Spontaneity

Hello everyone out there!

Hope you all are well and is having fun.

Last week I had some trouble in my thoughts on what to write about. Well I have some words this time, not much perhaps but some :-)).

Yesterday afternoon Marianne said at fika that we should barbecue that evening and have a bit fun!!?? Oppps barbecue, no planning at all just those word: -this evening we shall barbecue! This is typical for Marianne, doing and saying spontaneous things :-)) and it´s fun. So we all had a nice evening with very good food and some wine/bear. Hopefully this will happen some more times.

Our spontaneous Bombadil "chief" Marianne, at another barbecue time.

This spontaneity is also there in our young authors and I just love it! They all are great in every way. They can write so seriously despite their young age! And they "let out" the words in an admirable way.

Today I also had managed to do a new colour on a feather for Galadriel publishing, it's green. More information will come about that.

Have a nice week

Mari

Hot music

Sweden is a cold, cold country. It's beautiful, but it's cold. Deep frozen moose, Arctic foxes and lynxes with frostbitten paws abound. I know this because my friend who lives in London, and is an 'it' boffin, regularly tells me what the weather is doing just outside my door. He has some desktop widget on his computer that tells him the temperature in various parts of the world and he delights in informing me on a weekly basis that I am living in a cold and frequently damp environment, in contrast to his own existence in West London where he is saved from drowning in his own perspiration only by air conditioning.

In vain do I tell him that the Swedish flags are cracking, the tarmac is melting and my digital thermometer (100 kronor at the local supermarket) is showing temperatures in excess of 30 degrees Celsius. But here I present my one last rebuttal to the constant stream of meteorological misinformation that is emanating from Chiswick, namely one perfectly ordinary compact disc case that I left on the parcel shelf of my car.



John

A lot + sun + bath

Hello everyone out there

Finally the summer has come to, with some warmth and a nice big sun :-)). That really does a lot to your mind. Today I actually took my second bath for this summer, it was actually a bit colder than the time Sara and I jumped in the lake a couple weeks ago. Brrrr, but I went into the water twice anyway. I just can´t let it be there for just looking at it :-)). The lake here at the office is so nice to go to and just sit down for a while and just take a calm moment.


The lake "Vikern" just outside our office.

On monday and tuesday we had one of our authors here for a visit, Tommy. He came on his motorbike all the way from Stockholm. Not just for a visit we also did some work on his book. Some layout stuff and choosing pictures, going trough the text a bit. Actually John took a new photo too, that will be in the book. That will be more personal than the other picture from a big photo company. I like it that way books shall be personal well at least the ones our authors is writing. The books they are writing is theirs and no ones elses!

Co-workers are good to have they are inspiring, fun (they always have a laugh for you), they are helpful in every way they can and that is worth a lot. It is worth a lot to me, I really appreciate them very much. Everyone should have co-workers like this!
Today was Saras last working day, she is going on holiday so I just want to say to Sara: -Have a nice time in Austria and send us a postcard or some photos :-)), say hello to Kristoff also.

Ohh I almost forgett something :-)). We have finally got some apple cake that John has done. We have kind off teasing him about apple cake that he had done at his house and not letting us taste it (Sara had, she has a room there to). Finally we all got to taste it and it was good:-)). Thanks John, you have to do it again!

by by for this time
Mari

The Bombadil family is growing and growing!

Well, our dear family is expanding all the time, as we could read a few days ago; Matthias is our last acquisition as co-worker at our office in Gyttorp. But in the international side are we growing too, a lady from Peru, Maggy Jacinto, has started as a mentor and proofreader, as well, in our family, she had experience of office and printing work and she is mother of two young girls back in Peru, I want to welcome Maggy in the name of all Bombadilians and we´ll see toward new adventures together in our wonderful world of books, our world of writing, our world of creating and building a different world, a better one, there all the young people around the world have the possibility to express them self and show the world that the young people can create a new better world… and want too.



Maggy Jacinto Salazar.

And we got several fresh writers from Colombia and Venezuela, young people who inspire other young writers, and older of course, all around the world, and the marvelous felling to be part of this family get me this sensation difficult to describe, but easy to understand for everybody in our expanding family. Come together everybody and get this feeling, the Bombadil feeling and be part of this wonderful world all around us, the Bombadil World! YOUTH TO YOUTH.

