Hallo, Hallo dear hearts!
When I first signed on to this blog tour, I wanted to host a guest feature in order to delve a bit more into the series and to seek out a bit more information about how the author approached writing it. Uniquely, the author had a few topics already in mind and one of them stood out to me because I have been wanting to become more fluent in Sign Language since I was in high school. I first learnt my ABCs in ASL (ie. American Sign Language) off my classmates and from there, I learnt more signs through a church program to teach limited conversational sign language when I was in my early twenties. I was a quickstudy and thinking this was a blessing it turnt out to be a hardship as I wasn’t able to stay in the class. I apparently learnt the signs and conversational combinations too fast for the class to keep up with me!!
I did try to seek out private instruction and tutors – however, in my local areas and regions, I couldn’t find a teacher willing to teach me to where I could be conversational fluent including seeking out resources for the deaf as apparently if you didn’t immediately know if you wanted to be translator and/or seek a University degree in Sign, you weren’t able to study it. I still have the passion for signing and I can get by a bit by what I originally learnt but it always has bothered me I never could take the short skills I had and develop them into being fluent in a language outside of my own.
Linguistics was a field I felt I would go into as an adult as I loved hearing different dialects and I felt learning languages would be wicked fun as a learner who likes to challenge herself. However, the one key issue I never felt I’d have as a roadblock is being dyslexic and finding that language itself was an uphill climb throughout all the years I went to school. Even as a writer, I had to develop my own short-cut through a written style wherein I combine certain language usage and phrases from both American and British origins – to where I call this mash-up AmeriBrit.
Thereby, when I saw the author had written about her own history with Sign Language and how this plays a strong role in the series she’s written, I knew this was the guest feature I was meant to share for the blog tour! It simply spoke to me and I wanted to share it because even in my early forties, I still hold out hope I’ll be able to master the art of ASL and become better prepared to converse with those who are deaf or partially deaf as I am only able to do so now in limited capacity. I hope you’ll enjoy this guest feature as much as I did and perhaps it will give you a reason to seek out the series to read!
First Flyght
Subtitle: The Flyght series
by S.J. Pajonas
Her future is brighter than the stars. But one betrayal will change everything…
Vivian Kawabata can’t wait to claim her privileged destiny. But when the heir to the family agricultural empire finds her bank account empty while shopping for expensive shoes, she’s horrified to discover that her own brother has financially stabbed her in the back. To stand a chance of restoring her rightful place in the universe, the honest and rule-following Vivian may have to break a few intergalactic laws.
After securing an old ship from her aunt, Vivian takes on two new roles: a sexy heiress collecting eligible husbands and a hard-nosed captain rebuilding a lost fortune by any means necessary. Completely out of her depth, she’d be sunk without the help of a relationship broker, a handsome ex-boyfriend, a hacker with a heart of gold, and the other potential partners she meets along the way. With a business that runs the razor’s edge between trade and smuggling, can the former high-society socialite get the money she needs or will her brazen ambition lead to a deadly crash landing?
FIRST FLYGHT is the first book in the Flyght Series of sci-fi reverse harem romance. If you like action-packed space operas and a universe full of twists, then you’ll love S. J. Pajonas’s interstellar adventure.
Note: This is a slow-burn romance series!
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 978-1940599571
ASIN: B07V6LN2YW
Published by Onigiri Press
on 6th September, 2019
→ IF you can read ebooks, check out the SURPRISE announcement the author kindly shared with me about how to get a digital copy of “First Flyght” on the 16th of December!! ←
Converse on Twitter via: #ScienceFiction, #SciFiRomance
as well as #ScienceFictionRomance and Reverse Harem
On the Inclusion of Sign Language within the Flyght series
by C.J. Pajonas
I’ve always had a passion for language, but my passion for foreign languages didn’t come around until I was in college. I loved writing at a young age, which is something I’m sure tons of authors say in interviews (I’ve heard this said often enough in podcasts to know it’s true)! And I always did well in English classes despite not being a big fan of Twain and Faulkner (sorry, not sorry). Writing and language was my first love, and it showed. When other teens were off partying, I was co-writing my first screenplay at the age of 15. But I didn’t really fall in love with language until I learned a foreign language that was so different from the mainstream normal romance languages forced on us in middle and high school. You see, growing up in a small middle America town meant that I only had two choices for foreign language: French or Spanish. But then came college!
