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Everyone Is Invited To Visit My New Blog Site!

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Yessss!  We are up and running at heyboomers.com.  These are the early days and the site is still only a shadow of its future self but come on over and take a look.  I think Deborah Kunzie, owner of Garlic D’zign, has done a brilliant job on the composite artwork of my headline.  She used a few photos, taken in Egypt and Thailand, and really got creative.  We haven’t yet linked that site to this one, but we soon will.  Later on, there will be picture galleries and books to buy and……. advertisements!!!

Yes, absolutely…..Ads……offering tastefully-selected, appropriate-to-the-theme products-that-I-would-actually- recommend….STUFF that you will certainly wish to investigate.  Theoretically.

If you are as innocent to the Blog Ownership World as I was a few months ago, you might not know these little insider facts about the possibilities of making money by blogging under your own label.   Since this is a tell-all site about the adventures of making  dreams come true….which in my case is blogging, book publishing, and more world travel…… then, I shall proceed to tell you all about the new world of advertising on these personal spaces.  Yes!  Blogs can make money for you, as well as books can!  Ta Da!

Yesterday, Deb told me to sign up with Amazon Associates so that they would consider my heyboomers site as a possibility for their advertising.  I did and they are now thinking about it.  I expect that I will soon do the same with Google Ads.  If they all like what they see, then we’ll get a chance to accept or pass on various products that might be compatible with our image.  Then a small sign is posted somewhere along the side and when somebody either clicks or buys (it varies), the blog owner gets paid some agreed-upon fee.  This just pours quietly into your bank for as long as the marriage lasts.

You can see the same thing happening in the right-hand column here, except that it’s not me earning that money.  But, isn’t it nice?  Quiet, dignified, non-intrusive but appealing and sometimes right on the money to fulfill someone’s need. 

Besides, the blogger can tell that at least SOMEONE is reading the entries, because a day or so after writing about luggage, for instance, there’s this swarm of little ads offering all sorts of luggage solutions.  It’s wonderfully personalized!  Just go through these little tastefully-written enticements about book publishers, writers, boomers, and work-at-home money-makers.  They know what they’re doing!

I’m really anxious to find out who will flock to my site and set up their cute little booths and send love letters to my bank.  How many marriages am I to make through this new blog of mine?   Please visit me often and click on their sites and support my next jaunt RTW!

It Never Rains But It Pours

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

As predicted, everything came home to roost simultaneously.  My editor, Lynn Stratton, has returned the manuscript with many re-write suggestions; the blogsite is nearing completion; the cover design is coming along wonderfully and we will soon move to the content of the back cover for the book.

With each one of the above, there are time-consuming things that need doing.  Some consume a lot of time, some just a little but they are full of details or applications for things like PayPal membership for the blog or an ISBN number and a BISAC code to print on the back of the book.  More such numbers will be needed for the inside copyright page, but I’ll take care of the urgent ones first.

Had to go to Sears Portrait Studio for some new head shots for the back cover and the blogsite.  So I can check that duty off the list. 

Writing a book is an amazing bit of therapy!  At least, that seems to be true the first time around, but I suspect that it’s true most of the time.  Only your editor knows for sure!  She’s the therapist! You disgorge all this stuff that looks vital and witty to you, or perhaps feels simply like a bit of honest reporting in calling a spade a spade; and you think that you have done a very good job on a very fine manuscript.  Then she gives it the critical eye and, if she (or he) is worth their salt, you’ll get it back with lots of comments about how your readers might very well react to that pompous attitude you have just displayed.  Funny, how when you look at it through her eyes, the truth becomes so clear.  Now, why didn’t I see that? 

Knowing that she is right and wishes only the best for the future of the book, I get right to work on fixing things up.  And, so it goes.  Not a rapid process. 

Then you wonder if you can trust the greater part of what your flying fingers routinely type into being and (now, in this day and age of instant blogging) what you send merrily out into Cyberspace with nary an editor in sight.  It’s kind of like live radio,  but much more permanent and permeating. Don’t we usually think that we are so confidently right and fairly invulnerable?  Well, wait till you get a manuscript back from an experienced, effective, and sharp-eyed editor, who was a university Creative Writing professor, a copyeditor for the St. Pete Times, and an author herself.  Very humbling experience.  But, it should happen to everyone at least once in a lifetime. 

