Lawrence Schimel

February already! Eep! I'm in my pre-trip panic state already, even though I'm not leaving until Tuesday. But there is so much I should get done between now and then that I'm not able to do any of it, if that makes any sense.

Deep breaths aside, must buckle down and focus and tackle a gazillion things.

Eep!

My mood was not helped by waking up to huge fat snowflakes flurrying down from the skies. This is a ridiculous amount of snow for Madrid. (And I hope we have clear skies on Tuesday, when I fly to NYC...)

Speaking of which, I'll be in NYC for a week or so, en route to Chicago for the Associated Writing Program Conference.

Not sure what my schedule is going to be like, in terms of social free-time, though I am once again trying not to overschedule myself.

Not sure if anyone who reads my blog will be at AWP, but A Midsummer Night's Press will have a table, so I'll be fairly easy to find since that's where I'll be almost always.

Stop by and say hi!

I will have copies of the new FORTUNE'S LOVER: A BOOK OF TAROT POEMS by Rachel Pollack available; the new printer is supposed to deliver them to me tomorrow. I got the unbound-but-printed covers and interiors last week, so I know they're almost ready... And people who are not going to AWP but who are interested in the book can order it from www.amidsummernightspress.com

If you are interested in one of my other titles--especially the Spanish language children's books which are harder to come by in the US--drop me an email and I can schlepp some with me and mail them once I hit NYC...

I've uploaded some photos from last night to my facebook and to flickr.

You can see the flickr set here.

Here's a shot of me gesticulating wildly, as usual... :-)

The profile of me in TIME OUT BARCELONA about DESAYUNO EN LA CAMA and SOÑÉ TU BOCA just came out.

The online link doesn't have the photos, it seems, at least on my computer; but they used the shot of me with Armand de Fluvia.

(Note: the article is in Catalan.)

Un recordatorio de la presentación madrileña para DESAYUNO EN LA CAMA, esta tarde en la librería Berkana a las 19:30.

There's a lovely review of BEST GAY POETRY 2008 by Amos Lassen in EUREKA PRIDE.

A snippet:


However, being a long time fan of Lawrence Schimel I felt fairly safe when I picked up his edited anthology of best gay poetry. He provides the reader with an easy way to keep up with what is going on in the field of gay poetry and I was able to enjoy almost every selection in the volume. There is diversity in the poems chosen in subject matter as well as in style and form and the variety of gay subjects presented is amazing. There are also both new and established poets among the 50 poems and what I really enjoyed was reading poetry by some of my favorite prose writers like Brad Gooch and Jeff Mann.

What I also find important here is that many stop reading poetry when they no longer have to---as in having finished college survey courses or English majors who do not work in the field. Here is a way to approach poetry for pure pleasure and to enjoy simply for the sake of enjoyment. I was thinking as I sat down to write this review that if I were to list all of my favorites, I would use all of the space for my review. So I say to you to pick up a copy and find your favorites.

There are times when the client-freelancer relationship absolutely boggles.

This morning is a case in point.

I was awakened by a call before 9am to tell me they have decided to go with a different translator for a project in question.

If they wouldn't call a business before business hours, is it really necessary to call an individual-who-is-also-his-own-business at such unprofessional times?

So much for us freelancers being able to call our own hours.

But this all ties in to the way so many clients seem to forget about the human element of us external contributors. Like sending us work way after deadline and expecting us to keep the deadline, very often without enough time to actually physically do said work in said period of time, and not understanding why we can't stay up all night working at their beck and call, etc.

Sigh.

The reason I won't after all be translating the project that occasioned this too early call this morning is because they got bogged down in what is or is not a page.

To whit, they want me to translate a few short novels, and are applying for a subsidy to cover the costs of said translations. They need to use the official EU rate as a result, which is a set amount per page, which they define as ever 1500 characters or less.

However, the client in question simply multiplied the per page rate by the number of printed pages in the book. They sent me the contracts with just their total sum as a lump sum, without showing me the math.

Now, I haven't seen the books still, so I told them I couldn't sign a contract blind like that, that they needed to include in the contract the rate, the total number of characters in the book, and then the total.

This was when I learned they'd just used the printed page as their measuring unit, instead of the actual unit stipulated by the rate.

They don't have electronic versions of the texts (the easiest way to measure characters) so I had them take a sample page, count how many lines, and then multiple by the number of characters of a full line.

This resulted in a bit over 1900 characters per page.

Which is why their calculation was not in fact equivalent to what they claimed to be paying, nor would it in fact equal what the EU official rate is.

The math is actually fairly simple: multiple the number of pages in the book by 1900, divide by 1500 and then multiple by the EU per page rate, and voila.

But it was beyond them, as a concept.

They kept getting bogged down that that was more pages than the book actually had, and they needed to use that according to the subsidy guidelines (although when they read them to me over the phone, it did not in fact say they needed to use the printed pages of the book as their guide but rather each 1500 character--or less--unit.)

All this negotiating and so on for a project which may very well not be approved for funding, in which case they won't go ahead with the project.

But in any event, I am no longer the designated translator for the project.

Which is fine.

(All of this was complicated by the fact that my original contact is not actually at the client but at an agency to whom said client had outsourced generating the subsidy application, and during the two weeks that all of this has been going on she left the company. So I've had to deal primarily with two different people on this, one at the client and one at the agency, neither of whom was involved in the original computation and therefore didn't understand what was done, why it was done, nor why it was wrong...)

The EU rate, curiously, is based on the source text, although almost everything I've translated to date has been paid on the final output, which is also how almost all translations INTO Spanish are paid here in Spain...

Although another client today, again a Public Administration, needed to know in advance what the total cost of translating a book on local products into English would be, so I had to give a price quote based on the source text instead of the destination text.

Actually, the fantasy novel I'm translating right now is also based on the source text, although we agreed on a set fee for the project that's not actually equal to a per word or per page fee. And, alas, when I finally got the electronic version, it was actually 15% longer than what we'd discussed when they gave me the physical copy of the book, which was the number I'd used to base my mental calculations on. Sigh.

Speaking of which, I should try and finally get some work done on it, instead of all this meta-work that's been occupying my day from way-too-early until now...

I also bought a new teapot. It was so hideous I couldn't resist.

And this way I can offer both a caffeinated and a decaf tea, for instance...

(Last time friends were over they were split half and half in terms of what they wanted; I had used my travel thermos for the non-caffeinated tea... but this will be much better.)

Now I just need to invite some people over for a tea party!
:-)

Oh, forgot to mention that today I got a contributor's copy of the Russian translation of THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF SERIOUSLY COMIC FANTASY. Very handsome edition: hardcover, surprisingly thin given how many pages the darned thing is. I was pleased to be able to identify myself in the ToC, and confirmed this since the bio note at the start of my story did then have my name and birth year in English.

I know there're Russian editions of some other anthologies I don't have, so it was nice to get this one.

But then, it's always been a pleasure working with Mike Ashley (the editor of this anthology).

I don't know how to embed videos, but this was a moving short film about the power of language (and compassion):
http://www.adnstream.tv/video/nilSqaMboM/HISTORIA-DE-UN-LETRERO-THE-STORY-OF-A-SIGN

A profile of the Spanish illustrator Ismael Alvarez includes a mention of his favorite authors. Not bad company for me to be in. :-)