The second coffee.

 

Mother, daughter and sons on the way to Thai café.

The second coffee usually treads a familiar path. Normally it comes after the first. But, normality took a break this morning. You have no idea how complicated the publishing of a book can be. I wonder if the homeless under the bridges or highway overpasses are the results of those desperadoes seeking self-publishing? I am so sick of reading my stumbling words with  ‘a kind of this’ and a ‘kind of that’ getting repeated so often. I’ll delete them, but the rate I am deleting, soon I’ll have a brilliant book with no words.

With each change the family gets  consulted. Their patience will be rewarded in lofty credits in the book if it ever manages to escape the US taxation laws or the pernicious PDF Word Files. One major decision was to change referring to Mum and Dad to father and mother. Back through the whole thing again re-edit and change to the latter. Was it a good move? At 3am I get up and micro-wave a mug of milk (60 seconds) add a spoonful of wattle honey, climb back in bed afterwards and hope for kindness of mind and some sleep.

I made a fatal mistake on reading (Googling) up on back-page blurbs. The general idea is to give the background to the book with the minimum of words. ‘Less is better,’ is the sage advice. In any case, the expert blurb writers warn never more than 250 words. I spent days on that alone till my daughter took over and wrote a very good one. She reckoned my own blurb concentrated too much on colonoscopies and wacko erectile dysfunctional benefits. ‘Just give a hint, don’t rub their face in it,’ she advised.

The torture of the night gets relieved when the first of daylight manages to climb through the bedroom window. It is first- coffee time and this alone heralds a new day. I  leap out of the bed and put on the kettle.  The leaping is not as vigorous as it used to be. The kettle has a whistle and the water heats up by gas. I try and prevent too much of the whistle in case it wakes H who normally gets an extra half hour in. Often breakfast doesn’t happen till well in the morning, usually after 11 or so. This is where to-day’s the second-coffee comes in. Most times we put in a solid couple of hours upstairs on our computers, abusing the Australian Government on the ABC’s on-line forum.

This morning second-coffee was unusual. The same amount of boiling water is put on about three table spoons of ground coffee. I rattle the cups and spoons so Helvi upstairs knows the coffee is in the making. This morning I was perhaps a bit more absent than normal and instead of taking Helvi’s keenly awaited cup of second coffee, I carried a complete two litres of milk upstairs instead. I did not even realise what I had done till I handed it over.

‘You are going ga ga and slipping,’ she said, and laughed her head off.

Size does matter.

I would have thought that twelve is too small. What do you reckon? I have been steeped once more in pondering about the publishing of the book. Not just the font size but also the book size. On our bookshelves there are a huge variety of different sized books. For this first attempt, my H is advising to remain modest. A small sized book.  Perhaps a Penguin size? I prefer at least a bit bigger because it will have photos. In books shops the  customers seem to be mainly of advanced years, or at least advancing years. The younger ones are outside pressing the IPhone to their ears or simply grazing or licking something out of a paper bag or box. Often both. In any case, many readers seem to wear glasses indicating visual impairments. So, font size is important. On the size of the book, 24.50 cm x 16cm seems a good size.

And then the issue of a ‘blurb’. This is designed to attract the reader and buy the book.

Please,feel free to write a blurb! You will be acknowledged in the book.

So much to consider. What do you think of a font 14 for text and 18 for headers? The copy right issue and ISBN number? With known writers there are all sorts of glorious descriptions like ‘undownputable, mesmerizing, haunting, life changing, Booker-prize nominated pending, Nobel Prize potential, explosively written, after-life guaranteeing, transgender promising, avertible impossible, Baha’ism enriching, Horatian hinting qualities, and so many more.

The other issue is of even greater importance.The Australian Government has decided that the 30 refugee babies with parents and families that were taken from that poo island of Nauru to Australia to give birth or suffering from health issues are to be sent back to Nauru (poo) after they have recovered. Even though New Zealand has offered to take all the Nauru refugees at present in Australia, NZ is deemed not enough of a deterrent or punishment. The refugees might actually enjoy living normally!

Australia is instead looking to the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia to export the refugees to. Those countries are deemed to be much better as a deterrent,  stopping refugees claiming refugee status in Australia. I would have thought North Korea to have been even better. Remember the payment of 40 million dollars by Australia to Cambodia for accepting 3 refugees? One of those has since left Cambodia.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-22/baby-asha-transferred-to-community-detention-peter-dutton/7188252

Australia is not the country it used to be.