#I did not proof read this btw it's probably full of errors

[autistic-autumn]

Interesting medieval Latin poems

Okay so I've been reading a lot of medieval Latin poems recently and some of them are pretty cool. My latin is unfortunately very limited so I've most been relying on translations. I am no expert in the field at all. A lot of these poems are quite long so I'm not going to post all of them. Some of them are just stuff I have written up part of in a google doc too so they aren't great.

Most of the translations I'm using are by Helen Waddell because she did an enormous amount of translation and her stuff tends to try preserve a lot of the meaning and poetic form over direct translations. Her translations are sometimes not all that direct but still poetic and neat.

This here is the Dies Irae, known as the day of wrath:

I've just stolen this straight from wikipedia because it's so famous. It is a 13th century poem of unknown origin got turned into a Gregorian chant and later became part of the traditional requiem texts as the Dies Irae sequence. As such there is a large number of music works for the text, the most famous being in Mozart's and Verdi's requiem. The text is often split into a large number of verses and makes up the full requiem sequence. The original Gregorian chant melody was picked up into general music works and being reused in a number of works (I believe the first instance of this is Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique mvt 5). Overall just a very cool poem with some musical adaptations.

On a similar note a lesser known poem titled Dies Irea exists.

This poem here is by St Columba, a 6th century poet. Hellen Waddell suggests with her translations that it may be a precursor to the more well known Dies Irae above. This appears to just be a small snippet of the full poem by St Columba. It was set to music in 1962 by Benjamin Britten.

Another very famous poem is the O Fortuna:

This too is just take from wikipedia and has many translations out there (Helen Waddell's isn't all that great I don't think and I don't want to type it out). The poem is of unknown authorship and taken from a 13th century manuscript known as the Carmina Burana. This manuscript is full of goliardic poetry. The goliards who wrote this poetry often spoke on topics such as love, fate, drinking. ect. A lot of this stuff was somewhat sacrilegious by 13th century standards and much of the poetry remains anonymous. Carl Orff famously took 24 of these poems and created the Carmina Burana, with the O Fortuna as the opening work.

One of the poets who we do (kind of) know the name of in the Carmina Burana is The Archpoet. The Archpoet had 10 poems, with all of his 10th and part of his 6th appearing in the Carmina Burana manuscript. Here is the Confession by the Archpoet:

This poem is a personal favourite of mine. I've mostly seen the original poem laid out in four line stanzas with slightly different spellings in the Latin. Waddell's own translation spells the first line as "Estuans inrinsecus" but splits the original into eight line stanzas. I have no idea why this is but I just quickly found a latin one online that matched up with the translations by Waddell. I find this poem very powerful and the translation very well encapsulates both the poetic form and rhythm while keeping the original meaning intact. I have set this text to music myself and have most extensively studied the latin translations of any poem on this list.

Another Goliardic poem that appears in the Carmina Burana Manuscript is the Portrait Of Despair:

This translation is actually by George Whicher in his book "The Goliardic Poets; Medieval Latin Songs and Satires". The full piece is three stanzas long (at least in the book) but this one here is just the one stanza I wrote up. I think this verse is the most interesting anyways.

Another poem from the Carmina Burana Manuscript in George Whichers book is Iste Mundus, This Dizzy World:

I don't really have a lot to say about this one. It just think it's neat

There are a bunch of other interesting ones I have that I might update this post with but that's a little collection of some of the interesting stuff.

[mapofthemazeinthemirror]

Home Invasion - Jeon Jungkook

Trigger warnings: mild swears, themes of stress towards work and assignments, dialogue that eludes to a hostage situation. I think that’s all, please correct me if not.

A/N: I put a movie reference in here, but I don’t think it’s a well known movie so I will be surprised if anyone gets it (btw it’s not a movie that gets named) These aren’t posted in any particular member order, just as they are completed. I proof-read this with a headache so please excuse any errors. Hope you enjoy!

Most of the time you were level headed, centred, a functioning human being. You were the kind of person others turned to whenever there was a crisis. But today, you were Godzilla.

Thoughts manic, temperature rising, you had reached full Hulk potential; you had stomped across your apartment in a desperate search for your laptop charger, stubbed your toe on the leg of your desk and fell, hitting the door on the way down causing it to slam shut. Rolling onto your back, you lay there letting the anger and frustration of the day consume you, swiped the decorative cushion from your office chair and screamed into it. It wasn’t enough.

