A Viking collaboration visit: Judson Roberts in Oregon

One of the advantages of my recent trip to Oregon and Washington was that I was finally able to meet fellow writer and collaborator Judson Roberts in person. It so happens that he lives less than an hours’ drive away from my father, so we went to his house one evening for dinner.

Me, Jud, and his wife, Jeanette

They fed us venison and showed us around their farm, where we met the energetic dog and the berserk duck (r.i.p). And it’s funny how meeting in person gives the whole project a much more personal feeling. Virtual isn’t everything.

Jud and I know each other from the Codex Workshop, and a while back, he persuaded me to translate his book Viking Warrior into German — as a collaborator. Part of the deal is that when he publishes the German books, I am listed with him as author. I get a lower advance for the translations, but a higher percentage of the royalties.

Since my name is also on these books (or rather, on the first one until now, Ein Krieger der Wikinger), it’s especially important to me that the translation is as good as I can make it. That in turn, however, slows down the translation process. I find myself doing a lot of research into Viking terms and historical figures of the period and have acquired several books on the subject. 🙂

Right now, I am not quite halfway through the second book, Dragons From the Sea / Drachen aus dem Meer. We have a lot of visits from the States scheduled for the summer, but I’m still hoping to get the translation done by October. Then my husband will still have to proofread it. If he and I can stay on schedule, the next book can hopefully be published in December this year.

I wonder what Chris REALLY thinks about all that proofreading …

What was with that apple? #WIPpet Wednesday and an update

As many of you have noticed in previous weeks, many of the motifs in Facets of Glass come from the fairy tale Snow White. But just as I used the motifs from Cinderella in very different ways in Island of Glass, so too in this book. It is not a witch who brings the apple to Minerva, or even the Evil Dowager Princess, it is the unsuspecting member of the Foscari House Guard, Gaetano. In this excerpt, which comes a couple of paragraphs after the one I provided last week, Gaetano is starting to suspect something after all. My math for 3/4: 3 + 4 = 7 paragraphs:

With Guilia gone, he took one of Minerva’s hands and gazed into her beautiful young face, quiet now, no longer vivacious. She lay stretched out on the floor, seemingly asleep, one arm flung wide away from her body. Gaetano recalled all the uncharitable thoughts he’d had about her when Dowager Princess Zilia asked him to bring her the gift of the apple.
Why had the smelling salts not worked? Could the apple have something to do with it? The gift he had brought?
At the thought, he glanced at her hands, but her palms were open. When she fainted, she must have lost hold of the apple. But there were no shards around her prone figure, so the apple had presumably rolled away.
The surgeon hurried in and took Gaetano’s place at Minerva’s side. The medicus was followed by at least a dozen family members, wringing their hands and making a worried racket.
He stepped back and watched the proceedings, hoping that the Signorina would soon be her normal lively self again — as superficial as he thought her vivaciousness.
But he had never before been offered refreshments by his superiors during his normal duties.
As Gaetano surreptitiously left Palazzo Dragoni, he worried about the role he might have unwillingly played in Minerva’s fainting spell. The thunk of her head as it hit the floor of the palazzo echoed through his mind on the trip back to Venice.

WIPpet Wednesday is the brain child of K. L. Schwengel. If you’d like to participate, post an excerpt from your WIP on your blog, something that relates to the date in some way. Then add your link here — where you can also read the other excerpts.

On to the weekly progress report. I have a head cold, and as I am not one of those people who works well with a stuffy head (who is?), my word counts have gone down again. Add to that the next big translation project which came in on Friday. What it adds up to is that I am no longer flirting with 1000 words a day. Instead, I’m adjusting my goals downwards to 500 words a day. But since I had trouble even getting that done during the last big translation project, my main goal will be to find a better balance with this book. Up until now, I seem to be achieving it. Since I started on this Viking translation, I’ve been getting 400-500 words a day written as well. As long as I can continue to make consistent progress on both my own projects and the translation, I will be okay with that.

The guard and the princess for #WIPpet Wednesday

Hi, everyone, I’m back! I still haven’t really gotten back into the swing of things as far as writing is concerned, with only a measly 800 words written so far this week. But on the family front, things are looking a lot better, and my head is free for creativity again. In the next few days and weeks, I will be working on reestablishing my old writing habits, and hopefully the word counts will pick up again. I still have some present wrapping to do, but I got most of that done while I was still having more difficulty writing.

I realize that I have not yet done a write-up of the Villa Diodati workshop in France last month. I hope to get around to it in the next few days.

As a result of the family complications, I am woefully behind on all of my goals. Some of the things I did get done:

– Completed Life in the Fjord Lane and published to Createspace (I’m not sure if I want to bother publishing that one to Kindle, since it’s mostly a photography book)

– Published my first erotica story under a pen name

– Created the Epub version of Ein Krieger der Wikinger, the German translation of Judson Roberts’ Viking Warrior

– Set up a Countdown Deal for Shadow of Stone, including experiments in advertizing a 99c ebook

Gosh, looking at that list makes me feel that I got more done than I’d thought! Just not much in the new words department. But marketing and formatting and publishing has to get done too.

With the update out of the way, on to WIPpet Wednesday. This week I’m returning to Facets of Glass, and an excerpt directly following the last one you may or may not have seen here. As a result of critiques at the last Villa Diodati workshop, Gaetan’s name has been changed to Gaetano, since Gaetan didn’t sound Italian enough for my fellow writers. My math for 12/17 is to take 12 away from 17, giving me 5 paragraphs for today’s excerpt:

Gaetano bowed low, honored to be called into the presence of the dowager princess for a personal task.
When he straightened again, she gave him a warm smile. It always amazed him how beautiful she still was, although she was the mother of the most powerful prince in Venice. And today she was particularly stunning. The gleaming gold of her hair, usually covered, was pulled up on top of her head in a crown higher than the modest circlet she wore. In the back, curls tumbled artlessly around her long neck. Gaetano couldn’t help imaging how long her golden locks must be to achieve such an effect. Did they reach to her waist? Her hips?
He shook himself mentally. He shouldn’t be thinking about her this way — not only was she the female head of House Foscari (since no one took the new Princess Anastasia seriously) — she was old enough to be his mother. Not that anyone knew how old the dowager princess really was, but Prince Vittore was her son, and he was older than Gaetano.
Ergo … It was wrong on any number of levels to feel lust for Her Grace the Dowager Princess Zilia of the Foscari Dynatistic Princes of the Venetian Empire, Princess of Trentino, and Dowager Duchess of Ferrara.
There, much better. Reciting even a mere handful of her many formal titles in his mind made him feel much more like himself.

I doubt if I’ll have any time to post next week, since it’s Christmas Eve, and I will have a house full of people that I’ll be cooking for. So wishing you all a Merry Christmas ahead of time! As a little Christmas present from me, my short story collection Dragon Time is free through Saturday. 🙂

WIPpet Wednesday is the brain child of K. L. Schwengel. If you’d like to participate, post an excerpt from your WIP on your blog, something that relates to the date in some way. Then add your link here — where you can also read the other excerpts.

German translation of Viking Warrior now available

A couple of days ago, I posted the news on my German blog, but now Jud has also announced it on his blog. So I will now announce it here on my English blog as well:

Ein Krieger der Wikinger, my translation of Judson Roberts Viking Warrior into German, is now available on Amazon.de!

More about the project is available in German here.