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

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

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

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 - 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

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

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