But then I arrived at this big, BIG campus — Michigan State University. And at the time, the course catalog was in paper and you could flip through it to see what was on offer for those extra credits you had to take each semester. I distinctly remember flipping through the catalog and landing on Swahili. Oh my god, you could take Swahili as a language! I really loved Africa and African culture at the time (still do) and so I thought, YEAH, I’ll take Swahili.
Lots of people talk about turning points in their lives, and looking back, this was it for me. This was when I knew I really loved language. Because Swahili is so different than romance languages. The sentence structures and the way verbs are conjugated really made me think about English in a different way. And I loved my professor. He was so patient with us as we worked our way through the language. It was a lot of fun! I took two years of Swahili, and I would have gone on to take more, except I was on a budget and I had to pay for credits my junior and senior year of college that would go toward my major. It was a total bummer not to have a foreign language in my life for two years.
I graduated college in 1998 and immediately got a job as a web developer in Detroit where I met people who really loved Japan like I did. A friend of mine had actually lived in Japan and could speak fluent Japanese. Oh man, I wanted to learn Japanese too! So when I moved to New York City not long after, I found the Japan Society on 49th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues, and I took seven years of Japanese language there. It was fantastic to be learning another language again! And although I wasn’t writing at this time, it gave me an appreciation for all language.
This was when I found out that Japan also has its own sign language. Like America has ASL, there exists JSL as well. This fascinated me too, and I have spent many hours watching videos of the differences between ASL and JSL. If you’re interested in Japanese Sign Language, you definitely have to check out DeafJapanTV on YouTube! His videos are super informative and fun.
Learning about JSL led me down the rabbit hole to many other sign languages too. Did you know, there exists anywhere from 60 to 300 different sign languages in the world today! And there are differences between British Sign Language and Brazilian Sign Language and American and Japanese and on and on… There is an International Sign Language too, a sort of simpler form that’s used in international meetings and when traveling. This page from the United Nations has some good information on sign languages.
And I love this video with examples of different sign languages from around the world.
So when I was developing the Flyght Series, I was thinking about the consequences of a genetic disease that had run rampant in the Duo Systems that my characters inhabit and what it could do to people. I thought it would be interesting to have it attack soft tissue, like vocal cords, and render some people mute. Not deaf, but mute. (It’s science fiction, so let’s suspend our disbelief for a moment here.) People in the Duo Systems speak a mishmash of English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and some Japanese too. But I gave them all a Universal Sign Language (USL) that the mute citizens could use to communicate. In my mind, this is a mash-up of American, Brazilian, and Japanese Sign Language. I describe a few sign language gestures in the books, based on books I’ve read and videos I’ve watched, but otherwise I leave it up to the imagination of the reader.
But with this USL, I was able to give people a way to communicate and MIScommunicate as well. It was another layer of language to add to the mix, another point of reference to build the fictional world these people live in. The drama of it was a lot of fun! It was an interesting inclusion in the series, and one that I will continue on in this universe for more series to come.
I was intrigued by the concept of the series, I overlooked a key part of what kind of series this actually is which is ‘reverse harem’. I’m not entirely sure if that would be a good fit for me as a reader as I don’t tend to gravitate towards the regular variant of this subgenre anymore than I might this variant of it but I’m always open to reading stories outside my comfort zones (at least once!) and seeing if I might get along with them as a reader. In this case, it was something I overlooked and thereby wouldn’t mind still seeking out to read the first in the series just to see how it is set-up by the writer and how the story builds off this premise before it moves into the next installments of the series.
