Month: October 2023

The Trick to Publishing Your Own Book

M's Adventures

Holding your own book, that you wrote, in your hands is a real treat. It is not tricky to publish it. The hardest part is writing the book. A book does not have to be 600 pages. To self-publish a book, it is better to keep it under 200 pages. Cheaper too. Once you have written your book, then you can find a place to publish it.

The self published books look just like any other book — as you can see, next to some of the marketing swag.

Even if you have no cover artwork, you can still publish your own book. Below are some of the sites you could use. I have used Lulu, Blurb, and most recently, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing when I found that Blurb no longer publishes e-books. I wrote about self publishing twice before. I may experiment with other companies.

IngramSpark

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing

Apple — you can publish from Pages in the Apple environment.

Barnes and Noble

Dorrance — the oldest self publishing company

Bookbaby

Smashwords

Rakuten Kobo

You can read about what books I have published on my media page.

And if you want to print more than books, read this article.

Most importantly, if you want to write your own book and publish it, just do it!

Danish Bakery in New York City

M's Adventures
Raspberry “snippets” like Poptarts but less dry. Copenhagener/Tebirkes coated in poppyseeds. And cinnamon slice.

A danish is a pastry and my favorite one is not too sweet.

Normally, when I fly out of Copenhagen, I get a final danish at the airport. The bakery at the airport in Copenhagen is a branch of Ole & Steen, which is a franchise version of the old venerable Lagkagehuset (layer cake house).

But, New York City has four branches of this franchise! I had to visit.

Obviously, the dough and bread is different (like with NYC pizza, it’s the water, don’t ya know). The menu was also different. They still had my favorite pastry so I got two. My favorite is called “tebirkes” in Danish but they have changed it to “copenhagener” in English. It is in the first photo, covered in poppyseeds. It is a basic pastry with a subtle almond sugar paste layer inside.

The roast beef sandwich that I got was awesome with horseradish cream and rare pink roastbeef (a bit cooked in my photos because it traveled in a bag for six hours). I also bought rye bread and rye bread rolls. My eight rolls were so dense that they had to go to secondary screening at the airport.

Tak is thanks in Danish. Some Brits say, “ta” and I wish that was part of American English as well.

A Real Lithuanian Market in the Fall

M's Adventures

Last year, I went to the Baltics. In Lithuania, I met a local for a tour of the real market where the real folks shop. It was indeed quite “real” and there were very few tourists.

There were berries and spandex for sale.

Also dumplings and pickles.

It was the sort of place I would shop if I lived in Vilnius. I even got yelled at by the rotisserie chicken man for taking video of his chickens. Sorry, not photos here.

Albania, the Next Tourist Destination?

M's Adventures

Can Albania, with their Roman ruins and Greek temples, blue waters, and Adriatic coastline, be the next big destination? Many people are touting it as such. What I did notice were quite a few hair transplant tourists.

We went looking for the blue waters of the Adriatic. But, we went looking for the beach in the off off season, on a rainy cold day. We did find the beach and had a meal at a beach side restaurant (it was the only place open for miles), and oddly, I had to use my Italian language skills to order as the owner of the restaurant did not speak English.

I would recommend going way to the south near Greece when looking for sunshine. Or go in the shoulder season.

Still, it was nice to be able to get a decent “Greek” salad.

Another thing, everyone smokes.

But, Albania is the birthplace of Mother Theresa so perhaps people would visit for that reason too. There are things to see and do (the communist museums, the plazas, the Greek temples, the Adriatic, the mountains), and it is a bit cheaper than other parts of Europe.

The mosque in Tirana.

The Albanians are ready. They have the tourist gear. Also, it’s pretty inexpensive to get a car service from Tirana to Kosovo, Skopje, Montenegro, and other parts of the Balkans. This is could be practical because it is not so easy to get to some of those places but Tirana has a direct flight from Rome.

A Museum of Communist Times

M's Adventures
An example of how people spied on their neighbors.

Last fall, I tried to go on a quest to do a “Fall of the Iron Curtain” and I nearly made it. Along the way, I saw many places that are basking in the post-communist times.

In Tirana, Albania, I went to a museum, Bunk’Art2, that explained in a tiny way, what times were like just a few decades ago. The museum is underground in an nuclear fallout shelter and the oppressive atmosphere added to the sadness.

A commandor’s office.

One can easily forget history and take for granted the freedoms that we enjoy. This museum was a quick reminder.

A man defending his freedom of speech.
Rules for crossing the border.