Cat Whisperer

A stray kitty has been coming around some. I feed him dry cat food and every once in a while wet. I'm not completely sure he's a stray. He's really friendly now that he's used to me. Maybe I'm a cat whisperer. He's pretty thin to belong to somebody, though. At some point I decided to call him something besides new kitty but wasn't in a hurry. I finally looked up popular names from the 1880s to the 1930s. It's amazing how many of my relatives and other people I know have or have had names on the lists. After two or three days I narrowed it down to Nelson. That's a good solid name, and I don't have any relatives named Nelson. I started calling him that.

I had previously mentioned to my mom I was going to name the stray cat. When I told her he was Nelson, she had a fit. A woman she used to go to church with lives across from a widow whose deceased husband was named Nelson. So what? I can't name the stray kitty Nelson, because it might offend somebody she doesn't even see any more? I ran through some of the other names on the list until I found one she didn't object to: Patrick. We have no relatives and know no one named Patrick. So, I started calling him Patrick. He seems to recognize that that's his new name, although I'm not certain yet.

So, I was talking to my mom yesterday. She's had a change of heart. She's not sure he should be named Patrick. /facepalm You know what? If I have to change it again, I'm changing it back to Nelson. The moral of the story is you can't worry too much about what other people think. If your stray cat should be named Nelson, that's what you should call him.

Guess what Facebook told me today. "Matthew, we care about you and the memories you share here." Really? They care about me? Me? Then why can't I set preferences for the news feed? How come they won't stop showing me Buy and Sell Groups Near You, when I've Xed them all out I don't know how many times trying to get it to stop? Why do they keep recommending other pages to me at all? Why won't they stop showing me what people on my Friends list "Like" or "commented on" or were "mentioned" in, etc.? I don't care about any of that. Why won't Facebook stop showing me "Suggested Post" listings? I did a search for a car in Microsoft Edge this week. Now in Google Chrome, I'm seeing "Suggested Post" ads for that car and the website I used for the search. How is that possible? I went to a website for some Victorian era research I was doing. I'm seeing ads for one of those sites, too. "Matthew, we care about you..." Sure they do. When an older man on my Friends list is now Friends with the 100th underage girl, I don't want to see that any more! That's not caring about me, Facebook!

A bit of a rant there. The Zuckil made me do it. But seriously, I'm really starting to hate Facebook.

So, I finished up the second round of AoE and began the third. It's not going as fast as I'd hoped, but progress is being made.

Taking Advantage of Fluffertunities

This week was spent on AoE, the next book, doing polishing and looking for opportunities to add fluff to fill out the descriptions. Let's call them fluffertunities. I've been through it once and most of a second time. Being YA, it's shorter than a Messengers book. Not as many fluffertunities came up as I wanted. I got too distracted with polishing and trying to track the days. The story's about a girl who's trapped in a virtual reality spy game. As part of the story, she has a 365-day benefit package she earned in the game the previous year. Along the way, the number of days she has left for the benefits is occasionally mentioned. This gives the reader a sense of the passage of time, and it gives me a way to track it, too. Keeping up with the passage of time can be a real problem. Some days can take multiple chapters. Some take a fraction of a chapter. When references to time show up in a story, it might be for the author as much as the reader. I expect to go through it one more time before sending it to test readers. This time I'm going to try to focus on the fluffertunities and not whether the words are "right".

Like last year, this has been a cool summer so far, because of all the rain and clouds. I didn't have to run the air conditioner in June at all. This week was the first time I've had to turn it on. There's no central air. It's a window unit. During the winter, I had an insulation panel in the window to keep the cold out. I took that off one night and turned the AC on. It worked great. The next day, I was eating something in the living room. My cat Cici looked up near the ceiling behind me, eyes open wide. It was really cute. I thought she heard something outside that was reflecting off the wall. Then I heard it, too. I looked around to see a big, black snake climbing the wall.

Apparently, something was loose at the bottom of the air conditioner in the window sill. I fixed it later. It took about an hour and a half to figure out how to get the snake back outside. It was five or six feet long. You never want to look around behind you and see a snake, especially indoors especially high up on the wall. Fortunately, it was very passive and easy to work with relatively speaking. It didn't strike at the mop handle and piece of spare baseboard like they do on television. I finally got it into a laundry hamper and carried the hamper outside with the end of the baseboard. Whew. I didn't need the stress.

