Back to Work

I didn't expect this...

I didn't expect this.

What I expected was to go to Croatia and visit my family, and then to get back home, and back to work. But it turned out that SO got a vacation just when I got back, and since this time I didn't have a deadline to finish the translation, it meant I could just relax with him. Which I, of course, did. And enjoyed it.

And now, I start working again, later than I expected. It feels a bit weird, both not working for so long, and then starting again. What also feels a bit weird is slipping into the old routine so easily (come to think of it, that's what routines are for, you easily slip into them and get the work done without much fuss).

I'm not even sure what the point of this post is, other than me feeling slightly puzzled, and trying to figure it out. Does any of this - unexpectedness, not working for longer than you expected, and yet easily falling back into the routine - sounds familiar to you?

P.S. Hopefully, my next post will have more of a point - you'll get to read some flash fiction. Stay tuned!

Translating Untcigahunk by Rick Hautala

Translating Untcigahunk and enjoying it!

I've recently read, and am currently translating, Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers by Rick Hautala. The book consists of the horror novel Little Brothers and of several stories set in the same world -- which would be our own, except that the creatures from the American Indian mythology, such as the "little brothers", truly exist there. And are quite nasty and hungry.

Here's the description of the novel you can usually find on the Internet:
It has been five years since Kip Howard saw his mother killed horribly by a blur of ""little brown things"." Five years of nightmares and a terror of dark places. Five years of struggling to overcome what must have been just his imagination...But the 'untcigahumk', the Indian word for ""little brothers"," are no one's imagination. hideous forest creatures who feed every five years on human flesh, the little brothers are about to emerge from underground once again.Only this time, there will be no escape for the young boy who witnessed their last feast.

And here's what I think of the book, as a reader: I enjoyed it.

If I look at it as a horror novel, it works quite well, with the nasty little monsters trying to eat the protagonist and a few other people. It has a bunch of the usual horror elements, nasty monsters, teenagers who have sex and get killed after it, the kid who saw something but nobody believes him, the town drunk who can be so much more... What adds to the value of the novel is that it would've worked just fine even without the monsters. If the mother from the beginning of the description died by some more common accident while her seven-year-old son watched, if there were no hungry little creatures, the novel would have still worked as a compelling family drama and a coming-of-age story. The two boys who lost their mother, the man who lost his beloved wife and is trying to keep the family going, the older son who is becoming increasingly like the town teen bully while the younger one is seeing a psychotherapist on regular basis... The younger boy meets an unlikely friend who helps him overcome his troubles... It would be quite a compelling story even without the "little brothers" wishing to eat a bunch of people and perhaps some cattle, too. Although, it is more fun with the little buggers.

After the novel, you get to enjoy three "mythological" stories, about the creation of the untcigahunk, and then some other stories about human encounters with the "little brothers", with the usual entertainment of the unreasonable, stubborn trouble-makers or the folks who stand and watch instead of running for their lives getting eaten by the monsters.

Now, I would've preferred a shorter novel, but that's just me; I've seen people say they enjoyed the length, because that way they got to know the characters better, and they liked their company. What annoyed me a little bit was Kip occasionally turning from a likable boy whose fears and trauma we understood to a sulking little brat. However, it didn't really spoil the book, it's just a detail which could have been better.

What can I say, it was fun reading this book, and it's quite fun translating it.

My 2011

I did some work before I fell asleep, really!

This has been a tricky year for me. At the very beginning of it, I was left without job; not only was I left without my income (which wasn't much to begin with, but still better than nothing), I was also no longer writing for a living. Although, truth be told, I was more concerned about the income.

Some start of a year.

A friend helped me, she found a guy who needed a book translated from Croatian to English, a crime novel. I've never translated an entire novel before that, but hey, there's a first time for everything, and I made it. After that, a publishing house hired me to translate Graceling by Kristin Cashore and City of Glass by Cassandra Clare. More work, yay! And then, there was translating The Man from the Diogenes Club by Kim Newman with a killing deadline -- a new challenge, and a great experience; I'll be translating another book by Mr Newman, the one which nobody dared to publish.

So, within a year, I have translated four books -- is it good, bad, average? I'm not sure.

I've also managed to finish a short story collection (ghost stories), I hope it will get published sometime next year.

Not to forget: I've written some reviews for Suite101, and one of those reviews helped a book get translated into Polish. I'm really proud of that.

All the time, there's the economy crisis (although, there's always some sort of a crisis here), lousy health mostly due to stress (both me and SO).

Did I do well this year? Or bad? Something in the middle? I don't know, but we survived. I guess that counts for something.

What was your year like?

BusyBusyBUSY!

I actually enjoy having a lot of work.

