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)
We played books on tape (remember tapes?) for our children during long car rides. Our oldest taught himself to read at preschool by playing tapes and reading through the accompanying books.
And now it’s become of the main ways people get their stories–in audio books, so they can listen in the car, while exercising, or while ignoring the rest of the people trapped in their house during a pandemic.
I’ve now had the experience of helping to create a new audiobook–the audio edition of All That Was Asked has just come out on Audible (accessible via Amazon, too, of course). If you’re not already on Audible, there’s a free trial offer running that you can take advantage of (and keep the books to collect during your trial, even if you cancel).
We should have the iTunes version out Any Day Now.
I suppose this is a tiny bit like being a playwright and seeing your script being acted out on stage for the first time. First, you squeal, “eeeeeeeee, someone is reading my words!” and then you whine, “heyyyy, that’s not how you say ‘Ansegwe’!”
We have a wonderful reader, Trevor Wilson, who was amazingly patient with all my OCD-level requests for adjustments…especially with all those alien names to learn in this book. I know–they’re made-up names, right, so should it matter? Well, yes, since they all go together to help create a sound-image of an alien culture. I’m so happy Trevor made time to put his mark on this book. He had some really fun, creative takes on ways to make individual characters jump out of the text.
Trevor isn’t just a narrator, he’s a voice actor. That makes a world of difference. To create, in sound, the character of Ansegwe, he came up with three distinct voices–Ansegwe the memoirist, looking back on his youthful escapades, the younger Ansegwe, in dialogue, and the thoughts in young Ansegwe’s head. Each character, major and minor, has their own distinctive voice. He even gave two brothers–who only drop by in a few scenes–a unique, shared accent that still cracks me up, after, what? fifteen listens?
So if you like your books in sound format, mine is there for you, now. Enjoy!
Sunset #734
the fire dies down, and the colors rise up
rivers flow amber, gold, and blood-rose
cascading one upon the other
wave upon wave around the sky
pushing back the eastern dark
holding the light for one last hour
giving us time, time to remember
all of the days we have had together
the glorious days beneath the sun
The main character in my recent book, All That Was Asked, is a poet. It’s a first-person narrative, and he keeps mentioning how people reacted to a poem, or how much he enjoyed writing a poem, or that he likes to watch sunsets because they inspire poetry. But . . . there aren’t any poems in the book itself. It seemed to me I couldn’t quite measure up to the standard implied in the text . . . one gets the impression, although Ansegwe is self-effacing about it, that he’s actually rather good.
Still . . . it’s nagged at me, that I didn’t have any poems by Varayla Ansegwe. After spending hours and days and weeks and months with him, I’m sort of a fan, if you will. If I were a real fan, I’d have his work, wouldn’t I?
So I gave it a try. It’s interesting, to try to write personal-style poetry from someone else’s perspective. The one above results from all those mentions of poetry related to watching sunsets. Imagine our hero trotting down the hill after enjoying a really nice day’s-ending light show, muttering to himself, wriggling his fingers, anxious to scribble down this latest idea. We can leave it to your imagination how he improved this “draft”.
For a second poem, I tried to combine two things from his background. First, it seems Ansegwe had a fairly decent collegiate-level ranking in, well, whatever ball game is popular in Korlo. I envision it as sort of like baseball, maybe like an upsized version of kickball, with a larger, rugby-sized ball. Lots of running, jumping, catching, throwing–very energetic. Second, it’s evident that he was quite the one for romantic entanglements.
If I can gather enough of these, I’ll put together a little “collection” that I can share at events and such. Oh, and as a reminder . . . consider these as translated from Korlovian.
(Photos are mine. All from our own universe, alas.)
Intercept
In this moment,
there is only the ball, gliding on its parabolic arc.
It requires all of your mind to calculate the leap
the extension of your arm, the stretch of your fingers
the breath you draw at its approach
the strength you need to hurl it to your comrades.
For this moment, you do not know that she is gone.
For this moment, your heart is no more than a muscle.
Whether the ball glides into your hand
whether it skims your fingertips and caroms off under the lights
either way, you will crash to earth again
the world's gravity will bear you down
the moment will end
and you will know.
