Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Land of Wine & Vines

Just had a very brief break with my lovely bestest friend up in the Barossa Valley - (arguably) Australia's premium wine making district, and she and I agree that we would very much like to live out there. Good for the writing soul; rolling stramineous hills, row upon row of vines, with good friends and tasty drinks and readings of Aidan Coleman and Shel Silverstein to add lyrical beauty to the pulchritudinous surrounds. Came up with a stack of bizarre new foods for the H-c, plus some scenes that will - Lord willing - make their way into Book 3.

Wonderful, wonderful.

5 comments:

Femina said...

Your use of the word 'pulchritudinous' prompts me to ask... how are the Latin classes going?

Anonymous said...

Femina left out stramineous. Anyway, I like a YA author who isn't afraid to have their readers pick up new words from context or even look them up occasionally. I just checked out Foundling at my local library in Audio format. I think that I've missed some good stuff. Waiting impatiently for Lamplighter.

Good stuff, keep it up!

D.M. Cornish said...

Latin class is very expanding, thank you femina; I believe I am not as bright as I thought I was, it takes considerable concentrated time each week to fixed a new declension or conjugation in my noggin... This effort does have me - I must confess - considering that trying to learn a language AND write a book at the same time might be beyond me. Stay tuned.

And, a nonny mouse, absolutely my pleasure, and I will do my utmost to keep delivery the best I can with each book - I tell you though, they certainly test my limitation fully.

Femina said...

Learning a language takes LOTS of time and effort and takes far more effort than actual intelligence so don't use that as an indicator of braininess. I had paradigms stuck up all over the house and carried colour-coded vocab cards with me everywhere! To do it properly you need to work at it 1 hour per day minimum, I reckon, and really should be more. Translation homework used to take me hours in the beginning. Maybe instead of doing it now it should be your reward for finishing Book 3? Or is it too much hard work to be considered a reward?

D.M. Cornish said...

Lol! It just might actually. Not sure if I should kepp going to classes till course is done just for the fun of it or stop the course entirely. I think the former has more merit.

To consider taking on a language is (dare I admit) a bigger task than I had considered: all those nooks and nuances of English I have discovered over the years by accident and varieties of education and reading! How does one achieve such facility with an artificially studied tongue?