Today’s challenge involves promoting a post of our blog. What’s interesting about this task is that Darren points out that sometimes as blogger we fail to realize that promoting the whole blog, or the front page of our blog might be counterproductive, as possibly it is too vague. So he recommends selecting one or two posts a week to which you can give an extra push. In his post on the theoretical aspect of this lesson, Darren suggests a variety of ways in which we can promote our blog post. Here are a few that I think I can do:

• Putting your post on Twitter or Facebeook – I use both of these social networking tools, so this is something I can do.
• Promoting the post on Digg or Stumbleupon – I have registered accounts with both, so I can do this too.
• Comment on other people’s blogs – in this case I would not actually insert a link into the post, but I would get an automatic link by leaving the comment. And if the blog uses Commentluv (a Wordpress plugin that automatically displays the most recent post the commenter published, but which allows them to also choose a different post) then I can select the post in question for display. If people like the title, they will click on it.
• Using your Newsletter – I have a newsletter, so I can send out my newsletter with a plug of that post so people will click on the link.

This is about all I can handle. I mention in the title of this post that this task is especially challenging for me. I am not very good at self-promotion. I would rather just do my thing and wait for people to pick up on it on their own. This blog is slowly climbing the Google Page Rank ladder. I already have a Page Rank of 3 (for those who don’t know what this means, Google has a complicated system based on incoming links and pages loads and a bunch of other things, that it uses to rank websites. It takes some time usually to just get a Page Rank of 1. The highest is 10). But I find it hard to say: hey, look at me, I’m so great, my blog is so entertaining and interesting and informative, you have to read everything I write, and subscribe and get the newsletter and give me lots of money through different channels… But I have to get over that to a certain extent, because I am trying to build an internet business. Turtle^haus may not be “it.” I may end up building another blog entirely (I’ve been thinking of a cooking blog lately, because I’m on a diet and can’t eat anything. When I’m on a diet I get the urge to cook like crazy, so I can have at least the vicarious pleasure of seeing my family and friends enjoy the food I make. And I love food so much, just handling it… well, you understand why I’m fat, don’t you?)

Oh, my post of choice… let me select one. Hang on, I’ll be right back.

Okay, the post I am going to promote is the first segment of my 3-part interview with my friend Amanda Ackroyd, of Leeds, Yorkshire, England. Amanda and I went to boarding school together and have recently found each other again. We are as close today as we were then, in fact I would daresay that we are closer now. She is a writer and I very much want to help her publish her novel. So, here goes, the post I am promoting is: Author Interview: Amanda Ackroyd – part I.

(By the way, a suggestion that is frequently given by Darren and other blogging gurus is to occasionally link to your own posts inside newer posts so as to lead your readers back into your archives.)

I will report back in a bit. Off I go!

Okay, I’ve done three of the four tasks for both blogs (this one and Life+Web), and the Newsletter will have to wait until after the family Easter get-together, for which I’m leaving right now! Happy Easter everyone (or happy whatever you celebrate)

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This is the first post of a series on bloggers who inspire me. It is also day 2 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge, and today’s task is to write a “list post.” As far as possible, I have decided to adapt the tasks of the Challenge to the posts I had already scheduled on my editorial calendar. Since there are so many things about my friend Mario Kluser that I admire and find inspiring, I think it will be very helpful to take the approach of a list post.
I have already spoken extensively of Mario in this blog. I interviewed him with reference to his two novels (and there are podcasts to go with his interviews), and I have linked to his blog on various occasions. I have never talked in depth about our friendship or about our professional relationship, nor have I really spoken much about his blog.
His blog is called Mario LIVE! and the tag line is “The People Blog.” No tag line has ever been more apt. For those who may not be familiar with our history, as it is a good story, here’s a little background. Mario and I met on Twitter in November of 2007. I was new to Twitter and Mario was one of my first two friends. Both he and the other friend, an Italian, went on to become “real life” friends, and visited me in New York in 2008. Both will be friends for life. What induced me to ask Mario to be my friend was his tone. I could sense kindness, warmth, friendliness and a sense of humor in his tweets (amazing what 140 little characters will reveal about a person), and I was right. He is a kindred spirit, and as they are hard to find, it’s a good idea to befriend one when you spot one.


After a short while we began to correspond via email, and we soon discovered that we were in similar professional situations, both looking for work in our chosen fields and not finding it in the current economic climate, and both in the process of deciding to make our own fortunes so as not to have to live with the pain and suffering of depending on an employer. We would both rather depend on the world at large.

He was already experienced in internet marketing, with AdWords, AdSense, landing pages, squeeze pages, etc., but knew very little about blogging, having always been under the impression that it was for whiny teenagers who just wanted to put their “diaries” online, and things of that nature. I, on the other hand, had already had a very intense blogging experience and was in the process of launching what are my two current blogs, turtle^haus and Life+Web. I told him a little about what I thought blogging was and could be, and he was convinced. Thus, Mario LIVE! was born. Mario and I discovered that we have complementary skills in business and complementary work experiences, and decided to join forces on special projects. Now, in addition to our blogs, we are helping a few corporate clients increase their online visibility and bring more clients through the virtual doors of their companies.

So, without further ado, here are 6 of the many reasons why Mario of Mario LIVE! inspires me:

1. He is a DOER and not a TALKER. I told him I was launching a blog and he was still quite skeptical. Within two short weeks, his blog was up and running, with a dozen posts, active comments, and so on, while mine was still heavily in the “design” phase and only had two or three posts. He has now well surpassed 100 posts in 6 months, and has now started a lovely newsletter;
2. He is absolutely AUTHENTIC (an overused buzz word in the world of blogging) in a way that is difficult to find;
3. He is not afraid to EXPRESS HIS OPINION and has no concern for what others might think or whether they may disagree with him. Don’t misunderstand me, he is not defiant and “in-your-face.” Quite the contrary. He is willing to bare his soul and share his innermost thoughts and feelings with the world, and does not let fads, trends, political correctness or the media influence his voice;
4. He is GUILELESS, CANDID, and POSITIVE. This does not mean that he never has negative feelings or that he is immune from being a little depressed or overwhelmed at times, but he always bounces back, and has a SOLUTION-ORIENTED attitude. Rather than dwelling on what is going wrong, he very quickly focuses on HOW CAN WE FIX THE PROBLEM AND MOVE ON.
5. His sense of WONDER is still very much alive. This is perhaps his most unique characteristic and one I find very winning. In fact, I think it is what sets him apart from other bloggers and will ultimately make his success online. It is a CHILDLIKE (not to be confused with childish) quality that allows us, his readers, to see his eyes widen in the face of extraordinary events or personal actions, and our eyes widen with his.
6. He KNOWS WHO HE IS as a person and as a blogger.

As with most bloggers, Mario did not immediately know what his blog was going to be about, what his MISSION was. At first he had a ton of different categories. He still has several categories, but nowadays they are much more coherent and the parts meld nicely into a recognizable and very pleasing whole.

His blog is tagged as “the people blog” because Mario finds inspiration in the actions of others. And these others don’t have to be celebrities. Anyone is worthy of a blog post, even a conversation overheard at the bus stop can inspire a story. But what he has to say is always interesting. Human interest, I would say, is the main focus of his posts. His stories are always heartfelt and entertaining, and I am always sucked in right from the opening sentence.