All Roads Lead To Romance

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Now, that’s a good title!  Wish I were planning to write a book which had such a happy ending, so I could use it.  Who knows?  Maybe the next one…..  Anyway, what I mean is, that things are looking up today.  As predicted, each of the three current projects – the copyediting, the cover design, and the blog site – are ripening at the same exact moment.  Soon, I will be proofing the corrected manuscript; writing the first blog on my live site; and wrapping up the cover design, all in the same week.

NetMen Corp. has done an excellent job on the cover ideas they sent for my approval last night and I have bounced back a few tweaking suggestions to see how they might look, but we are well on the way towards a good front book cover.  Next will be the easier job of designing the back cover.   Someday, that will be the one in circulation. 

All of this is harder than actually taking the trip, but it’s as worth it, in the end.  

Watching The Paint Dry

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

I classify “Downtime” as any period in which there is not some steady and rather urgent work going on to achieve a particular goal.  Generally, I become sort of restless and unfinished-feeling, wanting to get cracking on whatever my project of the moment is.  These days, the Book/Blog Project is still filling someone else’s inbox and I’m waiting for my turn to start using the fruits of their hard labors.  My guess is that everything will come back to me on the same date and I’ll be more than frantic trying to take care of it all.  Stop and Start!  Those are the ingredients of life……and the ingredients of world travel.  Such a reality is hard to remember when a trip has receded into the past.  The mystique of being on the move carries with it the general impression that traveling is a great time-filler.  Truly it is, but luckily for our own sanity, there are the slow periods. 

Almost exactly three years ago, in July, 2005, I wrote this entry in my journal while visiting Zilina, Slovakia.  Now, this was just a regular town, not really expecting to be hosting many tourists.  It simply lay along a route that I was making up for myself on the way across Eastern Europe.  Probably, the only strangers it received were a few hikers entering the High Tatry mountains off in the distance.  The whole time that I was there, I had the impression that every resident was away for the weekend.  Here is my journal entry:

“Thinking about this town, I can’t find anything pulling me to come and be with it.  The people here have done more than most to make an attractive central square; but all they have actually done is to clear and pave a really, really, really big space and put some statues in it and lots of shops around it.   I’m circled with shoes and clothes and cell phones, winking at me through plate glass windows, and the little outdoor cafes cater mostly to thirst in this glaring heat of the day.  None serve much food.  I want someplace spectacular, and this isn’t it, but never claimed to be.  Most countries; most cities; most people just simply aren’t that and I’m asking too much to expect anything more than what I find.

When one thinks of world travel, especially the labor-intensive sort like this is, you never imagine that there could be days when you’ve done everything you can think of within your location; when you’ve more than satisfied your curiosity about it; when the books left to read are all dull; and there’s no prospect of finding others in your language; when you can’t watch TV or go to the movies because they are unintelligible; when there is not a soul to talk to anywhere; when the internet cafe is closed; when all your usual time fillers are unavailable and you are completely on your own.  What do you do?

Well, you can pray and meditate.  You can still write in the journal and you can still sleep.  You can soak and scrub your rubber sandals and you can shower and change into fresh clothing.  You can listen to your new CDs; you can dance to them, and even sing away in the privacy of your large room.  You can eat your fruit and muesli which you have provided for yourself instead of restaurant cooking.  And, you can be happy and content with your own company while you watch the day move steadily by.  Plus, you can write a little poetry:

The last few minutes of July

Bleed down time.

Me and July and Zilina, Slovakia

Will never, ever meet again.

July dies tonight,

I leave tomorrow,

And Zilina will continue

In her unbroken slumber

Never missing the two of us.

Never even knowing we were here at all.”

What Do An Author and a Butcher Have In Common?

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

The Cow, of course!  If that’s not immediately clear to you, perhaps it will be in a minute.  This is an analogy that helped me when I was in the writing stages of this book production project.  Naturally, in order to have something to send to a copyeditor and to farm out to a cover designer, you must have spent the hours, putting in your time, doing the writing.  That’s a hard and long slog, as well.

