Confronting Failure - and Learning from It!

Did you see the cover for THE LOST PRINCESS RETURNS yet? I'm so in love with it for so many reasons, but mainly because it so perfectly captures Jenna/Ivariel in my mind. Especially everything she's feeling about returning to Dasnaria after all this time.

I'm glad everyone nagged me to write this story! The novella turned out to be a short novel, and releases June 29. You can preorder at the links below at a special sale price or here. Yes, there will be a print version; it should be available for preorder later this week.

Our actual topic at the SFF Seven this week is confronting failure. Not just the occasional downturns of fortune which is the lot of every writer, but also being able to take an honest look at what is just not working.

I recently signed up to be mentored during SFWA's Nebula Conference. (Salient note: because the conference was online this year, we've been able to keep it going. For a reduced price, you can avail yourself of the recorded panels and workshops, along with ongoing chats and discussions!) I've always volunteered to mentor others, and I've always joked that I *want* a mentor. While I know I have an enviable level of success compared to many, I'm also invested in evaluating what's NOT working in my career (Spoiler: I am not a millionaire) and how I can do better. I ended up having a fantastic conversation with Laura Anne Gilman. She took my questions and ramblings very seriously and gave me some great ideas for how I could "level up," career-wise. (She did say she thought "leveling up" applied mainly to craft, and I could see her point.) Amusingly enough, by the end of the conversation, she said she needed to write down some of her wise insights for herself.

I think taking a hard look at what is not working for us career-wise is just as important as taking those hard looks at why a manuscript won't sell or isn't grabbing people.

That kind of work never ends!

************************************
  Or Buy the ebook Direct from Jeffe

More than two decades have gone by since Imperial Princess Jenna, broken in heart and body, fled her brutal marriage—and the land of her birth. She’s since become Ivariel: warrior, priestess of Danu, trainer of elephants, wife and mother. Wiser, stronger, happier, Ivariel has been content to live in her new country, to rest her battered self, and to recover from the trauma of what happened to her when she was barely more than a girl.

But magic has returned to the world—abruptly and with frightening force—and Ivariel takes that profound change as a sign that it’s time to keep a promise she made to the sisters she left behind. Ivariel must leave the safety she’s found and return to face the horrors she fled.

As Ivariel emerges from hiding, she discovers that her vicious brother is now Emperor of Dasnaria, and her much-hated mother, the Dowager Empress Hulda, is aiding him in his reign of terror. Worse, it seems that Hulda’s resurrection of the tainted god Deyrr came about as a direct result of Jenna’s flight long ago.

It’s up to Ivariel—and the girl she stopped being long ago—to defeat the people who cruelly betrayed her, and to finally liberate her sisters. Determined to cleanse her homeland of the evil that nearly destroyed her, Ivariel at last returns to face the past.

But this time, she’ll do it on her own terms.

Tomato Tomahto Yumblie

Word Cloud from COLONY UNDER SIEGE

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is our favorite and least favorite ways the language is changing.

(Looks at topic, pokes it with a stick, turns it over and then upside down…)

Yeah, not a subject I give any thought to. I use language, I write books using language and I’m happy to learn and utilize new terms.

When I see a term being used in social media that I’m not sure of, I – what else? – google it. 

In the case of my title today, I googled synonyms for tomato and - oh my - a lot of them are red cheek inducing but this one was fun...

Yumblie: "Yumblies are small red creatures found in Bubblegloop Swamp in Banjo-Kazooie. They pop up out of the ground in the minigame Eat More Yumblies or Grumblies than Mr. Vile, where Banjo (as a crocodile) must consume more Yumblies and/or Grumblies than Mr. Vile"

Apparently they are deemed to look tomato-like. Amazing what a google search will bring you. I also found 'jumblies' from an 1871 poem. But I'm getting sidetracked here which is what happens when an author does research online!