An overview of the things that interest him:

• The human mind
• Hypnosis
• Depression and overcoming it
• Friendship
• Overcoming life’s obstacles
• Personal finances
• Curious, fun, amazing things he finds surfing the web
• Music
• Photography
• Videography
• Films – he writes regular film reviews
• Books – as a writer he also reads a lot, and writes book reviews
• Animals – he has a pet rabbit, some hamsters (or is it gerbils?) and a cat. His girlfriend has a dog. They are sometimes featured
• Twitter
• Social media
• Motivation
• Television shows (he wants to be a corpse on one of the CSI shows)
• Fulfilling his dreams – this is another reason I should have mentioned. He is not afraid of pursuing his dreams, and he puts them right out there in the universe. I have no doubt that he will achieve most if not all of them
• New York and Brooklyn (where I live, now a second home to him)
• People and their stories.

When I get discouraged or a little “blocked” with my blogging or our online ventures, he always knows what to say to encourage me and get me going again. We motivate and encourage each other, we are each other’s biggest fans. At the end of his visit with me in November, on the day he was leaving, he said, “From now on, if they ask me whether I have any siblings, I will say yes, two: a brother in Germany and a sister in New York.” That’s the kind of person he is.

I am proud to be his friend and adopted sister, and so very happy to have found him. Thanks, Mario!

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As you may remember, I recently wrote a post inspired by the great Darren Rowse. Something he said inspired me to refine and restate my mission, or rather, the mission of this blog. Said mission turned out to be the telling of stories in all their different facets and mediums: written or told stories, stories in pictures, on film, and the stories that our lived-in spaces tell about us.
I left it at that. It was a nice long post in which I waxed poetic on how stories are at the basis of everything in our lives and how much we all enjoy telling them and hearing them (or reading or watching them unfold on stage or on a screen). A few days went by and I realized, Dammit, I forgot to mention another really important part of my mission! So, drum roll please, seat yourselves so as not to be taken by surprise. Here is part 2 of my mission statement:

To bring the untold stories I find into the world, disseminate them, give them light and air, allow them to be enjoyed by any and everyone.
This includes unpublished novels, such as Scarborough Baby, by Amanda Ackroyd, which I am publishing serially on a weekly basis, short stories that may have won awards but never been published, poems that have been hidden in shoe boxes in the bottom of closets… you get the idea.
So my desire is not merely to tell stories that belong to me or that are already well known but I think merit another word or two. No, I long to help orphaned stories find the light of day. Or help people who are a little timid bring forth their stories.
There, that is the other half of the mission.

This brings me to today’s mission. The great Darren Rowse has launched a project (he has done it twice before, but it’s slightly different every time) called the 31-Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge.The title of the challenge is self-explanatory. The way it unfolds is that the participants receive a daily email for 31 days, linked to a blog post on Problogger, with instructions for the day. The registered participants may receive a few odd tidbits that the regular readers of the blog do not, but on the whole you may follow along by reading the blog every day almost as well.

So I registered for the challenge, and today is Day 1! Today’s task is to write an Elevator Pitch for our blog. This too is fairly self-explanatory. Imagine you get onto an elevator and you bump into someone whom you’ve been trying to reach but who never gets back to you, or someone you have never had the courage to approach (we’re talking about networking here). Well, this person is now your captive audience, but only for as long as it takes to ride the elevator up to whichever floor he is going to (if your floor comes first, you will of course skip your floor, get off with him, and then find a way to slink down the emergency stairs back to your original destination floor).

It’s a great idea to have this pitch ready, so that at a moment’s notice you can regale your audience with a 30-second spiel which enlightens them while also tantalizing them. They should get off the elevator feeling that they get the general idea, but also intrigued, thinking, I’m going to log onto my computer and check this blog out, it sounds interesting.

The main and best reason to have an elevator pitch is, of course, for yourself. It will help you become laser focused on your mission, so that everything you do is guided by the Primary Objective (I know, I watch too many TV shows). Over time, and not even too much time, this practice will give a shape and direction to your blog which will make it immediately identifiable to your readers. And this is good, because it begins to establish your BRAND.

Darren says all this and more in his post, but I want to add just one little thing. Another great reason to have an elevator pitch is to increase your ability to believe in yourself and what you’re doing. Blogging is only a little less lonely than writing books. There is some interaction with readers and other bloggers, but when you are writing in your own little room, you are all alone, and having the elevator pitch that you can repeat to yourself when doubt starts creeping in helpt tremendously. It makes you think, oh, yes, this is real. I am doing a real thing for a real reason. Lastly, but not leastly (hee hee), the elevator pitch, though brief and to the point, is not usually actually delivered in an elevator. So if you learn to deliver your pitch in 30 seconds (and you should really practice saying it out loud, because it is meant to be spoken, like epic Greek poems, and not read), without requiring a paper bag to gasp into at the end, then when the time comes to say it to someone you have just met at a conference or party, the pitch will be able to breathe, will come to life, and will make perfect sense to the person you are speaking to.

After all this, would you like to hear my elevator pitch for turtle^haus? Well, hang on to your hats, here it is:

Nice to meet you, my name is Ilaria and I write a blog called turtle^haus (that’s H-A-U-S). It’s all about stories. I focus on three mediums of expression: writing and speaking, architecture and design, and film and theater. If you like to hear, watch, read stories and look at people’s houses to understand something about their lives, then you should become a reader. I also help un- or little known storytellers find an audience.

I can deliver it comfortably, with pauses for expression, in 24 seconds. Please let me know in the comments what you think! See you tomorrow!

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In Chapter 4 of this exciting novel, Harv has now discovered the identity of her biological father, or at least she thinks she has. Her feelings in a turmoil, she leaves her parents’ house without saying goodbye and sets off to at least get a glimpse of the last place where her father was seen alive. The plot thickens. Enjoy this new chapter.

