It funded on the second try.
The publisher is over at https://shewstonepublishing.com/
See their contact info.
It's the main bit I've written ATM, so discarding it would be hard.
Next time, I tell you where they hid the faeriie forest. It rocks. (Written later - no, I'm ahead of myself. Next time is the sacred weapon of the urban Dianic alchemist cult)
The idea to do a Magonomia column comes out of the Venice source I'm using. It goes up to the fall of the Republic under Napoleon. So, it might be Ars until 1500 and then Magonomia after.
I feel like the Weapon of the Urban Diana cult episode perfectly encapsulates Ars Magica's strengths, where folklore fuels stories.
I'm inordinately pleased with the idea of it.
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Hi, you'll see the episodes go out of order a little this month. Basically it's a RL sickness problem.
I still have six episodes set up, but they are all on curious stones or Venice, so I don't want them all to come out together.
Also, my idea for a Magonomia column? Libsyn suggests I split it off into a separate feed. I'll need to think about it a little more.
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The last six months of transcripts went up this week.
I just had a chat with CJ via Zoom and he pointed out that I never tell anyone where the Paetreon is. That's quite silly of me....I must start doing that. It's probably against Atlas's site rules to direct link though, so...I'm Timothy Ferguson on Patreon.
So, onto GFF news:
I'm working on the transcripts for September-October now. Likely up this weekend.
The podcast costs about USD10 to host a month, and for a little while I've been getting USD18, so this month I was able to kick things up to the USD30 level with my podcast host and rebuild my episode depth.
So far the following have been loaded to auto-broadcast. I've not statted the monsters yet. For those of you wanting chunkier episodes: The King of Elfland's Daughter and Pentamerone episodes are about half an hour long. I won't be able to do this every month at the moment, so episodes will still often be 5-10 minutes otherwise.
Nov 19 Walter de la Mare 6 (I'm doing these in bunches because they are too short as solo poems. This is the last one in this series. It gets replaced by Pentamerone.)
Nov 26 Venice - The Banshee
Dec 03 The Cormorants of Andaver (A short story with a folk tradition of witchcraft)
Dec 10 The King of Elfland's Daughter 3
Dec 31 Pentamerone 1* (Fifty Italian Faerie Tales cut into useful chunks)
Jan 14 The King of Elfland's Daughter 4
Jan 21 Pentamerone 2*
Feb 11 The King of Elfland's Daughter 5
Mar 11 The King of Elfland's Daughter 6
- I have loaded Pentamerone episodes, but they are based on the Taylor translation since it is out of copyright. It's been heavily bowlderised: for example 18 of the 50 tales have been left out entirely and the others have been made more child friendly. I'm going to revisit it using the modern Canepa translation and I might make little supplementary recordings to follow directly on the ones here, with my summary of the juicy stuff Taylor carved out.
In terms of current planning, if I get my act together episode 300 will be Dec 24, and will be stats for the backlog of monsters. The backlog will blow out incredibly, because by writing longer episodes, I mention more things which could be statted. At my old rate, which was one monster a month, I have enough to keep me going until 2025 now. 8)
The episode for Dec 17 is a biography of Teodroa Selvo, who is central to the Venice setting I'm building (she's the Rotting Princess that gets aided by something claiming to be Tytalus). The more I write this though, the less I need to go high fantasy. It turns out there were several female alchemists who wrote books in Venice at just after the period, and I'm looking to get a translation sent to me one interlibrary loan starts up again.
The transcripts for Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec are up.
Yes, I know I said December - I've scripted that far in advance. Monsters not yet done, but I'm going to find a new way to get some done.
Two bits of news.
I've kicked off my post a day over in that subforum. I know I'm a month late...
The other but of news is that I've preloaded nine episodes, so things are looking good in terms of material for the next few months.
Hi,
The 2020 Annual is available now!
It basically has no art. Sorry - 2020 was an odd one.
There's an updated version of "Half-remembered monsters" coming once it hits 100 creatures.
The one big change is that I think the Pantemerone and King of Elfland's Daughter series are going to run too long, so instead you'll be getting bigger chunks to make the whole series shorter. Pentamerone will now be 3 stories a month (in one episode) for the ones in the Bowdlerised version. These episodes are just over an hour. Similarly, King of Elfland's Daughter will be 4 chapters per episode, rather than 2. This means they'll also be double length. Hour-long episodes will -not- be the new normal, but it will be pretty common for the next few months.
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I just caught up with this Timothy. Awesome work there, thanks!