I’m happy to invent new terms for my science fiction romance novels and to create words for my alien languages from syllables that sound good to me. I also have given my various characters different kinds of universal translators. Here's a sample from MATEER: A Badari Warriors SciFi Romance Novel: A tiny chiming sounded from the edge of the table, drawing her attention as the three alien males sat. A discrete display blinked at her in thin air, hovering below the tabletop, offering six choices, one of which was Basic. Hastily, she clicked that one—the only recognizable thing on the display—with her index finger and was rewarded with voices in her ear, apparently translating what the others were saying. The selection menu disappeared. She glanced at the men, but they were ignoring her, so either no one cared if she now understood them or the scientists were unaware the conference room had offered her the amenity. Schooling her face to be blank and bored, she sat and waited.

My attention can be briefly caught by some fascinating linguistic trivia, like the amazing @HaggardHawks serves up daily on twitter.  Here’s a sample tweet from Friday: In 17th century English, an EGG-WIFE TROT was a fast walking pace. It literally referred to the quickest pace an egg-seller heading to market dared to walk at while carrying a basket of eggs.

And then I might retweet it or I might just move on.

One thing I found fascinating over my long career at the old day job in process improvement and change management was how each area has its own terms and verbal shorthand which can seem impenetrable to the newcomer or outside. I think every organization has this. I still remember my ‘blue pencil’ number from working at the old May Company. I was 318881 and if the procedure called for a clerk to get a blue pencil approval on a return or other transaction, they’d have to find me and get me to scribble that plus my initials on their sales document. I can still do the scribble in two seconds flat.

When we did an enterprise-wide installation of Oracle software for the first time at the old day job, one of the biggest challenges was getting various departments together to flowchart the movement of various transactions. I remember sitting in one meeting where because of my broad interdepartment experience, I knew one of the words they were all using, thinking everyone understood it to be the same thing, actually had totally different meanings. I stopped the meeting and went around the room and had each department explain what the word meant to them. A lot of dropped jaws and disbelief by the end. We had 64 different understandings of the same word. Of course we eventually overcame that and other linguistic challenges but it was a good lesson learned for me.

At one point, years later, I was working with a team from a high powered consulting firm, who of course had their own jargon, which began to creep into our daily conversations because we were hearing it all the time. I had to laugh out loud the first time I heard one of them describing something as being ‘crisp’ because that was MY word and I was always demanding our presentations to my management be ‘crisp’ and anything else we delivered as a work product had to be ‘crisp’. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing my language infiltrate their corporate culture. I’m sure after the engagement with us ended, ‘crisp’ went away too, for lack of daily reinforcement.

Words have power and I’m happy that in the current world the English language (and others as well but I’m an English speaker so…) is so adaptable and welcoming to new words or combinations of old ones.

******************************************************

Changing Language

Language changes. I strongly suspect change comes faster when a culture is highly mobile like ours is.  There is a quote out there in the world about English rifling through the pockets of other languages, but in its original form, the quote is super problematic for it's sexism and attempt to somehow shame sex workers. I prefer the mental image of English as a thief willing to sneak up on another language, club it over the head, and take everything it could find. 

It's how we got hurricane. And geyser. From entirely different parts of the world. Imagine trying to learn English as a second language and having someone tell you, "No, no. That word's Japanese. Yeah, that word's Icelandic. And that one? That one's -- hell we have no idea where that one came from. Sorry." 

Then add in the variations and dialects associated with the language. The UK has one version of English. The US another. Australia yet another. The we add in Canada and the Caribbean region and I defy you, if you aren't practiced in hearing it, to decipher a southern Creole dialect speaking what's supposed to be English. You'll understand my sympathy for anyone trying to learn English. The language makes no damned sense. 

While I occasionally feel like some old curmudgeon yelling, "You kids get off my linguistic lawn!" I'm learning to not mind the ground of my language shifting beneath my feet. It's been rightly pointed out that rigid, codified grammar is a form of oppression. Insisting on "The One True Way" of language devalues the speakers of other dialects. For the longest time, the most common impression most people had of anyone who spoke with a Southern accent was that they were less intelligent. Now think about how grammar rules are used against Black culture and the dialects that have grown out of Black experience in this country. It absolutely casts Black language and culture as lesser. As something to be mocked and laughed at. Instead of listened to and appreciated for the original music it brings to the whole of the English language.

Oh, for the love of language.

“Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” ~Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

As writers, words are our tools, our weapons, our voice. And as writers that means we always need to be collecting new tools, sharpening our weapons, and improving our voice. How do we do that?

