New Gig: History Witch

Out of the ivory tower and into the streets!

Or at least the blogosphere. I'm proud to unveil my latest gig, which sprang directly from the interest generated by Rook Chant: I am now the History Witch for the Witches & Pagans site. I'll be bringing the fascinating but often rather challenging information from my studies to an appreciative audience with varying kinds of knowledge and interests.

Witches & Pagans coalesces a variety of publications and readerships, reaching a wide and diverse audience across the world, so I have a potential audience of tens of thousands. Something to put me on my mettle for sure. I expect to have some lively conversations. I join fellow bloggers like my pal Byron Ballard.

I have spoken for some years now about the need to communicate the importance of scholarship in an increasingly (or perhaps returning) anti-intellectual climate, especially in the United States. Many great minds engaged in fascinating pursuits share their discoveries with a too small audience. Many American universities discourage this kind of work and frown on those who engage in it. Colleagues can be dismissive. But it's key to promoting the message that education is not a business. It's a dedication to improving your mind and thinking critically. Most of all, it's important.

In Britain, it's still possible to be considered quite interesting for having a lively intellectual curiosity. The new president of Ireland is a poet. In Italy it's possible to appear in the Paris Review and the bestseller list at the same time. Though all regions have their anti-intellectual forces, it's become particularly virulent in the States because of corporate-funded propaganda like the Murdoch empire.

So this is me stepping out in my own small way, hoping to encourage other folks to do the same and show that academics are not "snobs" or irrelevant, but deeply engaged in understanding the world in which we live from many different angles.

I begin with a little piece about Anglo-Saxon magic. Drop by and say hello.

Six Sentence Sunday: Rook Chant

All right, it's Sunday again -- and Father's Day! Happy Father's Day all -- so here's my six. A little change of pace: not fiction, but non-fiction. A little taste from my latest publication, Rook Chant, which offers a compendium of essays, translations and reviews on one of my favourite topics: magic. I write about it from many different angles, often bringing fairly obscure things to a general audience. My way of saying, "look at this cool stuff I found!"

Here's my six from a presentation I gave at the Harry Potter Symposium in Salem, MA. What a fun event that was! Charles de Lint and MaryAnn Harris were there (and singing!) and many other luminaries. My presentation tried to give the basics of Anglo-Saxon magic to an audience that included all ages. This  will give you a taste of the charms:

By the time these charms are being written down, England is a mostly Germanic-speaking land with a healthy population of Celtic folks, fighting off Vikings and often one another. The one constant was magic. The charms of Anglo-Saxon England  consisted of words, herbs and actions. The Anglo-Saxons believed that words had a magic of their own especially when spoken aloud, but that the application of the right herbs would help the healing processes along, too. Sometimes other actions were required to create the right atmosphere or to move bad luck along to someone else. Used in conjunction the result was simply magic.

I've already got a lovely review and several requests for review copies. I also will be announcing another exciting piece of news soon that's a direct result of Rook Chant. It just goes to show, the real magic is making your dreams manifest. Audaces fortuna iuvat!

Check out the other Six Sentence Sunday entries and find yourself a few new authors!

Know-vember: Frances McCormack

Okay, what're the odds? Oh sure, it is entirely likely that I would get on with the first medievalist I met at NUI Galway. After all, we medievalists have to stick together like all endangered species. But we keep finding amazing things in common like our birthdays (!) and P. G. Wodehouse and the Marx Bros and Tony Hancock. Destiny took a hand in things, I think, when it sent me to Galway. She even invited me to talk to her Old English course so I wouldn't forget entirely what the inside of a classroom looked like. Here's the lovely Frances, award winning lecturer.

1. What's the first thing you do upon waking in the morning?

Let the cats in for a cuddle and go back to sleep, even if only for two minutes. I'm not a fan of sleeping late, but I do like to wake up slowly.

2. What's a song you might be persuaded to dance to?

I'm a trained dancer, but the best songs are those that make me dance like I don't know how! "Come on Eileen," by Dexy's Midnight Runners, has made me jump up and down on ever since I was a bairn in 1982. I remember the first time I heard it: I jumped around the breakfast table with such enthusiasm and abandon that my mum cried with laughter. "Late in the Evening" by Paul Simon makes me do what my husband calls "Muppet Dancing", and it works best when I'm in the passenger seat of the car (although God knows what the people looking in their rear-view mirrors at me are thinking)!

3. Where in the world do you live?

In books. I much prefer stories to real life!

4. What's a great night out for you?

I don't tend to go out. I much prefer 'in'.

5. What's a great night in?

Learning languages, or doing something craftsy. I like to be busy!

6. If you were offered an all expenses paid trip anywhere in the world,where would you go?

Japan, Japan, Japan...or New York! But unfortunately, as I don't really like 'out', traveling is not the easiest thing for me to do!

7. What book do you wish everyone would read so you could talk about it?

The one with the boy with the orange pyjamas...but I can't remember what book it was. I vaguely remember reading it in bed--there was a boy who may have been an orphan; someone (it may have been a man) took him in, and a woman (whose name may have begun with a J) brought him pyjamas in which to sleep. The pyjamas either had oranges on them or orange buttons, and the boy had an aversion to the colour orange, so he slept in his clothes and then crinkled the pyjamas the next morning to make it look like they'd been slept in. I can't remember whether I actually read this book or DREAMT that I had read this book so if it sounds familiar to you, let me know what on earth it is!

8. What movie makes you cry?

I don't cry at movies...but Graham Greene's books always have me in tears!

9. What makes you laugh?

At the moment, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But everything in general...I'm a giggler! [Ed: I can attest to this.] Ooh yes, and games where you substitute the word 'goose' for either a noun or a verb in a film title. That one makes me chuckle too!

10. Are there fairies at the bottom of your garden?

Yes! There's actually a special fairy garden in my garden, where the dead trees are and the primrose grows. I don't like to visit it very often, because it's also where the septic tank lives, but the fairies don't seem to mind.

Thank you, Frances, a delight!

Blast from the Past: Wordgeryne

Just in time for the Halloween season, my dissertation and Cthulhu-inspired short story, "Wordgeryne" will be featured over at Unbound. The story originally appeared in Lovecraft's Weird Mysteries back in 2002. It's kind of a fun story (well, for horror, you know) because it combines a bunch of references that amuse me: of course, there's Cthulhu, but there's also a reference to my brother's favourite bad painting, "Brigitte" (she of the massive eyes), to Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart (the novella that provided the script for Hellraiser), to The Bride of Frankenstein as well as a nod to my studies in Anglo-Saxon literature, culture and language in many details, including the title, a word not chosen at random but with special purpose. Enjoy!

“Take my hand!” I begged, but Brigitte’s wide eyes only stared back in mute terror. I inched further out the window, stepping gingerly onto the narrow ledge, trying to reach toward her hand. “Please!” There was an audible gulp, but no other response. She closed her eyes and lay her palms flat against the wall. Hope sprang up in my heart. Perhaps Brigitte had changed her mind. Her whole body suggested defeat, relinquishing. Give up this foolish plan, I urged silently, but aloud I repeated, “Please, take my hand.” Brigitte turned her head slowly and opened her eyes once more to meet my gaze. My tentative sense of hope disappeared at once and I could hear an increase of fearful whispering in the crowd below.

“I didn’t know,” my friend said softly, a single tear crawling down her cheek. “I didn’t believe…it. I’m sorry.” And before I could begin to puzzle the meaning of her words, Brigitte pushed herself away from the wall, the ledge and, arms wide, fell into the air... [read the rest at Unbound!]