Somewhere, your subconscious was telling you this was not an efficient way to deal with your current problem, but all you could hear was the sound of your rapid pulse, the only feelings the red hot throb of pain in your injured toe and the need for release of pent up stress. Your hand sought out the discarded pointy workplace shoes under your desk and, with difficulty due to being flat on the floor, threw them one by one like darts at the wall.

After this, you resolved to lay there for a long time and wallow. With any luck the carpet would absorb you and you would have no responsibilities or worries again. It occurred to you that this was the first pause you’d had all day. You weren’t going to move for anything.

Not even that knock at the door. It was probably just a salesperson. They would move on to the next apartment.

The knocking came again, longer and louder.

Groaning half-heartedly, you slowly began to pull yourself up. As soon as you tried to put weight on your battered foot there was a horrible pain and you couldn’t help but cry out. There was a voice accompanying the knocking now, but you couldn’t make out words. Limping to the front door, you opened it enough to reveal a dark haired young man in a hoodie. You didn’t intend to open the door any further as you wanted to keep this disturbance short and sharp and return to your misery.

“Did, uh- Did you order a pizza?” the man asked, eyes seemingly searching your face.

“What?”

Now his eyes looked past you, head craning to get a look inside. You glanced benhind you but there was nothing to see. “A pizza?”

“No?” You were too annoyed and not observant enough in that moment to notice that he wasn’t actually holding a pizza.

“Are you alone?

You sighed heavily, your mind still on the problem in your home office, the promise of your boss yelling at you in front of all your coworkers. Was this guy trying out some new pick up routine or was he just here to play Twenty Questions?

When you zoned back in, he was still searching your face, his eyes flickering between each of yours. You hadn’t answered his question, just standing there looking through him for a few moments. With a large tattooed hand, he pushed the door open enough for him to squeeze through, the movement of the door you had been leaning your weight into pushing you backwards slightly with it.

“Uh, excuse me!” you spluttered.

Now inside the living room, he was looking around, his head whipping from side to side, boots stepping on your spotless carpet.

“Hey, get out! I don’t even know you!”

“I’m your neighbour,” he said distractedly, as if that was any explanation, before ducking his head and stepping into your bedroom off to the right.

This was the strangest home burglary you had ever seen, and you watched a lot of TV.

“I’m calling the police,” you shouted, reaching for you pocket. Panic. Where had you left your phone?

In the bedroom. Shit.

Your apparent “neighbour” emerged from your room after only a few moments, empty handed. “Is there really no one else here?”

“Yes.”

He was a lot bigger than you, but your mind started looking for ways to get past him into the bedroom to your phone.

You flinched when he moved suddenly, his stance relaxing and a hand going behind his neck. “I’m sorry, I live in the apartment bellow you and I could hear a lot of noise, screaming, banging. It sounded like you were being attacked.”

The panic was stunned out of you. You didn’t know what to say.

He continued, still looking embarrassed but now making eye contact again. “When you opened the door like that and it seemed like you were trying to get rid of me, I thought you were being made to-“ He took a deep breath and let it out quickly. “Well, maybe I’ve just seen too many movies.”

You still just stood there, blinking, feeling stupid for not knowing how to act all of a sudden. “Oh,” you managed, adding, “it’s fine.”

He looked around again, slower this time, probably taking in the details of this living room which was the same as his, but dressed differently. “What were you doing?”

You felt the stress crawling back up at this reminder. “Having a bad day.”

The man’s eyebrows raised, a silver piercing moving skyward with them. “Must have been one hell of a day.”

“The worst.” Without having to look, you slumped onto the arm of the sofa behind you. “I’m shark bait.”

“Sorry?”

You felt it rising to your mouth before you could stop it. “My boss assigned me this project that is clearly meant to be done by more than one person with only two days to do it, I’ve had so little sleep, every waking hour spent at home and at work looking at numbers until my head is numb, and with two hours until deadline my dumbass computer decided to delete all my hard work and die on me.”

Now it was your neighbour’s turn to look blank and do nothing but blink.

“I’m sorry, that was a lot. You don’t even know me.”

“N-no, it wasn’t,” he came back to life again, lips twisted in the smallest smile. “I know you, in little neighbourly ways.” He sidestepped to the single sofa across from you and sat politely, not making himself too comfortable where he wasn’t invited. “I know your car in the lot, always in the closest spot to the entrance door. I gave up trying to get that spot a month after I moved in,” he chuckled. “Even when I pull in and it’s empty, I leave it for you.”

