News Flash

Nowadays, everyone says a writer needs a newsletter. I’m beginning to lose count of the number of things I’m supposed to produce that isn’t my stories. But what about all those goodies that don’t make it into the stories?

  • That chapter I deleted. The one that’s now just a couple of sentences buried in a conversation. Well, more like, how that works, how you decide to kill off 3000 words in exchange for 50, for the sake of the story.
  • The interview between me and my MC, you know, the one that went over so well at that open mic.
  • My research on the folk sayings that spark each of the chapters in Wind and Smoke. The ones that prove that Ireland and South Korea are pretty much the same.
  • The things I want to tell agents. Not mean things. Just advice. Would you sign with an agency if their website takes 20 seconds to load a page?
  • I could blurt out some of the things I wanted to say at book club, because other people sure have a lot to say. Or is it not OK to reveal that writers are readers, too?

Dangit.

I have all that stuff.

So now I have a new work-in-progress.

I won’t be sending a newsletter more often than monthly, because that’s what I like in a newsletter. Maybe the occasional special edition, like when I sign with an agent or get that next book deal.

Target date for first issue: Let’s make it Valentine’s Day.

Penny Cards–last century’s newsletter
(Public Domain, from Newberry Library via Wikimedia Commons)

You might also like to read:

If you read it, review itIf you read it, review it

In olden times, when you read a book that you liked, you would tell your friends. You might lend them your copy . . . then chew your fingernails anxiously until it came back safe. (Shall I digress to that time I found my best friend had thrown away my copy of Fellowship of the Ring . . . ? “But I thought you were done with it,” she said. Nothing like rummaging through a bag of garbage to retrieve your favorite book.) And then your friend would tell their friends, and so on.

Mysterious Box
Image credit: Diamondmagna
(CC BY-SA 3.0)

To perform this essential function in the publishing industry, we often employed these boxlike objects that sat on a desk or hung from the wall. Each one had a wire going from the back that plugged into a special kind of outlet, a useless-seeming outlet that you couldn’t plug a toaster into. And on top, there was a thing sort of like a front-door handle, though smaller.

When you picked it up, you’d hear a humming noise coming from one end of the handle-thing. Then, if you carefully pushed a certain sequence of buttons on top of the box–or even more interestingly, spun a dial on top of the box in a particular pattern–the humming noise would be replaced by your friend’s voice. And they could hear you, too! Then you would say something like, “I just read this book. You absolutely have to read this book. Make your mom take you to the bookstore tomorrow and get it. And there’s a whole series, too, I’ve got to go with you, so I can get the next book in the series!”

I have heard that there were other uses for this device, but they do not matter.

Now, big-city people may have decided what books to read based on some review in a newspaper or in a fancy magazine, but real fans relied on direct recommendations from friends.

The same is true today, but–like many of us–I’m guilty of not holding up my end of the stick. We’re all buying our books with the assistance of the internet–even if we’re relying on our local indie bookseller for product, we’re finding our reading online. And we need to be telling all our friends–and nowadays, that is apparently everyone else on the internet–what we liked and why.

So, I’m adding a section to this website dedicated to reviews. I’m being a better reader and adding reviews to my purchases at online sellers. Contact me if you think there’s a book out there I should review (not that I’m aiming to become a book reviewer, mind, but I do want to find books I’ll enjoy reading). And, by the way, when you buy a book from B&N or Amazon or Smashwords or wherever, if you liked the book, take a few seconds before you buy your next book and tell everyone. You don’t have to write an essay– this isn’t homework, it’s socializing. Just tap out a couple of sentences to let people know what was good about it. “hey, fellow readers, try this book, I liked this one thing especially –“

Or you could just pick up the phone and call.

A cylindrical spacecraft with long solar panels spreading out on both sides.

The names in “All That Was Asked”The names in “All That Was Asked”

In my previous post, I tried to explain how all those odd names ended up in my recently-published book and why I think it’s fun to play around with languages in the middle of a story.

