Electronic adventures

I have just tried to add a layout page to Myspace but I don't think it has taken. Sometimes there's a delay before things show, but I'm not holding my breath!

If I cannot do it, I might abandon the Myspace thing as my bit of it seems to be taken over by adverts for other people - not what I imagined at all.

There's an interesting discussion that keeps cropping up from time to time on what kind of language to use in historical novels.

Well: I've thought about this off and on for a long, long time. I've read so many historicals over the years that I must have seen a huge variety of responses to the question and I think I favour - no, I know I favour - normal language minus modern slang on the basis that when people talked to each other in the 8th century or the 14th century, they spoke normally, and there's no way we can recreate that. I don't see the point in putting a language barrier between the reader and the characters.

Some authors try hard to give a flavour of speech as it was then. I think it is probably wasted effort, but if they enjoy doing it and people enjoy reading it, who am I to spoil their fun?

What do I call neutral language? I fall down at once, because to me normal means Standard UK English - which of course, is not normal language for your average American, Canadian, Australian....and we're all supposed to speak the same language!

So I guess we'll all go on doing what we think is the right thing - and for me, that means using normal language without slang, without anachronisms in the hope that the readers will appreciate the lack of barrier and read as if they were there with the characters and understanding everything they said.