My name in Chinese, I think - 馬汀．米勒
(I'm saying 'Chinese' here, but that's probably not quite accurate, because there are different types of written Chinese.)
Here's some of the blurb from the back cover -
Notice the important words, in brackets in English - Jane Austen, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Sex Pistols. Good choices! I'm pleased to be known as a fan of Buffy, Jane Austen and the Sex Pistols. All three were at the top of their genre.
It also mentions Thraxas. I am at this moment planning to write a new Thraxas story, and publish it as an ebook. This will happen some time, though I'm not certain when.
it also has the bit about award for best novel in those brackets too, seems important too I think. In the color o they painted that thing in front of your place.
ReplyDeleteLOVE this cover! Not knowing any Mandarin, or whatever this is, the text all becomes just another design element and that's awesome.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, 馬汀‧米勒 is your Chinese name (similar pronunciation).
ReplyDelete馬汀＝Martin
米勒＝Miller
紐約＝New York
好＝Good
精靈＝Fairies
And you are right again, they are 100% Chinese. As this book is published by Taiwanese publisher, these Chinese characters are used in Taiwan (and also Hong Kong). To differentiate them from the simplified Chinese used in China, we named them as traditional Chinese, since they are exactly the same characters as used by ancient Chinese thousands of years ago. Though there are only 23 million traditional Chinese users (compare to 1.3 billion users of simplified), more and more people are becoming realized the beauty of traditional ones, and begin learning to recognize and read them.
'...only 23 million traditional Chinese users' Only? That's the entire population of Australia. LOL
ReplyDeleteSorry…forgot to count in the population in Hong Kong
ReplyDeleteSo the correct number of traditional Chinese users is 30 million
Um… now the number is bigger than Australian population ;)
NA - you're right, it could have been them that painted that cover blue!
ReplyDeleteHi Donna, I'm glad you liked the cover.
Lan, thanks for you info about the language. I should probably have mentioned that the book is being published in Taiwan, in fact I'll edit the blog to say that now.
I love the cover too. Maybe you could write a sequel - The Good Fairies of Beijing.
ReplyDeleteAnd good to see Buff getting a mention in the blurb. Speaking of, did you see she's been named as the third greatest pop-culture character in Entertainment Weekly's top 100 greatest characters of the past twenty years? Go Bufster!
Love the cover - but also, love the idea of a new Thraxas book. That's a fine plan. I will have to go an learn how to read e-books immediately
ReplyDeletethat's so gorgeous! i studied Chinese (Mandarin) in college, a most fascinating language...out on tour right now, waving to you from the road.
ReplyDeletexo Cat
Hi Cat, I've waving back to you on the road.
ReplyDeleteNew Thraxas? Fantastic, can't wait
ReplyDeleteBought the other Thraxas' installments as eBooks from Baen's Webscription service. Glad to hear there will be more.
ReplyDeleteThe previous poster was right!
ReplyDeletehere's some fun english pronunciation in case you ever wanted to introduce yourself or your book in Chinese:
馬汀米勒＝Ma Ting Mi Le
紐約好精靈＝Niu Yue Hao Jing Ling
Of course Chinese relies heavily on the accent of each word to say it properly but I'm sure they'll forgive that :)