Chapter 4

I slumped back down against the box, thinking about him, about my mother. I was confused, overwhelmed by a vacuous, empty sensation like something fundamental was being sucked from me. My head felt like a polythene bag full of water, blood thumping in my ears, I was holding myself tight, my forehead fretted until my head ached.
I knew I had to get away before Angie came home and without Ken seeing the trouble in my face. There was no way I could face them and a worse thought was swilling horribly into my consciousness; that it could have been Angie who had stabbed him.
It was crazy, but it would explain why she had refused to tell me anything, when it was now so clear that she had known the truth all along. It was not possible that she could have had sex with a man who was murdered almost immediately after he had supposedly dropped her off and that she would somehow forget about it. The press cutting in my hand, and the ones which I knew must have appeared afterwards, informed me of this truth. It must have been all over the papers at the time, including pictures of him. This murder would have been the total talk of a small town like Scarborough. There was no way that she could have missed it.
From the diary entry, it seemed perfectly possible that nobody who Angie knew, either friends or parents, had seen them together. No one had seen them as they drove through town and she had waited in the car while he went into the B&B. They had gone to a pub, but not locally, and had sat where no one could see them. The rest of the time they had spent in his car, her arriving home so late that her parents would not have seen her return, possibly on foot, possibly covered in blood.
These thoughts seemed ridiculous and dramatic but why had Angie not gone to the police with information? If she had, it would have become part of our shared history, something she could not have kept hidden from me; a huge and horrible and very public legend in her life. She was a key witness, maybe the last person to see him alive and definitely the last if she had been the killer.
It was possible that they had got into a fight in his car on South Parade, he might have pulled a knife, tried to rape her and she had somehow turned the knife on him, stabbing him and stabbing him until she managed to run from the car and home under the cover of late night, empty streets.
Maybe she had fabricated the details in the diary, so if the police discovered that she had been with him that night, she could show them the diary where she had already cleverly written her own girlish alibi, a clean and safe version of events, just in case.
I pushed these thoughts away; Angie was too lightweight, too transparent to have held or maintained a lie of this magnitude. But murderers came in all different guises and as long as no one had seen them together, Angie would have been a piece of hay in a haystack so far as anyone identifying her as the killer went. As long as she had kept her head down and clear, acted normal and said nothing to anyone, it was perfectly feasible that she could have got away with it.
No one would suspect a seventeen-year-old girl. She had washed away the evidence and the passing of time would calm her and allay her fear of being caught.
Angie must have calculated that to have come forward, would have splashed her face all over the papers to identify her with Myra Hindley style mug shot, as the cheap girl who had fast sex with a stranger in the back of a car four hours after meeting him in a Spar shop and that four hours after leaving him, according to her story, he was brutally murdered. If guilty, she would have been branded by the press as some kind of black widow spider; seventeen years old and pregnant by the man she had executed immediately after their casual mating. She would have gone to prison and I would have been born there. How would they have branded me? It was unthinkable.
If Angie had killed him, I wondered how she would have behaved the next morning, or where she would have hidden her blood soaked clothing. I imagined her sitting at the breakfast table, Brian reading the paper while his daughter ate toast and cereal self consciously wondering whether what she had done was written all over her face. Whether what she had done had made the early edition, and any minute now, her father would push the paper across the table at her to show her what she already knew. After breakfast she would have gone to work, measured feet and chatted about the weather, with the colours of a hideous death still hanging like a fresh bruise in her aura and perhaps, a crescent of dried blood screaming her guilt from under a torn fingernail.
Innocent or guilty, those few weeks of Angie’s life must have been intolerable. I wondered how a seventeen year old had found the resource to cope in the face of what had unfolded two days after that final diary entry.
If Angie was the killer, then the horror of her crime would have been painfully internalised along with the terror of being caught, scared that she would trip herself up with the lies which would have sounded to her so thin and obvious as she sidled them cautiously from her tight mouth. Every morning and night, her fingers panicking through rattling newspapers which appealed for the information that only she could give. Angie, wide eyed and waiting for the knock at the door.
If she was innocent, then she would have probably been scared and bewildered, her initial hurt at his not calling exploding to a heart sink of horror as she read the front page splash in the local evening paper. Maybe she had heard about the murder as a flutter of delicious gossip on the street. I wondered how she had found out and how she had set her face at that moment to mask her inner turmoil and how she had then decided what to do. Four weeks later, or thereabout, she would have been sure that she was pregnant. But what was she? A scared victim or a murderous receptacle?
I was horrified by the thought of his body cooling with death while his still warm and vital sperm were squirming and fighting their way toward Angie’s seed; bloated and ready in her hot, fertile young belly. Tiny energetic specks of half-life seeking to create a whole, as his own force ebbed away. I wondered if it were possible that he had died at the very second that the remarkable fusion had made me alive. It chilled me.
It was a lie. “I can’t remember. It was dark.”
I had to get away, to get some perspective. I felt raw, my emotions seething at the surface. I couldn’t grieve for a man that I didn’t know but I could grieve for the lost possibility and I could make Angie pay in some way. I didn’t know how yet.
Fuck her and fuck her lies. My rage toward her felt tight and white. Something had broken that would never be mended. Her lies had undermined the very foundation of our relationship. I was no longer sure of who she was and what I believed about her.
I tore the two pages from the diary, folded them around the newspaper cutting and pushed them into my shirt pocket. I wiped my face roughly on the striped cloth and wrapped the diary back in it, then repacking her Pandora’s Box, as accurately as I could remember, I pushed it deep into a corner, obscuring it with the heavy carton of pigeon magazines.
Grabbing the carton of photographs, I closed up the loft and quickly packed my weekend things into my small bag. I could see Ken with two friends in the garden; he was holding a bird, spreading one wing to full span while the other men bent intently, gazing at the fan of feathers as he explained something to them.
I scribbled a quick note and left it on the kitchen table saying that Philip had called and that I had had to get back to York quickly. I said that I hadn’t wanted to disturb Ken as he was busy and then I hurried like a thief to the car, chucking my stuff like swag into the back seat.
I revved the engine a little too hard, my tyres spinning gravel and pulled into the road, terrified that Angie would be just turning into the street to see me leaving, my face a seething sneer of resentment and my eyes flashing too much white.
At the end of the road, and without a plan, I turned my car away from York and toward South Parade burning up the hill toward the tourist side of town, the little engine screaming in third gear. I wanted to see the scene of the crime, sit outside The Golden Sands and walk over the pavement where he had stumbled to see if I felt anything, maybe a shudder or a warm connection.
I drove into South Parade and was confronted by a skein of painted signs, which stood at the gate of nearly every property, both right and left. They stretched the length of the straight road with the air force blue sea in the distance, a tiny block of horizon, like a full stop.
I drove slowly, my head scanning to and fro, and there it was, about half way down on the right hand side; The Golden Sands, painted toffee and white and insinuating itself boldly and bay-fronted onto the street.
I found a parking space just beyond it and pulled in, switching off the engine and turning to stared up at the windows, trying to make myself feel something. It was everything a Bed and Breakfast should be; a glass porch with a ‘vacancies’ sign and a spider plant, a small breakfast table in the front window and a compact and healthy palm tree in the gravelled front garden.
I sat there for about ten minutes wondering if he might have parked his car in this exact spot and sat exactly where I was sitting now, his eyes seeing the same view that my eyes were now seeing. Was this where he had defended himself from the cutter, scrabbling and struggling for his life? I got out of the car and went to the door.
As I turned the brass doorknob, I could imagine his hand unable to find traction, blood and liquid fingers sliding on smooth metal. Red smears and droplets on gold.
The hallway was bright and clean; practical patterned carpet and textured cream and white wallpaper. I thought about the smeary handprints, the ‘traces of blood found in the entrance’, which would have drivelled along the walls and up the stairs. They might still be there, hidden under layers of old paper and paint.
A gilt half-circle table with a glass top held a couple of letters and a silk flower arrangement in shades of peach. There was a small desk, more like a lectern with a lower shelf and a small brass bell with a galleon handle standing on a laminated sign, which directed you to ‘Please Ring for Attention’. I picked it up and shook it; its silvery ringing was strident in the deathly quiet and I waited. A fire door swung open from what I guessed was probably the kitchen and a middle-aged woman came out wiping her hands on her apron and smiling a smile of welcome. Now, I didn’t know what to say. I was aware that I was gaping and probably appeared confused and weird. We stood like this, for a moment, each of us waiting for the other to begin. She was pink and breathing heavily.
“How can I help you?” she eventually asked, still smiling. She wiped a clean red hand across her dewy forehead, “Sorry, I’ve just been kneading bread. Takes it out of me these days”
“I wondered if you had any rooms available next week?” I lied.
“Next week, next week, now let me have a look. Is it a double or a single, arriving when and for how many nights?” She reached a booking diary from under the counter and flopped it open to the following week.
I thought quickly. He would probably have stayed in a single, “A single, for two nights from next Wednesday if that’s possible?”
“Yes, we have a couple of rooms, but they may fill up quite quickly at this time of year.”
“Is there any chance I could see one of the rooms?”
“Of course.” My heart was thumping as she reached under the desk again and pulled out some keys.
As we climbed the stairs I built my story, explaining that the room was actually for my parents who were coming to stay in Scarborough for a few days. I was lying with the confidence of a used car salesman now but in my desperation to get up here, I had tripped myself up.
“Won’t they be wanting a double then?” she asked, looking bemused by my inconsistency.
“Yes, how stupid of me, sorry, they probably will. Well, they definitely will. Yes”. I felt foolish, was aware that I had flushed, and consciously decided to offer no explanation.
I was desperate to see the single rooms but at this point I didn’t really care what I was shown; I just wanted to be upstairs in this house, to get an eyeful of as much as possible. I kept talking and the woman kept answering, but it was as if the words were coming from outside of me, like I was narrating the scene from offstage.
I was detached, my eyes scanning the décor like I was scrutinising the accommodation for cleanliness, the woman obviously thinking that I was acting peculiarly. I was looking for a sign; a speck of blood on a skirting, a smear on a door casing or an indelible stain seeping through wallpaper. If I had found one there, what would I have done – asked if I could scrape up this tiny DNA daddy on a flake of paint and keep it close to my heart in a matchbox? Suddenly I felt mad.
The woman opened the door into a street facing room with plain nets blowing at the open window. I stood, wondering now what the hell I was hoping to feel or connect with. It was probably not the actual room and might not even be the right house. The original Golden Sands could have disappeared in a change of ownership, the name re-emerging here in a completely different property.
“My parents stayed at the Golden Sands on their honeymoon, twenty four years ago, and they asked me to see if it was still here. That’s why they’re coming back, for their anniversary”. This was my best lie so far and I hoped it would lead me neatly to the question which would confirm whether this was the right house.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, “I wonder which room they stayed in?”
“I’m not sure about the room but I think they said it was a Mrs Carr who was the landlady.” I tried to look convincingly vague.
“Yes, that’s right, she was the owner two before us; I think she went to live with her daughter in Sheffield when she sold up. That must be what…” she counted mentally,
”twenty years ago now, because we’ve been here nine and the people before us had it for about seven”.
I wanted to leave. Now I was here, the location confirmed, I felt nothing except sad. I asked for a business card and said that I would let her know about the reservation later in the day after I had spoken to my parents. Leaving the house, I felt a tugging and a pang of abandonment but I think that was because I felt obligated to feel something.

Stay tuned next week for the next installment of what is fast becoming a nailbiter. See you soon

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I had not seen Alessandro in about fifteen years, even though for a time he dated my historical best friend, Anna, in Florence and they have remained good friends to this day. Anna has kept me abreast of his general doings and goings on over the years, but I had no idea that, 1) he speaks near-perfect English and 2) in addition to being one of Italy’s top-ranked gardeners, he is also a writer.
On a recent trip to the U.S. to promote his book and re-establish some of his connections, he graciously agreed to meet with me at the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx and gave me a charming interview. Here is the first part of the interview, with some photos of the gardens he has worked in.

New York Botanical Garden

• Alessandro-Tombelli-18-minsAlessandro-Tombelli-part-I-11-mins

Ilaria: I’m here with my friend Alessandro Tombelli, whom I’ve known for at least 20 years or something like that, and he’s from Florence, as am I. He is an extremely talented and well regarded in international circles gardener. Recently he decided to write a memoir called The Garden Connection: Life and Adventures of a Tuscan Gardener. As I understand it’s a combination of a personal memoir and a professional memoir, is that right?
Alessandro: It is.
Ilaria: Okay, so, Alessandro, tell me a little bit about the genesis of the book. Why did you decide to write it, how long did it take you…? Walk me through the process.
Alessandro: I decided to write this book a few years ago, when I was in Texas. Thanks to my garden connections it happened that I was in Texas, working with a landscape architect from Dallas, and I got involved in all these travels and big projects in the area, and I was thinking about how a few years before I was in Italy, I was in Florence, doing some gardening in these historical gardens. And then I was projected in these big, big goings on in Dallas, Texas. I thought, well, you know, this would be a nice story. It would be a nice story for a book. And all the travels I’d done between and all the people I met. I was there because I met somebody, and I met somebody through somebody else. So there was a real garden connection.
Ilaria: That’s great. And between the time that you first thought of writing the book and the time you wrote it, what happened? Why did it take you several years to actually start writing it?
Alessandro: Well, it happened because I’d been thinking for so long but I was not brave enough to write it. And also you have to concentrate on writing. I remember when I was thinking about this book, when I was taking notes, I had some ideas… Oh, this would be a nice idea for my next book. But I kept it for years before I decided to write it. And one day I wrote something like maybe ten pages, and I kept it maybe for a year or two, I don’t remember exactly. And it happened that I was in North Carolina once, and I was taken to a readers’ group, and when I realized that I said, “Oh, listen, I’ve written something. I have ten pages of my book.”
Ilaria: Quote, unquote.
Alessandro: And this friend said, “Oh, you should bring it and read it.” So I had my ten pages saved on a thumb drive, so I printed them out, I took them to this reading group, and everybody was listening. They said, “Alessandro, we like it, you should write this book.” I said, “Come on, I’m just a beginner. Maybe I should have a ghost writer, someone who writes for me.” Because I’m not a writer, I’m not an author. And they said, “No, you have to write it down.” And my friend, this friend who brought me there, she was…she is a writer, she’s an author. And she said, “If you write the book I’ll edit it for you.”
Ilaria: Wow.
Alessandro: So that was a big kick. So I came back home and after a few months, we corresponded, you know, asking if she was serious about it. And she was committed to doing it.
Ilaria: That’s a very big commitment.
Alessandro: Yeah. And she had no idea, poor Jack, how big a job she was going to do for me. Because I do speak a little English, but my written English was terrible. Anyway, I spent one summer, I was home in my little apartment in Florence, and I started writing. Spending like six, eight hours per day, because I was committed to do it. I had to do it. And she said, “Alessandro, you must finish it by the end of August, let’s say.” So I did it.
Ilaria: And how long did it take you altogether?
Alessandro: Altogether a couple of months.
Ilaria: That’s not long at all.
Alessandro: Yeah.
Ilaria: That’s wonderful.
Alessandro: And many things happened in between. I mean, the computer crashed once, so I had to rewrite part of the book because I lost everything. And a few other things. But anyway, I did it.
Ilaria: It’s so funny to see this: “San Donato in Collina and England.” [Come dire, Compiobbi e New York.
Alessandro: No, fa ridere, eh.] It’s very funny. I tried to put some humor in it.
Ilaria: You know what’s so funny is that I relate to this so well. Because this is my life. I’m half Florentine and half New Yorker, and I can relate… and when I was little I lived on a farm, you know, where I picked the grapes and the olives…
Alessandro: So you know what I’m talking about.
Ilaria: …and the chestnuts. You know, all that stuff.
Alessandro: Were you there in 1985 when the big chill came?
Ilaria: I was. Oh, yes. When all the olive trees died.
Alessandro: They died. I remember at that time, I was not really involved in agriculture then, or horticulture either. But I remember the countryside around Florence had changed completely. Because if you look at Florence from the hills… Well, Florence or the Tuscan countryside… you have this kind of silver gray of the olives.
Ilaria: Of course, I know exactly what you mean, that silvery color.
Alessandro: The season after that big chill was brown. It was awful, awful.
Ilaria: I know, it was so shocking. All that snow. I had a Vespa then. It was buried under the snow, I mean completely buried, for three weeks. When finally the snow melted and I could get my Vespa out of there, I kicked it to start it, and the metal pedal [la leva della messa in moto, fatta di ghisa], it just broke in two from the freezing cold. It was so cold. The first few days there were no buses, because Florence was not equipped. Florence is not equipped to deal with that kind of snow.
Alessandro: Nowadays it’s still not.
Ilaria: Yeah. But it never used to happen like that.
Alessandro: No, it was a special year.
Ilaria: And I had to go everywhere on foot. I had to walk everywhere. I lived in, near via dello Statuto, in via Paoletti, and I had to walk from there to the University… which at least then the University was in Centro and not out in the middle of nowhere where it is now. So it was within walking distance but it took me three-quarters of an hour to go to school every day. Wow. So tell me a little bit about the book.
Alessandro: So the book starts about my life in Florence, the beginning of my horticultural interests, some friends, some private life, people that I met at that time, people who made me to be as I am now. And then from the time I spent in England. It was the year 1987 when I decided to spend some time in England. So I moved there and I worked for one year in a very important garden called Wisley Garden. And there the horticultural world opened for me. It was a revelation, you know. “Oh, I see what gardening is now.” It was not just for the plants, for the garden, but also the people. So I met all the gurus at that time of the English international gardening. People that I had never heard of before. And you know, together with the other students we were going to meetings, we were going to see gardens during the weekend. So it was an amazing year for me. So back from that time in England, when I was in Italy, I was a bit shocked, you know, because from the highest level of horticulture in the world, you go back to Italy, back home, and you do nothing like that. So I was doing some little gardens here and there, but nothing very important. So I spent a couple of years, I was quite depressed. And I wanted to go back to England, I wanted to go back somewhere else. I was thinking about Australia, I was thinking about South Africa, but nothing happened, until I had the opportunity to work in a rather well known garden in Tuscany. It’s called La Foce. So I was able to work in this place. La Foce is a garden in Tuscany. It’s in the Val d’Orcia, the Siena province, and it’s one of the most beautiful gardens in Tuscany, nowadays. So I became the head gardener, and there again I was happy. Because after my time in England I could do some practice. So I was involved in the restoration of the garden, in the upkeep of it, and I was absorbed in all these beautiful things I was looking at, you know there were concerts in the villa, nice people, interesting people, riding horses. So many things, it was really one of the best times of my life. And that opened another door. La Foce opened the door to Villa I Tatti, which is another important villa in Florence, which is owned by Harvard University.
Ilaria: Of course.

