Category Archives: Authors

GoT! What might have been and What might be.

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Who knew I would be writing about HarperCollins twice in one week? It turns out HarperCollins London’s office is moving into a swanky new office.  According to this article, there are conferences rooms named in honor of their authors, Hilary Mantel and George R.R. Martin. And it’s the Martin room that interests me.  This room has on display the original letter that Mr. Martin wrote to his agent about the plot of The Song of Ice and Fire.  The final paragraph has been blacked out keeping the ending a mystery, for which I am glad about.

Some kind soul took pictures of the letter and posted it on Tumblr. I don’t think I have to say this but I will, Spoiler Alert.  While many of Mr. Martin’s original ideas did not come to pass, some still might happen.  Including the five characters who Mr. Martin originally intended on surviving the whole series.  I give you a hint, all five are currently still alive though may not be for much longer.  So, click at your own risk. 

For those who found the letter to hard to read or too lazy to read it,  MilfordAcademy summarized the letter on the blog Oh No They Didn’t.  Again, don’t read unless you really want to know. You’ve been warned!

So what do you think?  Who wishes some of what he originally planned had happened?  There’s a few things I definitely do and other’s I’m very glad never happened but I guess there is still time.

Oh My God! This is Huge!

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Featured imageAnyone who ever went to high school in the United States and maybe outside the US has read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  It’s considered an American Lit classic and despite it’s success it’s Miss Lee’s only book.  That is until now.  HarperCollins today announced that Miss Lee will publish her first her book in over 50 years Like OMG!  This is amazing.  Not only is it a new book but it’s a sequel. Go Set a Watchmen follows an Adult Scout as she comes cack to Maycomb, Alambama.

The book is set during the mid-1950s, some 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father Atticus and is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand both her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood

This is awesome!  It turns out that Go Set a Watchmen is actually Miss Lee’s first book.  When she showed it to her editor, the editor said she should write about a young Scout, so she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird instead.  She thought the manuscript was other destroyed or lost.  Surprise! It was not.

Well it might not be all good news.  HarperCollins only has contact with Miss Lee through her Lawyer and Literary Agent so there are questions about whether Miss Lee has really signed off on this.  It would be sad if that was true and I hope that it is not true.  I’m not sure if this is good or not but for now I am going to be excited about the new release and will wait patiently for July 14.

Ola!

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I would like to diverge a minute from our regularly scheduled broadcasts of discussion of published works to rep for a friend doing some awesome work.

I spent much of my summer at the Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang for short) which is a biennial summer language program for linguists, language revitalization experts and speakers of any and all languages. While at CoLang I met an awesome woman named Hali Dardar, who was working with Houma Language Project. Houma is a language of Lousiana, it is endangered, and the speakers are looking for ways to change that for the better. At CoLang, Hali put together the first draft of an excellent guide for language investigation, specifically, language investigation in small groups with some native speakers and some learners. Since this summer she has continued to work on it and it now has a kickstarter! This book that she has put together is a guide to language discovery for small groups. If you, or anyone you know, is interested in practical language acquisition in small groups working with native speakers, I recommend you check this out!

Or, if you yourself are interested in what linguists do when they go to the field, you may want to check it out, too. A mere 15 bucks would get you a copy of the book!

that time I corrected a friend of a friend on social media

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This is a thing of beauty. Not only because I love The Vampire Diaries and read them cover to cover as soon as I discovered them in seventh grade. But, also because Dylan O’Brien is my favorite maze-runnin’ werewolf’s bestie.

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But, here’s the thing: I keep seeing this where people have commented, “Anne Rice had me from page one!
I love Anne Rice! These books are the best!” The implication being that Anne Rice wrote TVD. Great! Super! Good for you! I’m glad you love Anne Rice! She wrote Interview with a Vampire! L.J. Smith wrote The Vampire Diaries.

I know there are a lot of vampires around, but please let us endeavor to get the classics right.

Happy Halloween!