I'm Ba-a-a-a-a-ck!

[Tegwedd ShadowDancer]

I was really downhearted when I found out about the Temple's demise, so imagine my delight when I discovered you'd come back, and are on your own domain.  Much has happened since I last beheld these hallowed halls.  In some ways, it's a lot like Hogwarts, except Hogwart's is for kids and this is for adults.  In November, I won at NaNoWriMo.  In case you don't know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month.  They picked November because other than Thanksgiving not much happens during November, and it has 30 days, which makes it easy to to divvy up the novel into daily chunks of 2000 words each.  I used to take 5 days off during the month, but when I moved to Sacramento 6 years ago, it was difficult to get Stephen my house mate to respect my need to complete my project unless I did it every day, so I aimed for either finishing early or going beyond 50k words.  This year I had my Dragon.  The Dragon is speech recognition software that enables one to speak hir story instead of laboriously typing it.  If you are typing challenged as I am, it is just the thing for you.  I had waited over 40 years to get something like this.  As a result, I often went over 2000 words in my chapters just to make sure I would have enough words for the day, so I ended up with a little over 70K words.  It's not like me to be such an over-achiever, but when it comes to writing, I could do it all day.  I hope I didn't sound too much like an ad for Dragon.  It wasn't.  National is actually a misnomer, as people are doing it all over the world, and not just adults either.  They have a special program for young writers.  I'm going to recommend to Stephen's daughter Megan that she do Camp NaNoWriMo with me this July.   

Stephen, my business partner and housemate, is too busy with Utherverse to bother with writing discussions with me so if I bring any groups with me, such as Ritual Magick:  Its Powers & Purpose, I'll be on my own.  Maybe Lachlan Raindancer will help me with the discussions.  He's too much of a novice to know much about magick, but he can tell me when I'm assuming my readers know something when they probably don't.  This gives me an idea for a discussion.  The Science of Magick.  You see, I don't take the same view as a lot of other people of Magick vs technology.  I heed what the late great Arthur C. Clarke said about magick;  "Any sufficiently high technology is virtually indistinguishable from magic[sic]."  My housemate and business partner says "Magic is sleight of hand.  Magick is sleight of mind."  I take the view that magick is simply the use of technology and natural forces that are little or unknown and not well understood.  Maybe on Nibiru, the planet of Terence McKenna's vision, that has never known Christianity, they understand this technology and science very well. 

More about magick later.  I just want to say that it is good to be back.  I look forward to being better acquainted with all of you.

[Bryan]

Welcome back and congrats on the win! :) That is quite an accomplishment.