Ich habe Buch!

[swan_tower]

You know what's a wacky experience?

Flipping through a book and thinking, "I wrote this . . . but it's all in weird funny-looking words with too many capital letters!"

Or, to put it differently -- I have the German edition of Doppelganger! They sent me four author copies, which arrived yesterday. It's very strange, I tellya. I can pick out enough words in German to be able to figure out which bit of the story I'm looking at, but not enough to read it much at all, so it's very alien-looking. And man, some of those nouns get long. But it's also boggling to think that somebody -- one Axel Plantiko -- spent who knows how many hours reading over my words and working this strange alchemy upon them.

It's my book . . . but it isn't.

Anyway, many thank-yous to Herr Plantiko, and eeeee! German book!

Comments

[mastergode.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's so cool!

Clearly you should watch this video in celebration of the German language.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

<g> Yay Rammstein.

[mastergode.livejournal.com]

They're so awesome.

Did you see their Amerika video? Man, talk about totally encapsulating the way I feel about America.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I think I did at one point, yeah.

[shveta-thakrar.livejournal.com]

Is the title Doppelgänger? ;)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yes, actually, it is. <g> Which is why it tickles me that my first foreign sale was German. (The second book will be called Hexenkrieger.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Hexenkrieger.

That's... that's even better than Jagermonster. That may be my new favorite German word, dislodging 'longing in/for spring'.

[wadam.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! This is the sign you've really made it. Translations!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping for many more in the future.

[sora-blue.livejournal.com]

How exciting!

...I bet it would look even stranger in Chinese. :D

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. If it were Chinese, I wouldn't be able to pick out anything, and so it would be harder to grok that this is, in fact, my book. As it stands, I can recognize it and yet not.

[sora-blue.livejournal.com]

This is true.

[unforth.livejournal.com]

That's SO cool!! :)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yup. ^_^

[desperance.livejournal.com]

When I got copies of my first German translation, I bounced one straight round to a German friend who lives locally, thrust it into his hands in high glee and said "Here, Mark, this is for you!"

He looked at it, looked at me in puzzlement, said, "Chaz, I think I've read this, haven't I?"

"Absolutely not," quoth I, "it's not even in the bookshops yet."

He ran his eye down the first page, said, "I really think I have, you know - oh! It's in German!"

Snigger.

(Sadly, he said it wasn't a very good translation, but that's a whole nother story...)

[m-stiefvater.livejournal.com]

Sadly, he said it wasn't a very good translation, but that's a whole nother story...

Don't say that! You'll put worries in Marie's head! ;)

German version is very cool! Aww, I want a German version!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Eh, I know translations can be very hit-or-miss, and clearly I lack sufficient German to judge whether this one's any good.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Marie, Marie, don't listen to me! I'm sure your version is wonderful!!

(And I'm not going to say a word, not a word about the covers they gave me...)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

<lol> The covers I got for these two aren't particularly memorable, I think, but they're fine.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

'Fine' is a bonus. There is a habit in German fantasy publishing, where they just buy in pictures they like and allot them to books at random. One of mine was memorable for the giant golden bird with wizards riding on its back. On a desert-based Crusader fantasy which conspicuously lacked both giant golden birds and wizards, where the most romantic form of transport referred to was actually a camel...

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Heh -- yeah, I think it was Jim Hines who once spotted his cover art being recycled on (or having been recycled from) another book entirely.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup, that too. When Ace split my Outremer trilogy into six vols for the US, obviously they needed three more covers - and what they did, they dug out old John Howe covers they'd used before and blew up details from those. Cover stories - every writer has 'em.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

(But PS, do ignore my snark - I'm delighted that you're delighted. Translations are lovely.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

<g> You're a bad, bad person.

[tezmilleroz.livejournal.com]

We want to see cover! I think Doppelganger translates to Doppelganger, but with umlauts perhaps over the O ;-)

Have a lovely day! :-)

P.S. Axel - that is such a great name :-)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Over the a, actually. ^_^

Covers can be seen here (http://www.swantower.com/marie/novels/dopp/dg-luebbe-sm.jpg) and here (http://www.swantower.com/marie/novels/dopp/ww-luebbe-sm.jpg).

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your doppelganger book-- like the book you already know, with recognizable pieces, but not the same. If you put the two of them together, what happens?