Monday 25 September 2017

Re-reading the Outlander series

Gabaldon's books stand the test of time well. I'm enjoying reading them this time around (only my second venture into them) more than I did the first time. This may have something to do with the fact that I have more leisure time now to read them properly, word for word, instead of flipping through them to get them finished and go on to something else. The fact that I'm writing now may also have deepened my interest. 

As most of the female reading world knows, they are huge books, usually between 800 and 1,000 pages. Most agents and publishers frown on long books these days, so it will be interesting to see how long the last volume, scheduled for 2018, might be.

I'm almost finished Voyager, vol 2. This is the one where they sail for the West Indies to rescue Young Ian and I don't think I have read this one before. I often wondered, as I read later volumes, how they got to America with half their family around them. Now I'm finding out and along with that I'm discovering  some little bloopers. Yes, mistakes.  


They're not huge mistakes or typos, but because it is nice to know that even such famous authors who have huge publishing resources behind them can have the odd little typo, let me tell you what I've found. First of all she refers to Carter Bar as Carter's Bar. For those of you who have maybe never heard of the place, it is about 45 miles from me; the point on the A68 where the land drops over the ridge of the Cheviots from Northumberland into Scotland. If I checked historical maps I might find it was once called Carter's Bar - but so far all I've found is pubs and cafes in Edinburgh called Carter's Bar. 

The author also refers to "a bramble" from Jamie's mother's rose tapping against the window of Lallybroch. I've never heard of roses having brambles but evidently it is used in the US and people with more gardening experience than me assure me the UK catalogues hold a variety of bramble roses. To me, here in the north of England, we call  brambles those wild thorny shrubs that bear blackberries, and we go brambling.  On that point, I cannot accuse the US publisher of being incorrect. 

But when the author has Jamie and Claire sail from France to a port at Cape Wrath in the extreme north west of Scotland with vertiginous cliffs (there wasn't even a lighthouse until the mid 1800s) and no landing place, planning to pick up supplies at Lewes as they sail on to the West indies, I goggled. Cape Wrath is a hell of a place to get to today, never mind in 1760. The clansmen who rode there to meet them there were heroes! Read chapter 42 "We set sail" and then look at Cape Wrath on Google Earth. 

As for Lewes, it is unlikely that they had sailed from France to Cape Wrath and then proposed to sail south around Cornwall and back up the English Channel to Lewes to pick up supplies. Lewis, the northernmost of the western isles, however, would be on their way since they're sailing for Jamaica. 

Two pages on from this and there's an "exclamation of distate."

So many of the places mentioned in the story are real, but there are fantasy places mixed in, such as Ardsmuir prison. I never found where that was except she says it is on the west coast of Scotland near Coigach. Now, Coigach is the hill north west of Ullapool and there are islands off the headland where the gold could have been hidden on the seal's island. but my theory at the moment is that she uses genuine Scots names but not always as real places. It's become like a game for me to know which are which. Looking out for such things does not detract frm my enjoyment of the story; it's almost a bonus! Sad, I know!



Monday 18 September 2017

Alba is Mine pre-order link

I think it is safe to put this up now.

"ALBA IS MINE" is available for pre-order in the Kindle Store. Customers may pre-order here

Those who pre-ordered the book will receive the content on the release date, 10/01/2017.

"The bloody struggle to be king has begun for Finlay of Moray. Cheated by his grandfather, the girl he expected to be his bride married off behind his back, he rebels and faces an ultimatum from the old king - face execution or persusade Thorfinn of Orkney to join them. 

His half-brother Thorfinn rules a sea-based empire from Orkney and he too wants something of Finlay -
marriage with his sister and a war against kith and kin that will cost him dear. 


Two women vie for his love and in the turbulent world of 1034 AD the threat of death is as close as a cold shiver down the spine. Set in present day Scotland, then known as Alba, this is an absorbing, fast moving tale of power, greed, family rivalries and one man's vision of the future for his troubled kingdom. A hero worth fighting for and an exhilarating historical thriller that will keep you turning the pages into the wee small hours."









Wednesday 6 September 2017

KINDLE UNLIMITED PER PAGE RATE


The per-page rate for Kindle Unlimited dropped down to $0.004034 per page for July, 2017.
This downward trend has now continued for several months.

But it’s common for the rate to drop in January for the holiday season, and return upward starting in February.


On the other hand, the KDP Select Global Fund for July, 2017 was $19M, which is a clear million dollars above the $18M payout for June, 2017.
This is part of an upward trend. 

So while the per-page rate has dropped recently, overall Amazon KDP is paying even more in combined Kindle Unlimited royalties.

"However, there is another big factor involved. Amazon KDP just introduced KENPC v3.0. If you haven’t already done so, you should check the current KENPC’s of your books. You can check your current KENPC from your KDP bookshelf. Click the Promote and Advertise button next your title (or click the … button to find this option, if necessary), and scroll down.
If your KENPC happens to be longer than it had been, that will help compensate for the lower per-page rate. If your KENPC happens to be shorter now, the lower rate will hurt even more if it continues."


