Say What?

Translation continued.

Someone asked me why I didn't translate my own book. I'll tell you why. Because even though I know the language I'm rusty. Just how rusty?
After Katrina Attorney Gary's translator disappeared, the federal judge wouldn't pospone the case, so in a terrible pinch, I was asked to be the accused's translator. The proper papers were submitted, the judge approved, and I found myself in the Federal courthouse Campt St? in New Orleans, sitting next to a handcuffed fellow wearing an orange jumpsuit and shackles. The accuser had his translator, the judge had a translator and I'm so nervous I can barely mumble. By the time the two hours went by, I was sweating more than the accused. At one point, he turned to me and asked,"What did the judge say?"  "I'm not quiet sure," I replied. "But I think they're going to hang you."
So much for my translating.....

TRANSLATION

Both Cuba on My Mind and Secuestro are about Cuba, the island where I was born. Cuba on My Mind is before Castro when sugar was king and Las Vegas and Chicago mobsters ran the casinos in Havana. Secuestro takes place during the revolution. The third and final book will be about the exodus.
So where did all the Cubans go? Mostly Miami. They took over the place.
The biggest international book fair takes place in Miami in November. I
want my books there in Spanish. No point taking them in English, when most of the population no speeky de Ingles. 
Because I'm under contract to Livingston Press, a small university outfit, I get to do most everything myself with their blessing. I start looking for a translator, talking to people who know people, and get prices ranging from $10,000 to $5 per page, way out of my SS check range.
Livingston Press informs me translators don't get paid, they share in the royalties. My royalty is approximatly $1.44 a book, and it seems a sin to split that, plus no one volunteers to step up to the plate on those terms.  
Herta, a Chilean, is on her way to Valdivia near the Antartic, and she'll have time on her hands and offers to take Cuba on My Mind and translate it. My options are limited. I accept.
A year later she returns with six notebooks written in long hand. Never look a gift horse in the face.
Carmena, a Panamanian offers to type the long hand and I'm truly grateful. It's Thanksgiving, Christmas and everybody's got stuff to do and the handwriting isn't that easy to read and I'm imposing on this nice woman and that's not fair. I get the notebooks back. She's typed two chapters and January is gone tomorrow.
I solve any problem by going out to lunch and if the problem is really problematic I do breakfast, lunch, and supper. Eating somehow helps, ask us fat people. I drive to Berry Town to get one of their great lunches for $6.95, entree and two sides, enough for two meals, and I see down the block there's a place called My Tierra, obviously a Latin outfit.
What harm can it do to duck in there and ask if they know a translator. That's when I met
Nancy, the Mexican. Nancy says no problem she can do it in a couple of days and gives me her card. She's a disenadora, ilustradora and traductora, all the bases covered. By now, I'm leery. We agree she'll do a chapter and see how it works out. I'm now anxiously awaiting the results.
This endeavor has become international in scope, a Cuban, Chilean, Panamanian and Mexican co-op, and all I want, as Miss Universe contestants say, is World Peace.