However despite that one small hiccup about the subniche this story and series falls into as I have read f/f and/or m/m romances in the past, the concept of a reverse harem isn’t too far afield for me conceptionally at least.
What truly captured me the most though is when I read about the author’s reason to include Sign Language and just to read her journey with Sign was an uplift of joy. I especially liked how she developed a Universal Sign Language which is something I was curious about for a long time why there isn’t one for us now as I think it would help bridge more gaps between the different branches of Sign and the ways in which Sign can be interpreted when your speaking cross-culturally in Sign. I’d love to see how she made these distinctions with Sign and how they are denoted in the context of the text as well – some authors use italics and others block the text in a different style to show when Sign is being expressed and spoken.
I had known about International Signing but I think that’s a bare bones variant of the language and not a core of a Universal variant which would allow for better communication across cultures. All the way round, I think this is one series I am hoping I can borrow through the library as I’d definitely like to read at least the first novel to see if I a) like the style and b) have found a new voice in Science Fiction as I personally love all stories set in Space which was the focus of this past #SciFiMonth! As well as a follow-up of what I accomplished during #SciFiMonth.
This book blitz is courtesy of:
Be sure to click the banner to visit the rest of the tour route!
→ REMEMBER: IF you can read ebooks, check out the SURPRISE announcement the author kindly shared with me about how to get a digital copy of “First Flyght” on the 16th of December!! ←
I enjoy being a hostess for:
NOTE: Similar to blog tours wherein I feature book reviews, book spotlights (with or without extracts), book announcements (or Cover Reveals) – I may elect to feature an author, editor, narrator, publisher or other creative person connected to the book, audiobook, Indie film project or otherwise creative publishing medium being featured wherein the supplemental content on my blog is never compensated monetarily nor am I ever obligated to feature this kind of content. I provide (98.5%) of all questions and guest topics regularly featured on Jorie Loves A Story. I receive direct responses back to those enquiries by publicists, literary agents, authors, blog tour companies, etc of whom I am working with to bring these supplemental features and showcases to my blog. I am naturally curious about the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of stories and the writers who pen them: I have a heap of joy bringing this content to my readers. Whenever there is a conflict of connection I do disclose those connections per post and disclose the connection as it applies.
{SOURCES: Book cover for “First Flyght”, synopsis of “First Flyght”, author biography and photograph (of S.J. Pajonas), the guest post about Sign Language in the Flyght series, blitz tour banner and host badge were provided by Lola’s Blog Tours and are being used with permission. Post dividers and My Thoughts badge by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets were embedded due to codes provided by Twitter. Blog graphics created by Jorie via Canva: Stories in the Spotlight banner as well as the Comment Box Banner.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2020.
I am socially bookish and tweet my readerly life
.@joriestory NEW #GuestPost via #JLASblog!
Read how language (#signlanguage) plays a strong role in the backstory of how the #FlyghtSeries uses an interesting approach to lingustics in this #ScienceFiction world! Loved the 'story' behind the choice!
📖✍️https://t.co/oeLVzjItcn pic.twitter.com/XL6mz0ZbYG
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) December 11, 2020
Hi! I appreciate you going through the trouble to find the book in print but alas I stopped offering print books and went digital only this past year. Here’s a blog post I wrote on why.
https://www.spajonas.com/2020/04/07/why-im-discontinuing-paperbacks/
I’m sorry to hear you are plagued by migraines from reading on screens. I often get headaches from being on screens too. Such a pain! It’s why I bought an e-ink reader so that I could give my eyes a break. I’m super grateful for it but I understand it’s an expense for others.
Thanks again for hosting! It’s most appreciated.
