Erica

I feel like my favorite could easily change from day to day with so many intricate shinies. Today I'll go with the smallest of the beasties-headed brooches (dragon headed? I've heard them referred to in different ways). Lovely work.

Very much looking forward to reading that! I've also been looking at possible early medieval nunneries in Pictland so this will have to be top of my reading stack!

The Picts had a separate symbol for the boar (for instance: www.trove.scot/place/13507), but I love the grace of the Pictish beast. I'm currently in the camp that thinks it's an aquatic mythological beast, perhaps something in the kelpie family. Theories are numerous; whatever it is, it's awesome.

Five classes I took at uni? Hard to choose!

Celtic Civ.
Cosmology & Culture
Early Gaelic Lit
Northern Britons 5th-12th Cen.
Intro Archaeology

Hey early #medievalSky, how common is it to refer to Constantine using the matronymic Constantine son of (filio) Helen(a)? I'm looking at two instances and I'm not sure whether this is A) completely standard, B) fairly common, C) rare and therefore a noteworthy connection between the two texts.

Quick shout out for an awesome database of the Pictish symbol stones: outreach.mathstat.strath.ac.uk/outreach/pic... (doesn't have those only found in recent years, but incredible resource nonetheless.)

Thanks. Added to bibliography right after "The feminine Christ in Bede’s Biblical Commentaries" (Arthur G. Holder) and a couple of Ally Kateusz's papers that touch on similar depictions.

From my TBR (so haven't read yet):
Helga the Fair - S. J. Taylor (MG; forthcoming June2026)
Hild - Nicola Griffith (don't know how much is "remote" exactly)

(I have that feeling I'm going to think of ten more the moment I post and go away. 😅)

Love the art! (in case of interest re: Celtic knotwork and other patterns, I think some of George Bain's breakdowns/instructions are available online now, and Cynthia Thickpenny has more recently done work analyzing how the key patterns work and transition.)

I would 100% watch a heartwarming animated movie about a curious gosling having adventures lost in Pictland and trying to find its goose family flock again while all these Pictish history things play out in the background! 😂🥰

Current two hardest parts of reverse outlining:
1) the growing list of problems to solve 😬
2) resisting the urge to just keep reading and reading and not slow down to write down pesky things like summary and problems to solve. 😂

It's good I still love this book, flaws & all! 🦇🥰

I 100% thought on first reading that this was about pitching books to agents and waiting for them to make contact with a reply which then segued into a baseball metaphor about it. And I love that the paragraph works beautifully either way. 😂 #writerslife #booksky

YA heist! Sounds super fun. (And I love the saving their families from eviction motivation--I already want to know what happens!)

Last weekend I stuffed my head full of writing tips & topics. This weekend it's all #Pictish history and art! Got up 5:30am to hear some exciting lectures spanning metalworking and material culture at Rhynie and Burghead, Pictish (re)use of Roman-period silver, and clues to Pictish weaponry. 🔨⚔️

(the quote is from Glasgow Uni's website btw)

(which may be why post-doc listings sometimes say PhD as in, you need to *be* a PhD holder already, not a pre-doc/ PhD *student*).

Anyway, that's what I've pieced together over the years. Open to corrections/details if others know more.

I hope that helps at least a little. 😅

5/5

Out of the larger pool of post-grads those attempting to attain a PhD could be termed pre-doctoral students because they don't yet have their doctorate; contrast to post-docs who now have their doctorate.

4/

As I understand it, post-grads is a large catch-all for degree programmes after undergraduate (bachelors, honours/masters see above, etc) that might cover masters/PhD/others. 3/

I don't know if there's others offering masters that are not post-graduate besides those 4 unis. But I happened to know about them.

"A note on names: At Glasgow (and the other three ancient universities in Scotland), an Honours level degree in the Arts is called a Master of Arts (MA) .... These should not be confused with the Master of Arts offered by some universities in England, which refers to a postgraduate qualification."

Wow my brain is so full! Just finished a wonderful 3-day con with @flightsoffoundry.bsky.social . I'd highly recommend for any sci fi / fantasy creatives to watch out for next year.
I simultaneously feel like I need to dive into doing/revising/writing All The Things...and also sleep for a week! 😂📚

"never heard of"... or possibly already read about obsessively and gone to very niche talks about! 😂
I still want to go in person some day! No matter how many pictures and 3d models you look at, there's always an added dimension to seeing something in person, moving in the space, hearing its echoes.

This weekend I declared draft 1 of the WIP done! It has a beginning, a middle and an end!! 🎉😂

Now, for draft 2: structural edits and better villains! 😅

Structural edits intimidate me, but I still love these characters (40-somethings fantasy romance 🦇⛰️🥰) so let's do this. 💪

Oh no! Did it crash into the wall or did it land on the grass? I hope it didn't sustain too much damage (besides the obvious with the break at the base).

The Gap by Ira Glass YouTube video by brien daniels

Have you read/heard Ira Glass on "the gap"? I've heard people expand on this further, but here's the less-than-2min version if you're interested: www.youtube.com/watch?v=91FQ... I keep coming back to this when I'm utterly discouraged by my own writing still not measuring up to where I want it to be.

Where are you seeing a possible book? I just thought they were holding each other by the wrist?

I'm looking for a wide sampling of examples of early #medieval (earliest to 10th c) accounts of abbesses and female founders of religious communities. Vitae would be great, but a brief aside in another work is fine too. If anyone has done an actual study of this, even better!? Any leads welcome. 📜📚

They want us to feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of all this. A huge barrage of awfulness right out of the gate. It's part of the plan.

So part of resistance is just deciding to hope anyway.

🫂

Well, if we could record the interview, we'd have a sample of spoken Pictish and that itself would be awesome. And when the linguists were done with it, maybe we'd have the answer to the original question too!

Are you sure the recipe won't produce digital cookies to be stored on your computer? That sounds like the kind of cookie an "AI chef" would make... 🤖🍪🙃