Kit Marlowe Visits UnBound

Kit Marlowe is over at the UnBound blog with the Ravenous writers today. She's writing about cant, jargon and slang in her books and in her favorite novels. Join her and the whole crew, who are a fun bunch of folks and our wonderful hostess, the fabulous Dana Fredsti. Here's a snippet:

I love language!

I know, I know: all writers do, but I love the superfluity of language that supplies slang. I think in part it's like knowing a secret handshake or being part of an exclusive club. I specialize in rather obscure languages: for my graduate work I studied Old English, Middle English, Old Norse, Old Irish, Old High German, Middle High German, Modern German, Modern Swedish, Modern Icelandic and Latin (whew!).

But what I really love most are informal vocabularies that define a time or place...

Kit has reason to be cheery: her novella set in Jazz Age London, "The Big Splash," will be released by Noble Romance next month. Wow, barely born and already two publications! That's making a big splash for sure.

I, on the other hand, am still struggling out from under a bunch of tasks I'd hoped to have done by now so I could be back to focusing on writing. Soon, soon!

Publication: A Case of Dead Faces

I'm usually quick to post links to my publications -- after all selling books is part of the game. But I've been dragging my feet on this one, because I have to admit that I don't like the cover at all. The anthology was edited by Kerry Morgan over at Pagan Imagination. I haven't had a chance to read through it, but I'm sure the content is good. I just can't quite find it in my heart to like the cover.



My story -- which I think I've mentioned here -- is the jazz argot-tarot-Buddha story. Yeah, that's right; yet another chance to avoid that carefully constructed notion of "branding" which all good writers who wish to be successful are supposed to do. I think I should steal my "brand" from the wonderful Lynda Barry's Cruddy, a truly genius work of disturbing brilliance:

No matter what: expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected.



Yeah, that's a good marketing plan, right? Sigh. I should probably not quit my day job, eh? Well, I have a few other things up my sleeves; maybe this eclecticism will pay off some day...

The theme of the collection is the full moon: my story takes place in London and even drops by Treadwell's. FYI, the 59 bus is the one that runs from the Tavistock Hotel (my usual hotel) in Bloomsbury to the Southbank. I love slang and jargon, and found a good site for jazz age slang. This was a lot of fun to write and poured out fairly quickly. Sometimes inspiration is a twig and sometimes it's more of a yule log.