Wenn Gott flüstert, donnert es in der Schöpfung

If you can understand the title of this post, then you should buy the recently-published German translation of my first book. Heck, even if you can’t understand it, go ahead and buy the book with the same name anyway.

Currently Amazon is selling it at a generous discount. So for $10.17 plus shipping you get 300 pages of either comprehensible or incomprehensible German. Either way, that’s a great deal.

Kudos to Matthias Schneider-Marfels, who I know as “Matt,” for having the linguistic fortitude to translate a revised version of my “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder,” which has been out of print for quite a while. Matt lives in New Zealand. We’ve only communicated by email, but I feel like I’ve come to know Matt well. He’s become a friend.

Working on a complicated book project that spanned many months brought us close together. Matt wanted to make my book available to German-speaking readers. So we agreed that he’d contribute his time and energy, and I’d contribute whatever else was needed to get the book in print.

I ended up publishing it under the aegis of my own imprint, Adrasteia Publishing. It’s a print on demand title that gets produced one copy at a time through Lightning Source, an Ingram subsidiary.

One day I’ll write about the benefits of writers setting up their own “publishing house.” It’s not as good as finding a big name commercial publisher for your book, but it’s a heck of a lot better than signing up with a print on demand firm like IUniverse, XLibris, or Trafford—who are going to charge you for the privilege of keeping a good share of the profits from your book sales.

Getting this book successfully published, with the invaluable aid of ace book designer Charles King, has given me the confidence to get the English version of my shorter, simpler, and less preachy “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder” back in print. In my utterly biased opinion, it still is one of the best treatments of how the old mystics and the new physics relate.

“Wenn Gott flüstert, donnert es in der Schöpfung” is available on Amazon Germany, but for reasons known only to Lightning Source, Ingram, and Amazon, at the moment the umlauts are messed up on the book’s listing. This is just one of those many things in the book distribution process that drives writers/publishers/translators crazy.

[Next day update: naturally, after writing the previous paragraph the title now looks fine. I can only wish that every time I blog about some gripe, the world will change according to my wishes.]

Of course, anyone who goes through all the trouble to write, publish, or translate a book that likely will sell only a few hundred (or, if you’re lucky, a few thousand) copies is already demonstrably crazy. So a little more post-publication craziness isn’t bothering Matt and me all that much.

I’d like to close with some profound phrase dragged out of the memory bin of my four years of high school German, but all I can remember is the beginning of the record that I was given my freshman year and listened to so many times it is forever burned into my brain cells.

Guten tag, Luisa. Wie gehts?
Sehr gut. Und dir?

(my apologies to the Germanic world for any spelling errors; 1962 was a long time ago)

Comments

[carla]

I don't speak German and the pile of books I'm supposed to get to is unwieldy. But next time I do an Amazon run and I'm under the amount to qualify for "free shipping", you're in the cart! LOL

I do make a really good german noodle dish that I learned from my former mom in law. Is that decent substitute for not speaking the language? :)

[cg]

Danke, gut. Wer ist denn das da druben? Das ist Franz. Er ist ein freund von mir. Wie geht es, Franz? Prima!

[cg]

Oh, schon wieder gaste! Sie essen kuchen und trinken kaffe. Und mutter will immer das wir vorspielen. Es is so peinlich, und wir haben immer lampenfieber.

[Brian]

cg, sounds like you were in my high school German class. The way I remember the "45" record that I listened to so many times went something like this (forgive the long forgotten spelling):

Guten tag, Luisa, Wie gehts?
Prima.
Wer ist din das da druben?
Das ist ein freund von mir, Paul Schmidt.

And so it went. Even after four years, I never learned to speak German very well. But I sure memorized that conversation between Luisa and her friend, though after such a long time I'm missing some lines from the beginning.