Dear Reader of The Oddest Inkling! I’m coming to you with a sizable and serious request. If you enjoy the content that I post on here and my other work elsewhere, would you consider becoming a patron of me and my writing? You can do so through the Author’s Circle program at the Signum University Press.
I have so very many writing projects going on right now, and I’d dearly love to have you join me as financial supporter, encourager, beta reader, and accountability partner. My salary as Editor-in-Chief is quite small, so anything I can earn by way of royalties is a great help, as we are a single-income family embarking on a new Homesteading adventure.
Here are all the projects I currently have underway:
1. This blog (theoretically! it tends to get neglected).
2. My short story collection Shall These Bones Breathe? to which you can subscribe in monthly installments (although you’d get those as part of an Author’s Circle package). The next story comes out this Thursday (March 16th, 2023), so hurry over if you’d like that one. It’s an adaptation of a Greek myth, and I think you’d like it.
3. Scripts for a course from Wondrium/The Teaching Company on The Life and Works of C.S. Lewis.
4. My life’s work! The long-anticipated Annotated Arthuriad of Charles Williams.
5. Editorial work on all of these projects from the Signum University Press (and probably an introduction, chapter, etc. for some of them, esp. the Arthurian collection).
6. An upcoming keynote talk for Mythmoot X on Tolkien’s only play, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.
7. Lectures for my fall M.A. course on The Inklings’ Magical Milieu (which will be available for audit, BTW).
8. My dissertation book, at some point, if the publisher to whom I submitted it ever gets back to me?
9. Gardeners of the Galaxies, which I’m editing with Brenton Dickieson (of A Pilgrim in Narnia fame).
10. A series of “Writing Tips” over on the Press’s TikTok account. Let me know if there’s a topic you’d like me to address.
Whew. That’s rather a lot. And YOU can join me to talk about these, read drafts, help me brainstorm, give feedback, share ideas, and more. Are you interested? Here’s some more info:
The Author’s Circle allows greater interaction with the author and the text. Benefits of membership include:
- Access to text and audio chapters on release
- Access to notes and updates during the writing process
- Monthly meetings with the author to discuss and give feedback on the most recent chapter
- Sneak previews of cover art and illustrations
- A mention in the book if they make a suggestion included in the final book
- Acknowledgement in the final volume
- Personalized versions of the book at final publication
You can sign up here today!
The Oddest Inkling 
Does Signum University have a suggested amount or amounts for patronage?
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Nice to hear from you here, Sarah! The Author’s Circle is $25 a month for as many months as one would like to participate. 🙂
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Just heard about your upcoming Agora Christi Event with Paul Fiddes and Otniel-Ioan Bunaciu with Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson as dialogue host! Hurray! – but I think I will be rehearsing Handel’s Messiah at that moment – I hope it will be posted on the Agora Christi YouTube channel in some form, afterwards.
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Also good to learn of your Mythmoot X keynote talk The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son: best wishes for it! I’m looking forward to Peter Grybauskas’ edition of Tolkien’s Battle of Maldon material, and was delighted to encounter a link at the Tolkien and Alliterative Verse website to Anna Smol and Rebecca Foster’s “J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Homecoming’ and Modern Alliterative Metre,” Journal of Tolkien Research: Vol. 12 (2021): Iss. 1, Article 3. What an exciting time!
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Intriguing that Tolkien does not explicitly give any attention to Beorhtnoth’s last prayer, which Charles William Stubbs (whether known to Tolkien or not) had made to a considerable extent the ‘matter’ of his own (so to say) verse addition or sequel to ‘The Battle of Maldon’, though there he makes something rather different of it in ‘Brythnoth’s Prayer’ (1899) than in his Old English source. But I wonder how implicitly Tolkien is working with Beorhtnoth’s prayer in his use of the “Dirige” with its selection of verses from Psalm 5, at the end of his play?
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Finally catching up as far as a first visit to Anna Smol’s website just now, I see she lists various interesting-looking related items under “Selected recent additions” in the “Welcome” section.
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