storytelling

I like architectural drawings. Always have. Every once in a while I wonder about taking a drafting course and then of course the reality of my daily routine makes short work of such fantasies.

There's a wonderful Canadian website on the architectural heritage of British Columbia, with lots of visuals and historical information. For example there's extensive information about the South Park School, including a perspective sketch (seen here), and a whole series of measured drawings on elevations, sections, floor plans, and design details.

For Pajama Jones I have permission (I have given myself permission) to get all involved in discussions of historical landmarks in the south, particularly older mills and manufacturing facilities that are historical, but have fallen into repair and need to be taken care of. Most likely I'll be using a textile factory for PJ, but I have been thinking a lot about the possibility of an older tobacco processing plant or, more fun, a very old distillery. There's one in Tennessee that dates back to the 1700s which has been neglected and falling apart for the last fifty years or so. Now if I could only find architectural drawings of it.

Posted by at 9:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Not because it's funny, but because I'm so pleased. Homestead is being translated into Hebrew. Hebrew. Ha! I can't wait to see it.

I have all the Homestead translations lined up in a row, some of which are: Dutch, German, Spanish, Catalan, Chinese, and here comes Hebrew.

No Italian. I'm told that Italian publishers don't much like acquiring American authors who happen to have Italian names. Seems odd, but there you go.

PS: I know Chinese is written with ideographs (a symbol equals a word), but I still wonder if one variety of Chinese is favored when it comes to the written language in ways that are obvious to native speakers. Can anybody tell me?

Posted by at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

If you go look at the Amazon page for Tied to the Tracks and scroll down to the subjects list, you'll see the first on the list is African-American Women Authors.

While it is true that one of my major characters is an African-American and a woman and an author, I am not. African-American, I mean. My strong sense is that people will see African-American Woman Authors and assume that is a reference to the author of the novel in question: me. Again, still: not African-American. Plain ole boring vanilla, here.

Do I need to worry about this? Monica, you reading? Because I am worried. I don't want to be accused of posing or overreaching or being (all together now) too big for my britches.

Amazon doesn't even have a place to submit corrections about the subject list, which may (I fear) come from the publisher directly, so I've already emailed my editor to ask about this and see that it's fixed. Surely my editor knows I'm not African-American. I mean, my new editor, as Leona is gone now.

Babbling, here. I'll go away now, having established (1) I didn't do it; (2) I'm trying to fix it anyway.

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