NEWS FROM THE ISLAND

TICK-TOCK

The mornings are a little cooler now and neither the dog or the cat are in such a hurry to leave their beds, that is until they hear my call , 'biscuits!'

It's a strange limbo time this waiting for the proof copy of my book to arrive. Instead of it going to my post box over on the Mainland, it is to be couried to the ferryboat office and a water-taxi will deliver it to the end of my wharf.

This is a whole new experience of using a commercial publisher. A quick learning curve of how to do everything in a virtual world by email and phone-calls from unknown faces. For today's computer literate world, it's all easy-peasy as my children used to say, and a couple of times I had to call on the youngest daughter to bring me through contract-speak.

So different from the first time back in the '80's "when I had a dream". When the Women's Press took pity on my budget and obvious enthusiasm and helped me through the process, every stage was a physical hands on, visiting offices, meeting people experience. I supplied them with a large box filled with a carefully stacked pile of poems I had first printed with a daisy-wheel typewriter and had got photocopied into 50 books worth of pages, along with a cover design made with the help of Letraset, my choice of cover card and paper quality, which they then put together and turned into books. Then I was off to a commercial colour printer ( there were only two in Auckland City then ) for 50 copies of  the selection of photographs I had pasted onto a large card.

And finally, I am off to the local Bookstore/Stationers with forty copies of my first poetry book, illustrated with pasted-in photocopied photographs. The Gods of Dreamers were smiling on me and they were all sold within the week.