Archive for the ‘Life Philosophy’ Category

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Botox Thoughts

Friday, June 18th, 2010

 

I am a woman of a certain age, I might as well admit it. I have now reached the moment where I could consider Botox with a clear conscience.no-2-launch-033 Each time I look at a picture of myself I am surprised I am no longer 20. ( I am sure anybody over 40 understands what I am talking about, anybody under 40 doesn’t –yet! – have a clue.)

 

Luckily I have Peirene who keeps me young at heart.  Moreover, she compels me to keep in synch with the modern world. So, thanks to my nymph I write my little weekly blog, I am on facebook and I twitter – an achievement  since these delights weren’t programmed into the DNA of my generation.

 

Initially it felt like a duty - an obligation I had to do for the sake of the books. But now I am just so grateful that these social media forms exist. Thanks to them I have discovered the lit blogger scene. Even a year ago, I didn’t know these impressively ferocious readers existed. They’ve given Beside the Sea and Stone in a Landslide some stunning reviews.

 

But that’s not all. Because of their comments I am also learning to understand why foreign fiction has such a difficult time here in the UK. People are concerned that the author’s intention and voice has been lost in translation, that the publisher and translator might have taken liberties with the text. Valuable concerns indeed. I am just pleased that Peirene has embarked on a journey to dispel them.

 

And since we’re talking about journeys I should announce that my nymph has been backpacking in foreign places. Let me explain. A few days ago, I was asked by the London correspondent of the German newsmagazine focus, Imke Henkel, which nationalities visit my website. I shrugged. Never thought about it, as I assumed UK only. For the first time I checked the stats in my control panel. And what a surprise – most visitors come from the US, followed closely by the UK. And then – in third place – Russia! I’m intrigued. So please if you are a visitor from Russia and you’re interested in Contemporary European literature in English translation then drop me an email.

 

If however you are interested in selling me beauty aids or anti-aging pills ( I am not joking, I had a substantial increase in emails offers recently) then please wait for a few years. I want to retain the illusion of looking as beautiful as Peirene.

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Gossip at the Hairdresser’s

Friday, May 28th, 2010

 I have a really good gossip story for you this week.webite-home-144

A publisher tries to get in touch with one of his authors for a publicity stunt he succeeded in setting up. He sends the author an email. No reply. A few days later, sends another one – of the type “I was wondering if you received my previous email?” No reply. Might the author indeed be on holiday? On the other hand the publisher knows the author is the owner of a one of those beauties called a blackberry. In fact on a previous visit the publisher has seen the author checking the device on a regular basis. So after another couple of days the publisher decides to give the author a ring. He is put through to the answer machine. Leaves a message. A few hours later he finally receives a phone call – not from the author but from the author’s agent. Firstly the author is not interested in the publisher’s publicity stunt, secondly he prefers not to have direct contact with the publisher and thirdly he hopes the publisher soon will publish the author’s next book.

 To avoid misunderstandings here: this little story has nothing to do with me or Peirene’s growing number of authors. Six by now. It’s merely an anecdote I overheard at the hairdresser’s the other day. After all, I live in North London, an area known for its authors, art folk and publishers, too.  

 

I am biased of course. My sympathies go out to this poor, hard working publisher. A win-win situation for all sides, that’s what he seems to offer his author.  Surely any author would want publicity? Get known? Sell more books? Presumably that’s why an author decides to get a publisher in the first place. To help him spread his work. Otherwise, why bother getting a publisher. The work might as well stay in the drawer.

 

There is of course another explanation: The author believes his job is to write and the publisher’s job is to do the rest: to publish, to publicise, to market, to sell, to make famous the book and the author.

 

Fair enough. Some people like clear boundaries. Nothing wrong with that.

 

And that’s not what caused my internal outrage when I heard the story. No. The impoliteness of the author is the scandalous bit. When you are spoken to nicely, you answer back nicely. Simple table manners. You don’t send a third person. The poor, poor publisher.

 

Anyway, it’s none of my business. I got me hair done and went home. And now I am sending  loving thoughts to all of my authors for being such brilliant collaborators and communicators, and also to their parents for bringing them up so nicely. With our combined positive energies, I am sure Peirene and them will go many successful miles.

 

P.S I won’t be able to delight you with a story about the pain and passion of a small publisher next week, but shall be back in two weeks time reporting on THE summer party of the year - the launch party of “Stone in a Landslide” , Peirene Title No 2.

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On the Road with Bob

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

 

Thursday at precisely 5.30 I was happy, really happy. On Tuesday I had concluded the deal on the third book for 2011, so the programme for nextwebite-home-129 year is complete. On Wednesday I  had booked myself up for all the three days of the London Book Fair next week  - so my little publishing house has clearly “arrived”. And on Thursday I finally caught up with the email back log from the Easter break. Life and work had fallen into order. I put on some music, Bob Dylan, to help me through the last task of the day.

