Done that then.

Just finished the fourth book of the Faerie Wars trilogy -- first draft anyway -- and plunged into my usual depression at finishing a novel. (I miss the characters.) But it was cheering this morning to discover I'm still causing problems for my translators. That's a tradition started in the 1980s when I was writing game books. Translators for the overseas editions used to go mental trying to figure our the puzzles and puns. Life got easier for them when I concentrated on non-fiction for a while, but now I'm writing fantasy, a new problem has arisen: I've developed a tendency to make up words and phrases like brindles, bubble smoke, nants, ordle and retinduculus. Translators try to look them up, then find they aren't in any dictionary and have a crisis of confidence. Great fun altogether.