From: Jen McVeity <jmcveity>
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 11:30:15 +1000

Hi Everyone,

Just to introduce myself, I'm Jen McVeity, an Australian author who writes chapter books, middle grade and YA fiction. Got about 23 in print.

One of my favourite (or do I mean favorite) books was sold to Orchard in the USA several years ago. Called 'Dreamcatcher' the first thing the USA publishers did was change the title to 'On Different Shores'. Not because of any American 'translation' problems but because they already had a picture book on their list called 'The Dreamcatcher.' Sad, but true. It happens often in publishing.

I also thought they would change our common usage of 'Mum' to 'Mom'. However, they left that, as they did not want to hide the Aussie heritage of the novel. Apart from altering the spelling, they were very gentle with the text. Although, I was very relieved that one translation problem didn't get through. In the book I had the kids carrying water over to bushes they had planted to stop erosion and I had used the words carrying and lugging a bit too often. So I put in a synonym we use here a bit.
'They were humping the buckets.' My editor in the USA killed herself laughing. 'DO you REALLY want to say this?' she asked!

Jen The website at last! www.jenmcveity.com
Received on Mon 08 Jul 2002 08:30:15 PM CDT