Still not been devoured by the beastly dragons

Time flies like a dragon, and the PhD thingie is coming along nicely. (At least I hope so.) Ordered even more books from abebooks today (this time about Kenneth Grahame).

As I've nothing more amusing to say, I leave you with my favourite song from the 1948 musical THE PIRATE, starring Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. "Some day he will swoop down on me like a chickenhawk and carry me off." It doesn't get any better than that! *g*


Isn't Gene Kelly hot? And these arms -- oh my! (nom-nom-nom)

Now back to the dragons ...

Still Alive

Still alive and working on the PhD thingie. Ordered a gazillion more books on abebooks yesterday. Need another room for my library.

Word Count: 504 -- It's a real feat!

It took some truly heroic effort (almost as much as needed for killing a big, bad dragon -- and I should know, after all I'm an expert on How To Kill a Dragon!), but I managed to whittle down my aformentioned entry about the German author Ludwig Tieck to 504 words. While yesterday saw me still in despair over the whole thing, this morning the fourth and final draft emerged like a beautiful butterfly from the not-so-beautiful chrysalis. Yay!

Now on to the next entry about the Luddites!

Two-Hours to Midnight Ponderings

You'd think that writing a eenie-weenie 500-word entry for an encyclopedia was easy. Tell you what: it's not. *sigh*

And what's more: thinking of the responsibility one has when writing such an entry (aaaaaargh! future generations of students are going to use this entry! why did I pick such a famous author anyway?????) can be a bit stifling.

Current word count: 555.

Things that make my hackles rise

After what happened earlier this year, I find it unbelievable that certain views are still being perpetuated by authors, namely that people who write a bad review about your book, either on review sites, blogs or on amazon, are mean and jealous, are would-be writers green with envy that your book got published and theirs didn't, and want to attack you on a personal level. Oh and apparently their mommy has never told them that if you haven't anything nice to say you should keep your mouth shut. In other words, the concept of free speech is highly overrated, so please let's get rid of it.

Sheesh!

I'm the first to admit to yelling "you stupid cow!" at my 'puter whenever I find a bad review of my book. But I neither try to get the review taken down, nor do I attempt to intimidate the person who posted it. Because if a reader doesn't like a book, it's her right to talk about it.

Do I think that "CheetahDemon" wanted to attack me personally when she gave CASTLE OF THE WOLF the one-star review on amazon? Do I think that she wanted to attack me when she wrote, "I don't want to insult the writer or any of the readers who enjoyed this piece, but there just wasn't enough going on to keep me entertained, and I had a hard time empathizing with any of the characters"? No. And why should I? I don't know her; she doesn't know me. How then could her review constitute a personal attack?

Do I think that Cheryl Sneed, who gave BEWITCHED a D on AAR, is a would-be writer hating my guts for getting published? No, absolutely not. She is simply a reviewer who didn't like the book. Obviously, I don't agree with the things she wrote about BEWITCHED, but that doesn't change a thing about the fact that the novel didn't work for her.

Readers and reviewers don't owe the author anything. In most cases, readers and reviewers don't even know the author and have never met her. They only have the book, a product which they might or might not like. I for one certainly don't envision the author when I read a novel. I might feel some sort of sentimental attachment to an author whose books I particularly enjoyed, for example, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside when I think of Rosemary Sutcliff, Dorothy Dunnett, and Gillian Bradshaw. But as I've never met any of these three ladies, it's not a personal attachment as such, it's more a love of their author voice and their author persona.

When you become a professional writer aka when you sign that publishing contract, you should be aware that in that very moment your book becomes a product. A product which is produced, marketed, consumed and reviewed. You might have bled your heart's blood all across the pages, yet that's of no interest to anybody and that's not how you should regard your book. Your book is not part of you, it's not your child, you have to regard it as being separate from you. Reviews only criticize books, not you as a person. If you want to be an author, you have to learn to see the difference. If you can't do that, well, then don't sign the contract!