Book2. How do I fix it? That's a good question. Part of the problem with it is it's set 3.5 years after book 1. I'm thinking about moving the timeline back to maybe 3.5 months after book 1. Or at least closer. That eliminates the need to fill in the backstory for the last 3.5 years. I thought the backstory slowed things down and felt awkward at times. On the other hand, Joe and Ceinwen, Etan and Kayley, and Marion and Genia all have kids after 3.5 years. If I move the timeline, what about the kids? There's a whole subplot around them. They were really important to the story. Could I really have the girls running around fighting the forces of darkness while pregnant? That might be clunkier than 3.5 years of backstory.

So, I've put some thought into different ways to approach it, but it might require fundamental changes to the story. However, I think I can keep a good bit of it such as the political and military situations. When certain things occur isn't very important as long they do occur. It's going to take more thought.

Have a great weekend.

With New Improved Meatier Fluff

I think I've figured out how to balance updating the KJV with my regular writing. I'll need to cut the update down to maybe two chapters a night and put the leftover time into book stuff. I'll have to try it and see how it works. That will stretch what is already a long project into an even longer one as far as time goes, but I have to get back to work fixing book 2 or redoing it or whatever the ultimate decision for its future turns out to be. It's not right to delay it.

However, I need to do the final run through of AoE, which is the next book in the pipeline and mentioned previously in various posts but not recently. As a reminder, it's a about a 16-yr-old girl who gets trapped in virtual reality and has to find a way to break out. I submitted it to an editing "event" last fall that turned out to be a publicity campaign rather than what it claimed. Despite that, I got some good feedback from an editor with character and integrity that I'll be incorporating into the final pass for AoE and future work.

In so many words the editor thought I needed more description to anchor the story better. I already suspected my prose was too skimpy. Now, I need to turn it into something fluffier and meatier. Instead of saying a character looked down at the sidewalk, I need to say something like the character peered down at jagged cracks that careened like EKG lines through the grizzled sidewalk. It's not sunny any more. The sun glints off windows as it cascades through verdant, green foliage like ruby smiles from half-forgotten dreams. Who cares if sunlight is yellow, leaves are green and rubies are red? It's fluffier. Well, maybe not, but I do need some padding. Now with new improved meatier fluff!

I've gotten a small start on AoE. Since it's basically done already, I'm hoping it won't take more than a week or two to inject the fluff, fix the jargon problem and send it off to test readers. Welcome aboard to the newest tester. You know who are! Assuming you read the blog, of course.

The reason I use skimpy prose is because I don't want to be what I call a doorknob author. You've read them before. They describe the glint of the sunlight off the doorknob in excruciating detail and how that reminds the character of something in the past, and the next thing you know you're trapped in a two-chapter flashback the editors should have cut to three pages. I've blogged about doorknob authors before. Enough said.

Remember the mystery/romance from a while back? It's time to cut what needs cutting out of that and get it out the door. It would be under a female pen name, probably named after my cat, Cici. That's a real name. I could get away with that. I used Sandy at first then switched it to Janie after an ancestor of mine from the 1800s. But I'm also partial to the name Amy. Or Émy for French flair. I've got options. Assuming the book works. I'm having doubts about it, which is why it's been on the back burner since 2014.

Next week should be some talk about Book 2 and what the options are for that. Maybe the solution will have presented itself before then.

Have a great weekend.

Re-Calling

This week was slower. I didn't get all the sleep I needed, and it left me tired and somewhat unmotivated. The KJV update suffered some. It takes a certain amount of concentration and focus. Galatians is done. I got into Philippians and did some other work on it.

I got an email this week asking where The Calling of Aethan Lightbringer is. I think that's a sign. :) The other day I mentioned I removed it from Amazon and it needed to be reworked or redone or however I worded it. I've been thinking about it already and how to balance the KJV update with my regular writing. I suppose I need to do more than think. The KJV update is incredibly time-consuming. I've been estimating it would take at least until September and maybe into October or November to finish. Mixing other things into that time would likely delay it even more. I really need to get AoE out the door, since it's so close to the final copy.

There never seems to be enough time. One option to fix that would be moving to Mars. The days are 39 minutes longer. That would give me close to an extra hour per day. It's not an excessive amount, but it adds up over time. I think I could get a lot more done there.

