What do you think of book trailers?

Have you ever bought a book because of its trailer? Do you even look at book trailers?

Obviously I have an ulterior motive for asking. My (malleable) position is they might be fun to make, but I question whether they sell anything, and the time might better be spent working on the next book, or a short story.

Any thoughts?

Persian Names

The Greeks believed all Persian names ended in -s (yes, I was prompted to write this by the recent talk of apostrophes). Herodotus wrote:

There is another peculiarity, which the Persians themselves have never noticed, but which has not escaped my observation. Persian names, which are expressive of some bodily or mental excellence, all end with the same letter: the letter which is called San by the Dorians, and Sigma by the Ionians. Anyone who examines will find that the Persian names, one and all without exception, end with this letter.

The reason the Persians never noticed this peculiarity is because in their own language it's not true. Greek and Old Persian is wildly different, and whenever the Greeks tried to say a Persian name they mangled it with an s sound at the end. Because all our histories were written by Greeks, we know all these great Persian men by their mangled but not their real names.

Greek Mangled Name									Persian Right Name
Cyrus									Kurush
Cambyses									Kambujiya
Hystaspes									Vishtaspa
Darius									Darayavaush
Xerxes									Khshayarsha
Artaxerxes									Artakhshaça

My Persian spelling is sort of phonetic in a catch-as-catch-can sort of way, since my Persian is non-existent, and the names were originally written in Old Persian Cuneiform, a script which, funnily enough, doesn't render in html. However there is, believe it or not, a unicode rendition.

Many Greeks could speak Persian, especially those in Asia Minor (what is now the west coast of Turkey). The name mangling suggests most of them spoke it with an atrocious accent, though certainly much of the problem lies in the Greek alphabet not matching Persian sounds.

HP Ink Policy Considered Evil

I noticed this graph on Hedgewytch's Tumbling and traced it back to its apparent origin, 3 years ago, on gizmodo.

I don't know if the numbers are correct, but the relative costs look about right to me, especially the cost of HP ink.

Notice that human blood is cheaper than HP ink. Frankly, I'm not surprised.

We have two HP printers. One is a Laserjet 5MP which we've owned for 12 years and has never failed us. It takes large toner cartridges which can be bought relatively cheaply and last a year, even if I'm printing novels. If this printer ever breaks, I think my life will be ruined.

The second is a Photosmart 3110. The price gouging on the tiny ink cartridges for HP's recent printers is astonishing and HP, needless to say, go out of their way to make sure cheaper third party replacements won't work. To add insult to injury, the printer keeps track of how long each cartridge has been in and refuses to print if a cartridge exceeds an arbitrary age.

The weird thing is, the value for money of the HP products has actually gone backwards. How did that happen?

To s, or not to s, that is the question

Happy New Year!

This year I want to concentrate in the blog on the Big Issues, the issues that grab you by the balls (if you're male) and kick you in the guts (unisex) with their desperate relevance to our lives. So let's begin with possessive apostrophes.

If you think this isn't important, then clearly you don't write Greek or Egyptian historicals. The Greeks had a love of names ending in -s. Nicolaos, Socrates, Pericles, Sophroniscus, Callias, Themistocles...at least half the names I need.

I was taught in school that a proper noun ending in -s has a possessive with only the apostrophe and no following s. So:

Pericles' scroll

Which is exactly what I have done throughout two novels, and when half your characters have names ending in -s, that's an awful lot of trailing apostrophes.

So far so good, except the style elsewhere appears to be quite different. To pick a random example:

Thutmosis's slingshot

Stephen King, in his essay On Writing, says the 's goes on the end of every proper noun no matter what.

The Chicago Manual of Style, which I have never read, apparently straddles the barbed wire fence by saying King got it right but that my convention is an acceptable alternative.

My OED gives clear examples my way, such as Apostles' Creed, but any search of printed books produces examples always using 's. So at this point I'm wondering if it's a UK vs US difference, except a net search finds plenty of Americans as confused as I now am.

It might help knowing English belongs to the Germanic family of languages, and -es is the most common of several possessive endings in German. Our possessive is precisely the German neuter version, but with the e of -es excised and the apostrophe showing where it used to be. Would it make sense in German to end only with the e? No. By that logic, King is right and it should always be 's. Except English parted ways with German some time ago.

One thing's for sure. If Stephen King is right, then my copyeditor at St Martin's is having a nervous breakdown.

Book picks of the year

I have a habit of re-reading the books I like best. A good example is Dune, for which the same paperback edition I read in (gulp) 1976 is still on my shelf and barely hanging together. Sadly the same can't be said for my copy of the first three Earthsea books, which fell apart from severe overuse long ago. Fortunately I married someone with her own copy so all is not lost.

Which books of 2009 will join this august company? I read piles of books I liked, but which will I be coming back to?

For me there are two absolute standouts...

A Trace Of Smoke, Rebecca Cantrell

The Ghosts Of Belfast, Stuart Neville

...and there are these great books, all of which can expect to see worn covers and tattered pages:

A Bad Day For Sorry, Sophie Littlefield

The Naked Olympics, Tony Perrottet

The Janissary Tree, Jason Goodwin

Secondhand Spirits, Juliet Blackwell

Nox Dormienda, Kelli Stanley

And there are these two ongoing series which I love:

The Aimée Léduc stories of Cara Black

The SPQR series of John Maddox Roberts


Wishing you all a fantastic 2010!