Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.
Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts: Jacqui Murray, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, and Gwen Gardner!
This month's question is: If you are an Indie author, do you make your own covers or purchase them? If you publish trad, how much input do you have about what goes on your cover?
I had an artist make my covers - which you can see to the right and in my header. I "met" Adrienne Saldivar through blogging so many years ago that I don't know how long it's been. The point is, I liked her style and knew that if I ever actually self-published a book I was going to commission her. I was not disappointed. She did the covers for all three of my books. If I ever publish anything again, I hope I can commission her again.
Origins: a recurring post in which I delve into the history of a word or phrase.
Since I chose WORD to be my word of the year, it's only appropriate that I give a little history about this word.
The word, WORD, (say it enough times it will begin to sound weird) comes to us directly and unchanged from Old English. It was the word chosen by some ancient scribe when translating the first sentence of the Bible from Latin. "In the beginning was the word." But the Latin word the scribe was trying to translate was verbum, which literally means "verb" (an action) and is itself a translation of the Greek logos which more closely translates to thought. So, from thought, to action, to something that names something that already exists, the first sentence of the Bible shows how difficult it can be find the right word when translating.
Old English isn't the language of Chaucer or Shakespeare, it's older - between 1200 and1300 years old! It's the language of Beowulf and England's Alfred the Great who ruled a mere 13 years, from 886 to 899, yet who revolutionized and encourage education and that it be taught in English (Old as it was) instead of Latin.
If you watched the series, The Last Kingdom, with the Saxon born Danish hunk, "Destiny is all" Utred,
that's the era I'm talking about.
Old English is so strange sounding and looking it may as well be a foreign language. Check out this short video of the first lines of Beowulf being read in Old English.
From this language about 4500 words are in use today and we, as writers should be happy and proud to know that the word, WORD is one of them.
Because it's February, I thought I'd also include the word LOVE which in Old English was spelled lufu and pronounced LUH-VUH, like our modern word, but with an extra syllable.
LoanWord: A word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification.
Today's loanwords are not really loanwords as I've decided to include a few Old English words that have come down to us almost unchanged or with only a small spelling difference. They include but are not limited to:
Gift, Friend, Foot, Hand, Finger, Candle, Weird (did you notice I used weird earlier?) Sun, Apple, Leaf, Winter, Cat, (not to leave dogs out, but the word is spelled docga and pronounced dodge-ah), Horse, Wolf, Elf, Wife, and my favorite (besides WORD) Snot! which is unchanged and still means the exact same thing today as it did over a thousand years ago.
If you'd like to learn more about Old English words check out The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English by Hana Videnn. There is also the Old English Wordhord app you can get for your phone which provides you with one Old English word a day, giving the pronunciation (with a recording of it) and it's meaning.
A Dribble or, a story in 50 words or less
The Stuff of Nightmares
A word by any other name is still a word. Or is it? She mulled the thought over and over in her brain. It kept her awake at night. She thought about it so much, it gave her nightmares. A word by any other name is still a word.... HELP!
Being Thankful
Today I'm thankful for what else? WORDS!
If you published a book, did you make your own covers? Do you have a favorite Old English word?