Chapter 27, Imperator Apollo, is up. Mostly cleanup, suggested edits, and a new epigraph. If the epigraph of this chapter reads a little like that of the previous chapter, it's because I swapped some of the wording around. Only 14 chapters left to edit! Woohoo!
Quick, go read!
Dirk
Here's a link to a CNBC article about the site Wattpad that some authors are using to publish stories and get noticed by agents, publishers, and producers.
Nicely done, Bill. And an impressive resume.
I've simply been responding to the suggestions people are making. I don't plan to write in Italian. I couldn't. Based on this discussion, I will either pretend everyone is speaking Italian (rendered into English), and I'll state that in the description a few times where needed, or I'll pretend almost everyone generally speaks English and throw in a few words or phrases in Italian now and then in their dialogue. The latter is what Dan Brown did, and it worked very well.
Thanks to everyone for their ideas.
Dirk
No, I need Italian in this case. The Church uses Latin for important written documents, but the common language spoken among the senior cardinals is Italian. Plus, there will be non-Church characters who will also be Italian. So far, all of my major characters speak Italian, although there's nothing that says they can't also speak English.
Don't you need to be fluent in the language to do that? At best, I might be able to hire someone to translate a few dozen words or phrases sprinkled throughout.
Got it. Thanks.
Mariana, *all* of the dialogue in the book is among native Italians. I can't write an English book with purely Italian dialogue. Who would understand it?
Thanks, JP. He did the same in Angel & Demons, but got some of it wrong in the original release. His factual errors have their own Wikipedia page, a level of fame I aspire to. :-)
Thanks, Bill/Janet/njc. Throwing in occasional words or phrases of actual Italian is appealing, although I'll probably end up with errors. Even Dan Brown got some of his Italian wrong in the original release of Angels & Demons. Fortunately, only real Italian speakers will know. More intimidating is getting inside the head of the most senior cardinal (the Secretary of State) and into meetings of the Council of Cardinal Advisers. How do the most senior Catholics on the planet think and conduct themselves?
I'm currently planning a story set in the Vatican/Rome, where most of the characters speak Italian by default. However, the book is for an English-speaking audience. I was thinking of simply ignoring the language difference and doing all of the dialogue in English, without acknowledging when people are actually speaking Italian. My thought was that most (all?) people in the book will be speaking Italian most of the time, and I don't want lines like this ("Dialogue," he said in Italian.) throughout the book. I suppose I could add a note at the beginning of the book that everyone is really speaking Italian. I should add that there will be Italian place names, which is unavoidable when describing the setting.
Thoughts?
Thanks
Dirk
This is good information, Jake. Thank you.
Check out BookBaby. They're affiliated with this site, I believe.
Awesome about the chapters. I'll get to those later this week.
Nuts about your long-term prognosis. Does your health plan give you access to the best hospitals/docs/treatments? Hopefully, you have more than Jersey City Medical Center. Oy!
Glad your feeling good. :-)
Dirk
No rush. Yoda voice: rest, you must. It may help to tell you I'm only planning to do light edits at this point. Slap me around a little, grab the points, and go back to sleep. Seabrass's final edits are already included in most of the posted chapters, and I'm about to add K's edits, so it should be in decent shape by the time you see it. I'll take a few hours this week and update all the online chapters. Depending on how far back you're reading, I have some late changes to post.
I totally forgot about Acme (not ACME, since that'll get me sued) and Aussie as I was revising my latest chapters. I'll have to go back and see if I can find more use for them. Did you know that I once forgot to use God in an entire chapter? Had to make a chapter checklist after that, which I keep forgetting to look at. I now have five ghosts in Joseph's head, so it's going to be hard to use them all. There's particular overlap between Joseph's mother and Admiral St. James. I knew that might bite me eventually. I'd retire Admiral St. James, but she's his military advisor, which should come in handy in act IV.
I thought Roman history research was hard. Try coming up to speed on the inner workings of the Catholic Church and the Vatican (for my next book about the Antichrist). Especially with my memory. I need notes just for my notes. I've bought two books just to understand Revelation, plus Catholicism for Dummies. :-) Every time I go deep into Catholic documents (e.g., online encyclopedia, the Catechism, etc.), I need a religious dictionary. There is a large DVD set all about the Catholic Church that I will probably buy, but it's $70 used, so I'm holding off until I get over the guilt of how much I've already spent. Had to buy a Blue-Ray drive and software just to watch the damn Exorcist Anthology, which turned out to be mostly crap. If I had thought to check rottentomatoes.com first, I could have saved myself a bundle. The worst of the five films has an 11% freshness rating. I miss having access to US streaming. Netflix Canada is all we've got, and it's relatively slim pickings.
I'm now officially in act III of IV with my revisions (about 15 chapters to polish). Four months or so to completion, allowing plenty of time for Catholic research. However, after some discussions online, I decided not to publish Into the Mind of God until I return to the story (after my next book), which means probably four or more years from now. I'm hoping the Antichrist book will be more polished and make a better first publication. Marketing will be a time-consuming bitch, so I want to wait until I've done a better book.
G'night.
Dirk
Chapter 26, Long Live the Regent, is up. Mostly cleanup and minor edits. The epigraph is new. I also reworked the opening to get to Joseph's anguish right away, as suggested by Seabrass. Joseph now has five passengers in his head. That's probably all for this book, although it will become increasingly difficult for him to remain in control, especially in book two.
Quick, go read!
Dirk
While it's been pounded into me from day one not to get too fancy, I would use some of the entries on the forbidden list (e.g., snapped, stammered, urged, etc.). If it conveys more information than who exactly is speaking (i.e., it does double duty), I'm all the more likely to use it. The beauty of self-publishing. I do, however, agree with the idea of not using tags when a little action will do nicely (e.g., Mary turned to Joseph. "Did you finish your essay?").
Maybe Sibrasso or Sibrassi instead of Leonardo?
I'd use Charles, but the Italian version is Calogero, which is too different. Or ignore the the correct translation and use Charlo.
I may rename Babilus Danasius (the car recyclling plant manager) to Babilus Sibrassi or something similar. Or maybe rename Leonardo, the Crazed Cabbie.
Thanks. Shiburassu was too different from Seabrass, so I went back to Kobayashi. I'm looking for an excuse to use sea bass in the story in a meaningful way.
Chapter 25, Tombstone, is up. It's a cleaned up version of the House Titanus chapter from v2. The epigraph is dedicated to Janet Taylor-Perry for her assistance with the demon poisons used in the book. Alan is someone she knows. :-)
Only two more acts (16 chapters) to revise!
Quick, go read!
Dirk
Can you pay a copy of the list on this site as well?
Ancestors forgive me. I follow the enemy.
Hold tight, little one. [name] is coming for you. (In this case, [name] is the dragon referencing itself by name.)