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Hi,
I just uploaded the longest episode ever. It's 77 minutes. I won't go live until mid-April.
Basically the state of play looks like this: Bold entries are already written and uploaded on timers. Italics are just planned entries. The episodes for this little while are longer, because I'm doing a bit of writing for another game. That means my episodes are more often commentaries on other people's texts, rather than written from scratch, which gives it extra length.
To make this work I've dipped the audio quality (sampling rate) in two epsidoes. If you think you can tell, please say, so I know not to do it again.
March
11 Venice - Marriage to the sea. Festival games.
18 - Samhain poems
25 - King of Elfland's Daughter 7
April
1 - Pentamerone 5, plus two short poems as bonus episodes for April Fool's Day.
8 Bjornaer swift
15 Venice - Coral story - this will be short for a Venice ep.
22 King of Elfland's Daughter 8
29 Was Pendule a descendant of Plotinus?
May
6 Pentamerone 6
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Update time
I've just uploaded the last of the really massive episodes for this little while. It's been too much for me and I need to cut back to smaller episodes. That being said the last few King of Efland's Daughter episodes don't have fresh folklore in them, so other than eventually stating the monsters, there's not a lot of writing involved..
I know the transcripts are five months late, and apologise. The podcast host I work with has a sort of "use it or lose it" plan structure, and I had to pay for a big chunk of time the last few months to fit in the long episodes I needed for Elflands Daughter and Pentamerone. This means I need to pack in all of that work, to stop the money being wasted, and its eaten into all of my time. When I get to the end of that space and can start working on smaller episodes again, monsters and transcripts will eventually come. In terms of "packing in material" I need to put about another two hours of finished audio in before the end of the month to make use of the space I've paid for. It's likely going to be Venice episodes just bvecause its the material closest to hand, but if I find poems or short stories with monsters in them on Librivox, I'll gather up those as a sort of "free audio from the universe".
The playsheet is as follows. Bold items have been uploaded on timers. Basically I think I've been able to rebuild the cushion of episodes I discarded at the start of the current plague, when I set all of the timers to immediate to give people a bit of brightness in lockdown.
May
6 Pentamerone 5
13 The Giant Legless Bird and the Cosmic Metronome (note 1)
20 The King of Elflands Daughter 9
27 Venice - The Stupidest War
End of month ? - Annual statement about the future of the podcast. Brief self congratulation on five years.
June
3 Pentamerone 8
10 Was Pendule a student of Plotinus?
17 The King of Elflands Daughter 10
24 Untitled Venice episode
July
1 Pentamerone 9
1 Pentamerone Bonus Episode (note 2)
8
15 The King of Elflands Daughter 11
22
29 (Venice)
August
5 Pentamerone - the censored tales 1
12
19 The King of Elflands Daughter 12 (conculsion of series)
26 (Venice)
- The graphics of this went live on the wrong episode last week. Given that the episode was full of Criamon weirdness...that seems OK. I'll fix it. Basically that was an accursed week where two episodes slipped the leash early.
- This contains three stories from the start of the Pentamerone I couldn't see much use in, so I cut them from Episode 1. Now that the project has expanded out to be basically all stories but the frame narrative and The Three Citrons, I've added it in.
Take care of yourself! That's always the better investment.
The transcripts for the first quarter of the year is up.
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As a note, one of my main series - "The King of Elfland's Daughter" is coming to an end. If you have suggestions for another work in the public domain that I could scavenge through, that'd be great. Lacking anything else it may be Wirt Sykes's "British Goblins" or "Night Side of Nature".
So, a list of upcoming episodes. If it is in (brackets) it hasn't been recorded yet. Most are written up, but I haven't done the episode graphic, or the monster stats. A star is eventually to be a statted monster.
I need to change my approach to Venice - basically there's too much folklore. My way of doing Cornwall, which was to just record the two big authorities and harvest them, doesn't work here because there's too much written to sift through. I'll need to lay out achapter out5line and work to it, eventually. Until then, I have some more extracts coming
July
1 Pentamerone 9
8 The Vampire of Croglin Grange*
5 King of Elfland's Daughter 15
22 (Monster stat backlog) Troubador by WS Gilbert.
