Friday 30 January 2009

All hail our glorious leader

Now, you remember that on Monday, Marianne posted a particularly peculiar picture of me? I thought it was time to redress the balance! But then I reconsidered, as she is currently spending time promoting my marvellous book, It'll Be Fine, which may be bought on www.amazon.co.uk . I was going to mention Marianne's inability to tell jokes - she knows a very long joke about a man sitting in a fridge, but she is completely unable to tell it. Well, that doesn't stop her trying. Tenacity is normally an admirable trait, however one can have too much of a good thing...



Anyway, since she's working so hard on my behalf, I've decided not to mention any of that, or to post this silly picture of her and Pixie.

I've now got a whiteboard and some coat hooks in my office, which is nice. I am told that the whiteboard markers are arriving some time next week, so in the mean time I'm sitting and looking wistfully at it, whilst quietly making little pen-squeaking noises and imagining all the witty things I could write on it. Roll on next week...

I have heard through the grapevine that our shorts have won the acclaim of a well known and long established author. The shorts bring together the ideas of the whole company, but as I am editor, director and often cameraman as well, I think I am justified in feeling smug.

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like waterlogged shagpile.

Posted by John

Thursday 29 January 2009

Merchandising!

Hi!
Now follows a message from our sponsors:
Buy Bombadil T-shirts, the ideal gift for anybody related to an author or interested in books or writing. And why are you reading this, if you are not in that category, anyways? ;)
At http://shop.cafepress.com/bombadil you can order a wide selection of quality apparel (according to cafepress.com, but their stuff is actually pretty good - I have some t-shirts from them, and a "Bombadil Publisher" hoodie - sorry, but that one is not for sale at the moment).
We plan adding a coffee mug to the selection, with the text "after finishing coffee, I'll finish my masterpiece novel", but haven't got around to it yet. Stay tuned to this channel.

Oh, and by the way, of course Bombadil is self-sponsored, so these are our very own designs. Please suggest additions and changes to the selection!

/Niklas

Wednesday 28 January 2009

Why do dogs get involved when there are cats...



I am being rather philosophical today, perhaps because I am a bit upset. I was going to blog, but when I got to the computer there was a cat. A cat of all things. A horrible white cat. It did not even smell of white socks!


Why should I get involved, why should I write a blog when there are cats.... they get all the attention and all the cuddles.



But no more!

From now on dogs rule! Especially those in cute coats.

Good night from your gorgeous, in-control-blogger-dog Pixie

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Full coffee room and starry nights

Today I am starting my blog rather late as I have been in and out of the office all day, not really staying long enough to blog. Amazing how blogging just one day a week seems to be difficult. This time, though, my colleague John did not remind me. Cheers John! (hmmmm that is rather worrying...by posting this really funny picture of John, he might somehow retaliate... I just hope that he will be kinder than me!).


On a different note, I am rather proud of myself for not needing a reminder....perhaps John has just given up trying to remind me? I better not ask, so I can remain basking in my own glory.

Mari, a lovely local lady, called in to see if we needed somebody to work with layout and graphic design. She joined us in the coffee room though she preferred tea, so perhaps we have to rename it the leisure room. Tea/ coffee room sounds too much like trying to please all and nobody, and the rest room is just not appropriate, though I am sure Pixie would like the idea! Anyway, I sometimes like tea the best too, despite trying desperately to adapt to the Swedish way of drinking an obscene amount of coffee. Mind you they drink not to keep awake, but to keep up the social traditions. Back to Mari, she is really nice and has two dogs and a horse :-D How nice is that! Certainly gets my vote. Anyway, we were so impressed by her spirit and the fact that it was the Bombadil Shorts that convinced her to seek us out (seems that some people actually appreciate our sense of humour) that we are going to see if we can find a way for her to join our group. She is what is needed for our covers to become the best in the business. So if all works out the way we hope, we will soon have one more chair filled in our coffee room (not to mention one more office). Very exciting indeed and we hope Mari will enjoy our company as much as I am sure we will enjoy hers.

It is dark outside my window, which is natural as it is late and in the middle of winter. But the view is till stunning: velvety black sky sprinkled with diamonds. That is one thing I am extremely pleased about living here: the nights are so clear, the stars are so bright and there is precious little light pollution. The prettiest time during the winter, however, is sunrise and sunset. Absolutely marvelous! Here are some pictures over which you may contemplate, meditate, enjoy, marvel or relax. Or a mixture of all. Some pictures are taken by me, some by John and one by my father-in-law. But all pictures are of the sun setting or rising on, by or over our lake, just a few steps from where I am sitting now.

Monday 26 January 2009

Monday - here we go again

Yet another Monday, is casting it´s superior light upon us,

or shall I say;

Yet another Monday, is throwing some crap- weather in our face?!



I never really understod the deal with Mondays and bad weather, but trust me, if there will be bad weather at some point during the week it´s most likely to happen on Mondays. There must be some kind of fault, a screw that is not properly tightened in the big construction called the universe that will make bad weather appear on Mondays....And only Mondays. Or it might just be my Monday-mood, you know that feeling don´t you? Your brain hasn´t turned itself on after the weekend, so everything just seem to be a bit greyish = Mondaymood.


That´s why it´s lovely to work at Bombadil! Because when I entered my office this morning (I was almost on regular time this Monday btw. Normally I stroll in at 10 o´clock since i´m driving 3h from my hometown to get here)


I found 3 presents as follows:
1. High back leather chair (that´s what it says on the carton)
2. Tiny, tiny bag of sweets =)
3. Stapler


I got really excited about my new office-accessories and started to unpack my new chair, and 1h later I had actually managed to put it together! Meanwhile I was struggling with the 5-step-instruction-sheet my dear colleague John were filming, I must mention that I wasn´t overlyexcited about this. When I shouted "It doesn´t work, where does this bit go?! The manual is too complicated!"
John would be standing on a chair filming me in some kind if artistic view from above with a big grin on his face, replying:
"It´ll be fine" (buy his book;) )
To me that was no help whatsoever. But at last I managed to get my office-chair together and I must say, It was well-worth the trouble. I´m now sat as a KING! Very comfy that is.

So I guess that Mondays isn´t that bad after all. I do have one request for next Monday, would anyone mind getting me some staples for my new stapler?



Yours truly,
Mondayblogger, Sara

Friday 23 January 2009

Flat-pack civilisation

I'm feeling particularly Swedish at the moment as I went to IKEA last night. In Sweden. With a Swede.

Conny the carpenter has been hard at work, building a bedroom for Sara in the house that we live in. It's a rather strange house at the moment as every room can be walked through, so some internal partitioning was called for. The next job for him will be to put a door on the bathroom. Then we really will be approaching civilisation and normality.

The Bombadil Shorts project is going well, with a new film uploaded every day. See Bombadil Publishing on Youtube. Also, we are now a seller on Amazon - we currently have It'll Be Fine for sale, but we will be adding the remainder of the titles soon.



The weather in Sweden this week has been really rather snowy, with more forecast for the weekend. Some of the ice on the lake has frozen, but the majority of it remains, although I wouldn't fancy the chances of anyone wishing to skate in it.

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like blue cheese dressing.

Posted by John

Thursday 22 January 2009

My turn to blog today, and this time I am actually doing it online, in real life, myself! But after logging in as webmanager and not finding anywhere to edit blogging pages, I had to ask Marianne who showed me how and where to blog in. (Don't tell her, but she's better on computers than she cares to admit.)
Gandalf visited us today - well, he isn't a real wizard, Carl Fridh, running our sister company Gandalf Publishing, publishing books for 60+. But we had a nice, productive meeting, and was interviewed by Nerikes Allehanda, the local newspaper. They'll publish a picture of our concert grand as an illustration of the virtuousity of the Bombadil authors ... or something like that. Nice article, anyway. I'll take a photo of the piano so you see what it is about...

5 minutes later (the piano is at the bottom floor and the stairs are in the other end of the building):

Grand Piano, to be known from the newspapers.
Also, in tomorrow's paper, the Bombadil crew, as well as Carl "Gandalf" Fridh will be in the picture, though Josephine looking for something to read will not be. But the piano and books will make the paper, and after all, books are the important thing, right?
:)


/Niklas

Wednesday 21 January 2009

Dog blogging...

Yawn. Woof. So its my day to blog again. I'm very tired as I've spent all week dealing with a large pile of lamb bones left over from Sunday lunch. I've decided to give the biggest, juiciest one to Niklas. I've put it under a big pile of socks in his wardrobe for him. I hope he likes it.

I borrowed Marianne's credit card when she wasn't looking and ordered some doggy perfume online. It's called "Fromage de Chausette" and I think it smells great. It must be great because everyone keeps remarking on it. I need to smell good now I'm a TV star - I know I'm the only reason why anyone is watching the Bombadil videos.


I'm going back to sleep now.

Posted by Pixie the Bombadil Dog

Tuesday 20 January 2009

Desk rotation


A nice reminder once again from my colleague John that it is Tuesday and my blogging day. I did remember, but it is always nice to be reminded. Only a pity that I had not yet published (or written) my blog so that I could prove that I had thought about it. But never mind, perhaps next week.

Today we had desk rotation. The usual policy is that employees move around the company trying out various tasks, but in our case it is not the employees but the desks that move around. Perhaps that is why John has attached an anchor to his.

I share an office with Niklas, who is particularly fond of his desk (a modern IKEA desk, I may add). I have an old antique desk, which I am also rather fond of, but it is not only impossible to get a matching one, but I also know that it would be difficult to make Niklas part with his desk. So, the answer is me getting one that matches his, and my desk finding a new home. John seems to like it, so he gets it and our accountant Lillemor gets his - if he is able to dislodge the anchor from it. I gather that a lot of you who have watched our vlogs think that we are horsing around all day and that musical desks would be an obvious leisure pursuit for us, but no. This is serious business! :-D

I am off to the stables now for a riding lesson, but hopefully I can put my new desk together tonight so that my office can become a bit more tidy. Those of you that have seen pictures of my desk, probably think it is about time too. I am hoping to report back to you next week about my tidy desk and redecorated office, sorry no, refurnished office.

If any of you wonder about the completely random picture in this blog, then it is me and two of my kids pretending to be an angel. So yes, it is random, but it is also relevant in a somewhat random way.

Happy evening to you all from Marianne

Monday 19 January 2009

At least we tried to film those old ladies!!


Yet another Monday,


Yes it is Monday, believe it or not. It´s quite amazing how quickly last week turned into a weekend and then turned out to be finished.




So yes, it´s yet another Monday.Today at Bombadil we´ve had a quite ordinary day, well as ordinary it gets when you´re working at Bombadil Publishing. Me & John went into "town" (Nora, 11 000 inhabitants) to post some books that had been ordered, of course it all turned into a shooting-shorts-session and looked like two crazy buffoons that never seen a mailbox before in our life. We almost managed to get two elderly ladies on tape, but they sneaked by in the last minute so we unfortunately missed them!We also decided that Coop Konsum in Nora is our favorite-supermarket! Such lovely member of staff. All our love to Coop Konsum. We are even starting to find our way through that shop. Next week we do have to remember to bring our shopping list.... We now have enough pasta to feed an entire army... Well, well, I guess It might be handy if we would invite the local football-team over for lunch, perhaps?


By the way; I sincerely hope that no poor man or woman have missed our absolutely adorable "Shorts", our videoblog project! Check it out on youtube, just search Bombadil Publishing. That´s the reason why we were filming the mailbox in Nora earlier today, so whoever thought that those footages was for personal use has got it "om bakfoten" as we would say in Swedish. Translates into: "around the back of your foot", which basically means you´ve got it terribly wrong. So make sure not to miss these crazy-shorts, it´s a great opportunity to get to know us at Bombadil a bit better and you get to see our every day-to-day life here at the office!




So yeah, a typical Monday at Bombadil really.




/Your Monday-blogger,Sara

Friday 16 January 2009

International Friday

I'm John, I'm in charge of the international office and the Shorts project and Friday is my day to blog. If you want to know more about me, have a look at my personal blog at http://booksandsnow.blogspot.com/.

I'm feeling particularly pleased with myself at the moment because in a stroke of comic genius I have attached a small anchor to the leg of my desk to stop it floating away. Anyone who has ever owned a desk, or indeed any other piece of freestanding furniture, will know what a problem "furniture drift" can be.



As you should know, we have published our second film today as part of the Bombadil Shorts project. These short films will be published daily and can be viewed on Youtube, via the link on the Bombadil website, via the Bombadil fanclub on Facebook and on my personal Facebook page.

See them here: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=BombadilPublishing&view=videos

We have had great fun making the films and I think I'm getting rather good at editing them. As they're so short, an awful lot ends up on the cutting room floor. Or the "trash can" on the Mac, to be precise. I can confirm that we are every bit as mad as we seem. We're absolutely rubbish at acting, so everything you see is completely unscripted and made up on the spot.

We have actually been doing some work as well. Sara, having drawn inspiration from Joey Tempest (see Monday's entry), is currently planning the Bombadil spring festival, Niklas is away at the university in Trolhattan and Marianne is keeping everything headed in the right direction. I've just been messing around with boating paraphernalia and film equipment though.

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like old socks.

Posted by John

Thursday 15 January 2009

And now a word from our resident scientist...

/Prerecorded message follows:/

Hi! I'm Niklas Järvstråt, mad scientist (see http://www.moon-mine.com/) and quality manager at Bombadil. I must start by saying that John's very first blog entry was most inappropriate! We are NOT a "gang", as that brings to mind a horde of ruffians wandering the streets in disorderly fashion, committing vandalism and destruction as they go. In contrast, we are a highly organised "crew" working together to provide support to young authors all over the world in their quest to make their voice heard and publish their manuscripts as high quality books. Quality is the key word here. ;) Quality and structure. Ah well, I cannot talk too much about that, so as not to get me going I'll stop here and shift subject.



Some more about me, I am Swedish, I lived a year in Norway but still think the Norwegians talk in a funny though fully understandable (mostly) Swedish dialect, called Norwegian. I am married to the boss, Marianne. Well, I'm her boss too at times, as she does a fair bit of marketing for my moon-mine project. She usually does way more than I ask for, and has got several papers interested in writing about the moonbase in Pershyttan. She even once had a team from Discovery headed to a set of small mines in Sweden for a film about how James Bond had influenced the world, which made me think of Moonraker. Unfortunately, James Bond himself was not part of that team - otherwise the terrorists would not have managed to keep the film team from bringing the camera equipment out of England. The film-team was just setting off on their world tour when, due to the London terrorist attacks, security was drastically increased at Heathrow airport and taking camera equipment on the plane became quite out of the question. So, the film missed the window of opportunity at the launch of that new Bond film and their mine documentary was cancelled. Well, guess I will be forced to make up for that in future video blogs at Bombadil.

Oh, and today I am travelling to University West to discuss research with the PhD students I am supervising. I work for University West on Fridays, supervising research students, which is why I blog on Thursdays. Yes, it is Thursday today, but tomorrow I need to be at Chalmers to discuss Design for Extreme Environments with students from Chalmers and Lund following that project course. So, this week, Friday occurs on Thursday, and my blogging cannot be performed live. Thus, this is a prerecorded message, brought to you by some of the other members of the Bombadil crew, or Bombadillos, as we prefer to call ourselves.

/Niklas

Wednesday 14 January 2009

A dog of very few words


They tell me I am supposed to blog today, being the Bombadil dog and all that. I'd prefer to sleep and enjoy the sunshine, but will do a bit of advertising instead.

I do not really want to be an author when I grow up, but they don't seem to quite understand that. I did not choose the T-shirt. writing is too much like hardwork and I just want to lie in my basket and enjoy the sunshine...hmmm....zzzzzz......

/Pixie - The Bombadil Dog

Tuesday 13 January 2009

Books, horses, moose and pink skates



Today is my turn to blog for Bombadil - I do Tuesdays. My colleague John called to remind me while I was out trying to find skates for my daughter Josephine. "Tuesdays are yours, you know, don't you?" I did know of course, and had been trying to concentrate on what to write about while queuing up to pay, but it still sounded a bit like a school master reprimanding the renegade student. So I hurried back, and here I am busy trying to write a blog, remembering nothing of what I was thinking about in the queue earlier.

I have not just been busy with buying skates, I have also worked a fair bit mainly with our accountant Lillemor who is taking over the tedious task of getting our paperwork into shape. And then of course, the good news. We got the new video camera today. It is minuscule and fits in John's pocket. He is the man-with-the-cam, and Sara, I, Niklas, Lillemor and whoever comes over our threshold will feature in our vlogs. I learnt that word the other day. Here I had been pronouncing video-blog, sounding out each letter as if I had invented something new and special...but no, somebody had been there before me and actually invented a suitable name. It think that is the worst thing. It is a cool name, and does what it says on the package, so I don't even want to change it.

Well back to my previous line of thought. The camera. It all started today and when I came back from trying to find the aforementioned skates, there was already a trial vlog waiting for me to look at. It was rather hilarious even without sound. Where is the sound? Hidden in a box. Why? To prevent the sound of Wow music videos from billowing all over the office. And no, I am not really a fan, but my ten year old son is, and he thinks my super cool Mac is more super and more cool when playing Wow music videos. So no sound at the moment, though I think I better connect it up so I can check what I am saying before the shorts are aired...hmmm talking about airing laundry; there is no dirty laundry whatsoever and shorts, for those who did not get the pun, is short for short features and since there are will be more than one, it becomes the Bombadil Shorts with an s to denote that it is plural. So not shorts as in short trousers, but shorts as in short features. Not my joke, promise. Well those that know me well, know that it could not be my joke, because mine are usually rather plain, if a joke can be called plain. No-frill jokes.



Anyway, the first trial short ended on a frame with a laughing moose. I like moose and have a particularly cute fluffy one that is sound activated. Very cute, and laughs more and better than the giggling and chuckling babies on Youtube. So stay tuned, he might well be featured in a short (note the "a" in front of short...I only dress up the dog, the moose is spared).

I am not going to write anything about books - you all know that Bombadil publishes books. We are the original and first youth-to-youth publisher....Hmm.. seems I did get in something about books after all, but then I guess it would have been impossible not to write anything about books, because wherever I look there are books, either our own or those of others. Books are nice. Very nice. So are horses. Wonder why I wrote that. I don't ride particularly well, but I do have a horse. A beautiful and very patient horse called Ophelia. I am sure you can guess from the above picture exactly why I think she is patient. I was definitely not going to talk about horses, but when looking for a picture to upload I saw a nice one with her as Santa... And yes, you are right, it is not just the dog I dress up. I dress up the horse too... Back to the title. I wrote horses in the title just to give myself something to write about in case I forgot what I had decided to write about while queuing to buy those soon-to-be- famous pink skates. No, they are not really pink, just what a designer would call white with a hint of pink. :-D And I did forget what I was going to write about, and thus kept the reference to horses in the title.


So now that I have blogged about nothing at all I will bid you all goodbye for now, and hope you enjoy my colleagues' blogs until I am back on Tuesday next week. Hopefully with something more exciting to discuss than pink skates, horses with Santa Claus hats, and laughing moose. Perhaps I will talk about Pixie in her Bombadil t-shirt... no better not get me started on that one.

/Marianne

Monday 12 January 2009

Joey Tempest saved the day, kind of.


Monday, oh bloody Monday.
It´s a windy day in Gyttorp today, not just regular windy, but like orcane-windy. Someone should probably declare a storm-warning quite soon. I wouldn´t mind a small storm, loosing electricity for a couple of hours, I really wouldn´t mind. As long as it´s a warm and cosy storm, unfortunately it´s not, it´s a very cold "storm" as matter of fact. It´s a Monday-storm. Hidious and cold.
So imagine the wind blowing outside, it´s dark and everytime you walk outside the door it´s like a raw, cold hand is taking you by the throat. You´re in the middle of nowhere in the deep Swedish woods and you are trying your best to manage a website that isn´t really in the mood to be managed.Plus it´s Monday, oh bloody Monday.
I´ve managed to paint a pretty sad picture haven´t I?
Then imagine that your workmate is popping by your office with a framed Joey Tempest-poster! I can hardly describe the warmth that went through my negative, black heart at that very instant. I could compare it to having warm sand between your toes in the summer, or the first ride on your bike in the spring. Warmth, and a happy giggily feeling, that sort of feeling that blow your so called problems away.
So todays input is all about my great appriciation of Joey Tempest.
- Thank you Joey Tempest for making me realise that website-problems will aren´t impossible to solve(at least if you phone the nice support-guy, Andreas).

This is Sara Karlsson Monday-blogging for Bombadil Publishing, now with a smile on her face.

/Sara

Friday 9 January 2009

Welcome to Bombadil Publishing's official blog!

Marianne, Niklas, Sara and I will be taking it in turns to update the Bombadil blog.

Times are exciting at Bombadil - we're expanding! Lots of great new titles will be published and we will be shortly starting the Bombadil video blog! See what the gang at Bombadil are up to today...

Stay tuned!

Posted by John Parry