I am recovering from surgery and my blog may not be as active as it usually is. I will get back to it as soon as possible.
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25 Covers from Bland to Sensuous
First published in 1928 in Italy, the D.H. Lawrence novel was put out the following year in France and Australia. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. Over the years there has been numerous covers ranging from sensuous to deliberately staid, even boring.
See all the covers at flashbak.com HERE
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Why pen names?
All y’all know me as Alma Alexander. Easy. Alliterative. But it was not always so. My maiden name and first author byline was Alma Hromic.
But back in the day when “The Secrets of Jin-shei” was first published, I got a call from my agent with a deal-breaker issue. The publishers didn’t want to put the book out under my maiden name, because “it was too difficult to spell, say, or remember”.
Granted, that’s been an issue ever since I waded into the English-speaking world. The English language mind cannot seem to get itself around the fact that two consonants such as H and R can follow one another. They keep on helpfully introducing a vowel between the two when they write it down, even if I am SPELLING IT FOR THEM AT THE TIME. Spellcheck tosses its cookies and offers up “chronic” or “chromic” as alternatives. Other people equally helpfully assume that the H in front must be silent when pronounced. It isn’t.
I feel for those poor Polish people who have lots and lots of what the English consider wildly inappropriate S’s Z’z and Y’s in the mix. They must all feel like they’re living their lives in an endless spelling nightmare, walking the English streets….
I’m not the only who has ever faced this, of course. At LitHub, Emily Temple gives us
An Incomplete Guide to Proper Literary Name-Dropping
starting with Vladimir Nabokov, J.M. Coetzee, and Ayn Rand (It’s pronounced “ine,” like “eye” with an “n” at the end.)
Read the whole article at LitHub HERE
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My books are like…
Christmas and the end of the year are approaching and you are beginning to think about finding gifts for mom and dad and the kids, as well as Aunt Sarah, your best friend and maybe a work mate or two.
Personally, I think there is only one indispensable gift for any occasion — a book, naturally.
While there are hundreds of wonderful reads out there waiting to be discovered, I have a few suggestions involving… surprise… my own books. If you don’t know them, let me help you decide which ones might be of interest to you and your gift recipients.
If you loved Harry Potter… try my Worldweavers series (Gift of the Unmage, Spellspam, Cybermage, Dawn of Magic). It’s the story of a girl who couldn’t do magic, then grew up to be the greatest mage her world had ever known.
If you loved Jo Walton’s “My Other Children”, .try “Midnight at Spanish Gardens” in which five friends are offered the chance of a new life.
If you love Guy Gavriel Kay… try “The Secrets of Jin-shei”, “Embers of Heaven”, or my newest, “Empress”.
If you love Cassandra Clare or Suzanne Collins, try The Were Chronicles (Random, Wolf, Shifter)
if you loved John Scalzi’s “Red Shirts”, try “AbductiCon” in which time-traveling androids kidnap a hotel full of science fiction fans and take them for a loop around the moon.
You can get further information and links to places to buy all of my books by going to “My Books“ in the Top Menu under the Header.
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