You were stunned again. Nobody else in the building would pass up that spot for someone else, especially someone they had never even spoken to.

“I know you work a lot, so you stay in on weekends and catch up on TV.

Wow, you would have to start lowering the volume.

“I know you get takeout delivered when you’ve been at work for 12 hours straight.”

Okay, that’s a little stalker-ish. You subconsciously wrapped your hands around your arms, something you did to make yourself small when you were feeling way too seen.

“I know you only collect your mail on Fridays. I know you don’t answer the door for trick or treaters.” He couldn’t hide his grin now, a pearly white smile flashing between rounded cheekbones. “By the way, I give them extra to make up for it.”

You couldn’t maintain eye contact anymore. You rarely ever felt shy, but you did now. How could someone you thought you’d never crossed paths with, who you didn’t even recognise on sight, know so much? You couldn’t think of a single thing you could say about him. You didn’t even know which apartment number he lived in.

“And I know computers. Mind if I take a look?”

You looked up into sincere brown eyes. “Are you sure? You don’t have better things to do?”

He got to his feet, shrugging. “What are neighbours for?”

Before today, you couldn’t have answered that question.

***

The only furniture in your home office was a desk and a chair, to avoid distraction and procrastination, so for some reason, instead of taking your laptop to the sofa in the living room, the two of you were sat on the floor leaning against the wall. This man, who thought he was your rescuer, who you thought was your burglar, who was actually your neighbour, had a name - Jungkook.

“So,” he was saying cooly. “Do you hear that person who plays the same music at exactly the same time every night?”

You weren’t sure if he was just making small talk or if he felt awkward. He didn’t look awkward, pressing combinations on the keyboard and looking totally comfortable as if this were his laptop and his apartment. But you were glad for the distraction; your fingers which were unconsciously twisting each other - your stress habit - relaxed as you began to answer, not even noticing that your black laptop screen had started to glow with life.

“Ugh, yes. That’s Ethan. He lives above me, has for two years. For two years he has played the entire soundtrack of Breakfast at Tiffany’s at nine o’clock on the dot without fail every night. It’s just him in there, so I don’t know why he has to play it so loud. He does have two cats though, one is called Moon and the other is River. But I’m sure they don’t appreciate it either. One of them tried to claw its way into my apartment once. I think that speaks for itself.”

“Huh.”

He was still looking at your computer, so you half-panicked thinking he’d seen something embarrassing. It was just your lock screen, which only had a default picture of a peaceful beach. His eyes met yours.

“How come you know all that about your upstairs neighbour and yet you and I have never met?”

You blinked.

“Well, he’s lived here longer than you have. He makes himself known. I’ve never heard a peep out of you.”

“Peep peep,” Jungkook chuckled as he hit the Enter key. As if struck by déjà vu, you felt you may have heard his giggle before, once or twice, while making your way through the building. “Where do you save work documents?”

“On the desktop.”

As if on cue, the loading screen ended and your desktop was up.

“Holy…”

It seemed he didn’t approve of your method of saving to the desktop, about 20 document icons covering the same serene beach that was your lockscreen picture. “Assign1”, “Assign2” and so on and on. You weren’t going to admit it out loud, but seeing those documents made your chest tighten with stress. You always thought of it as a metaphor: clear all the assignments and get to the beach vacation. But the assignments kept coming, and the beach grew further and further out of view.

“Okay… what number were you working on?”

“Twenty one.”

Jungkook’s eyes scanned the screen. “I see.” Meaning he didn’t see.

“I’m doomed,” You hid your face in your hands like a little kid, flashbacks of the last incident where an employee got berated in front of the whole office reeling before your closed eyes.

“Not yet.”

With the wave of some fingers, a black window appeared and he began to type rapidly, a crusendo of white letters and numbers filling it, meaning nothing to your unknowledgable eyes. Mumbling under his breath, eyes transfixed, his mouth moving almost as fast as his hands, it looked like wizardry. Your eyes flickered up to his face and you noticed he didn’t even glance at the keys once as his fingers flew over them.

“Ass21?”

“Yeah, I got sloppy. Wait, you found it?”

A grin. “Sure did.”

Your body suddenly flooded with warmth as if your blood had started pumping again. With the click of a button your hours and hours of hard work was back on the screen, exactly where you had been up to. In this excited state you didn’t register your hand flying out to grab Jungkook’s arm.

“Oh thank god! I mean, thank you! What can I do to repay you?”

“Bequeath me your parking spot if you ever move out?” His white smile flashed at you again.

