Rat as antidote.

There's nothing nicer than having your feet up on the sunny windowsill. Buttered sweetcorn takes some beating, too.

The boss is in a bit of a frazzle. Her brow is knotted. Her shoulders, too. She mutters away, asking how come she forgets every time how much work there always is the week before an ebook launch, and how many details wait in ambush blah blah blah. She frets about being publisher and published, when one is fraught enough without the other. Checking the ePub files, she observes how tortured her prose yadda yadda. Thank goddess for Elena! She's serene in Lily-the-Pink-land and at least her chapters remain enchanting . . .


Anyway, the boss thinks I should be up and running but thanks to my Argentinean wife, I've come to believe in La Siesta so that's where I'll be once I'm down to the cob. In between mouthfuls, I'll mention the students in Coral Atkinson's Whitireia Online Publishing class, who have come up with many ingenious and practical marketing suggestions: Kaahu Bennett, Nicola van Arndt, Mary Hay, David Langman, and Laura Sarsfield. Thanks, Kaahu, Nicola, Mary, David, Laura and Coral! Awesome work. The boss'll keep you filled in on how it all pans out.

As I write, the boss chuckles. An email from her amiga, Elena: Don't worry at all, is absolutely the same at the opposite for me. I like your write jajajajaja. Probably is not going to be our best novel but we did a good job. We did an original novel and we celebrate our friendship which is a lot. We were honest.  I am very happy …   "This is true," says the boss with a smile. "We're celebrating friendship — ours first of all, and in our novel the friendship between Jude and Claudia, between Judith and Adriana . . . Yes, this a good job."

Before they had an inkling that one day they'd meet: Elena Bossi and Penelope Todd.

Okay, so can we please get some kip now? Not you, dear reader. You may tiptoe over to Dorothee's site to check out her new publishing venture, Beware the Timid Life, which makes our outfit look timid indeed. If you have an  iPad with iBooks 2, you're ready to load up her playful and surprising exploration of the first American sexual revolution.  It's a new kind of eBook – "An Exhibit, A Story, A Salon." I'll let you know when it's ready for the Kindle. Meanwhile, you can revel in some of the same themes reading The Glass Harmonica.

Bravo, Dorothee.