Dear Ms Pajonas,
Wow. I actually have an enviromental conscience like you do and believe in forest sustainable papers and carbon neutral footprints when it comes to publishing. I was involved in a series of eco-friendly open chats on Twitter years ago wherein I found printers and other key components of how to reduce both the carbon footprint and/or the extra laymen in the industry to produce books which by the way sidestepped going to China (either for offset printing or outsourcing it completely) for either the product itself and/or the paper the books are printed on. However, as a migrainuer in the way I am I cannot even handle blogging on glossy screens (use matte and I adjust the filter/lights on the screens at different time intervals) whilst I also have to monitor how oft I am online vs offline. Its a crazy balance but I understand my body, my health and my triggers. I can’t read digitally in length no matter what kind of computer, tablet, etc is being used as its the digital space that affects me with the migraines directly. Ergo, you’ve effectively erased me as a reader without having a chance to read a story of yours. Which is okay but as a writer who is also approaching this from a business perspective, I can’t just erase readers irregardless of the work involved to offer a print edition because I’d be erasing myself if I did. I even read large print now to offset my migraines more and more as much as I lean hard on audiobooks. Those are the three I can read and be healthy as a reader. As a future writer who will seek publication I want to also look into Braille as I want to be better observant of individual needs and options for readers who have other issues outside of my own but I don’t want to subtract a format that by definition erases a reader from being able to read.
I get what your saying because I have a business background but on a personal level, it was the tone of your response to the problem that I took fault with because life is never that cut and dry. We can work within resources to protect our living environments by choosing how we do business and by finding supplies for products from different sources and advocate for further change but if some of us can only read stories in certain formats, I cannot condone erasure of those readers as I am in now what you’d consider a minority group of readers.
I don’t regret hosting your guest feature but I do regret I didn’t realise your stance on availablity of formats and the type of readers you accept as a published author. As I would have taken that into consideration when I first came across the blog tour.
Thank you so much for hosting this guest post today! I’m so glad the subject spoke to you! If you’re interested in trying this book for free, I have a little secret for you. You can get it in the RH Advent Calendar! My day is the 16th and First Flyght will be there for free to download from BookFunnel. https://www.reverseharem.co.uk/ Thanks again for participating in the tour!
Hallo, Hallo Ms Pajonas!
I would LOVE to take you up on your kind offer – however, I can only tolerate reading short extracts and/or small chapter samplers digitally. With my chronic migrianes I cannot read ebooks of any length at all. I have been running searches to see if “First Flyght” is in print and was quite gobsmacked at the prices on Amazon right now – which is they only bookstore (ie. checked Powells!) currently offering a print copy of it and that saddened me!! :( I hoped to find the series via inter-library loan at my local library (as they can pull from out of state) however, only another series of yours is listed. I was going to ask my regional library to consider purchasing this book but I’m worried it might be hard to locate or out of print; either way, they won’t be able to get it from their vendor(s). My local library put a freeze on purchase requests this year which bites as I always used those to request Indie Publishers, Presses and Self Published authors; yours would have been at the top of my list for January.
Outside of that bit of woe, I’ll just have to keep abridged of your book news and updates – maybe this will going into a print and/or POD omnibus edition or maybe it will be released say via your Smashwords page as individual POD copies for the books. I will add it to my wishlist I’m keeping for stories I couldn’t borrow this year and hope one day I can gather “First Flyght” and hopefully progress through the series.
Thanks for reaching out – I’m going to mention your comment in the middle of my post & near the blog tour banner in case others can read these digitally!!
I appreciated your visit today and I LOVED your guest post topic!! Truly a delight to host!!
I have yet to read a Reverse Harem book but I definitely need to change that!
Hallo, Hallo,…
Ooh boy!! I am overjoyed seeing your comment as I was on the fence after I learnt about this twist to the story and then, when I learnt about the signing – I honestly felt I could definitely give the first book a chance to convince me this is one series I might enjoy! Sometimes I stumble into a subniche in a genre I feel well versed in only to discover I haven’t really explored it as well as I thought I have! I am thankful to see your note about how you’ve never experienced one of these stories either! Made me feel loads better that I might not be the *only!* reader a bit clueless about this niche of genre!! If you get a chance to read it OR take the authors advice about a free copy (see her comment on this post!) – swing back! I’d love to hear your thoughts!!
I’ll do the same but so far, sourcing a copy in print for “First Flyght” is proving quite arduous! :(