Melvin González

The first bath of the year(?!)

It has been an absolutely lovely day at the Bombadil premises today, 1st of June and summer seems to have arrived!

Me and John are working with the visual part of the Bombadilian author school which includes a bit of filming... Naturally it goes a bit bonkers when you combine a few Bombadilian coworkers, a video camera, a horse and a kayak. I´m not going to tell anything about the theme of the author school film but I can reveal that I´m kayaking and sitting on a horse back to front. The horse in question is named Sunny and is a very calm and reliable Fjording which made her the perfect horse to be sitting back to front on. I shall probably also mention that I was not holding Sunny in the same time as resting my head on her backside, Mari very kindly held her whilst Sunny was quite happily eating lots and lots of grass. I figured I should be a bit responsible and explain this so no one thinks that it´s a neat idea to go out in the forest with a back to front horse. Or sitting on ahorse back to front is what I mean, really. It´s not a good idea, unless you bring Mari of course.

After shooting the horse scenes we continued with the kayak and as I was the bravest one in the group I jumped into the kayak and paddled 35 kilometres and back again, turned out that I was a kayak talent!! Eeh, at least this is what could have been, but it was not what actually happened. Since I was the one who were acting in all these scenes, I HAD to get into the kayak, I was not overly excited to be honest. But once I was out on in the water, in the kayak I happened to enjoy it quite a lot, and I actually was a bit of a talent, I could turn!! So I´ve decided'; Kayak is cool!

After kayaking me and Mari thought that the water looked extremly inviting so we had a dip! Which kind of explains the title since I have not been having a bath outside before today. Both of us was very happy with the first dip of the year and agreed that the water was warm enough and very refreshing! The summer is here!

And don´t forget stay tuned for the Bombadil author school video!

Over&Out,
Sara

Elo, Mr Blue Sky

Friday once more, and what a beautiful day it has turned out to be. It rained a little earlier in the week, which has inspired the lawn to reach a truly ridiculous height. If I don't do something about it soon, I will be at risk of finding a couple of tigers in there.

By tigers, of course, I mean Siberian tigers. And by do something about it, of course, I mean employ a gardener.



There are water lillies on the lake too. I thought they only grew in garden ponds, surrounded by faded plastic herons and covered with miles of plastic netting, but apparently I was wrong. They also grow on vast bodies of fresh water in central Sweden. There are as well, small black ones, but I think it would have been almost as pointless to attempt to photograph them as it would be to go to the effort of hooking them out and frying them up.



Sara and I have been filming for the author school, as she mentioned in her blog on Monday. I was in my element, dressing up in silly hats and throwing papers from rooftops (where I also found one hammer, slightly rusted). I used to hate dressing up and messing around like that when I was a small child, but I thoroughly enjoy it now. I think this is the correct way round. Dressing up is wasted on small children; they don't know the first thing about clothes in the first place, so they don't appreciate being decked out as a pirate or a zombie or a radioactive wombat.

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like grass.

"Are we insured?!"

After lunch the sun decided to join us on the first working day of the week, the weather is truly beautiful today! Which quite obviously lead to me and John doing some filming, since we are working with the Bombadilian author school at the moment. The author school which will be made into two parts (to begin with); part one is a short film that is introducing the Bombadilian philophosy and lifestyle in an easy manner and a quick pace. The second part of the author school is a summarize of background, philophosy, publication process and some other bits and pieces of information which will be of great value for all of our Bombadilan authors.

