Water!

I have now been down into the mine and fetched a bottle of water that was then sent for analysis. Well, the moon-mine mine, not a bombadil mine, but John was there to help me should there be any problem, and to hoist up the water bottle. (And a teddy bear that had somehow fallen into the mine and broken a leg.)

Sunny Wednesday

Hello everyone

Well Wednesday again and my and Pixie´s time to blog.
Hmm Pixie has not been around so much, well she has been here to look if I had some treat for her :-)):-)) and then going of in her usual speed. Her being around the office is nice, that makes it so I´m not missing my dogs at home all the time. I´m so used to have them around me (even in the bed under the blanket).

Otherwise it has been some nice days here, with sun and a bit warmer outside. Oh I really hope the spring will come more and more now. One thing that is springtime for me is when it is time to sow tomato seeds and some other stuff, I did that in the weekend. So the spring is on its way!
As both John and Sara has mentioned before the ants and other small creatures will wake up and they often come inside, I told them that. But at my office I don´t have ants, luckily. Hmm my suggestion with white pepper was meant to have just a little bit on the floor not the whole bottle, well it tickled your nose anyway.

Otherwise I have finished setting another book and it is sent to the printing company, very exiting :-)). At the time we have at least three books there to be printed. And more are going on.
A new thing to me is that I´m now also a mentor. Not so much to do yet but it will be some exiting time to do this thing, as I´m so new to it. Luckily I have Marianne, Sara, John and Niklas to ask if there are something that I´m not sure on. And they will get some questions, that they can be sure on :-)).

On the picture Ubbe has found some nice smell, maybe something to eat he thinks. And Pixie is investigating him to know who he is. It was Ubbe´s first day as an office dog.



Have a nice week and weekend
Mari and Pixie (a little bit)

A sunny Tuesday

Today was one of those wonderful spring days, with blue skies and slowly melting snow. It is absolutely amazing. The flowers are starting to appear and I earlier today I really felt like taking my computer outside, sitting in the sun and enjoying work and spring. It is still a bit too cold for that, but is regardless very tempting indeed.

I am not sure where time flies, but each week seems to accelerate faster and faster. We are getting more and more talented authors and we will soon be exceeding 100 authors a day. The present estimate is that in a month or so there will be over 1000 new authors a day . Fascinating, exciting and also a bit daunting. But most of all fun!

The clock is pressing midnight, and I still have a lot to do, so I will keep my blog rather short today, but promise to make it up next week.

Spring greetings to you all!
Marianne

Monday, glorious Monday!

Typical Monday today, greyish, soppy weather. The air tastes a bit like dust for some reason and the sun is refusing to come out. As usual I´ve been up a bit to early to drive up to Gyttorp from my hometown Trollhättan. The only thing that is a bit unusual is the fact that my brother came with me this mornong! His name is Erik and has just turned 15, he will spend the week with the Bombadil staff to do his work practice. He has already managed to re-do the layout of the Swedish startpage on the website and got himself a Bombadil hoodie. Not bad, I would say. As his mentor I intend to make him work, a lot. At least one power point presentation and som filming for our shorts. Since we only speak English this is a great opportunity for him to practice speaking English, he is already really brilliant and according to our dear mother, his spelling is better in English than Swedish...Interesting indeed.

On wednesday parts of the Bombadilian team is going to a college in Kinna (south of Sweden) to be interviewed by the students, well exciting!! Gonna be lots of fun to get away from the computer and meet some interested youth.

Another great thing that is happening right now is the preparations of World book day! We will have some different activities during this day and the main thing in Sweden is the "Library-book" as I have chosen to call it. The thought is to get the Swedish libraries more interactive, so we have decided to encourage people to send submissions to Bombadil: poems, novels, short stories etc. The topic is "Me&books" and you will submit through your local library, and then we will Publish the swedish "library-book". The whole event is finishing on the 23rd of April on world book day. So yeah, we've got some great things coming up. During the spring we will be visiting bookshops, poetry festivals etc. so stay tuned!

All for now,
Yours truly
Monday blogger Sara

Fast times, fast books

Friday is here again! Well, it may have been here yesterday actually. Thanks to Mari for reminding me that I am blogging today - oops. But yet another week has flown by; we're well into March and it seems like only a couple of weeks ago that I was sliding from one end of the cabin to the other on my epic and uncomfortable boat journey to Sweden (well, to Denmark at any rate, I still had a ten hour drive through several blizzards until I reached Bombadil Towers).

I'm very busy with my own projects, which I will reveal in the fullness of time. I have been working on the artwork for the Bombadil posters for World Book Day in my spare time. Niklas, having made peace with the pneumatic Ms Anderson, has been busy with some drawings of his own, in the shape of expansion plans on the back of paper napkins.

Back to the UNESCO World Book Day, which is on 23 April. We wanted to do something to mark this event, so we thought about it and decided to publish a world book, comprising of short stories, letters, poems and essays from around the world. To spice it up a bit, we will be starting the actual publishing process in the early hours of the 23rd and aiming to have the first copy of the finished book available by midnight of the same day. Will we succeed? Who knows!

Posted by John

Expansion

It'll be a very short and late blog from me this time, since we have all been very busy. Well, me less than the rest of the office, maybe, but anyway. We are expanding, growing at a tremendous pace that seem to be ever accelerating. 60 new authors in a day may seem a hard record to break, but that will happen again soon, I am sure. Another record that I do not think will ever be broken was when we added seven (7!) new countries to the Bombadil map in a single days work. Well, I had no hand whatsoever in that, so you might think I have not been busy. BUT, I have now devised a graphical expansion plan, that is here presented digitally for the first time. Please do not show to our competitors - I have heard rumors that there are sneaky people out there trying to steal manuscripts by asking Bombadil authors to send them by e-mail. Fortunately, our intranet is working perfectly, foiling all such attempts by us consistently using it for manuscript transfer, reviewing and uploading for printing.
/Niklas

Wednesday and barking

Hello out there

-Pixie come here, I have someting for you. (Mari)

-Voff, voff, sniff, sniff, sniff. I want it now can I have it please? (Pixie)

-Can you do some tricks for me first? (Mari)

Pixie laying down.

-I´m lying down, is that OK. (Pixie)

-Yes it is OK. Here you have some candy. (Mari)

-I like it. Can I have some more? (Pixie)
-No not now. You can get some more later in the afternoon. (Mari)

The electrician comes, and of goes Pixie very fast. You can hear her very well, she can sound a lot. Voff, voff, voff and voff she goes on. That can drives you nuts sometimes.

The week has been good. Well Monday was as Sara mentioned a bit "dosy". We were all up late on Sunday. But it was fun to go to Stockholm to have some good food, meeting some people that you haven´t meet before. And then going to the theatre was really fun. Then Tommy showed as around a bit in Stockholm in the dark. Then Marianne drove a bit wrong when we was going home. We got us a guided tour in the central of Stockholm:-)):-)).

On the way home it was coming more, and more snow. I think we are pretty fed up with the snow now, well at least John is. And me to actually, me and my dogs want springtime now.

Where I live we have a big garden and on the backside there will come a lot of wild animals, like deer. In the winter time we give them some food, like carrots and some other stuff. They will come quite close to the house, not afraid at all. Look at the pictures. Not so good quality on them, they are taken by a mobile phone.

Very soon Sara's book will be printed. And I have just ending the setting on another book. So it is going on in a good speed so far. And it will be really fun when we have those books in our hands. Well they are the first ones that I´m involved in so it is exciting for me.

And I have finally a bookshelf in my office. Now it is not so much stuff on the desk any more :-)).

Have a nice week and weekend

Mari + Pixie