When it's raining, it's pouring.

Yesterday was my birthday. In the morning, I did the laundry. I spent the entire day translating, except for a pause to get some groceries and another to make a quick meal in a microwave.

At the end of the day, I was barely able to look, because of the all-day translating -- and I guess it will be like that until I finish it, which will take some time.

I look tired and I feel tired and I can barely keep my eyes open, and yet, I'm not complaining. I can rant about having a lot to do (although I prefer actually doing it), but I don't feel bad. I like being busy, and it's not just because it pays the bills, and not even just because I enjoy translating this particular book; it's because I enjoy being busy like this, it's a challenge and it's keeping me occupied and there's this good feeling of accomplishing something worth accomplishing. Know the feeling?

Anyone else feeling this way when working?

A Book and a Story

A book and a story on the same day!

I received my copies of the translation of the Cassandra Clare's City of Glass today. It still feels great being able to hold my translations in my hands!

Also, it's Friday today, meaning Flash Fiction Friday's at Karen Wojcik Berner's blog -- and this Friday, my story Golden Eyes made it there. It's a Nightmare month over there, so if you're in the mood for it, go check it out!

Almost Done

Ah, the feeling of almost done. We all feel it sometimes, and I’m feeling it these days, the sweet anticipation of almost getting there, knowing I will get there, and the relief and the fulfillment of it soon to be completed.

Not so long ago, I was almost done with the reading of the Kafka’s The Castle. For some reason I don’t understand, it took me quite a while to read that book – as a matter of fact, I’ve read several other books while being troubled by that one. And then, the end of the book got near, and it felt good.

The translation of the City of Glass: almost done. The translation itself is over, actually, but there’s still work to be done, proofreading and finding the already existing translations of the quotes of Shakespeare, T. E. Lawrence, Coleridge… On a side note, it turned out that the librarian who never heard of Catullus or Milton also doesn’t know how to use the library computer properly – she told me the library had no Milton, and another librarian immediately found me Paradise Lost (that other librarian isn’t all smiles like the first one, but she knows her job, which is what I’m looking for in a librarian – I asked her for Coleridge, and she went straight to the shelf where the book was supposed to be, without looking like a puppy on a busy railway station).

As I said: the translation is almost done, and with this somewhat longish book, I cannot even begin to describe what a relief it is.

And then, there are the short story collections I’m working on. I need just a few more stories for one of them – the stories I write are very short, so that’s another thing almost done. And a good thing, at that.

I thought of doing something today – I’d certainly make a pause with the translation work, I always make it between the translation itself and the proofreading, but I thought of working on one of the books. However, it turned out I was too darn tired for it, so I’m getting some rest, drinking some green tea (the one with a beautiful golden-green color), doing some beauty rituals (everyone needs them!), and watching that pretty and interesting tree you can see on the picture.

Tree watching is always pleasant.

So, how about you? Is there something you’re almost done with right now?

Getting Carried and Forgetting Goals

Don't forget to see the forest, it's not just the trees! - photo by Kenneth Baruch

Being a writer and writing is wonderful; planning to try and survive from writing alone is also great. However, before that happens, we all need some other means of survival, that is, we need to do something and earn money. And, of course, there could also be health issues (ours or of someone we care for), there's purchasing groceries, doing laundry, cooking, and all the other household tasks which need to be done. It is very possible to get carried with one thing, such as finding a way to earn money, preferably by doing something you like, and to forget what was the goal: writing.

Sure, if I'm to be a writer, I need to stay alive, that is, to avoid starving to death, so earning money is important. And various other tasks do need to get done. But it's far too easy to get carried in numerous other things and to forget to write. To forget what was the main goal, and what was the big picture. Like not seeing the forest for the trees, all these trees you keep bumping into or avoiding them and forgetting there was actually an entire forest around you.

In January, I lost my regular income which I was earning by writing articles. A friend found me a novel to translate from Croatian to English, but that was only a temporary solution. Then I started translating for a publishing house - it was my first time to translate an entire novel from English to Serbian. I didn't know if I'd be good enough. I didn't know if they were going to like it - if they did, they might give me novels to translate on regular basis, but what if they didn't?

While translating, and doing various small tasks, and worrying, I was barely writing. And one day I realized that. The novel was almost translated. After a day's work of translation, I was tired. But I remembered I should be writing, remembered some ideas I had, and wrote some short stories.

Now I keep writing. I have some plans - a ghost story collection, a collection of Sf/fantasy stories about others and human relationship with what they perceive as the Other (Cold is one of those stories, only in Serbian version), and I'm also thinking about a third story collection, the one gathering all my stories about cats. And there's this idea about a non-fiction book about cats which went through my life.

