Say What?

All hell just might literally break loose when "Book Hunter" Colin Bliss ignores his lover’s warning and travels to the remote Western Isles to find a legendary book of spells.


I've been working on The Darkling Thrush, a new spec fiction (fantasy, in this case) novel due into Loose Id...in five days. (But who's counting, right?)

Don't ask me why I decided to start the year out with spec fiction when I find it the most difficult genre of all to write in. Which is not to say that I don't love it, because I do. And part of what I love about it is the fact that it's challenging. I think of it as something similar to assembling an onion. What happens so easily in nature is not what happens -- for me -- writing fantasy. So many layers that must be glued seamlessly on top of each other. The research is even more intensive than for historical fiction because I write a sort of AU historical fantasy, which means getting the real history down -- and then deciding how to tweak it. And the magic system -- it all has to be worked out. And religion. Where does that fit in?

I know I could just ignore religion altogether -- lots of fantasy writers do -- but this particular story takes place largely in the Outer Hebrides on the island of Lewis. If you know anything about Lewis, you know how large a role Christianity and the sabbath play in the culture and identity of the people. So it's hard to blithely ignore that and say...in this world Christianity never happened!

So...it's complicated. But I like that -- when I'm not cursing it.



Anyway, I've been going through and naming things from my trusty Gaelic dictionary. I have an up-to-date modern dictionary because at one point I was actually trying to learn Gaelic (don't ask). But I also have a very old 1903 Gaelic dictionary, and this is the one I'm using for my fantasy world.

As I was scrolling through it last night trying to finalize the name of my witches's grimoire I started noticing that the words in the English half of the dictionary are pretty much as unfamiliar as the Gaelic.

Maybe it's just me. I thought I had a pretty good grasp of English, but I had to look Tergiversation up.

So I thought I would throw out a few gems from the English half of my Gaelic dictionary, and the first person who defines them all correctly in the comment section gets a free copy of The Darkling Thrush when it's published later this spring.

Here we go:

Spiry

Pulpousness

Penduncle

Meridional

Foin

Crimination

Clangour