More Words

More Words

American friends Hallie and Mary arrived back in Mollans recently and came round for aperitifs the other evening. I was commenting on the lime trees in front of my house and Mary interjected that her dictionary gave the “tilleuls” as linden trees, not lime trees. Had I been getting it wrong all this time? So.........I duly searched on the Internet. What I found was that linden and lime are apparently interchangeable names for the same genus of trees, known botanically as “tilia” (from which the French “tilleuls” can easily be derived).. So maybe it was a question of species. I searched that and found that the number of species is indeterminate, lime/linden trees apparently being pretty promiscuous and creating new species at the drop of a hat (or speck of pollen). I left my search there. I have no great desire to know whether the species in front of my house, by comparison of leaves, bark, flowers or fruit, are of a known species or of an as yet unclassified one. I'll continue to call them lime trees but am now better informed on the subject, should.anyone ask.

Miraculous

I commented in my last posting about the problem with “un bébé miraculeux”, duly changed to “un bébé inespéré”. I recounted this to some French friends while playing boules and they said an alternative would have been “un bébé miraculé”. Both “miraculeux” and “miraculé” translate as miraculous, so what's in the difference? It appears that “miraculeux” has to apply to an event, whilst “miraculé” applies to a person. I'm sure there are instances of the same kind of distinction in English but have struggled to think of any. All I could think of was tall rather than high applying to a person but there must be better examples.

Incidentally, in the same last posting I mentioned the mental struggle to come up with fire-proof. My son emailed me to suggest incombustible. Now why couldn't I think of that?

A book?

I'm contemplating writing a book. Why? Believe it or not, it's not so much ego as thinking what to do over the coming winter, to keep me off the streets, hitting old ladies over the head, smashing shop windows, etc. It occurred to me that, having written this blog for 3-4 years, I probably had a third or maybe a half of the material needed for a book of 50-60,000 word-space, adequate if not generous. It could be titled A House In Provence or A House In The Baronnies or some such. For previous books I have written the publishers came to me with proposals, which made it easy; this time I was going to have to find a potential publisher.

If I'm going to take this further than an idle thought, I am resigned to having to write a synopsis, chapter breakdown, target reader spec, brief bio and maybe three sample chapters. No way will I write a whole book on the off chance of finding a publisher. Anyway, I searched on publishers and submissions. My results so far have been disappointing, with failed links and opacity predominant. New submissions are clearly, and understandably, one of publishers' minor concerns. What caught my attention dramatically, though, was the number of publishers that require hard copy (with return postage prepaid). This last I can understand as I know publishers to be very cost-conscious. But hard copy? I mean HARD copy, on paper that is. Haven't the advent of ebooks and Kindle really sunk in or is this just a way to make submissions more difficult? You can bet that final copy will be required in electronic form.

I knew from a period of my career when I was busy creating new magazines, taking chunks out of the big publishers' markets and selling it back to them at a profit, that the big publishers were generally dozy, complacent and marketing neanderthals. Nonetheless the hard copy requirement took me by surprise. Caxton lives on, probably even longer than he thought he would. Ah well, if any publisher reads this it's probably the end of my book project.