imprint of its author's mind, just as all children carry the DNA of their parents. That imprint is sometimes ideological, which is...

I've been posting these to social media, but I thought I ought to be sharing them on my blog as well. So here's the third of five posts about the kind things my fellow authors have said of The Longest Road in the Universe. This one comes from Alex Bledsoe, who writes:

This collection of short stories has a rich texture and a profound appreciation for human courage and decency, even when its characters aren't entirely human. From avenging sentient bombs to former slaves struggling to remember their ancestors' humanity, it's a vivid, epic and touching journey.--Alex Bledsoe, author of The Hum and the Shiver

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