Anglish

So, good news. I've officially resumed work on Stoneslayer. It's beautiful. I just did a read through with a bit of editing and am sitting at 85,000 words. I expect the finished product to require around 35,000-40,000 more words, so hopefully I'll hit at least 120k with this book. Time and hard work will tell. If I can get my butt in gear I should have the first draft done before the end of August. If not, then hopefully before September's over.

But the other interesting thing is a major series of edits that I made during this read through. See, in this book there's a tribe called the Hanoshites that broke off from the main character's tribe 400 years ago. Because of this, I wanted them to be able to understand each other, but to have distinct dialects. Originally I just had them speaking in sort of an old-timey drawl. But I recently got the idea to have them speak Anglish. Now some of you are thinking, Benny, I think you mean English. But no, Anglish is a purist version of English that only has Germanic roots. Sort of a, "what if Modern English had developed from Old English without any Latin/Greek influence?" Here's an example from the text:

“We of Hanosh like our crowded gladness—though not to the mark of drunken daze; this the Bodings fastly forbid. In eight of the months, each Tent takes their stint throwing a simbleday. Songwrights, craftsmen, cooks, and so forth make show of their knacks. The other four months, the coming of the yeartides, as they’re hight, are the times of highest gladness. The whole of Hanosh gathers and shares in the best of mirthmaking and feed—though I warn thee, thou mightest never need feed again.” He smiled at his quip. “As luck would have it, the Tamez Simbleday lined up flawlessly with thine incoming.”

And that's about what it sounds like. It has a certain elegance to it. But here's the crazy thing. Doing these edits I had to check literally every. Single. Word. To see what its etymology is. The other frustrating thing is that sometimes, there literally aren't any fitting Germanic words for it. One example is tent. Try though I might, I couldn't come up with a suitable substitution. In other instances I had to come up with my own word. Like for encampment I used haltstead.

In the end, I think that the Anglish decision has added a great deal of depth to the work and I'm glad I did it, though it took many days. In those remaining 40k words the Hanoshites will appear yet again, so I'll have to delve into the Anglish Wordbook once more.

A New Plague Cover Reveal

So I sat down today knowing only that I wanted to make a cover for my novelette A New Plague, which, as you can see in the sidebar, is complete. This is what I came up with. It will be out soon after some edits. You can read the intro section, Germ, here. As a brief summary, it's about a man whose job is to make new plagues, and, well, he makes a new plague. Even though it deals with some heavy topics, it has a general jovial air about it. I like to refer to it as a work of grindark.