Since we had such lovely weather, as mentioned me and John headed outside to get some nice filming done! The afternoon therefor has more or less been spent sitting on roofs, throwing news papers form roofs, throwing manuscripts from roofs, picking up news papers and manuscripts from the ground. John also showed off his acting skills whilst wearing his winter coat, summer cowboy/crocodile dundee hat and a pair of sun glasses, all he had to do was to throw a news paper in a big, green bin, but John being John, it had to be done with glory and drama! After today I´m starting to suspect that John once dreamt about being an actor, I think the best way to describe it would be in a chavy way: "He was being well dramatic, innit?!" He really was, but in a good way of course. Me on the other hand was as usual the one having to climb the really dangerous roofs!! A tiny crack in on of the roofing sheets and a terrified Sara later, John managed to get some nice shots of me sitting and writing on top of one of the Bombadilian houses. Which also finally leads me to todays title...."Are we insured?" was pretty much the only words that slipped out of my mouth whilst being on the roof. If I had been clumsy enough to fall from the roof it wouldn´t have been to bad tho, I insure you. It´s barely 2 metres to the ground which is covered with nice, thick, green grass, plus my backside is quite safe to land on. And that is the voice of experience talking since I fell of a horse last week...

All in all it has been a very creative and productive Monday, indeed, and the sun is shining!! Can´t get much better than that =D

All for now,
Over&Out
/sara

Books and, er, books, I suppose. Oh, and creativity. Lots of that.

There are many wonderful things about living in Sweden. The climate is pleasant (except for today; it's raining), the scenery is unbelievably beautiful and the Swedes are a particularly pleasant bunch. There are huge lakes, tall green trees and lush forests. There was at one stage a point to this paragraph. What the point was, however, escapes me now. I guess I'm just trying to say that Sweden is a pretty fantastic place and I spend my days in a basket of creativity. Those of you who spend an hour a day in the great orbital car park that is the M25, you have my sympathies.

Two books are nearing completion, Sahil's role-playing adventure book "Inz The Warrior" has been sent to the printer today and Seth's book "The Noresemen's Saga" has been sent off to be proofread. Note, proofread, not edited, as we do not believe in taking an author's work and then mercilessly chopping it about.

The big Learning Swedish effort is progressing steadily, if a little slowly. I have just discovered that rabbit is kanin, which sounds for all the world like canine. Dog is hund though, which makes a little more sense. And cat, well, that's just katt.


Detta är inte en katt...

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like pantaloons.

Creativity rocks!!

And it sucks when you can´t feel the heat, of creativity.

Lately I noticed that creativity is a quite trendy word, at least in Swedish, it kind of became one of those overly used words. People talk about "The pleasure creativity brings", "the lack of creativity" and the importance of having creativity! The world itself seemed to have got greater than the real meaning of it. It´s almost like one is supposed to be creative, wether one like it or not. All the sudden it´s well creative to have managed to clean the house or washing your shower curtain...

Creativity is to create something new, to think out of bounds and outside the box. To dare and to do. At the Bombadil office creativity is something that is used and needed everyday since we everyday meets new challenges and new situations that must be delt with which we haven´t faced before. That´s why lack of creativity sometimes might be a "tiny" problem as we all get those days when the brain seems to be a big lump of soft content rahter than a highly tuned, extremly dynamic organ. That´s why it´s so fabulous to work with people and around people who seem to have more creativity than they can handle. One of the authors I happen to mentor is one of those people, she will overwhelm me with short storys, poems and pictures. And she will never stop trying. Amasing. and the best bit is, her creativity smittens and those days when my brain seems to work best as a soft fotboll she and others can inspire and lift me and my creativity level up to a decent level again.

True creativity really rocks. It´s a fact.
All for now.
/Over&Out, Your monday blogger Sara

I'm not dead...

I have been absent from the Bombadil blog for a few weeks now. No, I haven't been shipped off to Finland as punishment for eating all of the Bombadil biscuits, it's just that there have been rather a lot of public holidays lately. They invariably fall on a Friday, so we are not in the office.

I have been working on a couple of Bombadil's flagship projects, whilst at the same time wishing that things would move just a little faster. Sahil's fantasy adventure book is finally nearly ready, after we decided to undertake a major page referencing exercise on it. Perhaps not the most sensible thing, looking back on it, when I consider the amount of extra work that it generated, but it will make the book infinitely more readable. It is a book that allows the reader to make their own choices throughout the story so it must be carefully checked, then re- checked, otherwise it will not make any sense.

The May Fire at Örebro and the Archery Club party (in my villa) has been extensively covered by other Bombadillians elsewhere, so I shall not harp on about that. I am, with Steinar's help, building a kayak. I have recently discovered the joys of paddling along a river in a beautiful wooden craft and so I have started on my own construction. It appears to be growing quite quickly, but I have a feeling it will start to take a lot longer once it is time for sanding.