Throughout my world travels, I filled a dozen journals, mailing them home as I went.  This is one reason that I didn’t blog.  I wanted all the anecdotes in one source, and I’ve been journaling for years, so it was natural to me.  My first duty at home was to type things up and see what I had:  400 single-spaced pages of daily diary.  Not edited and honed enough for a book, of course.  It took a long, long time to massage things; especially to cut things, and I wound up going down several blind alleys in my attempts to make it all read smoothly.

Once, in frustration, I took a long walk, after realizing that I had dumbly categorized events into chapters….such as dangerous things; weird hostels; crazy transportation; etc. and that destroyed the flow of the timeline.  I needed to begin again! 

That’s when I got my Butcher Analogy.  Okay, the 400-page story was the cow.  I had created it by doing the traveling and writing it up.  It was a fine cow.  But, nobody buys the whole animal and cooks it for their family.  As an author, I must butcher my cow into small pieces that will fit into an oven and can be served up in a tasty dish for everyone.  I must carve the stories out of the whole, and throw away all the hide, gristle, bone, gut, and other inedible parts.  I needed to get in there and hack away at my cow until I had isolated the steaks and roasts and high quality meats that would sell in the marketplace.  That meant that the greater part of my beloved cow would be thrown away.  Sigh!  Butchering is also hard and muscular work but there’s no way around it because no one can possibly eat a whole cow.  One practical way to think of this is to figure out how much each page will cost to print.  That provides a fine incentive to selectively hack away at the original carcass and serve up only the tastiest morsels.

Cover Design Has Begun

Friday, June 20th, 2008

As originally stated, this Blog will chronicle all the steps that I must slog through to get from Point A to Point Z in the creation of my book about my RTW journey in 2005/2006.  I have hired a design company through elance.com to do the cover design and have gone through the preliminaries of trying to define what I want……without really having a clue…….and of paying the $250 fee into escrow, to be held until I’m completely satisfied.  The company, NetMen Corp. of Buenas Aires, Argentina, has a great track record with elance, with many repeat customers and a long history of high earnings with this freelance source of internet talent.  

I liked one of the four samples they submitted, and so,  sent my feedback on that.  My title keeps slipping around at the moment, so that makes it harder to come up with a visual image.  I’m still working on trying to visualize the image I want to see on the book, but haven’t had any bright ideas to suggest to them yet.  Here’s the title evolution, so far:

Hey Boomers!  Dust Off Your Backpacks!  It’s Easy To Travel The World On A Limited Budget

It used to say:  Hey Boomers!  It’s Easy To Backpack Around The World On Social Security….Alone……For A Year

(By the way, votes from you guys would be good.  Just put them in the comment box.  What would have meaning to you……or your parents……grandparents?   Well, if you’re in your twenties, I could be your Granny!  You might want to send my book to her, one day, to suggest that she get out on the trail too.  You never know!  What kind of cover would interest you? )  Informal Poll #1

Titles are hard.  I’d love to land upon a three word title that captures the essence of it all.  But, I tend to get wordy.  I have painted myself into a bit of a corner by choosing to address the Baby Boomers in my title and in my book; because they are the ones who need to know that it is actually possible to get out there and do such things, even though they’re now at the dreaded age of social security.  Historically, 2008 is the year that the first leading-edge boomers cross the line and can collect early retirement benefits, if they choose, at age 62.  In 2011, the big bubble of boomers will begin turning 65 and the news will be very hot about their effect on our social security system.  By that time, I should have two books out on this subject, after my second RTW at age 71, next year….and so, I am positioning myself as a cheerful counsellor to the aging boomers that all is not lost, just because someone is  retired.  I wrote a long explanation of this to my cover designer, knowing that they might not even have heard the term Boomer, if they live in South America.  

