My name is Donald Quill. I’m an Irish Pagan priest, a writer, and for the past twenty-seven years I’ve been keeping telecommunications infrastructure running for the State of Delaware as a Network Technician III.
Those things aren’t as separate as they might look.
The IT career is what funds the books. It’s also, honestly, where I learned that systems have integrity — that every component has to do its actual job, or the whole thing fails. I brought that same thinking to everything I write. The mythology has to hold. The theology has to be consistent. The world has to function.
The two pen names
Donald Quill is where the Irish mythology lives. I write Celtic fantasy, Irish Pagan nonfiction, dark fantasy, and supernatural horror under this name. The Songs of the Crowmother trilogy. The Waking Ground series. Living the Irish Wheel of the Year and its companion volumes. The House on Ashburn Street. From the Threads of Silence. All of it rooted in mythology I’ve been studying and practicing for three decades.
D.R. Quill is the romantasy side. Viking mythology. Norse history. Dark, romantic, and character-first. The Oaths of Steel and Shadow series, starting with Blade and Bone on May 1, 2026.
One publishing house, Forgotten Rites Publishing, holds both.
The practice
I’ve been an Irish Pagan for over thirty years. I’m a Priest of the Mórrígan, and that isn’t a title I use casually.
The Mórrígan is a goddess of sovereignty, fate, and battle. In my experience, she doesn’t ask for decorative devotion. The practice shapes everything I write under the Donald Quill name: the theology in The Waking Ground, the festival guides in the Wheel of the Year series, the way the divine functions in the Songs of the Crowmother. When I write about Irish mythology, I’m drawing on a relationship with the Irish gods that goes back to my early twenties.
The nonfiction grew out of a frustration. Most of what was available for Irish Pagan practitioners was either too academic to be useful or too Wiccan to be accurate. Living the Irish Wheel of the Year was the book I needed and couldn’t find. So I wrote it.
The table
You’ll find Forgotten Rites Publishing at Renaissance Faires and pagan festivals across the Mid-Atlantic: West Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland. I’ve been doing this circuit for years. Both brands show up at the table. If you’ve stopped by and picked something up, thank you.
The faire world is where readers find books they’d never find otherwise. That matters to me. A lot of indie fantasy and pagan nonfiction never makes it to a shelf anywhere. A table in a field is enough.
Why “Forgotten Rites”
Because the old ways weren’t abandoned. They were buried. Suppressed, then forgotten, then dismissed as superstition by people who never learned to listen.
This imprint exists to pull some of that up. The Irish mythology in the fiction isn’t dressing. The ritual content in the nonfiction isn’t aesthetic. What you read here comes from a living tradition that someone is actually practicing, with a goddess who is definitely paying attention.
Welcome to Forgotten Rites Publishing. Take a look around.
forgottenritespublishing.com 