Rules of the House

These three points used to be on the sidebar; sidebar space got tight, and people visiting here had gotten to the point of remembering them. These rules now live on the Eagles Over the Kennebec profile page. They are reproduced here as a helpful guide for new visitors, and a gentle reminder for those who have forgotten.

Rules of the Blog
(may be updated from time to time, as Necessity dictates)

1. Please sign your posts. Anonymous posts (even nice ones!) will be deleted.

2. Snippets from the current work (if any) come at the whim of Management -- that's me -- and only at the whim of Management.

3. Please be polite, even when you disagree with everything that guy over there just said.

On being a native speaker of a fictional language

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time on the couch (ably assisted by Hexapuma, who's really getting into this nap-on-Sharon's-papers business; and Mozart, on window-watch) reading what there is of Ghost Ship to refresh myself (again) on what the story is about and how much I've told so far (day-job noise keeps drowning out story-signal). In addition to the foregoing, my mission was to circle all the weird words (English), ship names, planet names/designations, names of trees and houses, names and nicknames of people, and of course all the foreign words (Terran and Liaden, mostly), so that I can once again make a Big List for the use of the copy editor.

One of the things that I noticed, as I was red-circling things, was that I've been speaking Liaden for so long that I no longer register words like melant'i, cha'trez, van'chela, relumma, nadelm or ge'shada as "made up" when I'm writing -- which is to say, I don't remember to underline them. This is a problem. Underlining signals the typesetter that this word here is "foreign" and should be set in italics.

Hmmm. Now, I'm wondering, pursuant to our earlier discussion in this journal regarding the copy editor's bible, if it would be useful to readers if we whacked together all these Weird Words of the Liaden Universe® -- and Beyond! lists we've made over the years into a chapbook. Such an undertaking would necessarily include spoilers, so maybe that isn't well-thought, after all.

In any case, I'm guessing I'll need to go through the 'script when it's in clean-up phase, and just search on each Liaden word in turn, to make sure they're properly underlined.

*adds to the finishing list*

Five things make a post

1. I must need get with mine partner regarding the costs, not just monetary, attending a Liaden...call it a dictionary for now. Watch this space.

2. As reported elsewhere, I have here in my hand the mass market paperback edition of Fledgling. It's pretty. Be sure to order it in from your favorite local indie bookstore, or to buy online from B&N. As always, the DRM-free ebook edition is available from Baen Webscriptions.

3. I note with...sorrow...that the Macmillan links are not yet live on Amazon.com

3A. I note with even more sorrow that Amazon has, excepting the...alarmingly un-savvy posting in the Kindle forum last evening, not made any attempt to Explain Itself.

4. Mozart visited his Good Friend Dr. Slack this morning, and has drops for his drippy eye. He is Not Pleased. But the eye seems to be responding to treatment.

5. I seem to have lost my voice.