Season's Greetings, folks!
Today the talented Aurelia B. Rowl is here with us.
Aurelia, take it away...
The sun was
blazing down, and the crystal blue water in the swimming pool glistened and sparkled
as the sound of my children’s laughter rang out. Yes, I wrote a large chunk of
Christmas Is Cancelled whilst on a family holiday, staying in a gorgeous villa
in Majorca along with my husband’s family.
It was great.
But not
exactly conducive to writing a winter story, complete with snowy hills and
Christmas carols. I then finished the story during the Summer – if you can call
what we had here in the UK “Summer”, it was more of a damp squib – but
nevertheless, the story turned out fine.
Editing was positively
painless; just a few run-on sentences, repeated words/phrases, some
simultaneous actions and, the one I had to look up (hooray for the internet)…
the occasional misplaced modifier. The actual content wasn’t touched and I took
a great deal of pride from the fact my first ever completed manuscript wasn’t
ripped to shreds.
But can you
guess what I did stumble over during the edits? Especially the pre-edits stage?
I’ll give you
a clue… I am British. My publisher is Canadian. My editor is American.
You think
writing a book in English would be easy, wouldn’t you, what with being English
and living in England? Think again…
My first task
was the change the default dictionary in MS Word from UK English to US English.
That took care of changing a lot of my ‘s’ to ‘z’, for example: recognising
became recognizing, psychoanalyse became psychoanalyze. Okay, cool. Got that.
It also removed some extraneous double ‘l’ words, for example: travelled became
traveled, revelled became reveled… And, of course, my ‘re’ endings became ‘er’,
for example: centre became center.
Then came the
trickier ones: manoeuvre became maneuver, prised became pried, kerb became
curb, grey became gray, and hob had to be removed altogether to be replaced by
stove. I even lost some of my ‘st’ endings, like whilst, and amongst. At least
there weren’t any bonnets to convert to hoods, or boots to convert to trunks. Yet
a surprising number of words were simply lost in translation, very strange, and
I found myself wondering when English to English had become so tricky?
Does that
mean I now write in US English all the time, like several British authors have
taken to doing? Heck no, I’d never get anything finished. It would be akin to
peeling my fingernails off to consciously spell words ‘incorrectly’, and I
doubt I could train myself, even if I wanted to. And how bad would I feel when
my young son brought his spellings home from school, and I made him get some
wrong because I was still in US mode?
Uh-uh! No,
thank you. Did you feel the tremor when I shuddered? I shall continue to write
in my home language. If a manuscript gets picked up by another US/Canadian
publisher, I’ll worry about translating it – ha!! – then, and not before. I may
even get a British publisher next time and would only have to change it all
back again, after taking twice the length of time to write it in American to
begin with. And you can be sure my self-published titles will be published in
UK English, even if I have to include a glossary at the back.
I know I can’t
be the only one, and it would be interesting to see how other British authors
get around the writing in US English conundrum. Do you write in ‘American’ as
you go, or do you translate after? And if you’re an American (or Canadian)
reader, what UK English words trip you up and make you scratch your head, or
fire up trusty Google?
About Christmas is
Cancelled…
Matilda 'Tilly' Carter didn't think her day
could get any worse, but even Christmas had just been cancelled.
The one girl Dean Watson has sworn never to have—never even expected to see
again—just flared back into his life and into his home—his sanctuary—like she
belonged there. Christmas would certainly be more bearable with Tilly around
though…
As the chinks in Dean's armor appear, Tilly seizes the chance to win her knight
once and for all. She's not about to take no for answer—not this time—but Dean
must resist, even as his heart rebels and temptation threatens to undermine his
resolve.
Win or lose? Love or honor? Which will Dean choose? Assuming he gets a choice…
Excerpt
Tears welled in her
eyes, clouding her vision. She turned and wandered blindly toward the exit as
the first tear escaped, forging a track down her cheek for the rest to follow.
Tilly took in a lungful of air and then another. Having made a spectacle of herself
once already, she really didn't want to be the cause of yet another scene.
The crowds swarmed
around her, with students and family members heading home for the holidays only
adding to the usual rush-hour melee of commuters. They jostled past, threatening
to swallow her whole, as they rushed en mass in the opposite direction, using
their briefcases and suitcases as a battering ram.
It was suffocating. She
had to get out of there. Breaking into a run, broken heel or not, she raced
through the doors and out into the biting December chill. Her waterlogged eyes
struggled to adjust to the dark, dreary sky after the bright station lights,
but she didn't dare slow down, desperate to escape the throng of festivities
and merriment.
Carol singers assembled
outside burst into a jovial rendition of "We Wish You a Merry
Christmas," full of joy and happiness. Didn't they know Christmas had just
been cancelled?
"Ooof!" Tilly
smacked her shin against the edge of a low bench, too dark to see as she tried
to dodge the growing audience. She ended up sprawled across the bench, dropping
the handle of her suitcase with a loud clatter.
At least the pain
shooting down her leg gave her an excuse to be crying. Unfortunately, it meant
she had to stop running too. Not good. Whenever things got too tough, too
intimate, or too confrontational, you could rely on her to make a run for it.
Running away was what she did best...
A tall figure loomed in
the edge of her vision, something vaguely familiar about the man's loping gait.
In an effort to see him more clearly, she wiped her eyes with the back of her
hands, then cringed inwardly at the black streaks now etched all over them.
Great. She could add impersonating a panda to her day from hell as well then.
The mascara stung her
eyes, rendering her unable to focus properly. She blinked furiously as the man
strode past her, talking into a mobile phone in a deep voice that resonated
throughout her body and made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on
end. A surge of adrenaline rushed to her legs, numbing the pain as her
subconscious told her to run. Now!
The cloaked figure
stopped mid-stride as if he'd heard her gasp. "Mike, I've gotta go,"
he barked into the phone, hanging up instantly. He backtracked until he was
standing right in front of her, his tone changing from a growl to one of
surprise. "Basmati?"
Great. She hadn't heard
the nickname for years—nine years, four months and...sixteen days, to be
exact—and even then, only one person had ever actually used it. She screwed her
eyes tightly shut, shaking her head from side to side. No. No way. There was
absolutely no way this could be happening to her. Not now. Not today of all
days... Talk about kicking a girl when she was down.
Buy links:
Breathless Press
Amazon
Amazon UK
All Romance Books
Bookstrand
Barnes & Noble – coming soon
iTunes – coming soon
Aurelia B Rowl is a
contemporary romance author but you can also find her masquerading as Allie A
Burrow, her raunchier alter-ego.
She lives on the edge
of the Peak District in the UK with her very understanding husband and
their two fantastic children aged 5 and 3, along with their mad rescue mutt who
doesn’t mind being used as a sounding post and source of inspiration. They are
all used to her getting too caught up with her latest writing project...
or five!... and she is guiltily counting down the months until she has both
kids at school full-time.
To find out more about
Aurelia, or to check out what projects she's working on right now, you can
visit her website www.aureliabrowl.com
You can also find her
hanging out on:
