Where's the towel?

Another sale? Okay, I'm out. It was getting cold anyway.

Splashdown

Aaah, that's more like it. Thank you, dear buyer.

I'm going to stay here now until the sound of another ebook soaring off to meet its (e)reader drags me from this heavenly tureen.

The rat ascends

Rat in his birthday suit suspended above Earth by an inflatable onion.

Rattitude

That's what's needed. Someone has to start selling ebooks around here. Someone with verve, tenacity, a smooth tongue and a tricycle. Rats have no shame, no reputation to lose. Those went out with the Pied Piper and the original sinking ship. My only goal is to weasel my way into your pockets affections.

So, first things first. I've bound and gagged the publisher. I popped a straw in the corner of her mouth with a nice cup of lapsang souchong nearby. And I discounted the books — slash, slash. They're down to half price, for a fortnight only. Think of the pleasure to be gained for $5.50 from the lyrically erotic shenanigans of darling Chjara Vallée in The Glass Harmonica; imagine 20 perfectly curiously amorous couplings (and near-couplings and would-be couplings) for only $5 in Slightly Peculiar Love Stories.

I know, I'm just a rat but by all accounts these writers chew it up.

Look, you don't even have to buy an ebook. You might just feel sorry for the outfit called RMB with its high flying ideals, or for the kids in India still waiting for RMB to break even so they can benefit from a cut of the profits and learn to read . . .

Just go through the pay procedure, take an ebook or leave it — call it a donation if you want to.

Tell you what, every time I wake up and find a book sold or a donation made, I'll change my outfit, antic and vehicle. Watch me.

I am the rat.

Pssst . . . pass it on.

The Rat

  The rat wants to join the Rosa Mira Books sales department. He wants to be the Sales Department.

 

What do you reckon? Would you buy from a rat?

The suit would have to go for starters.

Dorothee Kocks: spurning the timid life tomorrow

Dorothee: I've decided to live up to my website's name, Beware The Timid Life.  I'm giving the talk advertised below in a feminist sex shop, restoring some of the great stories left on the cutting-room floor. For The Glass Harmonica, I did much more research than could ever belong in the novel, and I'm telling about the background of the time: the general expectation even in Puritanical times that women were naturally as lusty as men, the surprising number of bawdy houses; the connection being feeling frisky and feeling free. I'm aiming to add a supplement to the novel with these stories, the 'XXXtras edition' as it were. People can sign up here on my website.

 Meanwhile, Midwest Book Review had this to say about Dorothee's novel: To live for love and joy seems so alien to many. The Glass Harmonica: A Sensualist's Tale is a novel following Chjara Valle, a driven young woman who through her life of a servant as she goes from Corsica to Paris to America. A riveting and unique read with plenty of twists and turns as a woman with a love for music dares to go against the law for it. The Glass Harmonica is a read very much worth considering for historical fiction collections, highly recommended.

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.