The personal {and possibly professional} website of Brendan J. F. Donahue!
Sometimes, I hate having a mind like mine…
There is so much I yearn to do, and yet I do not not seem to have the patience to see it through. Yet, I try to carry on. Right now, It is my goal to update my website at least once a month, with the hopes that I can grow this platform in a meaningful direction. So here’s the quick update…
I once went to college to major in art. Why? At the time I didn’t know. At first, I went with the dream of making films, of sending people on adventures, of making heroes people could look up to.
And then I gave up. Was this the right choice? I highly doubt it. What I do know, however, was that I fell apart, not sure of what I was doing, or even what I truly wanted. I still yearn to tell stories, and someday soon to publish them in a finished format.
…but I hope to resurrect an old part of my life. It has been a strange journey, with the return trip in the middle of a pandemic no less!
In 2019, I drove myself up a wall for my perceived inadequacies in the field of painting. So I wrapped up all of my projects and simply quit the realm of paint. No more would I illustrate for money! All I would do is focus on playing music, acquiring a lute for this purpose, and maybe to work on various pieces of written work.
Or so I would thought.
Sebamose found it rather strange how the priest of Weres yelled obscenities at the death of the Nomarch. It wasn’t so much that the priest lost a human being; despite a hard life, empathy was not a foreign concept to him, he just found it annoying. No, it was the priest’s behavior that threw him off-guard. Priests, after all, were men of dignity, men who stood vigilant at every shrine and temple to serve as beacons of light—when they weren’t sneaking away little offerings that were meant for the gods themselves. That was the one thing that even a finder like Sebamose knew; it was like an un-secret secret, the one thing that cracked the façade of perfection that the priest tried so hard (or at least, pretended to try) to maintain. It was also one of the few things that made them more relatable, more human, if you thought dishonesty and hypocrisy were charming little quirks that is.
…I just haven’t had the time to Update! After an entire summer of get acquainted with a new job, and figuring things out, I’ve come back to see if I can’t post a few things here…hopefully so that this blog can have some semblance of life within it.
I am working on the next chapter of Cities of Eternal Rain, and I am halfway done with it already. I hope to publish this before the end of October; in the meantime, I’ll see if I can’t publish other works, so stay tuned, and thank you for your patience.
I know for a fact that I have yet to complete the sixth chapter of the obviously internationally popular saga Cities of Eternal Rain, so I thought perhaps I’ll slake my obvious horde of a reading audience’s thirst for prose penned by my hand with this short story.
The premise of the story was based on a writing contest that was about what exactly a character would do if he had but two minutes until the end of the world. Most wrote about some emotional drama between family members, or perhaps about the main character in question coming to terms with his inevitable demise. I didn’t write any of that madness. No sir, I chose a different path. Curiously, I didn’t win. It couldn’t possibly be that I wasn’t what you would call a stellar writer was it? Poppycock! It was obviously rigged by the Illuminati.
Continue reading “A short Story: Winston Thatcher and the Rod of Ragnarok”
Another College Story! Here goes…
In my sophomore year of College, during the spring semester, I found myself nearly being burnt out, or somehow just plain falling apart (A feeling that has yet to fully go away). It was during that time that I figured that I needed to do something.
So I wrote a film script. I wanted to capture the feeling of swashbuckling adventure, and to do it in a crazy awesome manner. So I wrote a story involving a space pirate, trying to marry the baroque period and the nature of space (In other words, something like Treasure Planet, with some modicum of logic in the ship design, complete with an original story).
Chapter 5:
Leaving the Pharaonic palace was a simple matter for the two, as it only involved a brisk walk through the palace’s side gate. To Sebamose, however, the cool, dry breeze that enveloped the palace that day reflected the inward calm and relief that he felt being liberated from the palace prison. It almost allowed him the luxury of forgetting his badly damaged wounds—that is until his nostrils picked up a familiar but unsavory scent. “What’s this?” Sebamose, “even the musty smell of the commoner’s den that seemed to have wafted itself up here.” That’s when his good will about living started to taper off. “Damn, I forgot,” he thought some more, “Those stupid refugees are there, invading my space. And now I have deal with this stupid priest with them!”
“Coming, Finder?” Djed cried out, as if on cue, startling Sebamose.
Chapter 4:
In a dark cell was where Sebamose ended up, after a generous beating to his sides. Only when he was chained up to the wall in his cell, did he allow himself the luxury of coughing up what blood had accrued up his esophagus. He wasn’t too concerned about his health, however; for all he knew, he was as good as dead. All he could do now was hope that Pharaoh was going to be merciful enough to give him quick death, as improbable as it might be. He heard many a horrible rumor of what happens when someone gets too brave and becomes an uninvited guest in pharaoh’s property, palace or not.
The most common punishment was almost always impalement. It was little more than a fancy term for taking a criminal and throwing him upon a well-sharpened stick, as if one were attempting to prepare a pig for roasting. While this was the written prescription of dealing with such a problem, ultimately, it was the decision of Pharaoh that commanded life or death. To rely on Pharaoh’s mercy, however, is to rely on a crocodile’s hospitality; both garnered the same chance of survival.
Chapter 3:
The majority of the court was trailing behind pharaoh, who in turn was lumbering, or rather limping away at the heels of the Nomarch. Sebamose stayed until the last of the court gathered and followed. There, he join the entourage determined to follow pharaoh and the Nomarch into seeing the great beauty that was the eastern horizon of the city soon to be transformed. At the first chance, he ducked into a hallway, and trailed off to find the Royal Temple of Udjat, armed only with a few tools, and what little memory of the palace layout that the Nomarch’s scribes gave him.
Treading lightly, Sebamose walked as if he was on a thin sheet of papyrus; one false move could break his silent stride. The worst part about skulking through the halls of the palace is that there are virtually no places to rest or regain some sanity from the deep peering feeling that after a few moments, you will be caught. Physically, you had to move like a small housecat using a man-sized body. Luckily the palace floor was made of solid sandstone tiles—assuming that the sandstone was properly placed, and would not wiggle unexpectedly.