Edward J. Branley's Blog: Eloquent Profanity, page 2
August 4, 2023
Hidden Talents via Patreon
Starting tomorrow, we’re publishing Hidden Talents here, serially.
Beginning tomorrow, 5-August, we’ll serialize Hidden Talents, Edward Branley’s first novel! Here’s the back-cover blurb:
New Orleans is hot, humid, spiritual…and magical!
Anita Delatorre is a junior executive for a publishing company specializing in Christian books and homeschooling materials. One of her “responsibilities” is to be her company’s liaison with a New Orleans-based radio preacher, whose books her company publishes. A group seeking to discredit her client is all too successful, and Anita must take steps to stop them, using any means at her disposal. And Anita’s means are formidible: She is a sorceress, whose psychic Talents extend well beyond those of most mortals.
Renard Alciatore is a thirty-four-year old photographer who enjoys using his computer skills to mock Anita’s client, the Reverend Jay Hadley. As Ren begins to receive information of financial and sexual improprieties from inside Jay Hadley Ministries, his life is threatened, and, in the process his own Talents are revealed. He is placed under the Protection of a shadowy organization known as The Assembly as he learns to use his Talents, to improve his photography, help others when he can, and defend his own life, when Challenged.
What were once Hidden Talents emerge in the hot New Orleans summer. Only one will walk away when the Duel is joined!
Hidden Talents is the first full-length novel from New Orleans Historian Edward Branley, whose knowledge of the city comes to life as Anita pursues Ren, to protect her business interests.
Originally released in 2016, Hidden Talents is available from all of the usual suspects. We’re re-setting Elysian Fields Press for direct sales of signed copies.
This is Eloquent Profanity’s first full-on Patreon content. While my Personal Log entries and other short thoughts are here, August marks the beginning of this site as formally patron-supported.
How it worksWe’ll drop chapters of Hidden Talents on the 5th and 20th of each month. In between, we’ll feature snippets and stories from all of Edward’s writing. That part of this will be fairly random, a combination of quick stuff and unpublished quick scenes. The goal is three solid items per month, along with personal logs and whatnot. That’s what you’ll get at the $1 a month patron level.
Future levelsWe anticipate adding a $5 level in the Fall. That will likely coincide with the release of the new novel, Trivial Tacos. Edward’s first romance novel is fun story we know you’ll enjoy. It’s twelve chapters, so we’ll follow the same pattern, but at the higher level.
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Personal Log 20230804
My Personal Log for this week is a bit behind schedule. Imagine that. Personal Log 20230804 I need to treat these log entries as self-care. IOW, practicing what I preach. I post inspirational memes that say, stop, work on yourself, then I start a three-part blog post on swimming pools for the history blog. Is that self-care? Arguably, but so is taking the time to stop and think. Maybe I'm stressing too much over a couple of days, I guess. Trains Y'all know I'm a railfan. I wear the "foamer" label as a badge of honor. I don't apologize for it. One of the reasons I like the PJ's Coffee on Canal Boulevard is its proximity to the "Back Belt,"...
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July 31, 2023
Deryni Lammas
Deryni Lammas, observing the Sabbat in Kurtz’s world.
Happy Lammas! Happy Lughnasadh! The first harvest yields wheat and other early crops. Summer comes to a close by the First of August. Farmers focus on getting in the crops and putting them up for the winter. The heat hasn’t completely broken, even in the Northern Europe of Kurtz’s world, but seeing the products of the hard work of spring and summer ready to be collected is exciting.
Ritual for Deryni LammasWhile modern Wiccans and other pagans recognize the first harvest as one of the Sabbats, modern Christians seem to have forgotten much of the Wheel of the Year. The Catholic liturgical calendar recognizes Alphonsus Ligouri on 1-August. Ligouri, the founder of the Redemptorists, was a bishop and academic. Maybe he got out in the fields for the harvest, but it’s not high up on his resume.
Kurtz’s Christians were closer to the land. They understood the harvest, even the nobles in the story, “Healer’s Song.”
The story tells the tale of the naming and christening of Tieg Joram Thuryn, third child of Rhys Thuryn and Evaine MacRorie Thuryn. They’re joined by Evan’s brother, Father Joram MacRorie, priest and knight of St. Michael, and Jebediah d’Alcara, Grand Master of the Order of St. Michael, For all Jeb wasn’t a farmer, he knew to go to St. Neot’s Abbey and get some fresh-baked bread, to mark Lammas.
If you’ve been to a Catholic christening, you know the basics of the ceremony. Usually held after Mass, everyone gathers around the church’s baptismal font. These nobles gather in a ritual chamber in Rhys and Evaine’s manor home. Being Deryni, the Christian comes together with the magickal. The room is warded, and Jeb “calls the quarters” using an older form he learned from his father. Here’s the first of the four quarter calls:
All Honor to St. Raphael, Physician-Healer, Lord of Wind and Tempest, Prince of Air, Thou Eastern Warder! Here stand thy servants, Rhys and Evaine, to dedicate their son, a Healer-born!