Somehow the book’s cover must telegraph a bit of this meaning, and at the same time, look fetching on the almost-postage-stamp-sized Amazon.com ad, which is what you get on that system.  That’s a big order!  That’s why I have hired professionals.  Probably, the way it works is that things get honed in a hit or miss fashion until, finally, there are a lot more hits than misses.  It’s a back and forth, artistic tennis match until a final product at last issues forth.  We consumers don’t know what goes on behind the scenes until we are suddenly there ourselves.

By becoming, essentially, my own publishing company, Hey Boomers Media, I hire out the various tasks and then have to oversee them, learning as I go.   You don’t have to do it this way because you can still self-publish by hiring one of the companies, which I note are advertising here on my blog, to be your middle man but, ultimately, you still face these same decisions with the plans that other people have for your work.   You’re simply turning over some of the recruitment duties, and creating a buffer level to run interference for you, which is not a bad thing if your time is limited.  Their services are not free, but perhaps they will be worth it to you in the long run.  The reason for this is that POD printers, like Lightning Source, won’t work directly with authors……but they will work with publishing companies, even if it’s just that author setting up his own company.  There are many, many books out there now, telling you how to do this.  If you can learn to do it yourself, why give away a percentage of your profits to more middle men than necessary?   That is……assuming there will be any profits in the first place!

Ergonomic Luggage Anyone?

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

Just now, I am disgorging all of my “Great Ideas” to the BootsnAll Universe, hoping to seed some fertile minds into bringing these fantabulous travel inventions into reality.  Here!  Take them and grow rich!  I know that I would pay to have the use of them.  As far as I can recall, this luggage design is the last one that I am harbouring within my heart, so here it is:

How about a rolling suitcase with a base more like a stroller than a miniature mover’s dolly?  I started my last RTW with a small rolling suitcase which was actually too heavy even when it was empty.  PLUS, the extendable handle didn’t extend high enough so I had to stoop over to drag it.  I’m only 5’4″, so what do tall men do with these dumb things?  Actually, I know because I watch them all the time, leaning down in a backbreaking posture.  I think these handles hit everyone at a very uncomfortable level.     PLUS, all of the weight is carried by your shoulder when the case is only supported by those two wheels.  This is a terrible design and should be junked!

I did, finally, become a backpacker in Prague, after fighting with four succeeding draggables and a variety of luggage racks throughout a summer of Eastern European travel.  (All of this is documented in a funny way in my new book.)  It cost a lot to keep experimenting to find the solution and I wound up giving them all away to my various hosts.  Forget trying to maintain a modicum of a ladylike image befitting my age, I needed to get practical.  I kept the backpack throughout the rest of the year of that trip and it will come with me again on the next RTW.   

But, I sure was doing a whole lot of mental suitcase designing as I hauled my heavy load though all those countries.  I had been a Mom.  I had pushed strollers.  I knew about the beauty of four wheels to bear the weight and the comfort of a waist-high handle.  Surely, that can be adapted to a folding built-in suitcase design. 

Another feature I want, at least on the two back wheels, is a stair-climbing ability.  In Gdansk, Poland, I spotted a luggage rack with its two wheels made up of three rotating wheels each.  As you pulled this up or down the stairs, those wheels would flip and roll you down instead of the jarring clacking you must do with ordinary wheels.  This makes so much noise in a sleeping hostel or hotel, but it must also be very hard on those small plastic wheels, which I always expected would crack off after so much banging.  All of you are familiar with the extreme staircases of every railroad terminal in the world….. except here, where we hardly use trains at all……and know nothing of vast levels of tracks.  But, considering the amount of punishment that a suitcase on the road is subject to, I think it would behove the manufacturers to be more aware of the drawbacks that they are inflicting upon us daily!

By the way, I didn’t allow myself to indulge in that fancy-dancy stair-climbing luggage rack, because I could see that the aluminum was way too light for any load-bearing.  Yes, by that time, I had already had two extendable handles bend like butter with the weight of my stuff, instantly rendering the new suitcase unworthy of further use.  But, I knew that the wheel-design was worthy of a luggage junkie’s admiration and I wanted it real bad.