 

It wasn’t the ash cloud that got me. It was something far less real, straight out of the virtual world.

 

My last deed of the day was to update the website. I went online, typed in the webmatrix address. A white page appeared “pcconnect failed. Session halted.” I typed in Peirene’s web address. Same thing. I wanted to send Tom, my webmaster, an email. It didn’t leave my outbox.

 

Technical problems freak me out. My heart beat accelerates, my mind displays paralytic symptoms, I desperately push the same buttons over and over again, hoping for a divine intervention. When I finally got hold of myself, I called Tom who confirmed that my hosting company had had an outage, which would take some time to restore.

 

I could have left it at that. The problem was identified, it would soon be mended. Instead I worried all evening. Hundreds of people were surely trying to look at the Peirene website right now, wanting to buy the three books with my fantastic exclusive deal.  And they would turn away, disappointed. I even had a dream. I saw a big spider-like UFO gobbling up an earth orbiting satellite. I knew the satellite had something to do with my hosting server.

 

I didn’t feel proud when I woke up. I don’t like having such pathetic dreams. Thus, I went into self analysis. Only to resurface with a beautiful line in my head, Bob sang when all went wrong the previous day.

 

“He not busy being born, is busy dyyyyying”.

 

A very sensible line. It’s telling me that everything in life, indeed life itself is a process, a journey with ups and downs. Fortunes change frequently and I’d better learn to ride the waves without feeling each time it’s the end of the road.

 

Bob would be proud of my insight. Long may it last.

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Spring is in the Air

Friday, March 26th, 2010

 

… and I am newly in love. With a vampire, actually. Edward Cullen to be precise. I’ve had enough of Heidegger. I think deep down I am a webite-home-124woman who needs something less intellectual, more straight forward. With Edward Cullen it’s serious. No teenage infatuation. I loved him in Twilight and love him even more in New Moon. It’s out on DVD and I got it, watched it and now I can’t forget him. I want to become a Vampire to be happy forever after.

 

Luckily I was able to go a bit easier with Peirene this week. Last weekend I realized that it’s time to let go of my first book-baby, Beside the Sea. I’ve brought it up well, I’ve given it all I could. Now it’s out there and needs to find it’s own way. My other books crave my attention. But before I devote my energy to Peirene No 2, I decided to take a breather or in other words, a holiday at work. I still went to some meetings, answered e-mails, followed up on pending matters. But my lunch breaks were longer. I dealt with unrelated Peirene paper work. I went for a couple of more runs.

 

And good job I did. It allowed me to think through my heart throbs before acting unwisely and in a way that I might regret the morning after. My conclusion: I truly love Edward and if he wants me, I’m his. Yes, the allure of eternal love and someone to protect me (from bad Vampires and Werewolves) and cherish me for the rest of my Vampire existence – all this takes some beating.

 

One small issue: he isn’t yet aware of my human existence. If he were, I am sure he’d desire me just as much as I desire him. So what can I do? I guess I should drown my heart rendering sorrow in Peirene. And who knows, Edward might one day pick up a Peirene book, take it into his lovely pale hands, wonder who has published such beautiful, interesting work – and find me.

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On Conquering the USA

Friday, March 5th, 2010

 

I think I sometimes fancy myself as the head of an international conglomerate, conquering the entire publishing world. I say “I think” becausewebite-home-1142 deep down I know that this is not the name of my game, but every now and again I fall into a trap behaving like a huge CEO. Do you get my drift? Let me explain.

 

Over the last few days I once again got terribly worried about sales figures. Yes, I am in second print run with my first Peirene baby but still a few hundred copies away from breaking even. So I became obsessed with sales figures. Why isn’t the book selling more? Look at this or that book. It’s selling heaps although it’s totally crap. Worry about sales figures was starting to do my head in. Added to the loo roll stress of last week, life wasn’t looking great at Peirene Headquarters. I then topped it all by deciding to break into the American market NOW and started talking to a US distributor who indeed listened to me. I was terribly flattered and felt that perhaps I was after all the head of a great conglomerate. So I rang up a colleague who actually runs a bit of a big firm, at least compared to Peirene, and suggested we two together should take on the US market. Baldrick couldn’t have made a more cunning plan, my colleague most subtly hinted. Then she mentioned the costs and the work involved.

 

I put down the phone and went for a run on the Heath.

 

I can’t remember if I had any deep thoughts on the run. I doubt it as I felt terribly unfit (because of all my anger and stress I hadn’t gone for a  run in a while) and was busy just keeping going. Back in front of my computer, I clicked on a lit blog I had come across two weeks ago. I had contacted the blogger to send him a review copy of Beside the Sea. From his profile I knew that he is a 24-year-old doctorate student at Oxford and sure enough his first reaction when I told him about the book was “I’m not convinced, a book about a mother killing her two children is my cup of tea” To his credit, however, he agreed to receive a copy. To my credit, I sent him the book, although I knew it was a shot into the dark. And then I clicked on his blog. And read a fantastic review (scroll down to March 2nd). The best of the lot so far. The blogger was totally honest, describing how, for the first two or three pages, he was taken aback, not liking it, but then had to completely change his mind. Reading this review made me incredibly happy. I pondered on that for a while. Then I realized why. Someone had given this text, a text I adore, a chance and the benefit of the doubt.

 

Had I been busy conquering the USA, I wouldn’t have had time for the initial email exchange with this blogger. And he probably would never have read the book and I would have never had the pleasure of reading his blog. And on the risk of sounding cheesy, I say it nevertheless. I realized then and there that happiness - and success - lies close to home and not in the USA.

 

P.S. But don’t get me wrong – my plan is still to make it onto the Elle cover.

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Heidegger’s Socks

Friday, January 8th, 2010

 

Schools are closed, buses aren’t running, the country will soon be out of gas and grit.  Everything has grind to a holt. webite-home-080

Except for Peirene and I. Back from the Christmas break bang on time Monday morning 9am. Refreshed, rejuvenated, full of beans for 2010. Our launch year! Peirene Title No 1 “Beside the Sea” will be published on 4th of February, the Catalan modern classic “Stone in a Landslide” comes in April, followed by the Germanic 120-page-long sentence that reads like a thriller “Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman” in June. I am worried (“Will they sell?”), I am excited (“Wow, they will actually come out”) and I can’t wait (“Will I earn a penny or two – or not?”).

 

The vibes are good, not only up here in the North but also down South. I received a phone call on Tuesday from Mark, the owner of Kew Bookshop. My sales rep had given him Beside the Sea before Christmas. He read it and told me how impressed he was, with the novel (he compared it to Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”), the cover, the personal statement at the beginning of the book, the whole Peirene idea. His compliments warmed my heart and so no surprise, I’m not going to fuss about the temperature outside.

 

Yep, of course I came back with a couple of beautiful lovely New Year’s resolutions. One actually. But it is – will be – live changing. Over the Christmas break I looked long and deep into my darling little nymph’s eyes. I love you dearly, I told her, I can’t live without you but… you are my job and not my life. Ordnung muss sein. I was tough with her but fair. I told her that I will care and nurture her during the day but at night she must sleep. However much she screams I will no longer return after bedtime. Because – after all – there is more to my life.

Heidegger for example. I’ve been neglecting him hugely, he stood out in the cold for months. But that’s all changed now. I’ve taken him back into the warmth, dusted the snow off his covers and dried his socks.

Happy New Year!

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Heidegger Soup

Friday, October 30th, 2009

 

Some families go to classical concerts or visit an art gallery. Something truly cultured for the parents and educational for the children. We had webite-home-042smalla family outing, too, last night – a birthday treat for our ten-year-old – and we watched a rather striking performance of the American rock band Bowling For Soup at the Roundhouse in Camden. How many times can I scream the F-word and C-word into the mike – that, I think, was the name of their game, and whatever their aim might have been, I seriously believe they overshot  their target by far. Raving applause. Best ever gig – as far as the youth of today was concerned.

 

Back home I on the other hand needed to be consoled and threw myself into the arms of my newly found love of the moment – Heidegger, yes, Martin his first name. It’s taken me a while to succumb. He’s been standing in my bookshelf for some time now, stalking me, now finally I am starting to get his drift. But – blimey – what an abstract soul, completely locked inside language, while he claims to be sorting out the meaning of Being–in-this-World. I wonder if it would have helped him to attend just a single Bowling for Soup concert. How would he have reacted to the heaving mass of bodies and to the sexual innuendo left right and centre? Perhaps it might have helped him to come down to earth a bit. Maybe he then could have skipped his infatuation with the extreme right-wing politics? As I think about it, I’m nearly ready to defend Bowling For Soup - although not until they clean up their language a fair bit! 

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Torture Experience

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

 

I now know what torture feels like. The scull  is bolted from the right and left, back and front. The screws are continuously tightened while the webite-home-0041head – perhaps the whole body (at that point you are no longer sure) – is spun around. The stomach empties itself violently a few times and then keeps on wrenching out bile. Finally I –  a confirmed animal-phobe who has never been seen near a horse - is put precisely on such a beast to descend the mountain as quickly as possible. It’s called altitude sickness and it hit me at exactly 4900 m. The rest of my family was fine. They made it to the peak of 5200m.

 

And I cannot wait to do it again! (I am not a masochist. No!) I’ve even checked out flights for next summer already. But it’s too early, most airlines don’t book that far in advance.

 

We trekked for seven days. No roads, no mobile phone signals, in fact not even electricity. The only thing around us were the huge barren Ladakhian Himalaya mountains and every now and again a green oasis, almost out of nowhere, where village life is able to flourish. Temperature fluctuate between +35C and -5C. We had scorching heat and freezing snow storms. Our 14-year-old daughter started the trek with a face and an attitude as if we were intending to deprive her of her friends, Topshop and Facebook forever. By the end even she could not help but admit that it was an amazing experience.

 

Was it the grandiose scenery? The glimpses of Buddhist culture with its stupas, little mountain monastries and prayer flags? The incredible sharp and clear light in the thin air? All of this helped. But what I loved most was the notion of passing through an unforgiving landscape that shows so clearly that it does not care – does not rely and does not need –  human life. A beautifully humbling experience. And surely a useful nihilistic experience for someone who is trying to make a living from books.

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Mountain Climbing is it!

Friday, August 14th, 2009

 

Mountain climbing must be my thing. I can no longer deny it. First of all there is Peirene. Setting her up, has been an experience similar to mountain-001climbing a mountain. A very slow ascent. One step after the other. Every now and again I stumble, I slide down a bit, but then I scramble back to my feet and on I march.

 

And now there is the family holiday. Back in March my husband rang me from a business trip to Delhi. Let’s go to India, he said, I’ve checked out our air miles, we have enough. The next weekend we cruised the internet wondering where exactly to go in India. By chance we came across one of these mountaineering companies offering tracking tours in the Himalayas. Bingo. Decision made.

 

“It was your stupid decision. Yours alone. I am not going. And the children neither!” On Saturday we are off and for the last few days I’ve been blaming my husband for this decision. Suddenly I would rather lie on a beach, go somewhere easy, somewhere familiar. I don’t want to worry about altitude sickness and diarrhea. Are we overdoing it with our nine-year-old? And perhaps we all might die!

 

Admittedly, I have a bizarre deal with fate. When something really good happens to me I don’t celebrate. I’m not allowed to laugh at my own luck and be thrilled that I am off to the Himalayas. Because if I do, the holiday might turn sour. So now I am stuck. I can’t even tell you how excited I am.

 

See you back here – if we survive – in the first week of September.

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Live your Fantasies!

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

 

Once a year I let rip!  For nearly two weeks I live out my fantasies to the full, only them I obey, only them I serve!

 

This year the set up looked better than ever: My neighbours have packed up their car and gone on holiday (so no one can spy on me). My children have been sent off on a two week summer camp ( so no responsibility). And my husband is away working very hard in some different country (so I am practically single again). There is the small issue of Peirene. But hey, no one is answering my e-mails anyway and if I get a reply it’s a holiday bouncer “I will be away from my desk all of July and August and won’t be checking my e-mails.” Well, ok then, I will just stop writing e-mails!

 

And NOW:  I am The Writer. And let me be even clearer: not any odd writer but a Novel Writer. We Germans have a particular Romantic idea about the novel writer. And that’s what I try to live up to during these two weeks. The Writer, who only lives for the words. I don’t cook, I don’t wash, I don’t even put the dishes in the dishwasher, I eat take-away pizzas. I’ve already come up with some spots but who cares, I am also not seeing or talking to anyone. I am all engrossed in deep thought and wonderful words.

Usually my writer-self gets three hours allocated in the morning. Before its children, afterwards it’s Peirene, then children, then household/husband/ friends/networking, then bed. Whenever I meet a writer, who only writes and thinks, I feel extremely jealous. And I ask questions like, so how many words do you write then? Only a 1000 in eight hours. I do that in two! Ha! And how many thoughts do you have, heh? And let me tell you, I’ve read the Bible, and Dante, all three parts! Yes, and the whole of Nietzsche. Jawohl!

 

So now I am a Writer 24/7. And have I produced 12 000 words? Of course not. I could explain, that I am actually right now not in word production mode, ie. writing a first draft, but rather at the revision stage, which by nature is not so word intensive. Still, nothing prevents me from engaging fully with the text all day long, does it? I stare a lot at the screen, that’s true. But I don’t really get on with it. Rather I am busy with anxiety attacks, lots of them throughout the day. I ask about my ability to write. I wonder if my story is any good. Am I a real writer? And what actually is a real writer?

I did however manage to get hold of one deep thought over the last couple of days: Perhaps the romantic idea of a lone writer 24/7 in the attic just doesn’t suit the multi-tasking geniuses that we women are. Perhaps we produce much better literature/art  when accepting that it is simply one of the things we do.

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