I was raised in an English-speaking only home even though both of my parents were fluent in other languages.
The only times I heard other languages were when my mom lit the holiday
candles or when my dad lost his temper (and didn’t want my mom to understand
the curse words) — while my dad understood and could speak Yiddish and some Hebrew, my mom had
NO knowledge of Spanish (and probably felt it wouldn’t be wise to repeat things
my dad said in anger). My dad also had a good knowledge, even if not totally
fluent, of French, German and Italian thanks to his time served in the army
during WW2.
I had heard my older relatives
speak in Spanish and Yiddish (and I think some other languages) but since my
sis and I weren’t encouraged we really didn’t pick it up. It wasn’t until
Junior High and High School that I had any formal education in other languages
(French and Spanish)… and I just never really seemed to retain any of the
languages. Because of my Cordero surname many people I’ve encountered through
the years have expected me to be bilingual with a fluency in Spanish and it’s
almost always been a surprise to them how very lost I am.
Okay fast forward to the past few
years, just in case you are not aware, I write. Obviously with my lack of
communication skills in languages other than English everything I write is in
English. My publisher and I were pleasantly surprised to find some of my books
selling in faraway (other language) places like Germany, France, Argentina,
Italy, Spain, India, and Portugal — my ENGLISH books. This helped inspired my
wonderful publisher at Vanilla Heart Publishing to market foreign language
translations. I was so excited the first time El último pecado (Spanish edition of Final Sin) was sold!
My terrific publisher has published
eleven more translations of four different books (Kimberlee, you are
wonderful!) She’s had my stories professionally translated by wonderful artists
like Elisabetta Colona, Audrey Vennin, Mariana Sanchez Carranza, Selma Regina
da Silva, and Katharina Klamt. Readers can find editions of Final Sin, Hyphema, Karma Visited
and Annie’s Karma in Spanish,
German, Italian, Portuguese and French. You can check out these and all of my
books on Amazon , Barnes & Noble and other online retailers.
Amazon buy links
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