Inventing Night Flight Hotels

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Every time that I have had to spend a night in an international airport, I wish so hard that somebody would get around to building an hourly-rate bed and shower facility right inside the secure portion of the airport for those travelers with ongoing tickets.  I has finally happened in the Tokyo airport and it’s called a Transit Hotel, so, hopefully, the plan will spread.  My stopover there was too brief and I wasn’t allowed to go in and find out how they had set it up, because my ticket showed a plane change, not a layover, and they tightly control access for the protection of the sleeping guests.  However, just learning that such a thing exists was like having a dream come true.

It was in the early 1990’s, when I was traveling frequently to the Soviet Union, that I realized what a boon it would be to have a spot to clean up and rest after completing an overseas flight to Europe and then waiting, sometimes many hours, for a continuing flight to my destination.  Just the need to lie down and stretch out was overwhelming.  Japan had, even then, pioneered in that respect and I remember reading an article about little mattress cubby holes there, that you could rent for a few hours sleep.  But, it sounded as if you had to crawl in when the last user crawled out and that didn’t sound too attractive.  Still, it was better than the floor, which I have resorted to on some occasions.

Yes, of course, there are the expensive airport hotels, often attached conveniently to the terminal, and I have used them sometimes, out of desperation.  But, if I have under six hours to a layover, it’s a great extravagance to pay $150 or more for a shower and a nap.  What I picture, in my Night Flight Hotels is something much more basic.  Ideally, it would be placed within the secure international region of the terminal, serving travelers waiting between flights or for early arrivals on an outgoing flight.  Pods containing a number of sleeping units could be tucked around in various parts of the airport, if necessary; because built-in Pullman-type beds, with wrap-around surrounding amenities – alarm clock, light, phone, mini-bar, etc. – to serve each sleeper, would be all that is necessary, rather than entire rooms for each renter.  A hallway would lead to men and women’s shower/bathrooms.  Entry, security, and silence would be controlled by an employee at a manned desk and maids would change sheets, clean, and restock the unit upon checkout.  Guests with ongoing air tickets could rent hourly, say $6 per hour, and the service would be available 24/7.   

Many travelers would pay well for a few hours sleep and a shower, and certainly during massive delays due to holiday crunch or weather problems, this service would prove invaluable and be in high demand.  It would also be a lifesaver to business travelers with early appointments upon arrival in a foreign city, who have no time to get to their hotel before swinging into their business day.  A shave, a change of clothes, even without a nap, can make a huge difference in your life. 

A clean, simple, prefab design is all that is necessary.  Not luxury.  Something like this could be popped right into wasted terminal space……or alternatively, on a parking garage floor if no other space exists, though that requires leaving security.  I know that this could be done, having eyeballed enough airports with this in mind.  My point is, that it would not require new construction, as in building an airport hotel. 

I’m really surprised that something like this is not already widely available.  I have seen it provided in shopping malls, so that marathon shoppers can get a second wind and stick around longer, but we don’t have it in the airports of the world and that’s a crying shame.  So, please someone, take this and run with it!  The world needs it right now.  Don’t you agree?

Cosmic Engineering & Your On-The-Hoof Ideas

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Okay, while I’m waiting for the paint to dry on my current inventions and you are sitting in some airport hoping for the fog to lift, let’s chat about how Grand Ideas get brought into the material plane of existence.  I truly believe that it all begins with you and me, who design something fantastic in our creative little brains, but haven’t a prayer towards seeing it into reality…..no money, no connections, no clue as to where to start.  And no…. I don’t think that it is stolen away from us by greedy industrialists.  I’m sure it’s way more complicated than that.

The genesis of this assumption came about during the last years of the 1970’s or the first ones of the eighties.  Maybe thirty years ago, before the world had seen such an object as I saw in my mind’s eye and put into a drawing.  The picture that I drew was of an ordinary white ice-skating boot.  But, instead of a blade, I drew wheels in a line down the center and even decided that the wheels must be more pointed than the flat skate wheels of the day, and that they should be made of a very strong plastic.  I figured that it would be a whole lot of fun to skate freely around on concrete rather than ice but to have the kind of flexibility that moving the wheels away from the four corners would allow.