So, what if you don’t really care about all that linquistic nonsense, but just want a guide to pronouncing stuff in this particular story?  In what follows, I’m going to share what I’ve prepared for the person doing our audio book.  On the surface, it may look daunting, but, really, it all hangs together with a few key elements:

Sensei, in Kanji
Source: japanesewithanime.com 
(CC BY-SA 4.0)
  • Lots of the names end in a shortened “ay” sound I’ve tagged here as ei. It sounds almost like a long ay, but is cut short like you were going to pronounce a “y” on the end, but stopped yourself just in time, “say” without that teensy “eeya” sound that wraps up that word. Sort of like “sensei” as pronounced in Japan, or at least in anime and Japanese TV shows.
  • In names ending in e, the final e is always sounded–usually as that shortened “ay” sound.
  • The exception is “ere”, which is ayr-ee, wherever it happens to fall, so some names end with ayr-ee, while some have that in the middle or at the beginning.
  • Children (or adults being teased as if they are children) or intimate friends get their names shortened with a bit of a stop in the middle, so Ansegwe becomes An-s-wei, and Kantalare becomes K-a-la-rei
  • As an example of the “translated words” system: the “aunts” are “awnts”, Brit/Northeast/Southern style, rather than Midwestern style “ants”.

Digression: How come I like weird names?  Well, jeepers, I’ve got one of my own, one that often gets pronounced weird, though I don’t care, really, I’ve heard ’em all.  The “correct” way is va-‘ness-uh ma-‘cla-ren-‘ray.  There are other pronunciations in use . . . but those are other Vanessas and other MacLarens. 

OK, here we go.  I’m not using really formal linguistic notation, but sound-shorthand that I think we all can follow. I put a single quote at the front of the stressed syllable in each word. 

  1. Our Main Characters

Varayla Ansegwe, Eskenyan Jemenga, Ensense Kantalare, Varaylas Ansele and Adeleke, and Haillyen.  These all appear frequently, though it takes a while for Kantalare to show up.  See how what we call “last names” (family names) come first, and “first names” (personal names) come second.

Wary, indeed.
Photo of sketch on wall, by Quinn Dombrowski, Berkeley, CA (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Varayla: Va-‘ray-la This one’s pretty phonetic, the tricky thing, from listening to auditions for our audio book, is that some people seem to read the “yla” as “lya”.  This reminds me of how people read the second half of my last name as “Wary” instead of “Wray”.  Don’t let it worry you, but if you prefer mispronouncing Varayla, just don’t go to Korlo. In the bad old days, you could earn a set of cement overshoes for mispronouncing that name to the wrong person.

Ansegwe: ‘ahn-seg-wei Our hero’s name is most likely to be mispronounced as on-‘seg-way, which is hilarious, as it makes me picture this enormous klutz trying to ride a Segway.  The first syllable should be said relatively slowly, so the second two click together fast, so that you almost lose the sound of the “e” in the middle: ahns’gwei. It has a kind of Japanese flavor to it.

Eskenyan: ess-‘ken-yan It sounds sort of like “a person from Kenya” (at least the way Americans say it) plus “Ess” in front of it.

Jemenga: ja-‘meng-uh When Jemenga is particularly pleased with himself, he really hits that middle syllable, so it’s like Ja-MENG-ah!

The Varayla Syndicate’s above-board operations include space-based solar power satellites.
(Not quite like this. This is NASA’s Solar-b satellite)

Ansele: ‘ahn-se-lei Tycoon aunt #1.

Adeleke: a-‘del-e-kei Tycoon aunt #2.

Haillyen: ‘hay-ul-lee-yen This is a “foreign” word to Ansegwe, so he’s basically phonetically “translated” it, the ‘y’ in the last syllable is a  bridge sound you get when putting ee and en together between the ee and the en.  Do ya get it? Yeah?  The reader should get it about 100 pages before Ansegwe catches on.

Ensense: en-‘sens-ei  You know, like, “sensei” with an “en” at the front.

Kantalare: kahn-tah-‘lahr-ei There’s a secondary stress on the first syllable.  Just make it sound pretty in your head.  Ansegwe is totally in love with her, so, whatever, hear her as beautiful

2. The people on the expedition

Some of these folks are only mentioned or quoted during the “expedition” chapters.