“But how did you do that?!”

“A master never tells his secrets.”

You’re looking at him, he’s looking at you, and you’re wondering if you could be friends, if you could have been friends all this time. Maybe all those weekends you spent on the couch watching TV and ordering take-out didn’t have to be alone. Maybe this could be the start of something good.

Then realisation dawns. “Oh shit, what time is it?”

Two heads turn towards the small time display in the bottom corner of the screen.

“8:12,” Jungkook reads aloud.

“Eighteen minutes.”

Now he reaches out for your arm, giving it a few gentle, reassuring pats. “You can do it.” Suddenly he stands up.

“Where are you going?” you ask in surprise.

“I’m going to rescue my dinner, which has probably been simmering for too long now. Then I’m going to bring it up here and share it with you. You’ve had a long day and you shouldn’t have to cook.”

At the mention of food, you realise that you are very hungry and how long it has been since you last ate, as Jungkook crosses to the door.

You wonder for a moment, if this day had gone differently, would you have kept going on the way you had been, not knowing each other, always passing like ships in the night? Maybe a little dramatic, but you were tired and hungry.

“Thank you.”

Jungkook looks back over at you with his trademark grin, one you are becoming familiar with. “Seventeen minutes,” he chimes, before heading out for his apartment.

Shit.

written by mapofthemazeinthemirror - do not repost my work in any form

[chrisstevenson]

The Lows of High Book Prices

A thousand pardons if I come off like a rant. I'm a mashup between J.A. Konrath and Harlan Ellison. I'm a writer advocate and defender of the written word. I also watch the industry like a stealthy Sasquatch. These articles are always meant for Guerrilla Warfare for Writers, my down and dirty blog. There is no BS here. Maybe some inaccuracies. I don't even like posting these articles to my YA website--no one reads me there anyway. I hope you suffer me well.  

First and foremost, if you are a celebrity author you don't need to be reading this. If you are an A-list author, pass on by. If you are a very popular author with a huge reader fan base and have a enormous mailing list that draws purchasing customers in like flies, audios. If you have a break-out or bestseller, you can kindly leave by through back door. There will also be some outlier exceptions. This article is not a call to arms for you. You are profitable, consistent and probably comfortably set in the mighty realm of book sales.

If you are new to writing with a minimum number of releases, an old-time mid-lister like me with a ton of books out there, or a new writer launching your first book, I think you better read this and make some grave determinations. It's unlikely a publisher is going to read this, but I've been with and seen too many that need to know what is working and what is not as far as ad pricing. This warning goes double for authors who just don't care that their e-book prices are going to be placed high regardless. It goes triple (as of this writing) because of the corona virus and the financially stressed atmosphere it has created.  People are buying essentials. As far as entertainment, they are streaming movies and playing games. Who started the the rumor that they were buying books hand over fist? Do you remember when this news was sent out on the wings of doves at the very beginning of the pandemic spread?

I would like you to read three paragraphs (below) which come straight from the keys of most of the advertisers I know and have dealt with. The wording might not be the same but the implications all point to the same conclusion. They don't want your high-priced book. They want rock-bottom cover prices and freebies. The reason is twofold; Shoppers want bargains, plain and simple. That's why W-Mart and Amazon rule the nest. Yet the second reason is that the company itself doesn't want to lose a potential customer. That means you won't be coming back for seconds if there are flat sales. They are also competing with other promotion and marketing sites that have the same mindset policies.

Here's my statistics for two YA fantasy/thrillers that had excellent covers and blurbs. Both of these ads were run before and during a Halloween special (the horror factor was quite evident).. Both books were priced at $2.99.

Book one ran for 15 days on a $45 budget. It received 5,391 impressions; total clicks--5--and a CTR of 0.09%

Book two ran for seven days on a $100 budget. It received 10,195 impressions; total clicks --13 and a CTR of  0.13%.

I don't think I have to do the math for you. Except for the takeaway, which was $145.00 from me and some wide-eyed experience. I later changed companies, dropped the e-book price to .99 cents, and still fell flat--no sales. We could argue all day long about what I did wrong with these two companies. I did not stop there. I enlisted in seven of the companies listed below, with very low, rock-bottom prices. Please excuse my spelling on the names.

Just Kindle Books

Fiverr--bkknights

Fussy Librarian

FreeBooksie

E-book Hounds

Robin Reads

Kindlebook Review

Book Barbarian

Booksends

BookDealio

Ebookdiscovery

Ereader IQ

Ent

Book Reader Magazine

Pretty Hot books.