Now what?  Nothing in my life at the time would have allowed me to promote this new invention.  So, I decided to give it to God….to the Universe……to the Upper Kingdom, if you will, and I mentally slipped the drawing into a file cabinet drawer that I visualized opening in my mind.  “Here!  It’s Yours!  Please help somebody to invent this!  The world needs it!”   A few years later, I woke up and there were inline skaters whizzing all around me.  The thought was, obviously, seeded into a fertile mind of someone who was in a position to do something about it.  At least, that’s what I like to think as I contemplate the sight of people enjoying this sport in many countries of the world.   I seem to remember reading of the man who did get these skates on the market and it took hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money, plus a whole lot of talent and work to bring it about.  But what a result!

The other idea that I drew down and submitted to my File Drawer In The Sky on the very same day must not have had much merit, because I still haven’t seen it in reality.  It’s much more practical and inexpensive and universally useful and I can’t understand what the holdup is.  Hey, if any of you want to invent it, please be my guest.  I would simply like to have the use of it.

I thought it up on the jillionth time that I was trying to smear suntan lotion on my back.  When no one else is around to help you, there’s a spot right at the center, that usually goes unprotected because it’s so hard to get your hands around to smooth on any kind of lotion.  Literally, a Back No-Man’s Land, in my single state, particularly.  Okay, you know those plastic jobbies that you fill with dishwashing liquid that have the sponge on the end for washing dishes?  Well, we need something like that full of suncream that you can squeeze, from the inside of the applicator, onto the attached square sponge and apply with its long neck to your hard-to-reach areas.  Those would include the legs and the tops of the feet, as well, for people who don’t bend so easily.

The dishwashing tool is only a model for this, because it’s too big to fill up, yourself, with the sunscreen.  This needs to be sold, fully loaded with UV-screening lotion or liquid, in a smaller applicator.   Now, why the skates have been around for a long time and this little no-brainer hasn’t shown up, I do not know, but I could still use one, if anyone cares to make one for me.

What bright ideas have you had?  Come on, there’s no need to hold it close to your chest unless you’re really planning to patent it or manufacture it yourself.  If you don’t want to share here, with a comment on this blog, how about slipping it into that Big File Drawer in the World Above and letting it seed a fertile mind down here?  Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about my beloved, travel-born, fantastic idea of Night Flight Hotels, which I have also actually seen gradually coming into being in this World Below. 

I’m Calmer Now…..

Monday, June 16th, 2008

All that pickly little business stuff is behind me for the moment.  But, it will come again another day, in another form.  I sure wouldn’t make a good accountant.  What I like to do is write and travel, and write about travel and organize the business of both; but boring details quickly demolish my attention.   At the moment, everything is farmed out and on somebody else’s desk for their input.  My excellent copyeditor, Lynn Stratton keeps telling me that I’ll soon be on Oprah, bless her, as she proofs and tightens the manuscript; Deb Kunzie, of Garlic Dzign, my blogsite designer, is working away to build a great online presence, which will link with this one when it’s ready; and my new Argentinian team, the NetMen Corp., of Buenas Aires, will have the first cover designs ready for me to look at on Thursday.

So, all is in motion, priming itself to coalesce in a few weeks.  Then, we send the PDF files to the printer, Lightning Source, and within a few weeks, I’ll have the beautiful books in my hands.  These will be the preview copies which I will send out with my press releases, hoping for reviews and TV appearances, but I’ll sell them on my blogsite as well.  Since my publication date will be in October (to give all this publicity the lead time it needs), the book won’t be listed on Amazon.com until that time.  I don’t plan to go through the hassle of trying to get the books into bookstores ( a very complicated arrangement), so Amazon and my blog will be the two sources for sales.  It’s all pretty simple and direct.

So, this is the hurry-up-and-wait stage.  Don’t we all know about that in the scope of world travel?  Rushing for a departure time and then sitting for hours in the airport.  Pretty familiar.  All in all, this book will have taken a good year of regular work on its various parts, and between $1000 – $2000 to produce and promote.  That’s just to provide a ballpark idea if any of you are considering doing the same.  But, it shouldn’t be too hard to make both the book and the blog pay their startup costs, and then they could provide some travelin’ cash!