We listen.

I don’t believe it matters what genre you’re writing in, you’ve got to be able to listen to people. Not simply what language they’re speaking, (English, Spanish, French, etc.) but soak up their personal language. How do they use their words, what do they enunciate, what offends and what makes them laugh. 

You don’t have to go far for language to change either. For a broad example you can look at the US, there’s southern drawl to the long o’s of Northern MN…don’t ya know. 

For a specific example, when I was in high school my hometown used the word barr. 

Barr: something stupid, ridiculous, dumb. 

Our school’s top rival, the neighboring town, didn’t use barr. If you used it in that town...they knew exactly where you were from. By the way, the distance between these towns is about ten miles. 

What does that have to do with writing? 

If you can listen then you'll hear words used in ways you've never imagined. Our languages change all the time. If you doubt that, check out the yearly additions to the dictionary! If you can listen and understand people, you can write realistic characters. And that’s one thing that all books should have in common. 

Former editor gets a bit ranty about language

True story: I'm sitting in my comfy chair, probably pretending to write a book, and my phone rings. It's a talky-type phone call, right, not a text, so I knew instantly that it was either my mother-in-law or my mom. And since it was a Yoda ring tone rather than R2-D2, I was fully prepared for my mom-in-law. Not unexpectedly, she was in a flutter about something, but this time it wasn't her computer, her car, or her cat.

It was language, a thing which is dear to my heart. Rant away, Meemaw, for I am here for it!

Anyhow, she was editing a paper for her son, who is a social sciences PhD student and worries maybe too much about his command of commas. She knows I was an editor and copy editor for coughfifteenyears, so she trusts my opinions on things like semicolons and style guides. She also expected me to be horrified at a thing she was horrified over. See, my brother-in-law had broken a basic usage rule repeatedly in this paper, and he is a smart dude so it made no sense. His mother was concerned.

The problem was pronoun-antecedent agreement. As the Towson University web site phrases it, "A pronoun must agree with its antecedent in number. Rule: [Their bold, not mine] A singular pronoun must replace a singular noun; a plural pronoun must replace a plural noun." So, if Chris went to the store, he bought beer. If Christa went, she bought wine. If all the Chrises went together, they bought cheese. We all learned this stuff in grade school, if it sounds familiar.

But my brother-in-law consistently used "they" as the pronoun for all singular nouns. Which was wrong wrong wrong... right?

Except no.

See, Meemaw, I explained, our language is living, agile, functional, and as our society changes, so change the rules. As we try to be more inclusive of gender identities, the old he/she/it rules need to flex to accommodate. "They" is perfectly acceptable -- turns out English speakers have been using the plural "they" to refer to singular nouns of unknown gender for a really long time, and most major style guides have approved the usage. Also, considering the paper was for an academic social-sciences audience, it would have been a mistake to replace "they" with "he or she" (or s/he, which was always an abomination). It would have been wrong.

Which, in my mind, is something so very, very right about language.

So, you just keep evolving, English, you adorable tongue you. The rest of us will catch up.

p.s. -- I am considerably less down with all the run-on sentences I'm seeing lately from people who I guess are trying to use fewer commas? There's nothing wrong with commas, people! If you have two independent clauses, please stick one of those little beauties and a connecting word in between, even if you don't pause at that part of the sentence. Trust me. Also, lay off the semicolons. I can almost guarantee you aren't using them right.

Language: It's a Little Fishy

Oh, how I love the way language constantly evolves. It's a fantastic excuse for why my spelling is such crap. (Why did we remove the "e" in judgment? What did it do to Mssrs Merriam or Webster?)  Or why my floundering with homonyms and homophones sends my editors snickering up their sleeves. (Grisly and Grizzly, I'm looking at you.)

No? Not buying it as an excuse? 

Believe it or not one of my favorite ways to bond with my father is over a delightful little card game known as Quiddler. It's a variant of Scrabble in which every card is a letter with a different point value that you must use to make a word. You start with three cards and add a card with each round you play. Simple enough. The catch, that is not an official rule, is we can only use words from our unabridged 1969 dictionary that we hauled around the world and that weighs more than the family dog.

