Ceallaigh's Blog
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Over the years, I've withheld one story from my collections of previously published work. It was originally printed in The Stolen Island Review in 2003, but it wasn't Pagan enough for The Ruin of Beltany Ring, and it wasn't quite mature enough stylistically for The Longest Road in the Universe.
I'm in DC this week and missed participating in the cover reveal for the next Alphabet Anthologies installment, but here it is now. This installment contains my story "D is for Duel/One Who Dies as a God Dies" along with a pile of great fiction by fellow contributors. You can follow the book on Goodreads and LibraryThing, and you can read more about it below.
For the fourth installment of Rhonda Parrish’s Alphabet Anthologies, contributors were challenged to write about dinosaurs. The resulting twenty-six stories contain widely different interpretations of the dinosaur theme and span the spectrum from literal to metaphoric.
Within these pages stories set in alternate histories, far-flung futures and times just around the corner, dinosaurs whimper and waste away, or roar and rage. People can be dinosaurs, as can ideas, fictions and flesh. Knitted dinosaurs share space with ghostly, genetically engineered and even narcotic ones.
Teenagers must embrace their inner dinosaurs in order to find peace and belonging, a dying woman duels a God in a far future city that echoes aspects of our past, an abused wife accompanies her husband on a hunt for an ancient power and finds more than she could ever have imagined and a girl with wonderful magical powers stumbles across the bones of a giant long-dead lizard. And so much more!
Features stories by Alexandra Seidel, Pete Aldin, Beth Cato, Michael Kellar, Cory Cone, Simon Kewin, Samantha Kymmell-Harvey, C.S. MacCath, KV Taylor, Laura VanArendonk Baugh, Michael B. Tager, Gary B. Phillips, Michael M. Jones, L.S. Johnson, Brittany Warman, Hal J. Friesen, Megan Engelhardt, BD Wilson, Michael Fosburg, Jonathan C. Parrish, Suzanne J. Willis, Lynn Hardaker, Amanda C. Davis, Andrew Bourelle, Sara Cleto and Jeanne Kramer-Smyth.
I should be catching up on writing career things while I'm between semesters, but now that I have my studio back, this blog post is crowding the front of my mind. So I'm going to get it out of the way first, and then I'll work on that story stamping its feet in the queue.
The LibraryThing giveaway for THE LONGEST ROAD IN THE UNIVERSE is live, so if you're a LT user and want to win a copy, check out this link and scroll down the page until you find it.
I'm still writing poetry. It's been cathartic for me to make political art for its own sake and publish it to my blog. Here's another piece.
Surfacing
You cannot always be drowning.
You cannot sink forever in a bottomless sea.
Brine fills the lungs, but these are finite vessels,
and the body cannot endure that awful fullness.
It spasms, pinches the larynx shut, blackens the mind.
You do not want to die.
Even the small fish of the deep make plans,
zipping past your body toward a story you cannot fathom,
while the whales who pursue them sing in tongues -
too profound for any human understanding.
Fight the flailing of your limbs.
Fight the clenching of your throat.
Fight the darkness at the edges of your sight.
And rise.
I've been writing this poem since Remembrance Day. I'm still so conflicted about what has happened, what is happening now in the States. I think this piece reflects that. Make of it what you will.
Remembrance
By then, her knuckles were thick and gnarled,
but the needle piercing her quilt scraps -
was sure as an old woman's prayer.
"Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah," she would intone -
over the television, as if President Jimmy Carter -
spoke with the voice of Almighty God.
"Never voted Republican once in my life."
Neither have I. It wasn't enough.
I should be there now.
From now until the end of the year, I'm going to donate all of the profits I make from the sale of The Longest Road in the Universe: A Collection of Fantastical Tales to Planned Parenthood. I'm doing this because American women are facing the greatest challenge to reproductive health I've seen in my lifetime, and I want for Planned Parenthood to be there for them, just like it was for me. I'm also doing this because it's something I can do besides sit and stew in my own fury at the election of Trump/Pence (which I'm already doing in spades). I have to do something.
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
Merry Samhain to you, and welcome to issue #21 of my newsletter, e-mailed to subscribers on Samhain 2016.
A Book Is Born
The Longest Road in the Universe: A Collection of Fantastical Tales is now in print! I'm so proud of this book, and I'm equally proud of Nancy Farmer's cover art and Kimberly Mayfield's cover design. I hope you enjoy reading these tales as much as I enjoyed writing them. Here's where you can buy the collection:
CreateSpace Paperback | Amazon Paperback
Kindle | Apple | Kobo | Nook
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:
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