Attn Literary Agents & Publishers :-D

I don't think literary agents are a species known in Malta, at least I haven't heard of any. To publish a book in England, for instance, you'd need one of those - at least having one considerably heightens your chances of getting published. Now, to get in touch with them when you're based in Gozo is a rather tedious task. When I finished my first - and so far only - novel a couple of winters ago, I got hold of a copy of the latest "Writers' & Artists' Yearbook" and did some severe homework. Subsequently I sent my manuscript to several agents as well as publishing houses directly. Each time freshly printed, of course, and attractively presented.

Needless to say, they all came back to me (at least they do return them... Maltese publishers - judging from my experiences - don't bother!), all minus the attractive folders but plus those dreaded refusal letters, telling me off in a polite way.

In the meantime I've read it myself often enough to practically know it by heart by now. I still believe in it... And while I updated my new website's archives page I had this idea to use - once again - my online resources to maybe, just maybe, attract someone to it who could start believing in it, too. The synopsis and first two chapters can be found here.

Even if you cannot help me getting it published, I'll be very happy with your feedback - be it positive or negative. If I were just seeking blind admiration I wouldn't expose it to all and sundry in this way! ;-)

I know this smacks of moderate despair, but it really is not much more than one of those spontaneous ideas of mine, which I just as spontanously put into action. It won't hurt, that's for sure!

Eclipse! What Eclipse?!

I have no quibbles to describe myself as an unphotographer. Oh yes, I'm quite good at inventing new vocabulary on a daily basis :-) I'm totally content with my little digital camera, for which I own no special lenses or filters and whose various functions that go beyond the "auto" settings I'm happily ignorant of. I have enough learning curves to fight through at the moment, so getting into unnecessary depth of photography is not exactly what I need right now.

Notwithstanding... I was dying to capture today's partial eclipse in pixels. If you'd seen me you'd have had a grand laugh. I was giggling all by and at myself, actually - I was confident that nobody observed me! So there I was, equipped with a tripod (oh yes, I do have one of those!) and several strips of old, blank negative film.

I'll spare you more details - if you've even read this far. It was all utterly useless - even though I did see the eclipsed sun through those filmstrips! What I captured are countless suns in blue skys... no sign of an eclipse, although it was strangely cold in the sunshine. Perhaps the blue of the sky was a little more intensive than is usually the case. Or that was just my imagination.

So here are two specimen of the Mediterranean just-about-afternoon sun (12.20-12.30 pm). That it was eclipsed by the moon to about 68% - well, I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word for it! Or see a proper picture in tomorrow's newspapers. :p

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N. B. "Spank" of Malta Forums fame had the better equipment/knowhow to take photos! (Just so you have proof that there really was an eclipse! :-D

Tuesday

Good morning! I just read an interesting piece of information on my beloved Malta Forums; Melliehasimon writes:

A new survey today says one in three workers says Tuesday
is the day they do the most!Monday's are generally spent
checking E mails and recovering from the weekend....while
by the time we get to Thursday and Friday we are too busy
planning the next one to do much!

But Tuesdays are actually 'do a bit of work' day!!!

Oh well... today is Tuesday (and a glorious spring day, at that) - and this quote actually made me feel a wee bit guilty. It seems I'm destined to always swim against the tide: so far it has been an extremely unproductive day for me! But then, I've also kept unusually busy for the last week or so (including the weekend and even yesterday!), which is a reasonable excuse for my falling into an empty hole today. So if I'll still remember by then I'll watch out for my output level next Tuesday!

On a different tack, there are two little things in my life that I truly consider balm for my soul. One of these is my garden; this is a photo that I took a few minutes ago:



My other mood-lifter is music. I just received a precious gift from a fellow German who's also a Roger Hodgson fan, and who I met for the first time in Kathy's chatroom a couple of Sundays ago. He sent me two concert recordings, one of Supertramp dating back to 1983 (I actually attended a concert on that "Famous Last Words" tour!) and the other of Roger Hodgson solo, from last year. Soooooo nice!! Thanks so much, Gregor!

Summer Time

Today we switched to what is officially called daylight savings time... Most people call it summer time, which sounds less forced and a little nicer. For me it means plainly that I'll be robbed of an hour's sleep each night for the next 7 months.

Funny thing is, we remembered to turn all the clocks in the house forward by an hour before going to sleep, but I totally forgot all about it today. Kathy, forgive me: I'm going to be late for the chat because we're going to eat now instead of an hour ago...

Not only do they cut your beauty sleep short by an hour, they also turn your life upside down (and to think that today's only Sunday)!

Anyone who'd like to join us in the chatroom of Roger Hodgson's best fan-site? A warm welcome is guaranteed! Chat - supposedly - starts at 8 pm - in ca. 15 mins! But it doesn't matter if you pop in a little later. ;-)

About BLOGTWIDDLING and API keys

If the word Blogtwiddling didn't exist - well, it does now. Did I say in my last entry I didn't have time for blogging? Darn right. But then WordPress didn't leave me my peace to work (in the sense of earning money). While I had a "last look around" before closing the door on WP, I came across an item "import" - which does exactly that: it very nicely imports your existing blogger blog... And here I went again!

Importing this blog over there was a breeze. Too easy to be true, actually! So I thought, well, let's do a little more, while we are at it. Because, while blogger incorporates the very neat function of word verification, WP does not. What it does have, however, is a nice utility called Akismet that sends spammers where they belong, sitting readily there and waiting to be activated.

From that moment on I went downhill again. In order to activate it, you need an API key, which - it tells you in the FAQ - you should find in your profile page. It doesn't tell you that you're not really regarded as a registered user if you host WP on your own site. To unearth that little but vital snippet of information took a google search and subsequent browsing of several dead links, webpages and blogs. Probably I simply didn't get it because I couldn't believe it! In essence, I had to sign up for yet another account on wordpress, activate it, check out my account information - and finally, lo and behold, take possession of my precious API key. Why are they going to such great lengths to make their own users miserable? I haven't got a clue!

I'm still not convinced WP is the way to go... Gotta think about it - not today, though!!

Blogging

A friend of mine recently gave her blog a fresh look, and by doing so tickled me into trying it too. WordPress seems to have a thousand features and is tweakable at every corner. And the fact that you can integrate it with your existing website (instead of being hosted separately) gave me the final push to have a go at it.

As a natural conclusion to all of the above, I fully expected this entry of mine to be all about how to find my new blog... However, there's nothing there (and won't be in the foreseeable future)! Learning the hard way, I had to make the profound discovery that a thousand tweakable features are just too much for me right now. I don't think I'll be changing over too soon!

The result of my blog-tinkering is that I don't have time to blog today... Must catch up with my deskload of work!

****

N. B. @ Kathy:
Thumbs up for your new blog! It looks great... in fact it looks like you have loads of spare time LOL!

Għandi bżonn ta' għajnuna... OR: Help!!

Hurray! My website is nearing its completion, and that's something I'm happy about and proud of. This morning I put the last finishing touches to its Maltese version. Now, that was a drag - but I'm content with the result. - Until someone starts pointing out the lousy mistakes in it, I guess!

If any nice Maltese person among you would give it a daqqa ta' għajn and let me know of any stupid mistakes, I'd be very grateful. It's not really much text, but where I usually scrape by in spoken Maltese, the writing of it is so much more difficult. For example, is prezzijiet jirreflettu il-volum ta' xogħol correct or must it read volum tax-xogħol?? My head's been spinning, and my mind boggling...

Well, if you have a minute to spare, please do have a look and tell me what you think. Since I cannot afford to pay someone to do a professional translation for me I rely on my blog as advertising tool! ;)

Grazzi!!

The island where time stood still...

Blessings in disguise… we all know what they are, don’t we? This morning my DSL connection went bust, and at a rather inconvenient time, too. Alright, alright, there never really is a convenient time for that to happen. But I was just in the middle of something when it happened, and it was rather upsetting.

Walked around the house like a tiger, returning every few minutes to my desk to see if that little green light on the modem had come back on. On one of my rounds I passed by the enormous mountain of clothes to iron - and that was an excellent opportunity to let off my steam (oops, what a pun!) and prove myself what a capable housewife I can be. When there's no internet, that is! ;)

For these past few weeks Simba has been following me everywhere, and he made no exception for my ironing spree. And the little bugger - as usual - knew full well where to make himself comfortable for maximum effect: as soon as the blackest t-shirt was done he decided that was the best bed to shed his hairs on...

Well, my clothes mountain has shrunk by two thirds, and the internet's working now. Better get back to work before it goes off again. Funny, though, how this island time and time again proves the slogan right, which some bright spark (many years ago!) invented to promote tourism: "the island where time stood still". Makes you wonder how broadband internet made it to our shores at all!

Light

Not that much to blog about today; it was pretty similar to yesterday, which was freaking around with my site and trying to make it look good and hopefully interesting too... Inbetween I sent and received e-mails and it just so happened - I can hardly believe it - that I seem to have sold one of the articles that I had already prepared for the upcoming Gozo Plus (which isn't to be now) to one of Malta's major Sunday mags. Needless to say: that lifted my spirits by not a few inches!

All in all I can say I'm feeling good right now. I'm actually finding out that there really is always light at the end of your tunnels. So thank God for the tunnels, because one wouldn't notice the lights!! And thank God also for the great people who are holding that little light for you...

Well, I'm going to finish my glass of Chateau de Font (made in Gozo, of course!) and will call it a day. Take care everyone! :)

Glorious Spring

Finally fulfilled my promise and took a few pics in my garden. And what a beautiful spring day we were given today. It's 4.30 pm and still 17°C! Now just 5 degrees more and I'd be content. Unfortunately, though, it won't take more than a couple of months until we all start moaning about the heat again...

Here are the photos. I really wish I could attach the flowers' smell with them - it makes you want to stay outside all day!



It's a shame one has to work...

In my study grow no flowers

So much for my wanting to take photos of my garden today. I didn't even see much of the weather today. I worked for something like 10 hours straight on my website, partly due to my own stupidity with a little nastiness thrown in by Frontpage, and all rounded off nicely by the application of Murphy's law.

I actually managed to turn the whole site utterly upside down - that's what you get when you want to handle a website in three languages simultanously without making a proper plan first. The saddest part is that I discovered several hits during my worst time on the site!!! I hope that their first impressions of pages not found, pages moved and funny links won't have sent them away forever!

Well. I think I'm on top of it now, although I've put the Maltese version on the backburner until the rest is sorted! If you take a look and find some funny problem with the site, PLEASE do let me know! It's here, by the way... ;)

Back to the weather: I think it was actually pretty good today as I could glean from an online weather report. I mean, ok, I could see from my windows that it was sunny, but I had no idea about the temperature! Tomorrow I will take those photos...

Today's blog title is a play on the title of a Maltese novel called "Fil-parlament ma jikbrux fjuri" (by Oliver Friggieri), which translates to "No flowers grow in parliament". I actually meant to write the title in Maltese too - but when I was searching for a Maltese word for "study" my dictionary came up with "il-kamra fejn wiehed jistudja bil-kwiet u bil-gabra". For the benefit of my English-only speaking friends: That would have caused my title to be something like "No flowers grow in my room where I study quietly and with concentration". I do sympathize with people who use English words within the Maltese language...

Before every Maltese language aficionado in (and out of) this country is tempted to rip me to pieces: I apologise, just in case, because of course I am aware that this was a somewhat stark exaggeration. But I had a lot of fights with the dictionary today, and I'm just in that silly mood. There's nothing I can do about it - and neither can you! :p

Busy times

I don't seem to find much time to blog at the moment. I'm busy setting up my own website, I'm even attempting a verzjoni bil-Malti! Apart from that I've been working on translating the English webpages into German for a local company, and on top of it just got a new website to set up for another company. Work in earnest on the latter will not start until some time later this year, but it sure is nice that things appear to be moving!

In the few idle moments I allowed myself today to clear my head a little, I logged onto Maltaforums, where unfortunately the proverbial sh*t was hitting the fan, and heavy discussions about banning or otherwise of a particular member were underway. Too heavy for me to join in and cope with at this moment in time... I was only seeking some fun - sorry, today that turned out a wrong number!

At least that left me with a few minutes for my blog; alas, there's nothing to report really. Which is a good thing for a change I suppose!

If one doesn't know whatelse to talk about, the weather always comes in handy (tried and tested!) ;-) Well, it's still so bloody cold, and without my laptop warming my lap I'd be under my quilt by now! It's really hard to believe that only 6 days are left till spring. The garden doesn't seem to mind the temperatures though: there is a profusion of colours coming up; all the freesias must have decided to wake up from their winter sleep at exactly the same moment! It's so beautiful, and definitely good for your soul! Will try to remember taking/posting a photo tomorrow.

Good night!

Breath of Fresh Air!

If I had opened the two windows of my study simultaneously this morning, and perhaps left the door open to boot, the resulting mess of flying papers would have made me freak out! Well, it's a bit too chilly for such a draft anyway, so the solution in preparation for a fresh spring breeze in here is: THROW EVERYTHING OUT before it's too late!

And that's what I've been spending my time on today. Actually I started my metaphorical spring cleaning last night: Out of the blue, about thirty minutes before witching hour, a little fairy whispered into my ear that I'd better get my own website. Oh wonderful internet age (no tongue in cheek here!!), which knows no office hours: scagozo.com is already up - if not exactly running but rather crawling under construction. Can't do everything at the same time now, can I?

Hope you like the background; I chose a photo that I took myself (see my blog a coupla days ago!) of my favourite place and photoshopped it just a tiny little bit. Somehow it's a perfect match for my mood right now, a little melancholy, delicately laced with hope...

As for the background melody, I'll probably have to change it soon... It is one of my favourite Supertramp songs, "Even in the quietest moments". But I've been hearing it almost to the extent of overkill this morning, while I was setting up the webpage, previewing it every few minutes!

At the moment, I'm in the middle of the literal part of my clean-up action. And funny enough, it actually is a relief to throw out the enormous amount of Gozo Plus-connected paperwork that's been occupying every horizontal space in this room... Even Simba didn't like my desk anymore!

Gozo Plus

Not much to blog today, but I was just informed that my ex-partner in the Gozo Plus venture is going to continue on his own. Strangely my blog about its demise made the round extremely quickly, apparently due to a plug on Toni Sant's blog. So there: Gozo Plus might be rising like Phoenix, but without me. Good luck Chris!

In Limbo

To soften yesterday's bout of acute depression a little, George and I spent an hour in Xlendi. Out of all places in Gozo and Malta it's the only one that till today can actually instill an illusion of being on holiday in me, probably because it was the first place I fell in love with when I came here so many years ago.

Today I'm feeling slightly better, if a little "lost". We watched the formula 1 qualifying sessions, which I actually greatly enjoyed. Forza Ferrari!!! Other than that, I have been thinking about what I'm going to do. Qaminante reminded me - without really knowing it - of the novel I had started last year, then stopped because I had no time nor frame of mind for it. Perhaps I should really dig it out again. Now is probably the best time ever for that! Thanks for the hint Qaminante! :)

The weather, once again, matches my mood. Very grey, pretty cold, awfully windy. Unfortunately we did have to leave the house in order to fulfil our citizen's duty that is voting in the local council elections, which meant that I more or less carefully straightened my hair and appearance, only to arrive at the polling station in a totally ruffled state. Sometimes I envy those housewives who do daily errants outside their homes without giving a second thought to their appearance - coming to think of it, not even a third - oops: should that read "first"?!

Local council elections also mean today one shouldn't turn on radio or TV. If I hear one more statistic about how many votes were cast in how many hours or how many less dutifully inclined citizens did not bother picking up their voting documents at all, I'll scream. Right now, Fleetwood Mac (Dreams) is much better for my nerves! Thunder only happens when it's raining....

R. I. P. Gozo Plus

After a short but painful disease, suffered - more or less - in silence, Gozo Plus, the only publication exclusively for the island of Gozo, was buried today. I actually shed a tear or two. This mag was my dream come true - only very few people know just how big a dream it's been! But to publish it was sheer luxury; even if everyone and his brother suspected us to get bloody rich from its revenue, I assure you that we did not even manage to get paid for hours and hours of hard work it cost us.

The bitter part of it is that I only ever heard praise for it. And then there were all those who were happy to try and get a free ride. Some of them were original enough to get it, others made me want to cry and scream with frustration.

'nuff said. It's part of my past; hopefully I've learnt some lesson from it, which I'll keep in mind for long enough not to fall for my dreams again. It really doesn't feel awfully great when you end up with all that egg in your face! (That one's for all those who - rightly, it seems - doubted my ability to pull this off...)