Tkonle: t-‘kawn-lei

Kulandere: koo-lahn-‘dayr-ee

Tekere: ta-‘kayr-ee

Tereinse: ‘tayr-ee-in-sei

Alekwa: ah-‘leek-wah

Nara: ‘nah-rah

Ensargen: en-‘sahr-gen It’s a hard g, as in “gun”, not a soft one as in “generation”. They don’t really use hard “g”

Korton: ‘kor-tun

Alawere: ah-la-‘wayr-ee

Tasegion: tah-‘seg-ee-on

Turame: too-‘rah-mei

3. People at home

Kateseo: ka-‘tay-see-oh

Kinshada: kin-‘shah-dah

Tumbal: ‘toom-bal

Erekulu: ayr-ee-‘koo-loo OK, this one isn’t a person, he’s a domesticated animal, so his name is a little goofy, meant to sound cute.

Tokal: toh-‘kahl

Ans’we: ‘ahn-se-wei This is a nickname for Ansegwe, used mostly by Kantalare, but also used by his expedition “friends” when they want to get on his case.

K’alare-: kah-‘lahr-ei This is a nickname for Kantalare, used by Ansegwe.

Az-dyel: ahz-dee-‘ell Note that this is another “foreign” word that Ansegwe has transcribed this way, so it’s pretty phonetic, the three syllables have almost equal stress, I hear just a little more on the last one, but you can feel more free to mess around with this one–it’s the ONLY word in this language that appears at all.

Eskewere: ess-ke-wayr-ee

Ensense Halense: en-‘sen-sei hah-‘len-sei This is a member of Kantalare’s extended family that they happen to run into at some point. 

4. List of authors. 

About two-thirds of the way through, someone gives Ansegwe a reading list, and the authors of the books are a mix of people from his world, one from outside his culture, and one (the last) he’s going to spend a lot of time with. I wouldn’t worry about these too much, but have fun with them.  Yeah, uh-huh, that’s intentional.

Asvelan Kulumbu: ‘ahs-veh-lahn  koo-‘loom-boo

Palawan Vejr: ‘pah-lah-wahn  vee-‘yay-zher

Trjia Qwijlian: ‘trr-zhee-ah  ‘kwizh-lee-ahn

Tsulander Tkonle: ‘Tzoo-lahn-der  T’kawn-lei

5. People in quotes.

Yeah, this is one of those books where each chapter opens with a quote from someone.  I picture these as remarks that people who know Ansegwe have made when interviewed about the events in the story.  Picture them sitting across the desk on their version of The Daily Show, chatting with their Trevor Noah.  Most of the quoted individuals made it into the final.  A few only get mentioned in these quotes.  These ones are mostly government officials.  Make them sound stuffy, self-important, and less-than-competent.

Insake Hailaware: ‘in-sah-kei  hai-uh-la-‘wahr-ei (For fussiness, there’s a secondary stress on first syllable in Hailaware. He will get all huffy if you miss that and maybe will find some minor infraction to write you up for.)

Elesennen Haileski: el-es-‘sen-en  hai-uh-‘les-kee

Kinsala Tkerelon: kin-‘sah-lah  T-‘kayr-ee-lon

6. Other words and place names.

The story takes place in a fairly limited set of “alien” geographic locations.  But I do have some place names included and there are a few other “thing” words that appear more than once.

The Kalinidor is something like this.
Alexander Fleming’s Nobel Prize (1945)
(Jemenga would discover penicillin if someone else hadn’t already.) Source: Science and Society Picture Library, London Museum of Science (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Korlo: ‘kor-low It simply sounds like “core” “low”.  This is Ansegwe’s country. 

Kalinidor: ka-‘lin-ee-dor This is a person’s name that’s become an object name–sort of like the Nobel Prize, well, actually, exactly like the Nobel prize.  Jemenga really really wants one of these.

Quazwallade: kwaz-‘wall-ah-dei  This is a place name, just a foreign country, one with some technological and cultural differences from Korlo.