The Weather Channel says 20% chance of rain Saturday. The Northeast Georgia Weather Information Facebook pages says flash flood watch until 8pm Saturday. I'm sticking with the Weather Channel on this one. ;)

A bit short this week, but I'm still dragging. Have a great weekend.

Honor or Worship?

The KJV update progresses. I'm done with 1 and 2 Peter and Most of John's letters. I got a little more done on Acts. In 1 Peter 3 I found a verse that should make me welcome at most women's Bible studies around the world. Here's the rough draft of it.

1 Peter 3:7 Likewise, husbands, live together with them according to knowledge, giving honor[Alt. due honor, esteem] to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being joint-heirs of the grace of life; so that your prayers are not cut off[Alt. eradicated, erased].

I'm going to have to take another look at "cut off". After sleeping on it I think that's the too strong meaning of that word. The general sense is the same, though. Not treating the wife right brings answers to prayer to a halt. The weaker meaning is that the answers are paused in place, not actually destroyed. There would be room for repentance. But that's not the fun part that would make me popular in the women's Bible studies.

The word translated as honor has a primary definition that isn't honor. Translating that verse with the primary definition would change it to this:

1Peter 3:7 Likewise, husbands, live together with them according to knowledge, giving worship to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being joint-heirs of the grace of life; so that your prayers are not paused.

If the women at the women's Bible studies ever felt like their husbands should be treating them like a goddess...they almost have a verse to stand on for that. Obviously, that would be a really, really fun translation. But I didn't feel peace about it. ;)

Worship in modern times involves gods and goddesses and God, etc. I'm thinking this is the correct word for the verse, if we used a more classical definition instead. If you go through the various definitions at that site, the meaning of extravagant respect or admiration to someone of esteem isn't bad. Or to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor or devotion. Those definitions link pretty well with the other general meanings for that Greek word such as esteem, due honor, dignity, worth, compliment, etc.

A lot of the update is tedious work, but I keep finding fun nuggets. Imagining the pastors at those stuffy, uptight churches telling the men they need to worship their wives makes me smile.

I had some trouble with the formatting on the post today. For whatever reason Blogger couldn't get the font size right until I copied the text into a word processor, reformatted it and copied it back. This is actually the third post I created trying to fix it. If it looks a little different this week, that's why. Hopefully, it'll be back to normal next week.

Have a great weekend.

When Not to Translate Literally

Progress on the KJV update adds the book of Ephesians, some of Acts and some of 1 Peter. Acts isn't one of my favorite books, so I'm thinking of switching back and forth between that and the some of the shorter ones.

As I'm going through, I'm finding things that don't directly translate from the Greek. That reminds me. If you're a European reader, I saw an interesting article on English this week. The language rules we know - but don't know we know. I thought it was a fun article. It's probably C2, but if you're really into the language, it's definitely cool.

So, I'm finding things that don't directly translate. Part of the update involves making the English more literal to the Greek where possible. It doesn't always work. The word pregnant never appears in the KJV. I think it was considered offensive in polite company around 1600. And afterwards for a long time. They used the quaint expression "with child". Greek doesn't say with child or pregnant. It says holding womb. In modern terms it would be holding uterus. That would be too shocking for the reader. If they had had movies in Bible times, it would sound like a scene out of Samarian Short Sword Massacre. You know how they felt about Samaritans. They would have made them the serial killers in their movies. That's very scriptural.

I've been doing this update since late April. I was getting a little discouraged with my French. I've been reading things and watching videos for a while. It doesn't feel like I'm making the progress I should be. I haven't been killing myself with it. I've taken a casual approach. Around the middle of May, I got distracted into the first part of June and didn't keep up with it as much as I had been, but I was still doing the KJV update, which involved a lot of wrestling with Greek sentence structure. I'm not trying to learn ancient Greek. French is more interesting to me. However, I was having to figure out what a lot of sentences were saying rather than relying on the KJV translation. Remember. Greek is like Yoda but worse. When I got back to where I could concentrate on the French book I was reading, something amazing happened. It was so much easier to read and understand. I blew through that book so fast, and it was much more enjoyable than before.

