I Need a Break, I Need a Vacation!

Well, that's me!

Back from holidays, I can tell you that I am exhausted. I slept about one order of magnitude less than I had planned! Yawn!

Anyway, it was nice to be back to my hometown, I made a safari to the local Art Factory, Fábrica de Sargadelos and got a handful of books, about linguistics, galician and even some Sherlock Holmes adventures (in galician, nod)... Hehe :-)

It was nice to be back, to be honest. I did a couple of barbecues (my first barbecues!) of varied success, but overall we had a great time, and the experience was valuable, and even managed to go to the beach and swim at least 3 times (it was damn cold and rainy weather, back in Madrid we arrived to 36ºC in shadows!)

As for Revolt! I managed to add a couple of thousand words and to make a first, quick revision of almost half the novel. Overall, it's surprisingly acceptable, the number of pitfalls and downright errors is fairly small and will be easily corrected when I'm done and start the first real revision. I have to finish some chapters that got left hanging during Nanowrimo, specially the second one (where the rebellion is forged) and the tenth, when one of the starrings gets married, and the failed expedition to Thrace and Macedon by Mardonius.

I have also detected a fundamental disequilibrium between the parts (it's articulated around a three parts concept, and the second part, where the "knot" and the heavy fighting and development takes part is, however, shorter than the first or the third parts. Maybe the problem is that I have concentrated some years of the revolt into that part, which is starred (and finished) by the Battle of Lade. I'll have to think if this is okay or if this is asking for some redesign.

As for the story itself, I have the Persians ready to start taking over the Ciclades Islands and head towards Euboea and Marathon, which is the direct consequence of the revolt.

As I'm planning to getting my car driving license this Summer, it will surely take time from my writing, but I hope to keep advancing at a good pace through the season, while I'm still thinking of a good story to tell in Nanowrimo, which I'll write in galician, my other native language, probably a much overdue opera since my school days writing short stories and poetry. I'd like it a short novel, to be written in Nanowrimo and finished within November, so I can review it in March and start sending it to galician editors in May or maybe even sooner.

I am thinking about late Roman times or even early medieval times in the region (Gallaecia, in Hispania), but I'd like it to also serve to protest about the current situation of inmigrants, Africa in general and Occidental Sahara, something of which the Spanish people should be more informed and more oppinionated than I'm afraid we are; which will probably force me to move to much later times, or do some historical contortions I'm not sure I'll be able to do. I'll let you know through this blog, anyway.

And that's all for the time being, back to Madrid, I'll be reachable through Internet once more.

KALLISTI!

Back to Ithaca

Well, actually back to Ulysses and Odysseus...

Over there, a Greek visitant left me his input after so long (isn't the Internet wonderful?):

Dear friend,

I have read your interesting story about how Odysseus became Ulysses by a linguistic mistake. Thinking that you should like to know alternative theories, I suggest that you examine the possibility of a non mistaken change of (Δ = delta) to (Λ = lambda). This transformation of delta to lambda is used in other cases also ( δασύς = λάσιος, δάκρυ = lacryma, δαήρ = levir, Πολύ-δεύκης = Pol-lux ). This is what Hesychius of Alexandria says in his Lexicon (5th cent. AD). See also the Liddell-Scott dictionary of Greek Language for the letter (Δ, δ, δέλτα = delta).

Basil Xydias

An now, the reply: :-)

Dear Basil,

thank you very much for your input!

I didn't know those transformations were as usual as you show them, but come to think about it, it's a kind of rotation I may have seen before elsewhere*...

I haven't been able to check those sources, but I'll try to get a hold onto them, it's an interesting topic, inded!

thanks for stopping by!

It's veeeeery warm in Spain today, I'm melting, my mind is melting... My body as well, oh no!

Take it easy and drink a lot of water...

KALLISTI

* well, in arab --the thing I was thinking about--, it's actually the opposite, a gemination of the article consonant al followed by a word starting by some consonsants (dentals, alveolars and postalveolar), eg. d, for example, disappears and dupplicates the next one, eg. *al-dîni), the Sun, is actually ad-Dîni. I haven't been able to find an "antigemination" transformation, but it's obviously there, at least in Greek->Latin assimilation. The other languages I know of don't show something similar that I can think off, I'll have to undust my Sumerian, but I don't recall anything lika that, either... :-P

PS- I made this front page because who's gonna read that story nowadays twice, to check any later replies? I may get a couple of visits more this way, that would make some 40% growth, wow! ;-)

The Revolt! is spreading!

Indeed, slowly but firmly.

Last status update: 50,119 words

Right Now: 56,223 words

This is, in a DIN/ISO-A5, Times New Roman, 10pt format, roughly 160 pages (YMMV)

Not much but more than before, huh? :-)

I'll keep you updated... :-p

Kallisti!