Book Plates and other Fun Stuff

Like all needy writers I have a Google alert out on my writing name and King Rolen's Kin, the name of my trilogy. I woke up this morning to an alert letting me know that some nice person has created a KRK facebook page.

Lovely surprise! Last time I looked 6 people liked it. So, if you've read my KRK trilogy and liked it, drop by.

Back to book plates. I don't know if they help sell books. I signed 500 of my KRK book plates and sent them to my publisher. (There was a sale on 1000 book plates for $80, which seemed pretty reasonable to me). I have a background in graphic art and creating a book plate is fun for me. It was only after I had them printed that I realised I'd forgotten to put my name on them. Sigh ...

Then another of my friends had a book come out. Tansy Rayner Roberts' new series is called The Creature Court. It's s daring mix of romanesque festivals and the roaring 20s, set against a dark threat and shape shifting Creature Lords. Tansy is part of my ROR group so I offered to do a book plate for her, too.

As you can see, I remembered to put the author's name on the book plate this time!

Then another of my writing group had the first book of his Death Works series come out. So I offered to do a bookplate for him. Trent Jamieson's series is about an ordinary guy called Steve, who works for corporate death, helping people's souls pass on. It's fun urban fantasy, set in Brisbane. (Trent's name appears in the web site address this time).


And lastly, because I obviously don't have enough to do with my spare time, when Marianne de Pierres' collection of short stories came out, I offered to do a book plate for her. Glitter Rose ( Think surreal, sensual fantasy crossed with SF) was a small paperback limited edition book, so the book plate's dimensions had to suite the book.

In the past I've done book marks. And I've always created my own business cards with my book covers on them.

Does having a book that has a signed book plate in it make the book special for you?

Do you keep book marks? I guess if you have an e-book reader you don't need one.

Words are Fun!

This is a rough for a book plate I'm going to have made up to help promote my new series. They'll be stickers which I sign then I'll post copies to the specialist books stores. Must brush up on my signature. Why did I choose a double barrel last name? LOL!

I've been at work all day marking UNI assignments so I plan to have a bit of fun with this blog tonight. It is amazing how many ways a student can abuse the English language. But then I have to remember that they aren't natural writers. They weren't born with a love for words.

Ever since I was a kid I've loved words, loved finding out their origins and playing with them. One thing that fascinates me is how the meanings and usage of words change over time. Once upon a time, we had collective nouns for groups of animals and birds because we needed them.

Here are some of my favourites:

A murder of crows.
An exhalation of larks.
An ostentation of peacocks.
A parliament of owls.

So descriptive and emotive. If you want to read more collective nouns take a look at the list on Wikipedia. (I tell my students you can't reference wiki but it is so useful for quick answers!).

By chance at college the other day we were talking about collective nouns and how they could be updated for the modern world. We came up with a few. And while I was preparing this post I found this site where they had fun with collective nouns.

An ambush of widows.
An attitude of teenagers.
An audit of accountants.
A fidget of altar boys.

These are the ones the other lecturers and I came up with:

An ignorance of students. (You can tell we'd had a bad day).
An exuberance of school students. (Especially at the end of term!).
A snoot of lecturers. (Yes, we can laugh at ourselves).

Now it is your turn. Can you think of a collective noun for readers, SF fans or bloggers?