Partout is the word that stands out to me the most. In my dictionary it means "everywhere" with a special usage meaning "all over". It was used at the end of a sentence in a scene describing a messy apartment. Things were scattered partout. I was reading along and automatically knew it meant "throughout". That's not in my dictionary, but Google translate has that as the second definition. That's so cool! Even though I'm not learning Greek, I'm still doing language stuff with it for hours in the evening at least five nights a week. Apparently, my brain has been getting exercise it's able to use for processing French. It's so much easier to read it now. I hope that's not too geeky. ;)

I guess that's more for people trying to learn two languages at once. The "rule" is to put 80% of your effort into the harder one and 20% into the easier one. Ideally, they should not be similar to each other. That makes so much more sense now. Of course, you can learn two languages at once. It might actually be easier in some ways. Just be careful.

A few real numbers. When I was 35% through the book before getting distracted, my Kindle said I had 17+ hours to go, which I didn't believe. I went from 35 to 50% really fast. When I got to 50, I surprised at the progress. It said I had under two hours left in the book. That's dramatic improvement. I'm a lot more excited about my French now.

Have a great weekend.

To Translate or Not to Translate

Continuing on with the KJV update, I've made it through the gospels and have started on Ephesians. It's relatively short, and I didn't want to jump into Acts right away. However, Ephesians is incredibly dense. The gospels seemed a lot looser linguistically, not that I'm an expert. They just seemed a lot easier to work with and understand. Paul had a professional doing his writing, so maybe that's the difference. I suppose I could look it up, if I get overly curious. Acts was written by Luke. Maybe it would have been easier after all.

As I'm going through this and updating the old-fashioned words to modern words, I keep finding things that need retranslation. I've mentioned this problem before and how that's not something I should be doing. I'm not a Greek expert. A good example of something I've found is John 21:8. In the KJV is says, And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. The word 'for' usually should be 'because'. I let it slide this time, at least so far. I may change it in the re-check. The problem is the phrase 'but as it were two hundred cubits'. In Greek the word translated 'but' means several things. The phrase 'as it were' is one word in Greek, and it means a lot of things: as, like, even as, which how, that is, that, to wit, etc. None of it is exactly 'as it were". Right after that is the word off, which also has a list of translations and was not translated into English.

What the KJV guy(s) put makes sense, but it's not quite what the words I'm looking up really mean. Every time I find something like this I struggle with whether to "fix" it or not. One thing I can do is check some of the other Textus Receptus manuscripts. The problem with those is they either copy from the KJV, or the KJV was copied from them, which doesn't help. This verse was partly copied.

This is one of the very rare times I went ahead and "fixed" it. In the update it says, And the other disciples came in a little ship; (because they were not far from land, notwithstanding as much as two hundred cubits off,) dragging the net with the fish. I went ahead and changed 'for' to 'because'. I think since would be a better word, but it's not in the lexicons I was just checking. It's in another one but would need more study, because of the conditions for usage. Offhand, it looks like since would only be correct if it came at the beginning of the sentence. Ugh. I know it's the right word, but. 'Little ship' could be rendered as boat, but I let it slide, since it's talking about professional fishermen.

Anyway, now it's updated to more modern English and is more literal to the Greek. It's pretty cool finding out what a lot of these verses actually say. This one wasn't a huge revelation, but it's easier to read and understand now. Although it's a good word, I may change notwithstanding later. :) Perhaps to 'nevertheless as much as two hundred cubits off'.

Did you know Yoda is a Hebrew name? It'll be in the update with a spelling of Yodah. Little Easter egg there. :)

Enough of that. I have something that could use some prayer support. A couple of weeks ago, it seemed like God showed me something for my life that doesn't seem to be for the near future. Not without drastic change anyway. I wasn't sure, so I prayed for confirmation. The answer seemed to be 'wait'. Hmm. I'm not sure what to make of that. Maybe God was showing me something that depends on something that needs to happen in someone else's life? The speculation could be endless. Without going into detail in case I'm completely mistaken about the whole thing, it would be an open door that doesn't seem to be the direction I was heading. I think it would require moving out of state, which would be a substantial disruption and a good reason for telling me ahead of time. I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm not 100% sure it's even God. Hence the prayer support. At the very least I need more patience for waiting. Thanks for anything you can do. If it is God and not a mistake, there will be more later and pics as soon as possible. hehe

Have a great weekend.