Scribblings

Ok. Have to vent. This writing and book-publishing is getting scarily serious now.
In about 2.5 years I wrote 8 Hilda books and 3 steampunk books. I have a download-amount of the free books that is downright indecent (currently it stands a few over 135.000).
Hilda 8 has been *sold* over 70 times since January 5th of this year.
And since a week people are sending me e-mails, asking when Hilda 8 will be available in .

Yes, I am thrilled. Yes, I am happy and amazed and grateful. But I am also feeling weird. I never planned this. (But now it's happening and I don't want to let it go!)

I have written a small 'report' on the evening where I was, for the first time in my life, invited to read something of my own work.

This is the first part:

The environment
The dinner was held in a wonderful ambiance. A nice building in an area that is not very crowded, owned by friendly people who try to make the atmosphere inside as gentle and welcoming as possible. And they succeeded in that. The dinner was held in a beautiful restaurant where about 25 people were seated.

The participants
During the evening, music was played by a very nice group of young musicians who go by the name of Cathain. They played folk music from Ireland, Hungary and many other countries.

There were two other authors present that evening. One was my friend Christian Turk, who is a cartoonist and author of a wonderful book called Faun. It was from that book that he read a story. The second author was Eire Rautenberg, who read a number of very interesting poems from one of her latest publications. And then there was yours truly, who read chapter 13 and 14 from Snow White Revisited. I had reworked those chapters into German for the evening.

If you care to read more, hop on over to the full post.

Yes, I am certain I am doing that now. The age of what? Perhaps it is "computers", perhaps it's "old", I am not sticking a label on it.

Fact is that this morning I ordered special glasses for reading and computerscreen work. My multifocals are making it too hard to properly read the screen (have to bend my head back too much), and taking them off only works for one eye, so that is also not a viable option.

As long as there's a fix for it in this way, I'm fine with it.

And once the laundry stops laundring, I'll be mostly set for the arrival of the new year too.

I hope everyone is having a good moment of the day, and for what it is worth, I wish you all a wonderful start of the new year, may the best of 2011 be the worst of 2012 for you.

Blessed be.
God be with you.
Eywa ngahu.

It is done.
I finished the story today, it ended up 101269 words, as counted by the nanowrimo count-bot.



If you are interested in a Blade Runner-like environment, the start of the story is on my site.


The first 30 chapters are there, unedited, unspellchecked, so if you find errors, you found them. ;-) I'll try to add a chapter a day, until all 46 are online.

that the books are in!

George R.R. Martin had a few hard-covers of a book of the Song of Fire and Ice series for sale. Hardcovers in Dutch, as it is a big book it comes in 2 volumes. Not very main stream I think. A friend tipped me off on them, as I had missed that post on his weblog.

I mailed his assistant Ty, bought a set, and today they arrived. :-)


The 2 books


Inscription 1


Inscription 2

From Thomas Cook Holidays - listing some of their guests’ complaints...

1. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard-creams or ginger-nuts."

2. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."

3. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."

4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

5. A tourist at a top African game lodge over looking a water hole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate".

6. A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she'd been locked in by staff. In fact, she had mistaken the "Do not disturb" sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room.

7. "The beach was too sandy."

8. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."

9. A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.

10. "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."

11. "We bought' Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five Euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."

12. "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."

13. "There was no egg slicer in the apartment."

14. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."

15. "The roads were uneven."

16. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England, but it only took the Americans three hours to get home."

17. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."

18. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying there?"

19. "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners '- now live abroad'."

20.. "We had to queue outside with no air conditioning."

21.. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

22. "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."

23. "My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

They walk amongst us and they vote.

Be afraid!

Be very afraid!

Right. So the European prime ministers and all them have reached a new conclusion to the debt-problems. Note the word debt. There is going to be some kind of fund with a lot of money (€1000.0000.0000.0000), which all countries are going to add to.
All these countries have failing economies, and they are going to pull some money from their failing internals to put into a fund that will do something for everyone. They assume. This will of course increase the money-problem (read: more debt).
Greece's money problems are cut in half (they do not have to pay back half the money they got from the other European countries). Does this not increase the money-problem for the others? (More debt.)
And finally, the Dutch prime minister stated reinforcing the emergency fund (that thing with too many zeroes) now has the firing power of a bazooka. Any idea who will get hit by that? And we are going to have "a growing economy". In my layman's words that would mean that more money will go round (and end up in the same bulging pockets as where most is already. Which, amazingly, will increase debt.
We live in debt. And as long as this lunatic circus of increasing, more, and faster money is kept in place, it will only get worse.

Laugh at communities like the Amish and such, but in that respect I think they are better off than most of us. The idea of a self-supporting community with no money and no debts is becoming more and more appealing.

I have to share this. I am happy about the place where I live.

A few times already, in the last few days, I passed a sign "Apples, 2 Kilos, 1 €". Beneath it, a large blue plastic basket with sacks of apples in it. Each 2 kilos. And a cup next to the basket. With Euro coins in it.

There was no one with the apples or the money, they just put it there and left it up to the honesty of the people passing by to pay for the apples.

Something very very simple like that makes me happy. I took a sack of apples. And left 2 euros.

Uhm...

Yes, today was the day. I went to a workshop to make my own longbow. I wanted to do that since a long time, and finally, today...

I intended to take a set of pictures of the process, but there was not much to see (more to do), and also the rain interfered with having the camera close by, so there are only a few pictures, and most of them are of the finished product, in my house.

You can find the set here on Flickr.

And yes. It is a long bow. It is longer than I am.

Making the bow was very interesting. We started little after 9 in the morning, and by 3:30 in the afternoon it was done and we (Simon the bowmaker and I) went into a field, set up a target and shot at it. It was the first time for me to use a wooden bow, and I am quite pleased how well it went. Simon said I was doing well for a first timer with that bow. :-)

The bow is now standing in the living room, to dry. When it is all dry I need to sand it a few times and then either oil or lacquer it. I plan on the lacquer, but I need to get some that works on flexible surfaces.

I had a really great time. Even when it rained all the while. (I worked under a tree which kept most rain away from me for a long time.)
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