La Foce

I Tatti #1

I Tatti #2

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Dear Readers,

it is with great pleasure that I announce the opening of my very own aStore on turtle^haus. Having my own Amazon store will allow me to promote my own recommended products. It’s easier than going to Amazon directly, because it’s not overwhelming and you will see only the products I have either mentioned or reviewed here on the blog. Here are some advantages:

• If you are in the mood to buy a book or a gadget, rather than going to Amazon, you can click on the “swimturtle’s store” button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and browse. If you trust my recommendations, then you will certainly find something you like;
• You don’t have to ever to go Amazon to finish your purchase, as there is a shopping cart right in m store;
• There is an additional and very nice benefit for me: not only will I get a commission on whatever you decide to purchase in my store, but if during the same session you stray from my store to anywhere else in the Amazon site and buy something, from a spoon to a high definition TV, I will get a commission on that too. Amazon’s reasoning is that if if had not been for me you would not have gone to Amazon that day, so since you came in to the site through my “portal,” as it were.

So by all means, step right up and make all your Amazon purchases at turtle^haus. You will be helping me and the economy!

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So my friend Cristina and I took a break for brunch and then got right back to chatting about the pros and cons of having an Amazon Kindle. The more we talked, the more intrigued I was by the implications of the Kindle for publishing, authors, and readers. So, without further ado, here is the rest of my fascinating interview with Cristina.

Ilaria: So, what are some of the other benefits of owning a Kindle that come to mind?


Cristina: Well, in addition to the benefit of being able to read fiction again, I have noticed something else in my behavior. I read a lot of non-fiction, both for personal interest and for professional reasons, but there are many books that, while I find them interesting and intriguing, I don’t necessarily want to own in my bookcase forever. And I don’t feel like spending $24.99 for them, either. Let’s take Outliers, the latest book by Malcolm Gladwell. I was curious about it and had enjoyed his previous books, but I didn’t necessarily want to spend the money. Besides, I just don’t have room to keep every book I buy on my shelves, my apartment is too small. So, for $9.99 I downloaded it to my Kindle and now I’m reading it on the train and at other odd moments here and there.

In my other house in North Carolina my partner and I have two walls full of books, I just can’t afford to keep buying them. What is ever going to happen to all these books. So I also give lots of books away using BookCrossing. Kindle helps me be more efficient in my consumption of books.

Then there is another great advantage that I just thought of. The Kindle allows you to download the first chapter of any book for free as a sample. Two goals are achieved simultaneously this way: 1) If you are curious about a book, you can find out right away if it’s for you or not, and 2) instant gratification. I am curious and also anxious (have I mentioned that I’m a little neurotic?). If I find something I like, I have to have it right away. Before I could order a book on Amazon, but then I’d have to wait for it to be delivered. Now I can download the whole thing to my Kindle in 60 seconds. I love this feature. When I find something that interests me, I have a great sense of urgency, and the Kindle allows me to satisfy this urge.

Ilaria: How about other newspapers besides the Times?

Cristina: We Italians are woefully behind, in this respect. I would love to be able to read Il Manifesto. I would gladly pay for the subscription, because it has always been one of the ways I “do my part.” But there are no Italian newspapers on the Kindle yet. There are several English, French and German papers, but no Italian ones. We need to catch up.

Ilaria: What about Italian books?

Cristina: No, nothing, that I know of. When my sister visits from Italy, she brings me a few books, or I can order them from Internet Book Shop, but the shipping costs are prohibitive. The funny thing is that I haven’t stopped buying books. I still buy one or two books a week, and I get some for free as a faculty member, but perhaps I am digressing here.

Ilaria: Not at all. This reinforces my point that the Kindle is not detrimental to the publishing industry. It doesn’t stop people from buying books. On the contrary. A book you might be interested in but not enough to pay hardcover money for becomes affordable on the Kindle, so you do buy it. And books are like cherries, you can never have just one — you buy one on the Kindle and you have more money to buy the one you really do want to have on your shelf, so you buy that one too. It makes for abundant reading.

