Saturday, March 21, 2020

Reedsy Helped Me Start My Own Indie Publishing Company

Reedsy Helped Me Start My Own Indie Publishing Company Reedsy Helped Me Start My Own Indie Publishing Company Christina Enquist shares her experience assembling the team of professionals that helped launch her debut novel, The Immundus - and her very own independent publishing company, Odolf Mingan Publishing.I was on safari, traversing my way through the rugged terrain of social media, seeking the elusive and coveted book editor. Not just any editor would do. I knew I had to have an editor with experience in editing young adult and science fiction, preferably someone who had edited bestsellers and award-winning novels.I tried reaching out to editors on Twitter and got some bites, but I was concerned about handing my manuscript over to a person whose qualifications I wasn’t sure of. It was then that I happened upon a Mark Dawson podcast where he talked all about Reedsy. I began to investigate Reedsy myself and was instantly hooked. Thus ended my safari, as I found a prize better than I imagined: an entire herd of talent.I knew that I had found my resource for top talent, one that cou ld support me in starting my indie publishing career. I didn’t have to worry about hiring full-time or even part-time employees. I could hire professionals per project/book by contracting them through Reedsy.I am gearing up to launch my debut young adult dystopian novel,  The Immundus. The story is set in the year 2828 in Domus, the world’s last remaining country. Domus’ population is dwindling as the result of a mysterious disease called allagine. When 16-year-old Nia is recruited by a research company pioneering a cure to allagine, she witnesses something she shouldn’t have. As she sets down a dangerous path that uncovers national secrets, Nia must decide not only what kind of person she wants to be, but how far she’s willing to go to save humanity.In order to make The Immundus the best it could be, I connected with professionals at different stages of my book’s development.EditingI contracted two editors to get my book ready for the pre sses. Katrina Diaz Arnold served as my developmental and line editor, while Parisa Zolfaghari worked as my copy editor and proofreader. Both of these women were wonderful to work with and provided exceptional feedback to help me shape my story and tighten the lines.For example, Katrina was instrumental in helping me determine where to end the book - not always a straightforward task when writing a trilogy. She also made me aware of areas where I needed more thought or dialogue so the reader could fully understand what’s going on - which is crucial in any novel with dense worldbuilding. "Working with a professional editor is crucial for any novel with dense worldbuilding." @cienquist Parisa added additional depth to my story: she not only provided copy edits to make sure my punctuation and grammar were appropriate, she also provided some of her own developmental recommendations - even adding a few more scenes to raise the stakes of the novel’s central conflict. Since I started working with the professionals I found on Reedsy, I have learned so much about the publishing industry and its standards: from learning about widows and orphans thanks to my copy editor, to understanding bleeds and crops from my designer, my team helped me acquire the knowledge I needed to become an indie publisher.The Immundus is available for pre-order on Amazon!Please share your thoughts, experiences, or any questions for Christina Enquist in the comments below!

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Language in the Byzantine Empire

Language in the Byzantine Empire Constantinople, the new capital that Emperor Constantine developed in the East in the early fourth century CE, lay in a largely Greek-speaking area of the Roman Empire. That doesnt mean that before the Fall of Rome the emperors headquartered and the people living there were native Greek speakers or, even if they were, incompetent Latin speakers. Both languages, Greek and Latin, were part of the repertoire of the educated. Until recently, those who considered themselves educated might be native English speakers but could piece out a short passage of Latin in their literary reading and get by speaking French. Peter and Catherine the Great ushered in an era where the politically important, the nobility of Russia, knew the French language and literature as well as Russian. It was similar in the ancient world. Greek Culture Greek literature and themes dominated Roman writing until the mid-third century B.C., which is about a century after Alexander the Great had started the spread of Hellenism including the Greek Koine language throughout the vast areas that he had conquered. Greek was the language Roman aristocrats demonstrated to show their culture. They imported Greek pedagogues to teach their young. The important rhetorician of the first century BCE, Quintilian, advocated education in Greek  since Roman children would naturally learn Latin on their own. (Inst. Oratoria i.12-14) From the second century CE, it became common for the wealthy to send their already Greek-speaking, but native-Latin-speaking Roman sons to Athens, Greece for higher education. Latin Gaining in Popularity Before the division of the Empire first into the four parts known as the Tetrarchy under Diocletian in 293 CE and then into two (simply an Eastern and a Western section), the second century CE Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his meditations in Greek, following the affectations popular with philosophers. By this time, however, in the West, Latin had gained a certain cachet. A bit later, a contemporary of Constantine, Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330-395 CE), from Antioch, Syria, but living in Rome, wrote his history not in his familiar Greek, but in Latin. The first century CE Greek biographer Plutarch went to Rome to learn the language better. (p. 85 Ostler, citing Plutarch Demosthenes 2) The distribution was such that Latin was the language of the people to the west and north of a dividing line beyond Thrace, Macedonia, and Epirus down to northern Africa west of western Cyrenaica. In rural areas, the uneducated would not have been expected to know Greek, and if their native language were something other than Latin it might be Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic, or some other ancient tongue they might not even have known Latin well. Likewise on the other side of the dividing line, but with Greek and Latin reversed In the East, they probably knew Greek in rural areas, to the exclusion of Latin, but in urban areas, like Constantinople, Nicomedia, Smyrna, Antioch, Berytus, and Alexandria, most people needed to have some command of both Greek and Latin. Latin helped one advance in the imperial and military service, but otherwise, it was more a formality than a useful tongue, beginning at the start of the fifth century. Last of the Romans The so-called Last of the Romans, Constantinople-based Emperor Justinian (r. 527-565), who was an Illyrian by birth, was a native Latin speaker. Living about a century after the Edward Gibbon-driven date of 476 for the Fall of Rome, Justinian made efforts to regain sections of the West lost to European barbarians. (Barbarian was a term the Greeks had used to mean non-Greek speakers and which the Romans adapted to mean those who spoke neither Greek nor Latin.) Justinian may have been trying to retake the Western Empire, but he had challenges closer to home  since neither Constantinople nor the provinces of the Eastern Empire were secure. There were also the famous Nika riots and a plague (see Lives of the Caesars). By his time, Greek had become the official language of the surviving section of the Empire, the Eastern (or later, Byzantine) Empire. Justinian had to publish his famous law code, the Corpus Iuris Civile in both Greek and Latin. Greeks vs Romans This sometimes confuses people who think the use of the Greek language in Constantinople means the inhabitants thought of themselves as Greeks, rather than as Romans. Particularly when arguing for a post-5th-century date for the Fall of Rome, some counter that by the time the Eastern Empire stopped legally requiring Latin, the inhabitants thought of themselves as Greeks, not Romans. Ostler asserts that the Byzantines referred to their language as romaika (Romanish) and that this term was in use until the 19th century. In addition, the people were known as Rumi a term obviously much closer to Roman than Greek. We in the West might think of them as non-Romans, but that is another story. By the time of Justinian, Latin was not the common tongue of Constantinople, although it was still an official language. The Roman people of the city spoke a form of Greek, a Koine. Sources Chapter 8 Greek in the Byzantine Empire: The Major Issues Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers, Second Edition, by Geoffrey Horrocks; Wiley:  © 2010.The Latin Language, by L. R. Palmer; University of Oklahoma Press: 1987.Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, by Nicholas Ostler; Walker: 2007.