Meet Cia, manta whisperer and underwater cat trainer. Cia is so much more than a palindrome or colored pebbles arranged in a pretty pattern.
Every palindrome tells a story, and behind the palindrome is a longer story. Cia So Manic In A Mosaic contains 143 stories written as palindromes, plus the longer stories that go with the palindromes. The cover illustration and the introduction make up the long story behind the palindrome “Cia so manic in a mosaic.”
Why palindromes? It’s all about symmetry. We expect symmetry in biology, of the two arms and two legs kind. We expect it in cars, with mirror-image right and left sides. Most people don’t expect that right-left symmetry in language.
I can say “mosaic,” and you would know what I meant. But if I said “ki-yay-so-mmm,” would you have any idea what I meant? Probably not. That’s how “mosaic” sounds backward, sort of. No one speaks backward in everyday conversation. English doesn’t even have words that sound the same forward and backward.
Palindromes are surprising, absurd and delightful because they do fold in half like an ink blot. Find the center of a palindrome, and the same letters march away from the middle in opposite directions. That balance is why a palindrome reads the same forward and backward.
Even more surprising, the best palindromes have a stealth mode. Spaces between words, and punctuation, effectively hide the right-left pattern. The middle is not obvious. It reads like an ordinary sentence. But wait, it reads the same backward!
These are all new and original palindromes, not the stale and ancient ones found all over the web. Meet the authors of each palindrome and hear their stories. No anonymous compositions here. This is fresh, constrained writing.
After the collection of authors and their palindromes is the chapter “How to Create Palindromes.” It’s easier than you might think. The chapter is packed with detailed examples, from the first word of inspiration to the finished palindrome. It explains how to use unique word lists in the Palindromedary. That’s a reference book created to make writing palindromes easy.
Writing a palindrome is a game like solving word puzzles. Fit words together to make a sentence that reads the same backward. It seems hard, but the Palindromedary and practice make it easy.
This chapter also describes the Palindrome Composer, another tool that works with the Palindromedary to speed up palindrome composition. Both the Palindromedary and Palindrome Composer are free tools available online.
Targeted Age Group:: 12-100
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I wanted more people to experience the joy of composing palindromes.
Writing a sentence that reads the same forward and backward seems daunting at first. That’s how I felt for years. Being a software engineer, I had some ideas about making it easy, but I lacked a decent word list. My early attempts foundered on that hard rock. I set my dream aside as life got in the way.
Years later, on a whim, I searched the web for a word list and found one! My dream resurfaced, and I pursued it. Within a year of starting the project, I had built a tool that made it possible for me to write palindromes. Two word lists, filtered and specialized for palindromes, showed me the light.
I soon realized that anyone could use the tool to compose original palindromes. That is when I decided to share my discovery with the world. Now, the website Palindromedary.us is open to all at no cost.
This book is the first collection of original palindromes written by Palindromedary.us members. I’m proud to have helped these people become palindromists.
Book Sample
While working on the Palindromedary, I chose ananym as my preferred term for a word that makes a different word when reversed. Twenty-one different terms have been used at various times for this kind of word. On a whim, I reversed ananym and saw “My nana,” which caught my attention—even though my family never used the endearment “nana” for our grandmothers.
ananym, my nana
Then I decided to include an ananym in the palindrome: the pair was/saw. The finished composition came to me in a flash.
Was Ana Nym, my nana saw.
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All information was provided by the author and not edited by us. This is so you get to know the author better.
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