Cristina: And then there is another thing. Since I don’t have a lot of time for fiction, I have a lot of novels that I have started but not finished. The Kindle is very lightweight [editor's note: 10.2 ounces], so I don’t have to choose which of the novels I’m in the middle of reading to take on the train. I just pick up the Kindle and then decide what to read once I’m in the subway.

Ilaria: This definitely resonates with me. I have been late to appointments before because I spend five minutes staring at the pile of books on my bedside table and agonizing over which one to bring. I often end up with two or three, and a heavy bag.

Cristina: Between books, folders and papers, my bag is huge and extremely heavy already. Before the Kindle I would most of the time give up on reading for pleasure while commuting because I just couldn’t bear to add one more weight to my bag. And there’s another thing. I commute during rush hour, naturally, so half the time at least I don’t have a seat. The Kindle allows me to read with one hand, so I can read standing up. Before I would resent my book because I would have to leave it in my bag, it would be weighing me down, and I wouldn’t even be able to read it. Those days are over. Also, it has this new technology, iInk, which makes it more like a book. The Kindle is not backlit like a computer screen, so it requires an external light source, just like a regular book. This means that it does not tire the eyes the way the screen does. It’s just like reading a book. And the Kindle 2 is going to be much better. I have already got one on reserve at Amazon.

Ilaria: So my friend who was afraid that the Kindle would kill book sales was wrong?

Cristina: Absolutely. In the old days, for instance, when the first big bookstore chains started opening up all over the place, we used to say that “another bookstore will kill the libraries.” That is not at all true. They feed each other.

Ilaria: The more we read, the more we read. The more channels we have through which to read, the more we read.

Cristina: And it can be seamless, from one place to another, one medium to another. You end up reading constantly.

Ilaria: Thank you so much, Cristina, for this lovely conversation. The Kindle 2 is going straight to the top of my wish list!

So, in summary, here are the advantages of owning a Kindle:

• Being able to move from one environment to another without having to stop reading;
• Being able to read things you normally would not have time for, like fiction and newspapers;
• Being able to download a sample chapter for free, which allows you to find many more books to read;
• The instant gratification of downloading an entire book in 60 seconds;
• Portability and reduced weight in your bag;
• Being able to carry many books with you at one time with no added weight, all inside the Kindle;
• Being able to buy books you ordinarily would not want to spend the money on, because they are less expensive [editor's note: there are some books to which this does not apply, but most bestsellers are $9.99];
• An esthetically pleasing reading experience with no eye strain due to backlit screen, since the Kindle relies on external light in the same way that books do;
• Being able to read standing up, even when there are no seats on the train, with one hand;

Since this conversation with Cristina I have been thinking quite a lot about the Kindle and how it can help the publishing industry and authors as well, and something new occurred to me. One of my goals with this blog is to help new authors become published, and another is to extend the “shelf life” of previously published books. In future posts I am going to explore both of these possibilities. I know that authors who self-publish can get their books published on Kindle, or at least that is what I have heard, so I am going to investigate this avenue. But I also want to find out whether books that are out of print might get a second life on Kindle, without having to be reissued on paper. Then, if interest grows, there can also be another print run. The possibilities are endless! Stay tuned, because we have not heard the last of the Kindle, by a long shot.

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I am happy to present the second half of Chapter 3 of this riveting novel. In the first half of the chapter, Harv found Angie’s diary from when she was a teenage girl, and realizes that by reading it she may uncover the identity of her biological father, something which Angie has kept a secret from her for her entire life. Harv has always found this inexplicable and frustrating, and is determined to find out the truth. This is where events are irretrievably set in motion, and from here on out, there is no looking back. In the second half of this chapter, as Harv reads on, she makes a terrible discovery. Enjoy! And get ready to start biting your nails.