I am also learning Swedish. It's not really necessary as nearly everyone here speaks impeccable English (even the bums outside the off-licence) but as I have been here for a while now, I thought it was time to learn. It's going rather well (I'm on week two of learning).

I andra nyheter, Bombadil hunden är för närvarande mycket blöter.

"Another girl, another planet"

I have a habbit, a habbit of getting stuck to songs. Today that song is "Another girl, another planet" by The only ones. Once have got infected there is not much that can stop me from listen to the same song, over and over again. Somtimes my surrounding minds, but normally not. It usualy depends on how loud i´m playing.... ;)

It´s very interesting how people are effected by music. For example, I could not go through a working day without listening to music, there is always something playing in my office, same thing when I´m at home cooking, chilling out, sitting by the computer or whatever. I guess I wouldn´t have to have music playing, but I prefer to. Whilst going in the car it´s a must though, I litterary would go nuts without the mp3 player in the car. NUTS.

At the Bombadilian offices there is music streaming from two offices, mine and Veronicas. Apart from us it´s quiet except for Pixie barking every time someone is entering the main door... The Bombadil office are very different in what they listen too, for example, Niklas seem to be a mayor Djinghis Khan-fan, John is into Dire Straits and Blur, Mari likes Toto, Marianne dig Dr. Hook. I will have to look up what Veronica listens too, (I would do, but she has left for the day).

Back to the matter in hand; all of us are different in our way of listening, what we listen too, how we listen and why. And with that we can all learn something new from eachother, learn to appreciate other types of music and perhaps new ways of listening too it as well. Varity and an open mind will make your world larger and with that you can contribute to enlarge somone elses mind. Just by introducing them to a band or lending them a book.

It´s all about varity, that´s a fact.

Over&Out
/Your Monday blogger, Sara

We went west!

Today Monday feels a little bit odd, an odd Monday. There are a few things that contribute to My odd Monday, I will list them below.

1. It´s nice weather!!! I can´t believe it but spring is here to stay, and me, the worst pessimist in the world when it comes to Mondays and weather has actually started to believe in nice weather on Mondays again. It feels nice not having to moan about those rainy, cold and dark Mondays anymore. Some how I had talked myself into that role as the moaning-monday-mistress. But no more, no, no, no. From now on I will salut these great Mondays, filled with sunshine and blue skies. Indeed.

2. Second thing on my odd Monday list is the fact that i´m not at the Bombadilian head quarter today. I´m actually in my hometown Trollhättan, sorting todays work out from here. I´m sitting by my kitchen table and I have to admit that my office chair is more comfy than my nans old wooden chairs.... Well, well, at least I have the privelige of sitting in my old Taewondo trousers, wearing the top that I wore on both friday and saturday.... and sunday. And no one is complaining about my bad breath or my dirty top. Lovely. The reason why i´m in Trollhättan today is that i´m off to a meeting with a creative coach that hopefully can help me (and Bombadil) to arrange a small event during the summer. Nothing is set so I´m gonna keep a bit hushush about it until I have some more information... So I guess I will have to jump in the shower sooner or later anyway... =/

3. The third odd Monday thing is that John has both texted and e-mailed me in Swedish today. That is well confusing. I almost start to believe that he is actually learning to speak and understand Swedish. As I said, well confusing on an odd Monday.

Over&Out
Your Monday blogger Sara

The Bombadil Ear

Hello all Bombadilians,

I got a mail from a Peruvian guy who wrote about the feelings he felt when he found Bombadil Publishing on the Internet, and the certainty to be listened to. As he wrote, I just smiled, because I read this mail – not listening to anybody - but, of course I understand this young boy, and I’m very happy to do that. Like this boy, there are many young people who are writing e-mails to Bombadil and express that they get this same feeling, they get inspired, happy and they show their enthusiasm, and start to write the books on many different matters. At the same time I’m very surprised for this rich experience this young people give me, and not only from Latin-American but the entire world. Be sure young Bombadilians, that here in Bombadil there are several of our staff who is ready to listen to you!