Language Once Again

During the discussion of the first page of an anonymous, unnamed fantasy novel over at Dear Author the horrible thou-shalt-not-use-historically-incorrect-language-monster once again raised it's ugly head. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that this is a topic which regularly has me wanting to bang my head against the nearest wall. *roll eyes* And as this ties in with something I've covered at the "No iPods for Regency Rakes" workshop, here's an excerpt from the "Anachronisms - when to embrace them" section of my workshop:

Language: This is when it gets tricky because quite a lot of people think it's not only possible, but also desirable to accurately recreate the language of the past. In one amazon review of a novel set in Shakespeare's time, the reader in question complained that the dialogue wasn't Elizabethan enough. In the AAR review for my April release, BEWITCHED, the reviewer made a big point of my historically inaccurate language: in a story set in 1820 I had *gasp* used the word "heck", even though the earliest record of this word is from 1865. On one message board a reader thought the use of "to screw" in CASTLE OF THE WOLF inappropriate. Even when I explained that this word is, in fact listed in the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, she was still adamant it's totally inappropriate for a story set in 1827 because it sounds too modern. Same goes for "whatever" (a contraction of "whatsoever" that appeared some time around 1300!!!).

Discussions like these always make me want to go and bang my head against the nearest wall.

Because, let me tell you, it's neither desirable nor really possible to accurately recreate the language of the past, not even the language of Jane Austen's time. First of all, you have to bear in mind that you're writing for a 21st-century audience. You want to use words that people actually understand. Of course, you can sprinkle old-fashioned words and phrases into your dialogues to further the illusion of your historical setting, but this has nothing to do with recreating the actual language. For even in 200 years the English language has changed considerably. From David Crystal's wonderful Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language: "Early 19th-century English can, however, deceive in its apparent familiarity. There are hundreds of instances where words have changed their meaning, often in highly subtle ways" (76). Here are few examples Crystal has taken from Austen's novels:

• "the supposed inmate of Mansfield Parsonage"
• "She was now in an irritation as violent from delight as ..."
• "three of four Officers were lounging together" (to lounge = to stroll)
• "whatever the event of" (today: "whatever the outcome of")
• "she saw her in idea" (today: "she saw her in her mind's eye")
• "suppose you speak for tea" (today: "suppose you order tea")

Other language changes affect grammar:

• "So, you are come at last!"
• "What say you to the day?"
• "to be taken into the account"
• "She was small of her age."

And this is just the early 1800s! Imagine going back a few more centuries! Can you imagine your hero saying this to your heroine in the throes of passion: "Lemman, love me al atones, or I wol dyen, also God me save"?* Or would you care for him to introduce himself like this: "We synt gum-cynnes Geata leode"?** And, of course, if you write anything set in England before the 8th century, you really want to take care not use any of these horrid Scandinavian words such as sky, skin, skull, skirt ... (You shouldn't use "skunk", either, but for altogether different reasons. *ggg*)

So you see, it's really not possible to give an accurate version of the language of the past in your novel. All you can do is to create an illusion of the past for your reader. And let me tell you, you won't be able to please everybody anyway, whatever you do.

* from Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale": Sweetheart, love me at once or I will die, so God save me.
** from Beowulf: We are Geats by birth

Welcome to America

The US government certainly knows how to make tourists and business travellers feel welcome:

Pre-Travel Authorization program

I'm not suspicious, but you can take my laptop and any other of my electronic devices anyway as soon as I enter your country

Charming, isn't it?

Don't forget: we also have to leave our fingerprints upon entering the USA.

Icecream-Maker-Apprentice

Yesterday and today I made my first two flavours of icecream with my wonderful, wonderful icecream maker machine thingie and with the help of Ben & Jerry's recipe book.

Friday icecream: coconut chocolate chip

Reducing the amount of cream in favour of milk was not a very good idea: even after 50 minutes of running the aforementioned icecream maker, the icecream still was runny around the edges. In the end I gave up and put it in the freezer (ha! that showed the stupid icecream!). Nevertheless, it's very yummy and coconutty. :)


Saturday icecream: vanilla cream & cookies

Well, this time around I decided I'd try the cooking method (you make custard, stir in the cream and put it into the fridge overnight). Put a tad too much sugar into the custard, but it tasted great nonetheless. Then I stired in the cream and the vanilla essence, whereby I also put in a tad too much vanilla essence. For some reason it also acquired a slightly cinnamonny taste. Very strange. Still, yummy.

This morning I put the liquid into the icecream maker and lo and behold, it started to thicken almost straight away. Added the crushed Oreos (if you ever need to crush cookies, put them into a freezer bag and hit them with the potato masher. Works lovely!). Probably due to the amount of pulverized Oreo pieces the icecream acquired a hot-cocoa-with-lots-of-milk look. But the consitency was excellent! And the taste is not what I expected or aimed at, but -- oh my gosh -- it's sooooo good! :)