CHAPTER 3b

After this episode, the diary continued in much the same vein. I thumbed through quickly, seeing some empty pages, a sprinkling of capital HURRAH’s and the regular red asterisks.  There were some dull little write ups on nothing in particular and some containing more, deeply difficult to read descriptions of sexual forays, none of them any more sophisticated or satisfactory than the Gary Smythe affair.
Angie clearly hadn’t learned very fast. In fact it appeared that she hadn’t learned at all. She had ridden the exhilarating waves of teenage sex and carelessly given love, with a gung ho naivety, lining herself up again and again to be plunged into troughs of despair and disappointed tears.
I sat back and let the pages riffle through my fingers like a flick book and suddenly understood the significance of the red asterisks; each one flagged up a night when she had gone all the way, like notches on the headboard, keeping score. As I flicked through they flashed up with shocking regularity, about once a fortnight in fact.
It was like a competition. Had she and Sal and Janice just been going hell for leather to notch up the biggest number?  Did they all have a go with the same ones and compare and allocate points?  I felt sorry and a little sick.
I had been eighteen when I had lost my virginity and that had been to James, a serious boyfriend, and we’d waited for at least a month. Then for the next three years I’d only had sex with him. Now, here was my mother, going at it like it was a living, with all and sundry.
The first four months of the diary, she must have totalled what? I checked back, making a count of the asterisks, one, two, three, four, seven.  Seven – nearly one a fortnight.  I shook my head like a disappointed head mistress, appalled at the promising girl who has let the whole school down so badly.  It was no wonder that she had fallen pregnant with this level of reckless activity. For God’s sake, how old had she been? Fifteen? Sixteen?
I flipped back to the beginning, to see the year that the diary had been written, but could find no reference until I noticed two pages stuck together and reamed a fingernail around the gold edging, peeling them apart to reveal the year as 1974.
This was my apocalypse; a gasp escaped as if I had been shocked and an urgent plume of adrenaline fluttered its way from under my ribs to stroke at my heart with a hot, feathery rush.
If there had been a million red asterisks in the first six months of that diary, they would have paled into insignificance with the one that I thought might be twinkling on or around the top of pages dated mid June. I leafed slowly back through the diary turned Pandora’s Box; April, May, steeling myself for what I might find there, all the time knowing that the truth might be far more unsavoury than the fantasy, knowing that it might be better if I didn’t know the answer.
I had been born on Thursday March 6th 1975. Therefore, according to the conception calculator I had looked at on the internet, I had been conceived on or around the thirteenth of June 1974.   Apart from the fact that Angie was my mother, this was the only absolute regarding my conception; that, around the middle of June 1974, my mother had coupled with the man who was probably my father.  This date had secretly felt as significant to me in the absence of any other information, as a birthday.
Part of me hoped that this page of potentially huge implication would be blank and nothing would have changed.  The alternative might be the discovery that a goon like Gary Smythe had spawned me, with my mother’s revolting detail leaving me feeling like a seedy voyeur at my own grunting and youthfully enthusiastic fertilisation. I didn’t want to read that the residue of this disgusting mating had just been some ‘stuff’ which had been wiped off a moquette cushion in a dreary living room, that I was the bit that got away. If that was what I found there, I would have to live with that horrible truth and never be able to tell, and every time I saw Gary Smythe I would wonder if he knew, find myself looking for myself in him.  I would never go out in Scarborough again.
I began to turn the page, eyes half closed as if I could just feed myself a blurry half version of this enormous truth until I knew whether I liked it or not.
At the top of the page, blazing like a beacon was the red asterisk. Wednesday June 12, 1974.  The entry went on across the 13th and over to the 14th. There was a flattened cigarette packet, black and still shiny with a gold JPS insignia. On the white inside was written, ‘Angie, Easy Rider, get my dad’s special copy. I’m in it.’
The words were heavily underlined and there was a scribbly forward slanting signature that I couldn’t make out. I put my hand to my mouth and began tentatively to read.
‘It’s two a.m and I’ve just got home. Going to feel like shit tomorrow but I don’t care ‘cos I think I’m in love. AGAIN!!!  Had the weirdest night. Left work and stopped at the Spar to get some fags.  There was this bloke in there and he was absolutely gorgeous. He had on this shirt that made your eyes go funny and he smiled at me when I was buying my stuff at the counter then he smiled at me again when I left and said ‘bye’.  I looked awful. Had my shitty uniform on, but at least I’d rolled up the skirt a bit to make it shorter and tied the horrible shirt in a knot at the front. I hung around outside, waiting for him to come out. Pretended I’d lost something in the bottom of my bag. I really, really wanted to talk to him. Just as he came out, some Tampax fell out of my handbag. REALLY EMBARRASSED.  He was laughing and he came over and picked them up. He had a nice Newcastle accent and he smiled a lot. He said he was on his way to Hull and he had stopped off in Scarborough because he’d never been. He needed somewhere to stay. I started to give him directions to the B and B’s and all the time, he was staring at my mouth and his eyes were sort of twinkling. It made me feel excited and uncomfortable all at the same time. HE IS GORGEOUS. It was like he couldn’t take his eyes off me. It got me all confused and shy because he knew what he was doing. I kept saying ‘Stop it,’ and he kept saying ‘What?’ and smiling more at me. I felt like a little kid.  I said I’d show him where the places to stay were instead of telling him and he said he’d take me home after. We got into his car, it was better than dads and I took him through town. I was hoping that someone might see me in the car with him, but we didn’t see anyone.  Drove up to South Parade and he went into one and booked in, then we went for a drink out of town on the way to Whitby and had fish and chips at a pub. We sat behind a pillar so the barmaid couldn’t see me in case she wouldn’t serve me.  I phoned Mum and Dad and said I wouldn’t be in for tea. Told them I was with Janice. He’s really funny and into films and videos. I’ve never even seen a video machine.  Kept going on and on about Easy Rider. He says I need to see it.  Wrote it down on this fag packet so I’d remember the name of it. Kept teasing me that his dad had a special copy and he was in it. I don’t believe him but he kept saying it was true. His name’s Martin Simmons and he comes from somewhere near Newcastle.’
I looked again at the flattened JPS packet. Now I could see that the signature said Martin Simmons.
‘On the way home we stopped in Peasholme Park and he started kissing me, then we got in the back of his car and we did it, it was fantastic and he kisses really well.  Afterwards we stayed in the back for ages and he told me about Newcastle and talked about music and stuff.  He’s really, really sweet and gentle and he’s going to take me out again while he’s here. We smoked nearly forty fags and he had got some beer from the Spar, so then we went back in the front drank some cans and sat up at the park till half one. He wanted to take me home, but I got him to drop me near South Parade and I walked down the hill. Didn’t want dad to see me get home in his car. Said he’d ring me tomorrow. He’s got green eyes and long dark wavy hair and a really nice moustache. Had to sneak in so Dad didn’t know what time I got home on a work night. Think it’s O.K.  Can’t wait till tomorrow.’
There was the same unsophisticated giddiness in Angie’s telling of the story but none of the coarseness which had made some of her other encounters seem so unclean.  He had stayed with her for hours after they had ‘done it’ and they had shared cigarettes and beer and conversation. He had taken her to a country pub, he had fed her and at the end of the night, he had wanted to take her home and when he had left her he had done so with a promise of more.  I felt a sense of warm relief.  Martin Simmons from Newcastle with green eyes and a shirt that makes your eyes go funny is going to take her out again.
I quickly checked back through the pages, wanting to be sure there had been no other sex which might interfere with my now desperate desire that he was the man I had been looking for.  There was an asterisk a week and a half before, someone called John Clarke; I supposed that he could be a contender but it was more unlikely I convinced myself. I wanted Martin Simmons to be the one. The last sweet and significant piece of my jigsaw clicked into place, somewhere so visceral I couldn’t locate it.  It made me shudder.  My picture felt complete. This was all that I had needed; a few precise brush strokes and a name. I liked him.
What I now understood was that Angie, having committed this act to paper, must have known all along that he was most likely to be the father. So why had she refused to tell. When she realised that she had missed a period, she had to have known; the facts had been in front of her written there in black and white. I couldn’t understand why she had refused to tell me anything about him, given that there seemed to be a lot less to be ashamed of in this encounter than there had been with the rest of them.
I excitedly turned the page to the fifteenth and then the sixteenth but they stared back glaringly and humiliatingly blank.  He had let her down.
I felt as deflated and sorry and disappointed for Angie’s empty pages as she probably had.  They whispered a sad defeat. There was none of the excuses and angry expletives which had followed her earlier let-downs. He had been nice to her, he had been different and she wanted to see him again but he hadn’t phoned.
I turned the page, and another and another, wanting so badly to see one of her big, shouting HURRAHS!  Instead there was nothing but a piece of newspaper folded into a yellowing square.
I opened it carefully, the creases so well pressed that it threatened to break apart as I unfolded it; The Scarborough Herald; the top half of the front page with a colour photograph and a blaring headline, ‘Man found murdered in Scarborough B&B’.  The page was dated Fri. 14 June.
The newspaper picture showed a typical Scarborough guesthouse, but with two policemen standing guard at the wooden front gate.  A Ford Escort squad car was parked in the street. The pavement had been taped off.
I read the article. ‘The body of a man, not believed to be a Scarborough resident, was found yesterday morning at the Golden Sands Bed and Breakfast on South Parade.
The owner of Golden Sands, Mrs Edna Carr, who became suspicious when she found blood on the walls and in the entrance to the property on Thursday morning, made the grisly discovery at about 6.30 a.m.
The man who is thought to be in his early twenties and who, police report, was repeatedly stabbed, bled to death in his room.  Blood found in what is assumed to be his car, lead police to believe the attack may have taken place elsewhere.
Police say they have no clues at present although Mrs. Carr told police that she thought she heard him returning at about two a.m on Thursday morning.
The victim is 6’1” tall, of slim build, with dark hair and a moustache.  Police are appealing for witnesses who may have been in the vicinity of South Parade in the early hours of Thursday morning or who may have seen anything suspicious.’
And I knew it was him. Martin Simmons. I felt winded. I involuntarily stood up, my emotions oscillating between shock and disbelief and a selfish little thrust of horrible disappointment.  Within those two small pages he had been a possibility. Alive and warm, talking, laughing and eating and having young sex in the back of a car and with a turn of the page, he was dead. Not just dead, but murdered, stabbed repeatedly.  How many times was repeatedly?
The word ‘repeatedly’ hung in my head and suddenly felt sickening, the imagined sound of blunt fist and sharp blade again and again driving into the minced flesh and adrenaline engorged organs of the man in the shirt that made your eyes go funny, with his green eyes and dark wavy hair.
Had he put his hands up to protect himself while the blurry image of his murderer flickered before him like the fragmented frames of a terrible film?  I curled my hands to my chest, the backs of my knees zinging as I imagined the shear and sting of flashing metal as it slashed through the tautness of the tendons in his fingers, rendering them useless red jelly on bone.
I imagined Mrs Carr the next morning, knocking, ear to the door, calling with increasing urgency, her concern growing until unable to stand it any longer, she made a proprietary stand and gained entrance with her master key.
Did she find him lying across the bed? One dried up eye, a slit of white staring at the wall, cheek stuck to the pillow with a foamy splutter of bloody spume coughed out and fanning from his mouth and beginning to dry black at the edges.
Where was Angie in all of this? My head felt as if infused with menthol, airy and clear as images flashed graphically and in full, horrible colour. I shook myself to make the pictures go away, feeling nothing and yet everything, the silence of the attic roaring, as the man I so badly wanted to be my father died on the little piece of yellowing, dried up paper which trembled in my hand.

