Ceallaigh's Blog
Working hard on the words lately. I'm in that place where I don't know whether I have 12,000 words of awesome or 12,000 words of what-the-hell-were-you-thinking (and yes, the B Beast is going to top out at 12,000 words, twice my original word count limit and thank you, Rhonda). I've been running my language through the sifter, again and again, turning words into art, or trying, anyway, because that's what I was hired to do. Come to think of it, this gig is teaching me about art, about story, about making a beautiful thing because beauty. Each time Rhonda has asked me to write for her, I've taken the work as a challenge to myself, a way to practice some new piece of craft.
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:
I'm about 6100 words into "C is for Cloister" right now, and I think it will top out at about 9000 words. My deadline for the story is October 1st, and 3000 words isn't onerous for a month by any stretch, but I've also got a novelette to finish preparing (Grandmother Mælkevejen's Belly) and a revised collection to prepare (The Ruin of Beltany Ring). There's also the monthly blog for PaganSquare, and I've just begun a research-intensive series for that.
A second edition of my short story and poetry collection The Ruin of Beltany Ring: A Collection of Pagan Poems and Tales is scheduled for release later this year, so I'm giving away my last six copies of the first edition, released one year ago today on August 13, 2013.
But wait! There's more! I also have an abundance of Murky Depths Issue #4, featuring Vincent Chong's award-winning cover and containing my illustrated short story, "Casting Sin", so I'll be including a signed copy with each giveaway packet.
Wewt! Free books! I loves me a book giveaway.
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.
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.
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!
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...