Hello from Australia - a self publishing husband/wife team in the tropics :)

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

Very neat new logo for Australasia, by the way. I'll import it from my other machine and post it later (currenly slaving away on a wee netbook, under a parasol and with a chilled beer at my elbow. Life's hell at times, eh, Paul?)

I really do not understand how you cope with such hardships ....

[MrPLD]

Neil,

Originally Posted by neilmarr

And, with so many BB authors Down Under now, we'll be opening and registering a fully-staffed Australian bureau based in Adelaide in October/November.

Not too far away time-wise... and right back in my home territory (though personally I'd rather live in Tasmania, it's got more of a European feel).

Will drop a line when we're ready to roll and all wrinkles in the plot are ironed out.

Good luck with the wrinkles - always a lot of fun getting them out, sometimes they become features I look forward to hearing from you, it'll be nice to get involved with the broader audience of this industry.

(currenly slaving away on a wee netbook, under a parasol and with a chilled beer at my elbow. Life's hell at times, eh, Paul?)

Aaah, shame about the slaving hardships. Was a tad unpleasant today with the humidity peaking and the heat coming with it, hopefully we'll get some nice rain through the cooler hours of the morning (it's currently 1am here).

PS: Must take a look at 'Tree of Life' from you and Elita. Sounds a good read.

It'll be good to have some more diversity of eyes looking at it. I can organise to get you a copy.

Paul.

[neilmarr]

Kind of you, Paul. Thanks for the offer.

I can pick up the ebook of *Tree of Life I* for less than the price of a six-pack, though ... and I'm sure it'll last longer and be even more satisfying ... so I'll blow the cobwebs off my credit cards and do that and hope to have some quality recreational reading time Sunday afternoon.

***(I'd rather live in Tasmania, it's got more of a European feel.)***

Funny you should say that. My late mother's side of the family are as Welsh as the hills and pretty well all moved to Tasmania in the sixties and seventies -- starting with my late uncle and aunt and their three daughters and their husbands.

They're now in the 4th generation and, from what I hear, have pretty well taken over the island. Breed like Cane Toads do the Taffies. They've all done well and -- without exception -- seem really happy. Long gone is the quaint Welsh accent, though.

Couple of other MR pals here from Tazzie, by the way, Paul. You'll no doubt come across them.

Hoots toots. Neil

[MrPLD]

Neil,

Books certainly are a lot cheaper than even the cheapest of alcohol it would seem these days - especially if one has a fondness for fine Brown Brothers Musket ( I personally don't drink much, maybe a bottle of whine a year ).


Should be good to bump into other Tasmanian people here in MR - while we'll probably end up personally at somewhere like Toowoomba, I do still like to keep the Tasmania dream alive.

Many thanks for the support. I'm sure you'll find ToL a bit different from the recent pack of fantasy novels.

Regards,
Paul.

[neilmarr]

Local beer is dirt cheap where I am, Paul. Good beer costs a fortune.

Taxi to airport: $130, return flight to Heathrow: $500, taxi to station: $35, return train to Burton-on-Trent: $70, taxi from station to pub and return: $12, pint of Theakstone's bitter: $2, taxi from London station to airport: $35, taxi from Nice airport home: $130.

That's $914 a pint!

Neil

[MrPLD]

Reminds me of my "expensive" Kebab when I was living in South Africa... flew to Switzerland for a week to get one

[neilmarr]

Yeah ... 'fraid I'm guilty of such extravagant whims, Paul. I once flew in the eighties from Dallas-Fort Worth to El Paso for a tequila breakfast and caught the next plane back. Once in the nineties from Nice, France to Manchester, England for fish, chips and mushy peas, which I ate from the newspaper wrapping in the pouring rain before flying straight home. Often used to take a train from Glasgow, Scotland, to Carlisle, England, where the station bar served great, hand-pumped Jenning's bitter from the wood, and the the train straight back to Glasgow at closing time. Now I'm old and poor, but I can still occasionally phone in a wood-oven baked pizza from Italy. Neil

[MrPLD]

Neil,

It's a fun existence for a while. When I think back, I also remember flying off to Cape Town for a breakfast and then a tour of the wineyards ... which I don't remember too much of beyond the 3rd place (but I ended up with several boxes of fine wine in my cellar the next day ). I doubt I could do it anymore - I like my comfy home environment a lot and I've sort of fallen out with air-travel (especially these days). That said, as you can probably agree - it's good to have done that sort of crazy stuff My times were also in the 90's - back with the dot-com bubble.

Now a wood-oven pizza sounds great, want to fly me over? Probably cheaper use some spare land here (plenty of it), build a whole wood-oven area with patio, bar, etc and make it myself

Paul

[neilmarr]

Yeah, I've become something of a home body in the past ten years or so, Paul. The crazy life-style I had to lead before eventually caught up with me and some hefty health hiccups kicked in. These days, I doubt I hobble past the terrace gate more than three or four times a year. Suits me fine. Feet on the ground, head in the clouds. Life could be worse. Hardly miss the decades when I was a kinda jet-about international writing gypsy in a sensible suit and a mad rush. Cheers. Neil

[MrPLD]

Neil,

Seems like we understand each other's situation moderately well.

Just finished a lovely chicken and salad dinner - watching an episode of Futurama, now we're both back to work; Elita is working on a new novel, something rather daring and I'm just ambling around finding new avenues to promote ToL.

Paul.

[MrPLD]

I don't know if it's because of my presence here, or just conincidental, but it's interesting to note that the eBook sales have been increasing since I've been chatting away here

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

I don't know if it's because of my presence here, or just conincidental, but it's interesting to note that the eBook sales have been increasing since I've been chatting away here

you have shown you are becoming a part of mobileread, instead of a fly-by-nighter !


well done you (and the missus of course)

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

you have shown you are becoming a part of mobileread, instead of a fly-by-nighter !


well done you (and the missus of course)

Thanks GeoffC. The missus of course is quite pleased... now one will have to start to deal with the rumbling of more and more reviews popping up. I'm sure there'll be a few thumbs-down events as the book tends to be written in an 19th-century omnipresence style which may not be to everyone's taste.

Right now I'm doing my best to keep things moving on the internet while she slaves away at the keyboard hacking out some new stories. In the last few weeks she's generated 3 new stories but I think two of them have already been killed off after perhaps 20 pages (or put into hibernation). It's anyone's guess which story will end up being the next 'release'. Of course, even if she gets it written in 6 months, there's still all the editing, publishing and such to get done before we can offer it to the public - I dare say "Tree of Life (Part II)" will be released before an interim book.

Paul.

[GeoffC]

It all takes time ....

[MrPLD]

Oh just ... fantastic... just as things are picking up the fibre link to the hosting data centre I use has run into trouble and now we're completely down :-( Not even a backup link running :sigh: