Slightly Peculiar Love Stories Perused

Did you know you can read these stories on your PC or laptop? (That's how the rat occupies them, by crawling inside his old computer that's always humming and warm.) It was pointed out to me that some people think you need a special reading device to read digital books. Not so. The simplest way to read Rosa Mira's books on a computer is to download the PDF version. It will open on your desktop with a double click. I'm quite proud of the PDF.  The pages have been elegantly designed by Christine Buess and given some last-minute attention by Caroline Jackson.


Although Tim Jones is the author of a Slightly Peculiar Love Storie(s) he has reviewed the whole in a completely unbiased fashion and you can read the review here. (Thanks, Tim!) I'm looking forward to the launch of Tim's book of poems Men Briefly Explained tomorrow night in Dunedin,  but he'll also be coming to a NZ city near (some of) you. He's travelling from south to north.


I've almost finished proof-reading Michael Jackson's Road Markings: An Anthropologist in the Antipodes. His thoughts about the multiple strands of time, place, event and person that feed into and out of our lives have been occupying mine. I'd love to publish the ebook by the time Rosa Mira Books turns one in January. Let me see if I can dig out a quote for you . . .  


  No life is sufficient unto itself. A person is singular only in the sense in which astronomers use the term: a relative point in space and time where invisible forces become fleetingly visible. Our lives belong to others as well as to ourselves. Just as the stars at night are set in imperceptible galaxies, so our lives flicker and fail in the dark streams of history, fate, and genealogy. One might say that we are each given three lives. First is our conscious incarnation, occupying most of the space between our birth and death. Second is our existence in the hearts and minds of others ­– a life that precedes the moment of our birth and extends beyond our death for as long as we are remembered. Finally there is our afterlife as a barely remembered name, a persona, an element in myth. And this existence begins with the death of the last person who knew us in life.     (New paragraph; this is refusing to separate out.) I've been thinking about how to carry on with this labour of love called Rosa Mira Books which is not even starting to pay its way. Not by a long chalk. Except that carry on I shall, day by day, job by job, taking from Peter to pay Paul, finding ways to play and feel happy  about it, and not give myself a hard time if it doesn't conform to some impossible model of perfection.  (New paragraph.) I'm glad the rat turned up. I think he'll be a help.