But in this moment, you leap
and time stretches to meet you.
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:
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.
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.
Translations In the Real World (Photo by Tflanagan at KSU, Saudi Arabia, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)
One of the first things people ask me when they read certain of my stories is “What’s the right way to pronounce all these weird words?” My stock answer is: “However you like! It’s all made up, whatever sounds right inside your head is fine by me.”
Starting the process of doing an audio book for All That Was Asked has forced me to face the fact that, well, really there is a “right” way. For one thing, the story centers on language–in fact, the working title of the book was “Translations by Ansegwe.” In general, for the stories where I have a made-up culture with their own language or an “evolved” culture that’s grown from more-or-less familiar cultures but uses a language other than English as their root language, I do know how those words should be pronounced. I’m that wonky sort that blows off an entire afternoon at Worldcon to attend a linguistics workshop, so, well, that’s where I’m coming from.
In the real world, I know French pretty well, I watch a lot
of foreign-language TV (though of course I’m relying on subtitles), I live in
place where I hear Spanish and Russian regularly, and I have technical-world
acquaintances with a great variety of language “homes” from India to
Europe to Africa to both Chinas. I’ve
struggled to learn a smattering of my culture-base language–Gaelic. And I grew
up being hauled around to various places in the U.S. and England. I even still “hear” (and alas for
spell-checkers, spell) most English as Brit-style. End result:
I love the interplay of languages and the way everyone talks. I
do not claim to be a polyglot, but I’m a diligent researcher and I just love
all those sounds.
In my writing, most of the problematic words are names, because I think of such stories as having been “translated” from the alien/alternate history language set. Names tend to get left over after a translation, because even if I’m translating a story from French to English, I wouldn’t change “Tourenne” to “Terence” or “Gervais” to Gerald, because a) the names aren’t really the same and b) the sounds of names add the flavor of a language without requiring a reader to actually know a foreign tongue directly. Spoiler? My current work-in-progress has characters named Tourenne and Gervais, and they live in a francophone culture that doesn’t exist anywhere in the real world.
In the made-up language base for All That Was Asked, I have lots of names for people, place-names from more than one country in the alternate-universe world, and a few name-based terms. (The academic types in the story have dreams of winning their version of the Nobel prize, so they talk about it a lot. The Nobel prize is named for a person, but . . . it’s a thing.) I wanted the central names to make sense, to have relateable sounds, and to have some commonalities. For instance, in English we have a lot of names that end in ‘-y’. I selected some sound elements that would fit into different names and tried to make them sound like they came from a distinct self-contained culture–except for a few names I made up specifically to sound like another culture, in the same world.
I decided on a family-personal naming order that made sense
for the culture–Family first, Personal second, and most people refer to each
other and address each other by their personal names, because everyone knows
what family everyone else belongs to. And
I made names longer than we’re used to in English. In our culture “power names” tend
to be short, in theirs, most people have multisyllable names, and powerful people
tend to have longer names.
For other sets of words in this story, ones that are “translated” to English, I “hear” the words in British/European English rather than American English, because that fits better with the social style of the people and gives it a little bit of distance for American readers. It may sound really fussy–especially for such a short little book–but I think having a clear auditory sense going into it helped me with building the alien culture. I just have to hope it carries through to readers and listeners–not a burden to cope with but an added feature of the story.
In my next post, I’ll give you a blow-by-blow pronunciation guide for All That Was Asked, with a few background bits to liven it up a bit.
One thing about the global economy…it’s January 31st in some places already. Barnes and Noble has the paper editions as well as the Nook version ready to go.
Meanwhile, Amazon is lagging behind, with just the Kindle version and it still is tagged as “preorder” . . . in the U.S. C’mon Jeff, don’t you want more money for your rocketship project? UPDATE: Amazon is up, in Kindle and Trade Paperback editions.
But you can download it from Amazon’s sites for the UK or India.
And it’s up at Canada’s Biggest Bookstore, !ndigo.
