It Might be a Small World but I'm not Multi-Lingual

Remember guidance counselors back in high school? Remember being told there were certain skills we'd definitely want later and so we should take those classes now? Classes like typing and Spanish or French? Remember also thinking those same counselors were older than fossils and what did they know?

Or perhaps that was just me.



But here I sit, wishing I had learned to type. (Okay, yeah, so I do have my own system. Speedy, yes, but inaccurate as all get out. Not the most practical situation for someone who puts "Novelist" as her occupation on her tax forms.) Um, and perhaps also wishing I'd learned to speak (beyond asking, "Cerveza, por favor") and read a language other than English.



Because I now find myself in the interesting situation of being blogged about in other countries (Sweden, believe it or not!) and having no way of knowing what's being said. And of getting copies of my book in languages that weren't even offered in my high school (so, that gets me off the hook at least a little bit, right?).



And I'm tickled beyond reason with the idea that somewhere outside of Amsterdam, folks are kicking off their wooden shoes and curling up to read my words in Dutch. But I can't help but wonder how closely some of my carefully crafted prose has been translated. Do my alliterative phrases sound as lyrical in Finnish? And just what are the reviews extolling? Or lambasting?

So, if any of you are fluent in German, Swedish or Dutch, give me a holler and I'll send you one of my copies and you can report back. I'll make the same offer for Finnish and Complex Chinese characters (what does that mean?) when those versions arrive on my doorstep.

And finally, here's another neat picture:



a basket of books for a bookclub I donated for a silent auction at an author luncheon which was held to raise funds for Juvenile Arthritis my buddy Jen Vido in Maryland was helping organize.

To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, Oh, the places these books will go!