I'm not writing all of that at once, but I am writing stories for the ghost story collection and for the Other collection. The third one will come out of these two and of my first story collection, the published one, and the non-fiction.... I'll write that one too, at some point.

Most important, I intend not to forget to write again. Because writing is my forest, and I want it to be a big, enjoyable one, not something that shrivels and dies. I'm not quite sure yet how I'm going to achieve that not-forgetting, but I'll do it.

And hopefully see a plenty of my books published.

Crazie

The translation I was talking about in the previous posts went well; it was accepted, and I got another book to translate. A longer one, this time - I can't tell you what book it is, I'll just say it's the third in a YA urban fantasy series, and, according to Amazon, it's 560 pages long.

Now that will take a while.

My plan is, of course, to read that book before I start translating it. I also intend to read the first two books before I start translating the third one. And there's this book, about 700 pages long, that I've started to read, and which i intend to finish before I begin reading this YA urban fantasy series. That's about 2000 pages before i even start translating.

Now, do you think that such a plan means I'm too ambitious? Too confident of my abilities? Too optimistic? Or just plain crazy?

If nothing else, I'm going to have fun with it. And it's a great relief that things are doing well.

Completely non-related, but fun, is the Photoshopped pic of me, done by my SO. Judging from the picture, do I look weird? Maybe it's the hair. What do you think?

Do I look different to you?

My Review Helped a Book!

My review helped a book!

I've received wonderful news yesterday: Kosingas - The Order of the Dragon by Aleksandar Tesic will be bought by a Polish publishing house and translated into Polish. And my review helped that happen.

My story with the Kosingas trilogy (an epic fantasy trilogy with a flavor of Slavic mythology) began a few years ago, when I found the first book of the trilogy, the only one published at the time, in a local library. I've read it, enjoyed it, and wrote a favorable review at a website I was working for at the time.

When the second book in the trilogy came out, the publisher contacted me. It turned out they loved my review (it seems that, at the time, other reviewers of the book focused on some aspects of the book, and that nobody wrote just a review, an article telling people what the book was about, the good, the bad, the interesting... They just insisted on this or that aspect of the book, and some were quite overdoing it), and they gave me the second book in the trilogy. A book for free, yay! The book was good, and I wrote another favorable review.

By the time the third book came out, the website I was working for no longer published book reviews. Books, who needs them? Celebrities, women's issues, teens, love&sex, that's what they wanted, not book reviews. The publisher gave me the third book anyway, because we worked so well in the past.

The first book in the trilogy was translated into English. When I started to write for Suite101, I wrote the review of the book, this time in English, adapted for foreign readers. A Polish editor happened to read it, and less than a month from the review being published, he found me on Facebook and asked for the contact with the author and/or publisher of the English edition. He was interested to read the book, and perhaps to buy it for his publishing house. I gave him all the contacts I had. I contacted the author and told him about it, and he was very happy to hear about it.

A bit more than a week passed. Nothing. Maybe the editor wasn't interested, after all? Maybe those things didn't work so fast? I didn't know, but I wanted to hope for the best.

As I said, I've got great news yesterday. The first book of the Kosingas trilogy will be translated into Polish and published in Poland. And I helped it happen.

I'm still wondering if it's really true. I'm still not certain that my review could have had such an impact. Of course, it wasn't just the doing of my review, Mr. Tesic had written about 1500 pages of the trilogy (it really ended with the third book!), and good pages at that, but still. My review helped.

It's a great feeling. Even though I'm still a bit dazzled.

The Joy of Working Again

Typing Cat - photo by Dr Stephen Dann

At the very beginning of the year, I was left without work. It was a shock. It made me feel ill. It's not just the matter of income (although, of course, it does matter a lot), it'a also that I'm not used to not working. And, fine, I'm not used to not earning either. I didn't earn much, but it was still something.

Three days later, a dear friend found me something, a translation of a novel from Croatian to English. I've never translated an entire novel before, but hey, why not? The money wasn't much, but I was also learning while I was translating, I was getting experience and I was practicing, so that was good.

I translated the novel. I got the money. Err, now what?

A lot of people told me they'd keep me in mind if something came up. Great, but I was impatient for something to come up immediately. Of course, I didn't just wait for them to find me something to do, I also applied wherever I thought it made sense.

Today, I started the translation of a charming YA fantasy novel from English to Serbian. I suppose that the publishing house I'm doing it for will give me more to translate if they're happy with my work. My writing will probably slow down as I spend the entire day translating, but hey, I enjoy doing it. Yes, I'm a workaholic, and I enjoy being one, as long as I'm doing something interesting.

Happy at my keyboard again. Yay!