Amazon Contest

I'm a deadline person. I don't make Thanksgiving stuffing in October; shop for Christmas gifts in July or pay the IRS one day before April 15th. In writing when I reach the deadline date, I go berserk, knuckle down, ignore the phone, don't eat and as happened Friday night, don't sleep, either.
My entry for the Amazon contest (which I told you yesterday I have no expectations of winning) only doing it for the exposure, Publishers Weekly is involved in the judging and I'm told that's good.
I start working away a 9 pm. on the computer, cleaning up the little words, I hate little words: an, of, out, up, I mean, how many people stand down? and making sure every character keeps the same color hair and eyes all the way through, etc. etc. "The Azaleas," a Southern plantation real estate mystery features an African-American tap-dancing little boy called Louie.
My friend Pattie read the manuscript. "You have to change the name Louie."
"Why?"
"Because this is a Sandra Bullock movie and she has a little boy she adopted in New Orleans called Louie. It might offend her and she may refuse to star in the movie."
I love my friends. They have such grandiose ideas, they keep me floating.
Who knows what to change Louie to, so we go to the internet and look up most popular African American names and come up with LeBron. I'm moaning about finding each Louie and changing it to Lebron, when Pattie gives me an incredible stare, punches two buttons on my computer and says, "There. It's done."
That's what good friends are for.
I'm working away, 350 pages to check, that's a helluva lot of typing and when I finish and look up it's 6 a.m. too late to go to sleep. I have half a mind to call Randy Howes who has just told me he gets "zoned out" and loses track of time and his wife pushes trays of food under the door for him and sometimes it's days before he surfaces. He wrote 16 books last year, that's better than one a month. He's not human. He's a genuis machine.
I take a shower and begin my day (Saturday) at sunup which is not my favorite time. Deadline is midnight and since I'm such a computer klutz Pattie has offered to upload the manuscript for me. Yesterday we filled out Amazon's complicated entry form. We clicked through it without having to find a lawyer to explain all the wherases and wherifes. She sets up something called a Drop Box, so she can access the manuscript from her computer.
All Saturday I can't find Pattie. Friends come over for supper and I'm all smiles like a an adequate hostess should be and all the time I'm having internal frenzy because now it's 9 p.m. and still no Pattie.
 Maybe she forgot.
"I know where she is," somebody said. "She's gone to take a rescue dog to New Orleans." Pattie's into that.
One great blessing comes with being old and on your way out. Nothing much matters. If it happens, it happens, if not, it was a good exercise in whatever. The midnight deadline is fast approaching.
I wash the dishes, clean the kitchen and crawl into bed. So be it.
At 11:30 the phone rings. Phone rings at that time I think somebody is having an emergency and my hearts skips a couple of beats.
"Okay," the voice says at the other end. "You're in. Check your e-mail in the morning. You'll have a confimation number."
 A good friend never lets you down. Thanks, Pattie.
On the other hand, let me tell you about my problems with the Spanish translator--

My Writing Day/Night

      Writing a book is soooo much fun! I'm sitting there all by myself in my spare bedroom turned office, typing away on my keyboard, making up these characters, setting them in a real background which takes a lot of research, finding the right words, thank goodness for the inbuilt Thesaurus, my backside stuck to the bottom of the chair and I can feel it spreading. Ever noticed a truck driver's flat bottom? I'm worried.
     Then there's the interruptions: the phone rings, time to go out to lunch, one's gotta eat, then take a little nap, pay a few bills, put in the wash, etc. etc. and before you know it, it's dinner and a show or an art opening and it's 10 p.m. When I had a real job I put in 8 to 10 hours every day and when I retired and started the writing gig, I set a goal of at least 8 hrs a day, like a workday, then it came to 6, and now its 4, usually from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.
     You can't imagine how quiet it is at that time: no phone, no one knocks at the door, not even the dogs bark that late. Everybody is asleep and the world is silent. In the country where I lived before moving to town,  nighttime had it's symphony, frogs croaking, crickets chirping, but these little creatures don't like to live on concrete, so their music is missing in town. It took me a while to get accustomed to no night sounds, except the choo-choo train that rattles through at 2 p.m. and that took a little adjusting, but now I don't even hear it.
       Last Friday, however, I had a deadline to enter the Amazon novel contest, which I know I won't win because it's one of those popularity robo-voting things and my computer savvy friends are limited, but Cuba on My Mind got published because I entered a contest I didn't win, so what the heck, and I stayed up and....

Happy New Year!

After taking a few weeks off to enjoy Christmas with friends and family, a new shipment of Secuestro paperbacks has arrived and the scheduling for bookstores and book clubs is in process. Hardbacks are on their way from the publisher, Livingston Press.
Hope everyone had a blessed Christmas and that 2013 will be a happy and prosperous year.