Melvin González

Shaking kneecaps and poetry all night long.

Last weekend was a weekend full of poetry, creativity and nervousness.

So at last the 25th of april had appeared and The Poetryfestival in Trollhättan was a fact. We were four Bombadilians reading poetry and we were the ones opening the festival on saturday afternoon. First Bombadilian out was Jennifer Vidovic, an extremly talanted 13 year old who read a few of her poems and a short section from here collection of short stories that is under progress as we speak. She was so brave getting up on stage as the very first poet of the entire festival! When she was up there reading poetry like she hasn´t been doing anything else but reading poetry out loud, I was about to wet myself. I did not believe that I could get so tremendously nervous! Second Bombadilian out was Johanna Hansson who is getting her collection of poetry published at Bombadil Publishing within a near future, which is having a kind of scrap book theme. Cool! Johanna did also work the stage properly and did a great job reading her texts!

Then it was me and My, luckily, I wasn´t on my own. And no I don´t mean me, my and I or something silly like that, "My" is actually a Swedish name. My is an performance artist and have been reading my poetry before, so we figured; why not experiment a bit and do some reading together?! It all turned out very well, and apparently you couldn´t see my shaking kneecaps from the audience, well at least that´s what my mother told me. I haven´t decided whether I trust her or not, not yet. Last Bombadilian on stage was Kristoffer Hedberg (http://www.kristofferhedberg.se/) who is not "just" publishing his poetry at Bombadil Publishing this coming autumn but is probably more known for his music. Just couple of weeks ago he finished the recording of his third solo album. Check his website out!

After Bombadil Publishing All-Stars had done their part the Poetryfestival continued and offered lots of good, worse and brilliant poetry, texts with completely different topics and tone. The Swedish band Detektivbyrån finished off by midnight, and they really did an exceptional live performance!

So all in all the Poetry festival was a success and apparently Bombadil Publishing has already been invited to next years festival in Trollhättan, groovy!

over&out
Your Monday blogger Sara

Obsessed about it.

Today it´s all about obsessions. I think I´ve listened to the same song about 25 times, and it´s just 14.30, now that´s a bit obsessed! Plus it´s Monday, which means that I´m as usual a bit tired from getting up early in order to drive my car for 3 hours to get here. Me+tired is often not a good combination, I tend to get a bit cranky and high maintenance in general, but there is a couple of tricks one can pull to raise my mood a bit.... namely: food!!! I guess it´s all about balance, lack of energy in terms of not sleeping enough will be replaced with energy through FOOD. And coffee of course. So I guess I´m obsessing about food as well. Food and Fleetwood Mac. Not a bad combination at all actually. Silver Springs was the song anyway, by Fleetwood Mac. Tune indeed.




Fleetwood Mac - Rumours - Silver Springs

And I can´t stop thinking about the Poetry festival that Bombadil Publishing is attending on Saturday. I will be reading a few poems myself which is the result of not being able to take the Poetry festival off of my mind. We are 4 authors from Bombadil and on official festival leflets we are refered to as The Bombadil Publishing All Stars, neat! So I guess that´s being a bit obsessive too.

It´s nice weather anyway, on a Monday which I´m very suprised and impressed about, spring is here for real, at last. Welcome, please stay forever. And that´s all I have to say about that.

Over&Out

/Your Monday blogger Sara

Swanning around

Rather a short week for the second time in the last fortnight. Melvin Gonzalez, our Spanish countries coordinator has been hard at work translating the website into his native tongue, the Indian market is continuing to grow far beyond our expectations and I demolished a glass brick window.

Spring is here, and I'm rather enjoying it.



Mute swan



Coltsfoot (also mute)

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like Febreze, which is most unusual.

I´m late!!

It took me a Monday and a Tuesday morning to remeber to blog, I do apologise. But here I am, your Monday blogger Sara on a Tuesday morning!