That's right 1969, when terms like Byte and Gigahertz didn't exist. Email? No. Internet? No. Dear Reader, there are words in that dictionary that are not defined but used as definitions. I present to you:

  Nerfling. 

What a spectacular word, right? Brings to mind faeries and sprites and journeys through moon gates.

It's a fish.

(I had to look it up on the internet. Oh, the irony.)

So, while Zoomers are having a ball dragging Millenials for passe terms like Adulting and Doggos on TikTok, I'm rummaging through the past for fascinating names to bestow upon fantasy races of...fish?

It's a Living Thing

Language, that is.
Language is a living thing, and as such, it constantly mutates. What do I love and hate about that fact? That language is a constantly changing thing,.

Okay, one of y favorite examples is from the show The Simpsons. Now, with the exception of the annual TREEHOUSE OF HORROR. I couldn't much care about the Simpsons. I watched the show when it started and I watched the way the art changed and okay, that's fine.

But, I was amused to the point of a grin on my face when the Oxford Dictionary decided to add the word "D'oh" as modern slang. How delightful! A goofy little comment from Homer Simpson became an actual word in the English language because so many people were using it. I bet if I looked into it I could find a few words from Buffy The Vampire Slayer added as well.

I love the fact that the English language adapts and changes to suit its own needs. Sometimes it steals from other languages (Okay, often), sometimes a new word is made up on the fly In any event the language becomes something new. How cool is that? It's like watching a chameleon change colors.

I all as is almost always the case, working on multiple projects at once. Short stories, novels, collaborations, a novella. all of these are directly affected by the change in language. My novels is a first-person spin-off of a Novelette I wrote ten years ago, which is, in turn, a spin-off from a novel. The language is a complete bastardization of the English I speak and usually use because it's told by a hitman with a very different grasp of the English language. He doesn't speak like me. He isn't me. I'm just telling his story. I've caught myself a few times wanting to increase his vocabulary, but I won't let that happen. He has his ways, I have mine.

It all varies. One o0f my teachers, when I was a kid, thought the word "garbage" was the most beautiful sounding word in the English language She told that to a herd of fifth graders and was shocked at the laughter. I knew another teacher who though "Onomonapeia" was the bee's knees. Words are wonderfully quirky in this language. We turn a phrase with the best of them and usually get it exactly wrong enough to annoy at least one reader a book at a guess. But we use those words just the same, and we invent new ones if we have to.

If I can be said to have anything that I don't like about the way the language  keeps changing, I guess I'd have to say I'm not fond of the shortcuts. Where R U should never replace Where are you? in my book. It made sense when you  had to pay for each character n a text, but those days are mostly gone.

That's it for me this time around. In case you haven't run across my latest release (from a freaking year ago, because cancer and the treatments for the same slow down EVERYTHING) my last novel released was BOOMTOWN and the follow up collection of short stories was WHERE THE SUN GOES TO DIE. Both are weird westerns.

Love It or Hate It? Changing Language

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is our favorite and least favorite ways the language is changing.

I'm not much of a cane-shaker about language. I'm kind of a language nerd, endlessly fascinated by etymology, and in another life-path I would totally have been a linguist and polyglot.

(Though I only know English and French, along with a smattering of other languages. Still, in my mind, I imagine myself learning new languages, when I *cough* have time.)

I love how language evolves, how it's a fluid and living thing. (Except for those dead languages, forever frozen in a particular form to ossify that way. It always seems kind of sad to me.) I even love how technology is changing our use of language - like how "tho" has a different connotation from "though," even though the former is technically a shortening of the latter. I'm enough of a word nerd that I have a full set of the (paper) Oxford English Dictionary and reference books on the Roots of English and a Sanskrit bible (whence we derived many of said roots).

I do have my peeves. It annoys me that "factoid" has totally lost its original meaning of a sexy but deliberately untrue tidbit to, well, exactly the thing it was meant to comment on satirically. But I try to let it go because clearly people wanted a word to mean a "short fact" and glommed onto that.

Otherwise, I try to keep up with language shifts. They're a reflection of a dynamic society, and learning new words keeps my brain limber.

I'm sure learning a new language would, too...