New Books, New Languages
As always, my life has been insane with the number of things that I am doing and working on. But I obsessively organize my time and everything remains on track and on schedule.
On the convention front, I just got in a huge new shipment of books—two full boxes—that I am going to be hauling to the convention. I’ve recently touched up my covers and book descriptions on The Iron Way, The Babel Project, and Lilacs from the Dead Land, and I’m very happy with how they are looking.
In other matters, the fall semester just began last week and so I have 150 news students, new classes, and everything that goes with it. No rest for the wicked. I am part of a pilot program that incorporates ChatGPT and other AI tools into English Composition, and I am excited to be at the bleeding-edge of pedagogy. I want to empower my students and prepare them for this crazy world we are living in.
Still, I have made sure to continue to have time for my creative work. For the past few weeks I have been busy working on my languages for Archaios. This is really a huge piece of revision. You see, when I started creating this world back in 2007, I just used ancient languages for everything. I didn’t really think about it too much, because it was just a personal project that I did for my own pleasure. But it has bothered me for some years that I had this invented world but then had these real world languages just thrown in. The two main languages of the world, at least in terms of where the narrative is at, are mostly laid out. But now I have to go through all my files and maps and update everything with in-world names. We are talking about hundreds of characters and map locations, so it is a bit of an organizational nightmare. Still, I have renamed most of the major elements on the map and will redraw my map soon.
Adding quick labels before redrawing. Work in progress.
It probably sounds boring to most people, but I really love languages (I do have a doctorate in medieval linguistics after all) and the process has been very enjoyable. And already the world feels much more real to me and not something merely pieced together. And the first two books of Archaios are already drafted, I just have to edit everything! Never enough time…
Thanks for reading my little update, and stick around for more information on my projects. For now I am back to work.