29 (Venice - Housekeeping)
August
5 (Pentamerone - Flayed Old Lady)
12 Black Spirits and White - Succubus*
19 King of Elfland's Daughter 12
26 (Venice - Some of the islands of the lagoons)
September
2 (Pentamerone - The Young Slave)
9 Black Spirits and White - Duke Alberect*
16
23
30 (Venice)
October
7 (Pentamerone - Padlock)
14 Bibliophilic poltergeist from Bone to his bone by EG Swain*
21
28 (Venice)
November
4 (Pentamerone - The Booby)
11 "Eyes" from Weird Tales 1924*
18
25 (Venice)
December
2 (Pentamerone - Penta)
9 Wondersmith Mannikins (two monsters, but one may be the same I use in "Eyes".
16
23
30
January
6 (Pentamerone (Sapia Liccardia)
13 The Bottle Volcanic*
20
27 (Venice)
February
3 Pentamerone - Cockroach. Mouse, and Cricket
10 False But Beautiful*
17
24
March
3 (Pentamerone - Garlic Patch)
10 (Cordiphagii)*
The monster backlog right now looks like this:
King of Fleas
Wish-granting Crocodille from "Goat Face"
Ogre Shapeshifter
Whip Trolls
Edna St Vincent Milay's ghostly singer
Dragon in Elephant Car
Greater Wisps
plus the ones starred above, eventually.
The other ones which I've put aisde because the texts don't give me enough detail that you couldn't just slot any creature in are
The king of sleep from "I met at eve"
The king of never-to-be
Night from "Beware"!
The architect of ice
Lirazel (she does very little)
7 Brothers (giants each with a different talent)
Elfish guards
The transcripts for April - June 2021 are up. The second after I uploaded it I noticed I'd mucked up the cover, but the link will be the same once I've fixed it.
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I really enjoyed your episode on Pendule! I always really enjoy the episodes that get into the potential magical descent of characters in the order.
I was wondering if you could recommend any books for getting into the philosophy of Plotinus?
There's a modern bio just called "Plotinus". There's also a basic bio by one of his students. Porphyr?
Anyhow, the one I mean is https://www.routledge.com/Plotinus/Emilsson/p/book/9780415333498
If I can get it in Australia, I presume your libraries can get it too.
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Thank you, I really appreciate it!
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So, the state of play on the podcast
I've been feeling a bit burned out at work, in the real world so I've taken a week of long service leave. I know that my doctor's left me a "call me" message about a blood panel I took yesterday, so maybe I'll get some answers there. That's why you've had so many Pentamerone episodes in a row - I had them in the can, set to one per month, and just moved them forward as deadlines hit. The state of play may be a bit choppy ahead depending on what the health issue actually is, but here's where we are.
- I've made no progress at all on the backlog of monsters: it's gotten worse actually. Still, I hope to catch up a bit in the next few days.
- The Venetian material is not quite working how I'd like, so I need time to research new stuff for it. I've pulled all of the Venice episodes from the schedule until I work it out.
- We have finished The King of Elfland's Daughter and all the associated Dunsania. Next year I may do something similar with Lud-in-the-Mist, because it will be in the public domain, but if you have a public domain book to suggest, I'd be happy to look at it.
- I've finished the writing, but not the recording, on a Pentamerone episode not listed below. After that's done, there are only three or four Pentamerone episodes left. I say "Three or four" because two of the stories ("The Buddy" and "The Padlock") have been set aside as too boring for words, and so unless I find a new angle on them, they won't move forward.
The upcoming episodes look a bit like this. Bold items are already loaded on timers.
S23 - The Lamia by Keats. You've been told about this monster and the ancient mage who kills her twice in the core line, but Keats has a new wrinkle on it. It's the longest poem we've shared on GFF, and you have her stats already in RoP:F (she's a ghula with cosmetic changes ot make her more snake-like).
S30 - Cordiphagii - Two poems, which are about monsters that eat hearts. One's a reskin of the Miser's Pot from Realms of Power : Infernal. The other's a more powerful ghoul.
The ones following I won't give hard dates for, because I don't know when Venice will come back into the rotation, or if I'm going to have a Magonomia Week each month.
The other recorded episodes are
Bibliophilic poltergeist from Bone to his bone by EG Swain (monster)
"Eyes" from Weird Tales 1924 (monster)
Wondersmith Mannikins (two or even three monsters, but one may be the same I use in "Eyes".
Pentamerone - The Garlic Patch / Rosella
The Bottle Volcanic (a poem about an ink bottle that opens regiones)
False but Beautiful yet another avatar of the Infernal Saint of Pain.
If I do have a Magonomia week, the first will be about al-Mansur and the Anglo-Moroccan Alliance. If that were being done in a commercial book I would not be the guy to write it, but I can make up some fun-but-terribly-inaccurate stuff about it for web purposes. Basically I'm seeing what comes up, and if I can get a run of articles together, I might put a monthly thing in.
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