Spring has finally decided to show up and Gyttorp is more beutiful than ever, this morning a couple of swans were swimming on the lake, so yes we got our lake back! Sunbeams and melting ice, life is good on Tuesday mornings! Plus I´m getting to know The Mary Onettes, Swedish band which seem to have recorded an album that is made just for me and my Tuesday morning at work, thank you The Mary Onettes! You see, I´m that kind of person that cannot work without listening to music, this might be a bit disturbing for my coworkers, so far no one has complained but I´m waiting for that day to come. For some reason I have a feeling that it will be Niklas that will come to his senses and ask me to turn the music down... Or I might start playing Djingjis Khan, Niklas like Djingjis Khan a lot.

During the weekend John was sorting out our future garden and our patio, plus the deck, it really looks amasing and it´s kind of nice to be able to access the deck again. Before it was covered in the hedge which John cut down in January and a small dog kennel. All this has now been removed and we will be able to have breakfast on the back of our house, facing the lake. wonderful!!

So yeah, Tuesdays are not too bad.

/Sara, your monday blogger, today at a Tuesday morning.

Trees that grow on books

Yet another week has disappeared under our noses. Melvin Gonzalez, our Spanish expert, has joined us and on Thursday Mari, Sara and I went to see a man about a tree. Or rather a man about lots of trees, it is Bombadil's intention to plant a tree for every title that we publish.



We have decided to start with dwarf beech trees, as not only are they globally endangered, but the Swedish word for beech is the same as the word for book.



This is the island where we will plant the trees.



UNESCO’s world book day is on 23 April. To mark the event, Bombadil wants, nay, needs submissions from all authors between the ages of 12 and 26 - short stories, poetry, letters, essays – and anything else you can think of, to be published within twenty-four hours! Short or long, fact of fiction, poetry or prose, it's all welcome!

This is a not-for-profit book. We will cover our expenses and then donate the profit to charity. So, we will not be paying royalties, sorry, you will just have to make do with the glory of challenging the idea that publishing is slow and unwieldy and that books take years to produce. That and the satisfaction of seeing your name in print and reaching Bombadil’s audience with your writing! People, pick up your pens, tap on your typewriters and compose on your computers and become part of the Bombadil revolution! The deadline is 21st April. Email submissions to worldbookday@bombadilpublishing.com

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like kippers.

"Just make it cheerful!"

John has been helping me out with my blogpost of today, he named my title "Just make it cheerful". That was also the answer to my question: What shall I blog about today?

Although it might seem like I have run out of creativity, that is not the case, my levels are just a bit low today. I have great plans though, since i´m planning to make a festival, a Bombadil festival! Or an author-night, I haven´t really sorted out all of the tiny details yet. What I would like to achieve is a big get-together where Bombadil-authors will get a chance to shine and read from their books or books-to-be. I would like to have liveband playing and people enjoying themselves! And of course to spread the word of Bombadil, maybe we can reach some new youngsters that would like to publish their thoughts and ideas! This head of mine is not just a hat rack, believe it or not!!

A few things has changed in the Bombadilian way of working lately; we´ve decided that we shall start having old mentors helping new mentors with the mentoring bit of being a mentor. The old mentors that are helping the new mentors that are learning to mentor shall be called Super Mentors. I was just asked to hold an introduction about the mentor-role, since we are getting new mentors =). And then a rather important question sort of popped into my mind, will this introduction make me a Super Mentor? What is expected of a Super Mentor, will I have to wear my knickers on the outside of my jeans? Will I have to get Super sight and save people from burning buildings?!

I hope not. I haven´t got the figure for blue tights and certainly not the courage that might be requested in heroic situations such as the one mentioned above. Plus I can´t stand heat, I don´t do tans, just deep red.

But if it´s required to chat a bit about the feelings of being a mentor, how to develop a manuscript and how to aproach an author, I´ll sign up straight away!

All for now,
Over&Out
/sara

From Switzerland with love

I've been out of the office for a few days this week, visiting the British Council at the UN headquarters at Geneva.



I went to see their "Turning the Tide" exhibition at the Palais des Nations. We are planning a collaboration with them which should be launched soon. More details to follow!

We still have snow, but I am assured that spring is on its way. The Bombadil vegetable garden is expecting a delivery of topsoil in the next few weeks, so assuming the ground ever thaws out, I can start to grow Swedes. And other vegetables, of course.

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like the epitome of mustiness.