Nothing if not diacritical: More conventional wisdom
On the eve (or, if you prefer, the brink or the cusp) of Bouchercon 2009, here are some favorite things that fellow convention-goers have said or written at, about or after my three previous crime-fiction conventions:
"Chubby Cambodian hotties."
"A KNOB is a COCK!"
"For years I wrote poems, nothing but poems, and all but about five of them were shite."
"Tense vowels don't do a man's reputation any good."
=============================
"Chubby Cambodian hotties."— Christa Faust, Noircon 2008
"A KNOB is a COCK!"— Ali Karim, Bouchercon 2008
"For years I wrote poems, nothing but poems, and all but about five of them were shite."
— Ken Bruen, Noircon 2008
"Tense vowels don't do a man's reputation any good."
— Don Bartlett, Crimefest 2009
(After I'd worried about pronouncing
Jo Nesbø's name correctly. If "Joe
Nesbow" is good enough for the man
who translates Nesbø's books into
English, at least when he's addressing
an English-speaking audience,
it's good enough for me.)
© Peter Rozovsky 2009(After I'd worried about pronouncing
Jo Nesbø's name correctly. If "Joe
Nesbow" is good enough for the man
who translates Nesbø's books into
English, at least when he's addressing
an English-speaking audience,
it's good enough for me.)
Labels: Bouchercon, Bouchercon 2008, Bouchercon 2009, conventions, Crimefest, CrimeFest 2009, NoirCon 2008
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 7:01 AM
7 Comments:
Here's another one, not from the convention but today's Melbourne Herald:
"I refuse to be edited!" - Peter Temple.
Really nice article about the great PT in the paper today: he waxes poetic about crime writing, journalism, South Africa and his problems with editors. I know you're a fan of PT like me, but for some reason the Herald havent put it online.
Let me know if the piece does turn up online. I'd like to see what Peter Temple has to say about editing and about bad experiences he may have had with editors.
I don't quite know how to react to such complaints. My sort of editing is fairly uncontroversial and unlikely to cause offense. I wonder what sorts of things tee off someone like Temple.
I have mentioned here that three years ago a member of my tour group in Tunisia was an ex-pat Australian living in Britain who said she had worked with Peter Temple years before in Sydney. She said he was a fine writer and good at working with other writers -- a good editor, perhaps.
See you in Windy, Indy, hopefully less Knobs than wifflers
Ali
What I'd like to do is collect a group of speakers from the various parts of Indiana and get them to say "Knob!" in their local accents.
I don't know about Windy, but the forecast says good chance of rainy, at least through the weekend. National Weahter Service is calling for less lounging on promenades smoking and talking between panels than in Baltimore.
Ali, I suppose you're somewhere over the Atlantic by now, but there is a letter to the editor in Wenesday's editions of my newspaper that I hope I remember to bring with me. It'll make you spew gin and tonic all over the bar.
I think I said I declined to have my prose changed by clever 21-year-old English Lit graduates. It is possible, even likely, that the prose could be improved by 21-year-old English Lit graduates, but I do not wish to find out. I am, however, delighted to have someone, anyone, point out before a book's publication that I have used the same phrase four times, that I have changed a character's name twice, that chapter 37 would work well as chapter 4. I am also only briefly hurt by suggestions that I might like to reconsider parts of the book because they are awful.
I'm not in the publishing industry, but I do know the clever young English grad/editor is a stock figure. It has always amazed me that a publisher would entrust such weighty responsibility to people so young. When did this trend develop? Do wiser, more experienced old heads not want that sort of work? Do publishers not think that an author might be likelier to accept suggestions from such a person than from a bight young thing?
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