Posts made during July, 2008
The podcast that wasn’t.
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
A few blogs ago I said that I was going to put a podcast of my talk at the Melbourne Festival of Travel Writing on my blog. Well, I’ve been too embarrassed to mention it, but I forgot to put the recorder on. I went out of my way on the morning of the session to go to a friend’s place to pick up his pro-digital recorder and even had a 15 minute lesson on how to use it. I got five minutes into my session and realised that I hadn’t switched it on. So, here is my official apology… The apology
You can find this fun program at Text-to-Speech. When I’m bored I’ll type in a message then call a friend and… (read more)
The biggest snowman ever in this world!
Monday, July 28th, 2008
I’ve just had four days skiing at Mt Hotham (five hours north of Melbourne) where my daughter built the ‘the biggest snowman ever in this world’. Well, actually I built most of it while my 6 year-old daughter Jasmine threw ‘the world’s biggest snowballs’ at me. I don’t know how to break the news to Jasmine, but we fell just a little short of the World’s Biggest Snowman (or Snowperson, which I believe is the correct PC term). That title belongs to… (read more)
All I read is travel books.
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
I’ve just finished reading Dave Gorman’s America Unchained and realised that the last 8 books I’ve read have been travel narrative books. I do read other genres, but I’d built up such a stockpile of travel books (I have this problem that when I go into a bookshop I seem to always come out with a travel book) that I’m slowly working my way through them. I’ve had a bit of time to read lately because my latest book has just been sent off to get typeset and I don’t go away for my next trip until mid September. The 8 books I’ve read recently are:
1. America Unchained (Dave Gorman) – A good read but not as good as Googlewack adventures, which is one of my favourite travel/humour books.
2. Finding Nino (Marc Llewellyn) – It was lovely to read an… (read more)
Hemingway can’t sing karaoke.
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
In 2003 I went to the Ernest Hemingway Festival in Key West, Florida for my book The Naked Man Festival and met a man with a white beard called Tom Grizzard. Tom was one of 150 men with white beards who were all competing in the Hemingway lookalike competition (I took this photo of him and his colourful fan club). It was Tom’s third attempt at winning the coveted prize and yesterday, after eight years of trying, he finally won! I found the story here and I noticed that in the photo he looks a little sloshed. When I met him in a karaoke bar in Key West five years ago he was very… (read more)
Brian in the jungle
Monday, July 21st, 2008
I was sorting out my ‘iMovie’ files on my computer today and I found the promo video I put together for ‘Where’s Wallis?‘. These promo videos are used by the sales reps to help sell the books into the bookshops and are mostly only seen by the book shop owners. The videos, which are often very simple, are usually put together by the publisher, but I shot and edited the video myself with the help of a friend and his shaky video camera. Anyway, I thought you might like a look. The sound is a bit dodgy at the end of the video (the sound was fixed up for the final edit)… (read more)
Travel writers and beer
Saturday, July 19th, 2008
I caught up last night with fellow travel authors Marc Llewellyn and Simon Capp for an ale and a curry at the Prince of Wales pub in St Kilda and we talked about in-house editors, master proofs, royalty statements and subsidiary rights. It’s nice to meet up with other authors and talk shop. Because we live in our own little worlds and spend most of our time writing away in dark little rooms we have little contact with other writers and it’s not often that I get to say ‘ms’ to people who know what I’m taking about (ms is manuscript in case you’re interested). We were also there to plan Marc and Simon’s session for the Melbourne Travel Writer’s Festival, but that just seemed to get in the way of beer drinking. You can catch me tomorrow (Sunday) at the… (read more)
To blog, or not to blog?
Friday, July 18th, 2008
I’ve succumbed to the blog. I’ve always liked the idea of a blog, but I was always worried that I’d have nothing to say. Yes, when I travel there certainly is a lot happening, but I just never fancied sitting in an internet café full of smelly backpackers when I could be out wandering the streets with the smelly locals. Then when I’m at home writing not much really happens. ‘I had Weet-Bix for breakfast and then I went to the shop to buy some bread’ doesn’t make for riveting reading. Anyway, I’ve decided to have a go. I can talk about the book writing process. I can talk about upcoming trips and books. I can talk about upcoming events. I can talk about life and WeetBix. And if worse comes to worse and I can’t think of anything to say I can always just add a gratuitous wacky photo… (read more)