A slight deviation from my concept art, I’m combining business with pleasure today. Tangent Artists going to be publishing our first volume of collected comics, so I decided to work on the cover for said volume. The covers are going to be Tarot card themed, so here is Linus, the Hanged Man.
The Hanged Man, Monica Marier, copyright (c) Monica Marier, 2016
I’m on Spring Break this weekend so I decided it might be fun if I did a little “Elven Lesson” in Tereand Elvish. These fake exercises are how I started building the Elven language that I put all novels in Tereand (like Must Love Dragons and Madame Bluestocking’s Pennyhorrid). I’ll actually be doing a panel on language building at Ravencon next week so I thought this would be a good exercise.
These are all words in the OFFICIAL Tereand Lexicon (ie, the excel file in my doc. folder) and I’ll attempt to be as “official as possible.” Ready? 🙂
Lesson One / Falthe Enn
My Name Is… / Mei Maineh Es…
Vocabulary:
Il: I
mei: me/ my
ta: you (informal)
thee: you (formal)
wen: us/we
theeyn: they/ you (plural)
di: it
as: am
es: is
ere: are
yae: yes
nae: no/ not
name: maineh
Mei maineh es__________: My name is__________
*****
HOMEWORK Exercise 1:
Translate the following phrases:
Example: E. You are Ta ere
1. Yes (informal), I am _______________________
2. You (formal) are _______________________
3. We are not_____________________
4. They are __________________
5. It is ___________________
This morning I had another wake up call. Someone in an artists’ group I belong to had posted pictures of merchandise she was selling. She had used art which many people recognized as being stolen from a Deviant Art site, and did not belong to her. AND SHE WAS SELLING IT AS HERS. The perp refused to believe she was in the wrong, protesting, “But I can’t do it myself! I can’t draw! I only got it from the internet! That’s not stealing!”
That’s when I lost it and saw red. This post was originally going to be a nasty long drawn out letter to that person, but instead I decided that my argument would work better as a comic illustrating in clear points why stealing other artists’ work to sell as your own is wrong. Sorry if it’s a bit preachy, but this needs to be said. If it speaks to you or you know some people who need enlightenment on this subject, please feel free to share. This one’s on me.
A while ago I had this conversation on Facebook:
Me: Toying with the idea of a male pen name to publish under, but I keep getting the sillies. So far I’ve gotten Mann Riter, Duke Longcock, Dude Macho, Kevin Realguy, and Birk Totesman.
Replies:
1: Jock Manbro?
Me: Slab McRib
1: Stan McDudeguy
2: Chin McNads
Me: Harry Guymember
1: Brock Blokeyfist
Me: Stache Von Surham
1: Sir Male Mansome of the Muscle-upon-Hardbody Mansomes.
Me: Tor Ironbatch
3: Bob Johnson (oh wait.)
It was funny enough at first, and I got something like an unprecedented 65 responses, all in the vein of silly names. It was a lot of fun, but in the end it made me very depressed. I kept thinking about what might of happened if I HAD been a male writing Fantasy instead of a woman.
First of all, this discussion popped up after a fellow writer Emma Newman had done a large initiative towards Waterstones books after they published a sort of “Dummy’s Guide to Fantasy Authors” which featured predominately white male authors. I’m usually pretty much in the dark about this kind of bias. I grew up with brothers, most of my friends growing up were guys, and so on, so I usually think of myself as “one of the guys.” I’d toyed with the idea of a pen name or doing the ‘initial thing’ early on, but decided not to because I naively thought that it wouldn’t matter. “No one is going to care, right?”
It’s only when I see the surprise on people’s face when I tell them I’m an author and the genre is NOT romance or erotica that it hits home. It hits home further when I see people stop at my table to look at my books or comics, only to see that I’m the author/artist and then put it down with a sneer (ouch).
It’s disheartening and annoying to think that people aren’t judging my books by what I wrote in them. Instead they’re judging me and something I can’t control.
I know, I know. Total pity-party time. “Cry me river. Ever think it’s because you just suck and it’s nothing to do with your gender?”
It’s possible. But thanks to the common myth that “women can’t/don’t write Fantasy,” I’m not sure I’ll ever know for sure which it is. I have no “control group.” Unless I were to engage in some rom-com worthy gender-bending disguise antic that would fool the world into thinking I’m a male writer only to have it backfire on me with hilarious results and teaching the world a lesson about gender equality. And then we all have pie and coffee.
Seriously, though, I’m half considering showing up at my next con looking like this:
I’m out. Peace.
Monica Marier Author 