Stay tuned next week for Chapter 4, and don’t forget to comment.

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Dear readers,

the time has come for turtle^haus to have a newsletter. It will be biweekly, issued on the first and third Friday of every month (if there are five Fridays, I get one off). This is a momentous occasion, because it will help me to bring the blog to a new level of professionalism. Here’s what you can expect to find in the newsletter:

• A roundup of the blog’s activity for the two weeks prior to the newsletter issue. This is very useful for those of you who are too busy to read daily posts (daily? hahahahaha! — I know, I’ve been remiss of late, but that is only because I was cooking up all sorts of wonderful new things for you!). You will get the highlights and links in case you want to go back and read something cool you may have missed;
• Special content that is features only in the newsletter — this could take the form of an interview, a poem, an article, a review… you name it;
• Links and tips relating to things I have found interesting on the web — other blogs, websites, new programs, services, social networking tools, events, etc.
• I may also put in videos, pictures and other goodies from time to time.

You will find the subscription form in the header of the site, so come one, come all, subscribe to our wonderful new newsletter. And don’t worry about spam or any of that nonsense. I will use your email address exclusively to send you the newsletter and possibly at some point in the future to communicate with you about projects of mine you might be interested in. See you in the newsletter!

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When I first started blogging, I followed quite a few blogs, without much of a strategy. In other words, rather than following blogs that might help me become a professional blogger, I followed blogs I liked, for pure enjoyment, and from which I derived inspiration in the beginning for various posts. As my interests span Architecture, Design, Literature, Writing, Reading, Stories, People, Art, Film, etc., I followed a variety of blogs centered around these topics.

Then I became a little more serious, and realized that 1) I could not spend all day reading other people’s blogs — there would be no time left to write my own, and 2) I needed strategy, as well as content. It’s true that most blogging gurus will tell you that content is king, and it is, but I have so many interests and there are so many things I consider of vital importance, that for me the hardest thing was zeroing in on what I cared about most, or rather, what I wanted to share with others in a way they might find helpful, entertaining, inspiring, engaging and might want to subscribe to so they wouldn’t miss anything. In other words, I wanted to create something other people would care about as well.


So I became much more selective with the blogs I read. I unsubscribed to almost all the blogs I was following, and in a way started over. I chose blogs about blogging, about strategising, and about making your blog into a business. I don’t know whether my two blogs (this one and Life plus Web) will become full blown businesses, but I want them to be professional, to be set up as businesses. Whether they themselves generate income or lead to something that will generate income, in either case they are part of my online business presence. A big part of it.

In essence I did know that the overall “theme” of my blog was stories, and in a roundabout way, I did express this in my “About” page and in my initial posts.  Recently, however, I read a post by Darren Rowse, the author of Problogger, Twitip, Digital Photography School, and a founder of b5media, that made me stop and think. Darren is definitely one of my mentors and gurus.

In this post, which I admit I can’t seem to find right now, Darren spoke about being asked as a young man to write what he would like his obituary to say, many years from now. In other words, how he would like to be remembered. The implication for a blogger is not nearly as dramatic, but can be stated as: what is your blog really about and what would people say about it?

As my regular subscribers and more or less regular casual readers may have noticed, this is the first post in a while. I took a brief hiatus because I was deeply and furiously involved in the setup and organization of a joint online venture with my dear friend and business partner Mario Kluser, an author featured in this very blog, a blogger, and a discerning and clever internet marketer. During the time that he and I have been feverishly setting up our joint venture, and I have therefore not been blogging, I have been meditating and thinking about the blogs, about their importance to me, and their potential importance to my readers. So today I am restating my mission with this blog.

There is no such thing as objective reality. When I was younger I used to fight this notion with all my might. After all, it was an objective reality that my childhood had been miserable, that I left home at a very young age, that I had to fend for myself in this cold, cruel world, and so on and so forth. Or was it? More importantly, does it matter if it was?

The Rashomon quality of life is what makes it so fascinating. For each of us, what we remember is real, our version of what happened is an objective reality, but as we have seen time and time again, no two people experience anything in the same way. This is why the same book can elicit so many different reactions. We each project onto it, interpret it, react to it according to our own personal bias. We see everything through our own personal filter. And yet, so many stories are universal, in the sense that many of us identify with them, see ourselves in the protagonists, recognize them as our own, or partially our own.

I have a quality that I can’t quite name, but something about me induces people to tell me their stories. People open up to me, mostly spontaneously. It’s true that I ask questions, but the key is, I am truly interested. I love people, young and old, rich and poor, of all creeds, colors and extractions. And I can’t get enough of their stories. I can empathize with almost anyone and anything (except extreme violence and hatred). I am keenly aware and convinced of the fact that as humans the things we share greatly outnumber those that separate us. These days everything makes me cry, a mother’s love, the loss of loved ones to war, a child’s gesture, heartstring-tugging commercials, and this is because I am immediately transported to the root of the matter: how much hard work goes into being a mother, the struggle of raising those children knowing they may be killed in warfare, the fragility of the child’s happiness and contentment.

So, stories — this is what this blog is about.

And there is another aspect to this core theme of story. The way, or the medium, through which these stories are told. Each human being is an artist. Whether or not we think of ourselves as artists, that is what we are. We are each the creator of our life’s story, and we each do it in our own way. Those of us who embrace the inner artist and choose to follow the artistic path, however, are the ones who grapple with the impossible task of expressing their unique and special story.

Another thing I am fascinated by is translation. I have been a professional translator my entire life and therefore have had a long time to think about this subject. The truth is that every single utterance, every expression, every telling, is a translation. Each artist chooses the medium in which he feels that what he sees inside his head is most accurately translated for other people to decipher.

So speaking is a translation of our unworded, unformed thoughts.

So is writing, drawing, painting, sculpting, music, theater, film, and so are the buildings we build, the gardens and landscapes we create, the cities, the interiors… everything is an attempt to translate what we see with our mind’s eye into something other people can see, hear, touch, taste with their physical senses.

The eternal struggle to bring out what we have inside and communicate it to others, this is what I find endlessly fascinating and what I want to share with you, my readers. At this very moment I am attempting to translate my own message so that you can understand it. How am I doing?

I hope you will come with me on my journey, while I explore the many ways in which I and the people I encounter along the way tell our stories, and the story of what it is to be human.

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