Cignali: sig-‘nah-lee Let’s say that probably this was originally a person’s name, but now it’s the name of a famous university, think “Stanford”.

Utumwe: oo-‘tum-wei I told you there were academics in this story.  This is another university, a medical school actually, one that Jemenga lectures at, when they can get him.

Terende: ta-‘ren-dei  Another place name.

Tule: ‘too-lei Yep, place name. Doesn’t get much play, but even minor places count, says the writer who lives in a town that isn’t a proper town, just a collection of farms, houses, shops, and a gas station, that gets its own post office.

On the Care and Feeding of Participial PhrasesOn the Care and Feeding of Participial Phrases

In some critique circles, shooting down misplaced modifiers has become a sporting activity. It’s fun, because they’re easy to spot and can be really funny. “The robber drove the getaway car in a batman costume” should make you smile at the image of a car cosplaying as The Batman. It’s logical that a modifier works best when it’s placed as close as possible to the thing it’s describing. For example, the descriptor “in a batman costume” should be next to “robber” and not “car.”

Unfortunately, a valuable writing tool—the participial phrase—is taking collateral damage.

An image of a 19th-century postcard showing three people "flying" with stiff airplane-like wings justting from ther sides, as they shoot at ducks in the sky.
An 1899 postcard by Jean-Marc CĂ´tĂŠ
(public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

A participial phrase is a specialized modifier that conveys movement or change, often incorporating visual imagery and other details, while performing the duties of an adjective. This tool has its own grammar and punctuation rules. Like any modifier, it can be misplaced, but the writer has flexibility in its placement, supported by the unsung hero of grammar: the comma.

To be sure we’re all on the same page, let’s start with participles. A participle is what you get when you take a verb and use it as an adjective: drowned trees, running water, flying pigs, grown woman, billowing clouds. Look for the past- and present-tense endings.

A simple participle works just like an ordinary adjective and is placed exactly as you would expect. For example, “drowned trees” could be a more dramatic way to say “dead trees.” It’s not unique to English, but repurposing words is relatively common in our language. Apparently, we English-speakers are determined to keep turning one part of speech into another, as if we haven’t got enough words already. Verbing nouns is one of my pet peeves.

(Yes, I know. You saw what I did there.)

A participial phrase is both

  • a phrase with a participle in it, and
  • a phrase acting as an adjective, intended to describe the subject of a sentence.

For example, “acting as an adjective” is a participial phrase. So is, “intended to describe the subject of a sentence.”

To get a participial phrase, you build upon the participle:

Trees … drowned in the flood from the broken dam

Water … running over rocks and rills

Pigs … flying like eagles

Woman … grown wise in the ways of the world

Clouds … billowing like windblown sheets of satin (note the participle within this participial phrase)

Brilliant clouds sail high over the plains towards distant mountaints

Participles and participial phrases add flavor and texture to our sentences, and because they come from verbs, they help create a feeling of action. Questions arise when we go to put our nicely-constructed phrase into its sentence, because … where do we put the darned thing? You have three choices:

Leading: Billowing like windblown sheets of satin, the clouds sailed over the plains of Endor.

Subject-adjacent: The clouds, billowing like windblown sheets of satin, sailed over the plains of Endor.

Trailing: The clouds sailed over the plains of Endor, billowing like windblown sheets of satin.

Photo Credit: Jonathan C. Wheeler, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

(Note: these are my own terms. Reliable texts will say “at the beginning/in the middle/at the end.” yawn. Also, do not rail at me about the forests of Endor. This one is about the plains. Where, possibly, it rains. Like in Spain.)

Now … wait for it … here it comes:

If (and only if) you fail to properly punctuate a participial phrase, it becomes a misplaced modifier.

Technically, it’s a mispunctuated modifier, but to the reader, it’s confusing, and that’s why we care about misplaced modifiers. It occurs most often when the participial phrase is trailing. The separating comma before the phrase signals the reader that what follows describes the subject, in our example: clouds. Without the comma, you get:

The clouds sailed over the plains of Endor billowing like windblown sheets of satin.