The others continue the Call, following Jeb’s lead. It’s a joyous way to invite the Archangels into the ritual. While this ritual follows a Christian framework, it’s wouldn’t be hard to adapt it to a Wiccan/Pagan working. My first instinct is to convert some or all of the four Archangels to feminine forms, maybe Raphaella and Michaela?
So, the story is about Deryni Healers and bringing a new generation of magick-workers into a tense world. That Kurtz chose Lammas for the setting works. It’s a positive, happy time of year.
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July 27, 2023
Personal Log 20230726
Updates and things. Personal Log 20230726 Distractions! Well, partly. The other part is that I tend to use my Chromebook to write on this website, and other work had me working on the "real" laptop. Yeah, I know, that sounds lame, but hey, it's one of those things. So, the bag with the Chromebook sat as I used the Ubuntu laptop, and Personal Log 20230726 had to wait. Trivial Tacos One of the reasons this smaller laptop stayed in the bag was the romance novel, Trivial Tacos. My authoring software, Scrivener, requires Windows or MacOS. So, that means I have to run it in a virtual machine. That's not exactly something the Chromebook can handle. There are times when I...
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July 5, 2023
Personal Log 20230705
Stuff happening in Personal log for Wednesday, 5-July-2023. Personal Log 20230725 Can sum up things this week simply: things are happening, nothing overwhelming, but still, well, stuff I would rather not be happening. Family medical situations aren't going away. While these aren't my stories to tell, they still have an impact. The Crescent #20 just passed by here at the coffee shop. The trains provide continuity. Things keep rolling along. Distractions I blew up my Mastodon accounts on mstdn.party. They were sort of starter accounts, experimental. Now that I've sorted out what I want to do on Mastodon, I started my own instance. So far so good, but it takes patience. Since Mastodon is "federated," it takes time for other...
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July 4, 2023
Restructuring Mastodon accounts
It’s time for restructuring Mastodon with new accounts.
Back when Musk was forced to actually complete the Twitter sale, the kvetching over the future of the bird app was extreme. Lots of folks ran to various alternative platforms, such as Post and Mastodon. I chose Mastodon, and set up a couple of accounts as fall-back positions.
When it became clear that Da Twittah wasn’t immediately imploding, folks disengaged from the grand exodus. Da Twittah returned to its sort-of usual self. While there were some folks, particularly prolific political users, left for Mastodon, inertia kicked in. Count me in on that. Friends stayed, the teevee and other journalists stayed, and most importantly, the weather people stayed. (And in New Orleans, those weather people are important.)
Toot neglectSo, tooting (what one does on Mastodon, as opposed to tweeting) fizzled for me. I even investigated various mobile apps, in the hopes that a cool UI would bring me around. No luck. Some of this is on me, because I followed too many political types too quickly. There’s a lot of anger out there. While I may agree with most of what someone writes, negativity can be overwhelming. The other thing that became problematic was local folks who followed my history account. I followed them back, but many of them were all-politics-all-the-time.
Fixing the tootsI knew there had to be a way to make the elephants work properly. The best approach for me was to start over. This included starting my own Mastodon instance, nolabooks.social. I set up a basic hosting account and created a few users. They are (so far):
@edwardbranley@nolabooks.social – no real activity yet. This will be the books/booksta/bookwyrm account@nolahistoryguy@nolabooks.social – Da History Stuff. my @nolahistoryguy on Da Twittah is a hot mess. I intend for this account to be more concise.@yatpundit@nolabooks.social – My @yatpundit account on the bird app was my first. I use it now for non-New Orleans political stuff and Arsenal FC banter. That continues with the toots.Ongoing stuffWhile I set nolabooks.social on a hosting site, I plan to set up an instance in my home office. I’ve got a spare PC and a Raspberry Pi 4 to play with. Weill keep you posted on that on the Linux blog.
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June 28, 2023
Personal Log 20230628
A lot of stuff going on that I don't want to talk about in a Personal Log. Personal Log 20230628 Gotta fix the truck for El Gato Metairie. Not like Arwen's going to do it, as you can see. She's a sweet kitteh, but often lacks motivation. Unless she's chasing a twist tie, that is. Nala's doing well, too. Ever see a video on the TicTacs where you draw a box on the floor with masking tape and a cat will sit in it? That's Nala, but with sunshine. A sunbeam creates a box on the floor, she sitz. They still come supervise me when I'm in the study, teaching via WebEx. Arwen even jumped up on the desk the...
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June 26, 2023
Stay in or go out – what’s your morning routine?
What impact does your morning routine have on your writing? In or out morning routine OK, it's not great, but you get the idea: Yawning, she sat up in bed as a giant grey tabby cat nuzzled her. She slowly planted her feet on the floor and made her way to the coffee maker in the kitchen. Within minutes, she held a steaming cup of chicory coffee between her hands, allowing the warmth to course through her arms and into her body. Time to get the day going. Most of us have a typical morning routine that involves struggling to get out of bed, make coffee or tea, and placate a hungry familiar. (Doggo people likely have the added step...
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June 23, 2023
Historic Images Research
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June 20, 2023
Status Update
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