This first-contact story explores the challenges of communication between species–when neither side has a universal translator to rely on, when the alien in question is so odd most people would consider it an animal, not a person, and when accidents and misunderstandings get in the way.
Ansegwe’s a tagalong, a wannabe poet, and the pampered offspring of a rich, powerful family. When faced with the choice of leaving an injured alien creature to fend for itself in the wilds of a strange world, he makes decisions that force him to contend with his own failings–but also help him discover his mission in life.
Available in hardcover, trade paperback, and digital editions on January 31st. Pre-order now! Free shipping for B&N members and on Amazon Prime.
Long, long ago, when I was a horse-mad thirteen-year-old, we lived stranded in a one-street suburb of Montgomery, Alabama, where the only available equine companionship came in the form of a mare and foal pastured behind our house. The mare was tolerant, not friendly, but not the type to pitch a fit when some kid squeezed through the barbed-wire fence to pamper her baby. It helped that the colt wasn’t a baby anymore, to be sure.
Generally, I would manage to sneak out with an apple, which the young horse would snarf down with relish. Then he would snuffle at my pockets in hopes of seconds. Horses are smarter than non-horsey people give them credit for. Horses know what pockets are for. Pockets are containers for apples, carrots, crunchy horse treats, sometimes even a handful of grain, preferably sweet feed. They do not care about the cries emanating from laundry rooms when mothers find pocket-loads of such goodies swirling in the wash.
One fine February day, I ventured out with only some small treat, nothing as appealing as an apple. It was chilly, so I wore my new(ish) red coat. And my pony friend bit me on the shoulder. Another thing non-horsey people may not know is that a horse can bite hard. They fight with their teeth–stallions even have extra-sharp eye teeth for those battles that make the front covers of old cowboy paperbacks.
That bite hurt. It hurt bad. I was not so horse-crazy that I didn’t run home for help. I was lucky to be wearing that insulated jacket–all my friend gave me was an enormous bruise, as the coat distributed the impact nicely. My mother was angry, scolding me for trespassing in the pasture but also clearly angry that the horse had hurt me. I took his part, explaining–convincingly, I was sure–that he simply mistook the red, rounded curve of my shoulder for a big shiny apple. It was my fault, I told her, for leading him to expect apples all the time and . . . most accurately, for turning my back on him. I loved horses, but I’d been hanging around them since I was six, and I knew better.
Bear with me. I’m getting there.
We were living in Montgomery because my dad was attending the Air War College, an academic-style officer-training program. It’s very like a master’s degree program in strategy, analysis, all that sort of thing. (My copy of Strunk and White is a discard from the library there, one my dad brought home for his aspiring-writer kid.) My mom grew up spending summers on “the farm”–her parent’s country get-away. My dad was a city boy through-and-through. Years later, I learned he was afraid of horses–that the thought of his kid galloping around on top of one of those monsters horrified him.
The War College program is only a year. One spring night, quite late, my parents stumbled into the house after some kind of semi-official party at the AWC. They, or at least Dad, had had a really fun evening. Really, really fun. My dad had received his next posting. As wing commander for a prestigious bomber wing. In North Dakota. We were moving to an air base where there was an on-base stable, in a state where horses were cheap to get and to keep.
“North Dakota is Rough Rider country, cowboy country,” my dad told me that night, his eyes bright and his grin much wider than usual. “So you can have a horse in North Dakota. Won’t that be great?”
When Dad sobered up, the next day, and recovered from his headache, the day after, Mom sat him down and told him what he’d promised me. And she held him to it. She wouldn’t let him back out of it.
So for the next four months, I thought to myself, over and over again, I’m getting a horse, I’m getting a horse, I’m getting a horse.
It’s happening again. I may be ever so much older than twenty now, but I’m having all those same feelings Though it’s not a horse this time. It’s a book. It’s my book. And it’s being published. For reals. For really reals. In four months.
It’s about a couple of strangers who meet up and have some troubles understanding one another.
Cross-species friendships can be complicated.
The book is All That Was Asked. It’s coming out from Paper Angel Press, a publisher based in San Jose, California. And it should be out in January of 2020. In the meantime, check out all the other books that Paper Angel Press has available.