Out of my promotions, I received three apologies and full refunds. I think I sold two books from Ent. That was it. I won't go into which seven, but I did do my research beforehand. They were my best picks.  

Have you ever heard that it wasn't the gold miners who made money off their digs, but the merchants who sold them the supplies, tools, products and other services? We basically have the same thing going on here, with grandiose claims of the promotion and marketing companies talking about going to the top of the sales charts, breakouts, unlimited exposure and guaranteed results. Results. Not sales. Impressions and clicks are a normal state of business and you'll see them. What you won't see are voluminous click-throughs--buys, sales, mullah.

There are many Indie writers who are exceptions to this rule because they have targeted outfits that payoff for them. Might be some trade published out there too. This comes from a lot of trial and error--R & D--and it NEVER ends because the books can go through an insufferable amount of tweaking to fine-tune the results. This happens when an author watches his/her ups, downs and in betweens--the stats that govern peak sales. Self-published authors also get a larger percentage cut of the royalties than the small trade-house authors. Many of the elite Indie authors pay thousands for ads a months, but they reaps thousands plus in return. So it is a revolving door for them--huge investments that garner huge profits. You want to make money, you have to spend it. That's not my quote, lol.

Look, all I'm saying is be wise and careful with your expenditures. You are going to see, if you already haven't, self-proclaimed experts that can do all forms of editing, covers, formatting, book tours, pod-casts, trailers, page ads, listings, book-to-movie deals, screenwriting, agent introductions, publisher submissions, blurbs, illustrations, writing courses, query letters, one-on-one instruction, translations, ghostwriting, expedited (paid) reviews, synopsis's, proof reading, evaluations and all other manner of Internet blasting services. Can you pay for some of these services without losing your shirt or blouse? Sure you can! It's up to you. But be aware, unless you really need and believe in any of them, you'll lose out every time.

I often wonder if we are just giving our books away because the sea is awash with them. So many tens of thousands of books are published each year that the numbers keeps compounding and burying the authors under tons of pixels. Nobody can find you, lest you post on FB that you will commit suicide if somebody, anybody doesn't buy one of your books before you take that leap. Well, if it goes viral and you were bluffing, it would work. I think you get the idea. Dear gawd, I've often entertained the idea.

1. Your deal price should be as competitive as possible (This is a company motto BTW).

"We promise our subscribers the best deals available. The better the deal, the more appealing it is to our subscribers, and therefore the more likely it is to be selected by our editors/readers. We rarely feature books priced above $2.99, and even $2.99 is an unusually high price for many of our categories.(I JUST LOVE IT WHEN THEY SAY $2.99 IS UNUSUALLY HIGH).

"While your deal price should be based on your book marketing goals, pricing as low as possible will entice more readers to download your book. The lower the price, the higher the conversion rate of a Deal. Knowing this, our editors prefer books that are competitively priced, since those will drive a higher volume of reader engagement. They’re also able to select a higher percentage of discounted books. If you’re not selected for a deal between $0.99 and $3.99, consider resubmitting your book for a free promotion, as this can be a really effective way to increase your chances of getting selected.

"Keep in mind that the competitiveness of your price depends on your category. While it’s normal to see a higher priced book in Cooking, for example, prices are usually lower in the Mysteries or Romance categories (THOSE TWO ARE THE BEST-SELLING GENRES, BTW).. Browse through books in your category to see what’s competitive in your own genre. Again, if your book is not selected at one price, try resubmitting at a lower price or for free. Your chances of being selected will be higher."

Note the last sentence. They are going to select you in accordance with how profitable they think you can be.Sounds to me if you don't go low enough to suit them, they'll politely blow you off.

I've heard some positive news about AMS, BookBub featured ads, and in a blue moon, FB and Twitter boosters. I've used all but the grand daddy feature ad. While these might still show some profit, they certainly aren't working like they used to. Profit has measurably declined, and I mean this in a general sense.

What does my crystal ball tell me for the future? I can only take a wild stab at it and say that the heavy visual sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and others are driving a wedge between the other competitors. They could be the wave for future book exposure. I know their swords are drawn against Amazon

Anybody have any solutions or ideas about gaining some profitability in this industry? I'd love to hear it. Or any promo/marketing site that has fulfilled your dreams. BTW, just like FB put the whammy on My Space, do you see another FB type site in the future? I dooooo,

Blessed wishes, please stay safe and healthy.

Chris and Christy.