Book covers

Many authors agonize over their book covers. Some drive their cover artist crazy wanting every tiny detail of their hero/heroine exactly perfect. Some publishers have a series “look” which can make an author cry when they see their voluptuous red-headed heroine portrayed as a blonde stick figure. Other authors love self publishing because finally they can get the cover of their dreams by hiring their own cover artist.

But one thing all readers and authors will relate to, is the cover that has nothing to do with the book inside it.

Bustle.com has compiled a list of the sixteen most misleading book covers of all time.
http://www.bustle.com/articles/161333-the-16-most-misleading-book-covers-of-all-time

It also has a link to another article showing book covers so bad they’ll make you laugh.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/hilariously-bad-book-covers

Enjoy!


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Opposites and contronyms

English is a weird language, but that’s why it’s so much fun. A particular favorite of mine, grammatically speaking, is the contronym.

The contronym (also spelled “contranym”) goes by many names, including “auto-antonym,” “antagonym,” “enantiodrome,” “self-antonym,” “antilogy” and “Janus word” (from the Roman god of beginnings and endings, often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions. That’s how January was named – looking back to the previous year and forward to the new one).

“Dust” is a good example of a contronym. The forensic specialists dust your furniture (add dust to it) to check for fingerprints. Then you have to dust the furniture to remove the dust.

“Fast” is another one. The Olympic athlete ran very fast holding fast to his javelin, then threw it.

And how about “garnish”? You garnish the salad by adding parsley or mint to it. But if you garnish someone’s wages, you take money away from them.

For a lot more examples check out: http://mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their-own-opposites and http://www.dailywritingtips.com/75-contronyms-words-with-contradictory-meanings/ which has some great examples including “refrain” which can be something repeated over and over (the refrain of a song) or to not do something.

Happy reading.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

A Novel Written By A Computer Actually Beat Human-Made Novels In Japan…

We’ve all heard about computers that operate all kinds of household appliances, ensuring that the temperature remains appropriate, lights turn on and off, and even control window furnishings that open and close at set times. But recently technology stepped up to a whole new level.

The Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award is named after a famous, Japanese sci-fi author and it accepts non-human applicants. The 2016 prize included 1,450 novels, 11 of which were created using artificial intelligence. However, in order to criticize submissions fairly, the identity of entries (human or otherwise) was withheld from judges.

One computer-written submission made it through the first round of the competition. It was a novel called “The Day A Computer Writes A Novel”. The L.A. Times said, “Humans decided the plot and character details of the novel, then entered words and phrases from an existing novel into a computer, which was able to construct a new book using that information.”

“The Day A Computer Writes A Novel” didn’t make it to the second round of the competition, but it did freak out a lot of people with its final sentences: “The day a computer wrote a novel. The computer, placing priority on the pursuit of its own joy, stopped working for humans.”
Brilliant!!

For the full story check out, http://writerscircle.com/ai-novel/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Good News for Authors

Book Daily has offered some very sensible advice for authors and would-be authors. It’s just good plain common sense, but sometimes people fail to see the obvious.

1. There is no such thing as a perfect book.
No matter what you write or how well you write it, someone, somewhere will hate it. Also, typos slip in, formatting goes haywire, production inserts errors. So write what you want to write anyway.

2. Writing is hard.
It’s work. So work at it.

3. Save your work.
Back everything up several different ways. Technology will get glitches.

4. Write anyway.
Or, as I always say, “Go for it!” and “Have fun.”

Read the original article at
http://www.bookdaily.com/authorresource/blog/post/1853223

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.