{"id":21010,"date":"2025-08-13T19:55:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21010"},"modified":"2025-08-13T19:55:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:55:01","slug":"semicolons-colds-and-troll-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21010","title":{"rendered":"Semicolons, colds, and Troll Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

No book review tonight.<\/strong> Instead, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or to put it another way, whatever comes into my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read a good article<\/strong> about the semicolon today in Writer\u2019s Digest<\/em>. The author courageously defended the old s-c, and I applaud him. I myself love the semicolon. Aside from its delightful precision as a punctuation mark, when wielded skillfully, I have a happy memory of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The memory is fuzzy, but I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s true. I was writing some kind of an essay or report in school \u2013 elementary school, I think. The \u201cnew\u201d pale brick building on the south side of town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was composing, as I recall, some kind of a complex sentence. I had a complicated thought I was trying to express. I wanted to tie it all together, but it had a lot of working parts going, some of them more important than others. \u201cWhat I need,\u201d I thought to myself, \u201cis a punctuation mark that indicates a major division in in my train of thought, but also retains a connection to the previous thought.\u201d (Or words to that effect.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it occurred to me \u2013 \u201cHey! That\u2019s what semicolons are for!\u201d And I triumphantly put down a semicolon, intentionally for the first time in my life. The semicolon belonged to me now. I was its master. I had summoned it; it had not been forced on me by my teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a moment in my evolution as a writer, though I didn\u2019t understand it yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jumping to the present,<\/strong> I haven\u2019t been feeling well lately. My plan was to be doing a lot of stuff to promote the audiobook of Troll Valley<\/a><\/em> right now, but I haven\u2019t been up to the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m embarrassed to say it\u2019s just a cold. I see friends on Basefook and Xwitter talking about their mothers dying, or themselves being diagnosed with cancer or breaking a limb or something. And here I am, bellyaching about a common cold. So let me stipulate that I\u2019m not competing for your sympathy. If you have only compassion enough to spare for one person today, it shouldn\u2019t be me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I haven\u2019t had a cold in years. I used to get them regularly, when I ran the bookstore at the schools. All that human contact \u2013 couldn\u2019t avoid it. And for a while there, it seemed like every time I got that annual cold, it would settle into my chest and in the end require antibiotics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve had a serious cold since I retired, which is a few years now. And this one has knocked me over. Sunday was the worst day \u2013 I spent it mostly in bed, and didn\u2019t even make popcorn for supper, which is my sacred Sunday custom. Since then I\u2019ve been feeling a little better each day, and right now I\u2019m actually eyeing my work load again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was delighted to discover I have an old stock of zinc tablets that I\u2019d forgotten about, on a shelf. Hate the aftertaste, but they seem to help. And my ribs don\u2019t hurt as much from coughing today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To sum up \u2013 buy the audiobook of Troll Valley<\/em>. My Norwegian accent alone is worth the price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(And you can admire the cover \u2013 designed by Phil Wade \u2013 in both versions! Collect the whole set!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No book review tonight. Instead, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or to put it another way, whatever comes into my head. I read a good article about the semicolon today in Writer\u2019s Digest. The author courageously defended the old s-c, and I applaud him. I myself love … Continue reading Semicolons, colds, and Troll Valley<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,12,17],"tags":[246,547,5292,3201],"class_list":["post-21010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookselling","category-publishing","category-writing","tag-audiobooks","tag-colds","tag-semicolons","tag-troll-valley"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21010"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21013,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21010\/revisions\/21013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}