Here, the reader is cast adrift and must grab for the nearest noun. While it may be possible that the plains of Endor billow, without other information, the reader will snicker, backtrack, guess what you mean, and move on, now somewhat annoyed by your absent comma.

Participial phrases bow to the humble comma or risk being misunderstood. For leading ones, you need a comma to close off the modifying phrase and move into the sentence proper. For subject-adjacent placement, commas—or their absence—are used intentionally to create subtle distinctions in meaning, distinguishing between essential description and nonessential elaboration.

A participial phrase placed next to the subject but without commas makes that descriptor an essential one. Consider:

The clouds billowing like windblown sheets of satin sailed over the plains of Endor.

Here the phrase is “essential” because it’s telling us that only those clouds that are billowing (yes, like satin) sail over the plains. Perhaps other clouds lie high in the stratosphere, unaffected by the winds below. If we put the commas back in, then we know the descriptor is colorful but nonessential. That is, we understand that all the clouds are sailing, though we pause in the middle of the sentence to enjoy the charming detail of their movement and sheen.

Placement at the beginning versus the end of a sentence allows us to create a sense of sequence, the order in which the storyteller wants the reader to experience each element. With the leading version of our Endorian sentence, the author wants you to take in the image of the shape and movement and texture of the clouds first, then imagine them sailing over the plains. It’s like when a child runs up to you with a remote-control toy and says “Look! Godzilla is driving this robot car! Isn’t it cool? Now watch what it can do!”

In contrast, with a trailing placement, the author nudges you to first realize that the clouds are sailing over the plains—maybe it’s important, because a party of adventurers must cross the stormy plain—and then lets you enjoy the clouds’ beauty. In our child’s-play example, first you are startled by a remote-control car zipping across the playground, and then a child is calling out “Wow! Cool! A robot car with Godzilla driving it!”

And now, don’t you want a robot car?

Me, too!

Were the plains of Endor too much? Let’s review, using a simpler situation. Imagine a romance in which a young woman has just learned her true love is about to sail away on a ship, and she’s hurried to the docks. She spots him boarding a vessel, but it’s way down on the pier. She has to run. She wants him to see her, but he’s too far away.

Here’s a mispunctuated participial phrase: Mun-Su ran down the dock waving to her departing lover.

We know the dock isn’t saying farewell to its lover, we know it’s Mun-Su, but as readers we don’t like to have to stop and think about it. Add the comma demanded by a trailing participial phrase, and all becomes clear as we yank out our hankies: Mun-Su ran down the dock, waving to her departing lover.

Of course, you could stick the participial phrase at the front: Waving to her departing lover, Mun-Su ran down the dock. Grammatically, this is correct, but we’ve defined a situation in which Mun-Su needs to get a move on first; her running is the critical action, because the lover won’t see her waving until she gets closer.

Further, what if you want to make the situation more complex? This is an important beat in the story. Surely, you want to share the character’s innermost feelings, her physical sensations at that moment: Her heart hammered like a steam piston as Mun-Su ran down the dock, waving to her departing lover.

Those unaware of the functionality of the participial phrase will point and cry, “You must place the phrase next to the subject.” Oh, my, but then you get: Her heart hammered like a steam piston as Mun-Su, waving to her departing lover, ran down the dock.

Poor Mun-Su is awkwardly waving, in a nonessential way, as she runs down the dock. Sadly, I’m not seeing a happily-ever-after now. Pass me the tissues.

I do hope you have enjoyed this little missive from the Grammar Police. We protect and serve … the text.

Further reading:

Clean examples and a bonus round on dangling modifiers from Grammar Monster: https://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/participle_phrases.htm

Purdue University’s online writing lab explicating plenty of complexities in participles and their phrases: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/mechanics/gerunds_participles_and_infinitives/participles.html

Don’t worry, Ha Mun-Su does get her happy ending eventually, and Won Jin-Ah won an award for her portrayal, too! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7521898/

© 2012-2025 Vanessa MacLaren-Wray All Rights Reserved