Chris McMullen runs a very good blog for those who can handle more detail on this sort of topic. Here is the link:
https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/

Monday 4 September 2017

Summing up


The first detailed study of the genetics of British people has revealed that the Romans, Vikings and Normans may have ruled or invaded the British for hundreds of years, but they left barely a trace on our DNA. The Anglo-Saxons were the only conquering force, around 400-500 AD, to alter the country’s genetic makeup, with most white British people now owing almost 30% of their DNA to the ancestors of modern-day Germans.

The study found people in southern and central England today typically share about 40% of their DNA with the French, 11% with the Danes and 9% with the Belgians. Surprisingly the French contribution was not linked to the Norman invasion of 1066, but to a previously unknown wave of migration to Britain after the end of the last Ice Age nearly 10,000 years ago.

Prof Peter Donnelly is the director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford. “It has long been known,” he says, “that human populations differ genetically, but never before have we been able to observe such exquisite and fascinating detail.”

People from areas of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland emerge as separate genetic clusters, providing a scientific basis to the idea of regional identity for the first time. “They’re among the most different in our study,” said Mark Robinson, an archaeologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and a co-author. “It’s stressing their genetic difference, it’s not saying there aren’t cultural similarities.”

25% of DNA in the Orkney Isles comes from Norwegian ancestors who invaded the islands in the 9th century. Scientists believe Welsh DNA most closely resembles that of the earliest hunter-gatherers to have arrived when Britain became habitable again after the Ice Age.
Surprisingly, the study showed no genetic basis for a single “Celtic” group. 

Scientists began collecting DNA samples from people in Orkney in 1994 and gradually worked across most of the British Isles. The participants were all white British, lived in rural areas and had four grandparents all born within 50 miles (80km) of each other. Since a quarter of our genome comes from each of our grandparents, the scientists were effectively obtaining a snapshot of British genetics at the beginning of the 20th century.

Sir Walter Bodmer, of the University of Oxford, who conceived the study, said: “We’re reaching back in time to before most of the mixing of the population, which would fog history.”

Data from 6,209 individuals from 10 European countries was studied to allow an understanding of how their ancestors compared with the genetic makeup of the British.



 Hannah Devlin @hannahdev reported on this in 2015

Friday 1 September 2017

A geographical entity II

 It’s not known how or when the languages that we choose to call 'Celtic', arrived - they were already long established and had diversified into several tongues, when our evidence begins. Certainly, there is no reason to link the coming of 'Celtic' language with any great 'Celtic invasions' from Europe during the Iron Age, because there is no hard evidence to suggest there were any. Nor does language  determine ethnicity. If it did, then we wouldn't be English but German, since English is classified as a Germanic tongue.
Archaeologists widely agree the British Iron Age’s many regional cultures grew out of the preceding local Bronze Age, not from waves of continental 'Celtic' invaders. Calling the British Iron Age 'Celtic' is so misleading that it is best abandoned. There are cultural similarities and connections between Britain, Ireland and continental Europe, but the same could be said for many other periods of history.
The things we have labelled 'Celtic' icons - such as hill-forts and art, weapons and jewellery - were more about aristocratic, political, military and religious connections than common ethnicity.
The Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43 shows the profound cultural and political impact that small numbers of people can have. The Romans did not colonise the islands of Britain to any significant degree. Their army, administration and carpet-baggers added only a few per cent to a population of around three million.

 It was the indigenous wealthy people adopting the new international culture of power who built the province's towns and villas. The islanders became Romans, both culturally and legally (Roman citizenship was more a political status than an ethnic identity). By AD 300, almost everyone in 'Britannia' was Roman, legally and culturally, even though of indigenous descent and still mostly speaking 'Celtic' dialects. Roman rule saw profound cultural change, but without any mass migration.
However, “Scotland” remained beyond Roman government, although the nearby presence of the empire had major effects. The kingdom of the Picts appeared during the third century AD, the first of a series of statelets which developed through the merging of the 'tribes' of earlier times.
In western and northern Britain, the end of Roman power saw the reassertion of linguistic and cultural trends reaching back to before the Iron Age. Yet in the long term, societies gradually tended towards larger states. The Irish-ruled kingdom of Dalriada merged in the ninth century with the Pictish kingdom to form Scotland.
The western-most parts of the old province created small kingdoms which developed into the Welsh and Cornish regions.
The Romans left Britannia around c.410 AD and bBy the sixth century, most of the country had been taken over by 'Germanic' kingdoms. It was once believed that the Romano-British were slaughtered or driven west by hordes of invading Anglo-Saxons. However, there was no such simple displacement of 'Celts' by 'Germans'.
How many settlers actually crossed the North Sea to Britain is disputed, but it is clear that they  mixed with indigenous populations which, in many areas, apparently formed the majority.

The new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms formed from indigenous and immigrant populations drew their cultural inspiration, and their dominant language, from across the North Sea. These people became the English. 
Contrary to the traditional idea that Britain originally possessed a 'Celtic' uniformity, in reality Britain has always been home to multiple peoples. While its population has shown strong biological continuity over millennia, the identities the islanders have chosen to adopt have undergone some remarkable changes. Many of these have been due to contacts and conflicts across the seas, not least as the result of episodic, but often very modest, arrivals of newcomers.

(Please click here http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/peoples_01.shtml#top  for  the link to the original article.)

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