News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #136…
What do you like to read? Reading tastes vary, but my stories are in the popular genres of mystery, thrillers, crime, suspense, and sci-fi—I might write a “crossover story,” but it will have things in common with those genres (a genre is just a keyword these days, after all). I don’t do romance, erotica, fantasy, or horror. Sure, my stories can contain romance and horror—the first is a positive aspect of the human condition, the second is often a negative. I know a few authors who write that stuff (cozy mysteries and dark fantasy too), and they’re so good I can understand why their books are read, but I can’t write them, so I have to be a sometimes reader and admirer of their writing skills. That said, my mantra for what I write is simple: if each story entertains just one reader, I consider it a success.
Readers wanting freebies. I can’t seem to give it away—PDFs free for the asking, that is. No cost to me (OK, fun time I spend), so no cost to you. You might not be interested in my little course about writing fiction—that’s really for writers—but why not the short story collections and novellas? Send me an email and say what you’d like to receive. I’ll never divulge that email, and will delete it in fact unless you want to subscribe to the email version of this newsletter (it’s less frequent and more oriented to readers).
Speaking like a native. My new mystery/suspense/thriller novel Rembrandt’s Angel (coming this spring from Penmore Press) features Scotland Yard Inspector Esther Brookstone, so I had to review some differences between American and British English (Ms. Brookstone has a lively way with words). There are variations within American English and British English too. In Speaking American (I suppose the title is a nod to the UK because we Yanks don’t speak the Queen’s English by any stretch of the imagination), Josh Katz notes a few differences that go beyond regional dialects like Bostonian v. Texan. Here’s a short list of how different words are used on the East Coast v. West Coast for the same concept:
East West
sneakers tennis shoes
yard sale garage sale
skillet frying pan
scallions green onions
lightning bug firefly
turnpike toll road
highway freeway
middle school junior high
I’ve added a few. Because I grew up in California and now live on the East Coast, some of these cause me difficulty (“sneakers” is a problem for me, for example—are they worn by stalkers?). My mother used both terms, “skillet” and “frying pan,” but she was from Kansas. But you’d ruin the alliteration in the adage “jumped from the frying pan into the fire” if you made the replacement for easterners. I’d bet the Midwest has different words for things too—Midwesterners, weigh in! (Note: I can send you a list of words from British English used in Rembrandt’s Angel if you have trouble. UK readers won’t have any problems, of course.)
Amazon’s revenge? Readers of these newsletters know I’m adding ebooks to Smashwords. That’s coming along fine, thanks to Carrick Publishing, and will give readers who use services like Apple, B&N, and Kobo, with their special formatting needs (ebook formatting makes the old Betamax v. VHS debate seem mundane) access to my ebooks (Smashwords also sells ebooks in .mobi Kindle format). This project required me to make my ebooks non-exclusive on Amazon. Never sold many ebooks there anyway, but now the number is a big fat zero! Some authors have told me that Amazon ignores ebooks that aren’t exclusive unless they’re published by traditional publishers. Seems strange (a sale is a sale), but could be. Readers and authors weigh in. What’s your opinion?
Sales? I don’t give away ebooks anymore except for reviews and promotional purposes (unless you count those that are pirated, which are involuntary give-aways), but I will temporarily lower a book’s price from time to time. Don’t expect these deals to appear on Amazon (non-exclusive ebooks there can’t have deals). Any book on sale will be via Smashwords, so look for the coupon codes here in this blog. (One way to get you to read my blog posts, right?). Of course, my ebooks are already at such bargain prices that you don’t need deals. (Even my recent print books are bargains.) That might change in 2017, which could lead to more frequent deals on Smashwords.
Rogue Planet. Hidden away from near-Earth planets in remote spiral arms of the Galaxy are Human worlds that have lost contact with more progressive worlds and reverted to strange and primitive customs and traditions, their leaders using religion, superstition, and imported technologies to rule in tyranny. Survey ships explored and catalogued these planets as suitable for future colonization centuries earlier, but groups with a special interest in ensuring a homogeneous and often despotic society didn’t bother applying for permission to colonize.
Following the ITUIP (Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets) Protocol, ships are restricted to observe and maintain a hands-off policy for these rogue planets, even when there is great temptation to intervene. Eden, where a theocracy rules with an iron fist, is such a planet. A group of rebels struggles to end the oppressive regime to forge a new future.
Available in all ebook formats and print. Read for free by writing an honest review (query through my contact page).
In libris libertas!
January 7th, 2017 at 8:46 am
I looked over the words as a midwesterner, and found that usually we say one or the other. Sometimes we say “gym shoes” but usually it’s probably “tennis shoes” for that one. We say garage sale. I’ve heard the term “rummage sale” but we don’t use it around here…
We’re firmly in the “frying pan” camp, and they’re lightning bugs in Illinois. We usually say “tollway” instead of “toll road” or “turnpike”. (I rarely hear the latter term around here.) It’s usually “highway” or “interstate” instead of “freeway” though that one does get used occasionally as well. Sometimes we call them “expressways,” especially around cities like Chicago. And I always say “junior high” when referring to 7th and 8th (and sometimes 6th) grades. But our schools here have grades 1-2-3 (elementary school) and 4-5-6 (which I’ve always referred to as the “middle school”) then 7-8 (which I call “junior high”).
The odd one for me was green onions vs scallions. When they’re in a dish, it seems that we refer to them as scallions. When we used to pull them out of the ground, it was “green onions.”
My grandparents and my dad had some odd expressions that he used to say were because they were Irish but when I read Bill Bryson, he pointed out that those expressions and pronunciations were found in the southern United States. As far as I could tell, my grandfather, who always said he was Irish, hailed from the area between Germany and France, and his ancestors settled in Illinois when they came here, about a generation or two before him. So who knows? Anyway, if I come up with any of those expressions, I’ll try to post them…
January 7th, 2017 at 8:47 am
there may be a response in spam…
January 8th, 2017 at 7:32 am
Scott,
Your comment underlines the diversity of influences on American English. Adding to that the differences across the British Commonwealth, we can understand that a writer (or other communicator) will have great difficulty in being linguistically neutral. Katz’s book and the book The Stories of English (see “Steve’s Bookshelf”) show that there’s nothing new about this–English has never been a dead language.
r/Steve