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My mother is a fan of Diana Gabaldon's series of novels about... about some sort of time travelling, mystical Scottish highland romance thing. It's like Twilight for the middle-aged lady, as far as I can tell. I don't know; I've not read them, because my mother has very dodgy taste in books. Exhibit A: she loved The Mists of Avalon, which I hated. Exhibit B: the time I agreed to return her library books and read on the back of one of them that it dealt with 'the forbidden love between the village priest and the ditcher's wife'. I've mentioned that before, I know, but thinking about it always makes me laugh. (I should point out, too, that the feeling is mutual; she invariably dislikes books that I enjoy.)
Anyway, my mother likes these books, and she mentioned the other day that there should be a new one out soon but that there is normally a long delay between the US and Australian releases. I chose to take this as a hint for Christmas and hit the internet to find out more. The author's website revealed that the new book will be out in 2009; back to the drawing board for Christmas, then.
But! While poking about the website to find that information, I came across the author's FAQs, which included something that surprised me. In the questions about characters, one of the FAQs was asking how to pronounce the names of two characters, Laoghaire and Geillis, and the author's own answer was that she didn't know. She saw them written down somewhere and liked them, but had no idea how to say them until she heard the audiobook version, which must have been a long time after the book was written. Is that not a bit odd, an author not knowing how to pronounce her own characters' names? I wonder how she thought of them when she was writing.
Anyway, my mother likes these books, and she mentioned the other day that there should be a new one out soon but that there is normally a long delay between the US and Australian releases. I chose to take this as a hint for Christmas and hit the internet to find out more. The author's website revealed that the new book will be out in 2009; back to the drawing board for Christmas, then.
But! While poking about the website to find that information, I came across the author's FAQs, which included something that surprised me. In the questions about characters, one of the FAQs was asking how to pronounce the names of two characters, Laoghaire and Geillis, and the author's own answer was that she didn't know. She saw them written down somewhere and liked them, but had no idea how to say them until she heard the audiobook version, which must have been a long time after the book was written. Is that not a bit odd, an author not knowing how to pronounce her own characters' names? I wonder how she thought of them when she was writing.