Well, now it's off to pastures new. Need a ghostwriter anybody? Or perhaps a website? It would appear that I'll have lots of more spare time available now. Go on, don't be shy, drop me a mail! ;-)

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N. B. Things have changed slightly, although not for me. Please see my blog entry of 12th March.

Feline company

Now that George has to work more or less regularly again (he was off since November to get rid of an astronomic number of overtime hours he worked last year!) it's me and Simba "home alone" practically all day.

Simba is very particular in his taste of humans... First and foremost, he loves Daniel. I have the suspicion he sees Daniel as his "mother", because in the early days of his life Simba lived almost exclusively in Daniel's room.

Second in line is George. If Simba is left with the choice between my husband and me - with Daniel out of the picture - it's my husband, no questions asked. (The only question here is, why he sort of dislikes me so much!)

And now... If Simba could speak, there's no doubt he would say something like "Oh, alright then, guess it's just you and me left - let's make the best of it!" At least that's what his facial expression says when he joins me in my study, which he funnily enough does every single day. I reckon I ought to feel honoured by the company he gives me. I mean, there is nothing to stop him from retreating to other places in this house. Perhaps he doesn't dislike me that much, after all!

What's another year?

A sunny day today - just the usual weather for my birthday. Indeed, it does make me feel good on my birthday. Always! The dark thoughts usually come before or after (never mind the weather!), but on a sunny 4th March I'm just fine. Go figure...

George and I went shopping together this morning, and for a coffee afterwards. Then brunch (we never ever manage to take breakfast like "normal" people...), followed by my chocolate birthday cake. Yummy! An especially nice touch was the idea to leave out the number of years we're celebrating.

Oh yes, and my dear sister phoned from Berlin. She came up with the idea that we should have a big party for my 50th - and promised to come to Gozo for that occasion... that subtle hint rubbed it in better than any number on the cake could have done!

So this is it: 47 years in this world. That's quite a long time. It would be less depressing if one didn't have to be reminded at every corner how quickly time is passing by. Not to mention one's inability to simply forget certain numbers and dates! I can't even forget that my first schoolday was 19th April 1966... weird, that!

In all honesty, I don't feel 47 - as a matter of fact I couldn't put into numbers how old I feel. When I came to Gozo for good I was 25 and I don't feel that much older now. Not even much wiser, although I've learnt a thing or two but nothing much in terms of earthshattering discoveries you expect to make when you think of the future at the age of 18!

Tonight we're going to have dinner at XiXi in Xaghra. Chinese cuisine at its best! My son asked me if I minded him not joining us... Well, what could I say? I reckon, that's where the real sting of ageing lies: Suddenly our kids aren't kids any longer!

Thanks to all my great friends from cyberspace who sent me messges, mails and cards. This one from Wade stands for my good mood today!

Life...

I've just read the blog of a cyber friend, who seems like a great guy. He recently lost his job, moved temporarily in with a friend, and as of next Saturday he'll find him self both job and homeless. What do you say to someone who finds himself in such horrible circumstances?? I can't comprehend how something like this can happen, much less how it must feel when it happens to you.

What it does, though, is make me feel really shitty about my moaning and being unhappy with my life. I have been guilty countless times of ignoring my blessings and seeing only the "bad" things in life - which sometimes even turned out to be those famous blessings in disguise in the end!

Greg, I hope your life turns around - and soon!

One of those days

Today is one of those days that I'll be glad to see the last moment of before diving under my quilt. I spent most of it trying to come up with about a total of 300 words. No, it's not hard to produce 300 of them - but it's a bitch to construct something intelligible and meaningful without going over that threshold! ;)

Other than that I'm going through some trouble I really don't need right now but can't talk about in public. Moreover, if I told you what today's Super5 numbers were, you'd understand that to me it felt like they were laughing right into my face! Well, probably they would be right to do that too... (Just in case you actually want to know the numbers, you can find them here :p )

Last but not least, I received my dad's birthday card today - he always sends it early to make sure it won't arrive late. In fact I expected it today! It reminded me that another year is over and I still haven't got more to show for it than I had for the one before. And time's running out, if slowly so.

I'm feeling soooo sorry for myself today. If you feel like it, send over some hugs. I need them...