return from witch mountain

To new readers, welcome! And to old readers, welcome back! I am immeasurably grateful to all twelve of you for not deleting me from your bookmarks/links/rss feeders.

As you can see, there are some changes up in here. First of all, I'm no longer blogging semi-anonymously. This is because I no longer have a real job, which means that I no longer fear for my gainful employment. In fact, as a full-time freelancer, I have come to accept the fact that I will never again have truly gainful employment. Or health insurance.

So let me introduce myself. (Or re-introduce myself, as the case may be.) My name is Elizabeth Little, and I'm a writer and editor living in New York City. For the past eight months or so, I've been hard at work writing my first book, Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic, which will be published in November 2007 by Melville House, an amazing independent press that is, frankly, far too awesome for the likes of me.

Biting the Wax Tadpole is my take on comparative linguistics, a fresh, irreverent look at the languages of the world. (I'm also, as you can see, learning a few things about marketing copy. Ad agencies looking for stringers, call me!) I wrote the book in part in response to all the holier-than-thou language books already on the market. I have some very strong feelings on the state of the grammar industry (and an industry it is) - but I'm saving those for next week. But if you're the sort of person who has always believed yourself to be incapable of learning a new language - or even if you've just been bored to tears by all the soul-killing grammar classes you've suffered though - then you're the reason I wrote this book. It's designed to be as accessible and enjoyable as possible, without resorting to the sort of pandering condescension that you find in so many guides to style. Instead of warning against grammatical errors, I revel in them. The way I see it, there's far more pleasure to be had in fucking up than in grim perfection.

I also wrote the book because if there's anything in this world that I truly love, it's language. And also television, but that's another story. Although I'm well aware that you probably don't want to spend your free time rifling through Yoruba grammars, that's not enough to keep me from standing outside your window with the equivalent of Peter Gabriel on a boombox, doing my best to convince you that language is far more exciting and entertaining than your teachers ever made it out to be. (And, yes, begging for your approbation. Blogging wouldn't exist were it not for the basic human need for positive reinforcement, after all.)

(That being said, I also welcome criticism. There's nothing I enjoy like a good conversation. Or flame war, depending on your perspective.)

If you're interested in the real-life nitty-gritty, you can find out all about me by clicking here. There's also a handy set of links with information about me and my writing on the left sidebar (a sidebar that took me far, far too long to code properly).

Speaking of, if you're visiting the site itself, you've probably already noticed the redesign. I hope you like yellow. If not, get thee to an rss feed. As everything I know about html and css could fit on a postcard, it's entirely possible that there will be kinks and errors here and there. If you have any trouble browsing this site, please don't hesitate to email me at elizabeth@unhappymedium.com. I can't promise that I'll be able to fix all errors, but I can certainly promise to curse and throw things while I try.

The illustrations in the header graphic deserve special mention. These are portions of drawings by Ayumi Piland, the kick-ass illustrator of my new book. I repurposed them for the website, but all inherent awesomeness is totally due to her skills as an artist and not to my measly skills as a Photoshopper. You can see more of her work at apakstudio.com and, of course, throughout Biting the Wax Tadpole upon its release.

In the coming months, I'll be using this blog to write about a variety of topics, including language, television, and the long list of things that offend me. All in addition, of course, to book-related news and events. And as I'm going to try to teach myself a chunk of Hungarian before I go to Budapest in December, I'll also be relating a number of embarrassing stories about how crappy I am at Hungarian. (I haven't actually started studying yet, so I don't know for sure if I'll suck, but given what I know of the language and myself, the odds are pretty good.)

Regular posting will resume on Monday, so come back and check it out.