I still enjoy going to bookstores, and there are some really amazing stores out there. Here’s a small selection of what I feel are truly amazing bookstores.

1 – Maastricht, Holland - Selexyz Bookstore,  – The cathedral of reading….

http://flavorwire.com/254434/the-20-most-beautiful-bookstores-in-the-world

2 – Toronto, Canada – Chapters – The drama of words…

http://citywatching.com/2010/05/13/theatre-acoustics-make-big-box-sale/chapters-runnymede-audience/

3 – Paris, France - Shakespeare and Company - Book love, condensed

http://www.flickr.com/photos/conjure_real/4869731263/

4 – Porto, Portugal -  Livraria Lello, the regality of literature

http://www.flickr.com/photos/delviking/234946462/

5 – Somewhere where the content is more important than the presentation.

Never judge a book by its cover!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/friskodude/1176902/

 Author: Haris Ioannides – Armida Publications

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“Suicide is painless; it brings on many changes and I can take or leave it if I choose. The game of life is hard to play, you’re gonna lose it anyway…” goes that marvellous theme from M*A*S*H. Painless depends on how you choose to go. Throwing yourself off a tall building is not painless. In fact, how many ways to commit suicide can one actually say are pain-less? In Lars (TO DIE OR NOT TO DIE) I deal with a cancer case who has decided she has had enough and wants to end it by allowing herself to sink into the moonlit water among seals. No, it’s not a Kelpie tale where the human body becomes the lithe creatures of the sea; it’s the calm, sane choice of how Saga wants her suffering to end. And she is lucky to have a friend nearby who cares and accepts her decision. I have no illusions of what drowning can be to a person who does not want to drown. Too many from our fishing community have died that way to be blasé about it.

There were two boys of my age from my town who were in a boating accident, one was lost, (the finding of his body an amazing story in itself) and the other survived to describe what his near-death experience felt like. It was terrifying to begin with then a kind of languor set in as oxygen was overridden by water and the lungs deprived of air. And probably everyone who ends existence by their own hand has to deal with those fleeting seconds left to the mind in which it registers the no-return-flight notice blinking dully before all light irrevocably fades. Is there a second of enormous regret? We had a teacher who once told us a prophecy attributed to St. Patrick. He said that when the rest of the world dies by fire, Ireland will suffer a kinder fate and sink beneath the waves. So, under no circumstances did I deal with watery death in an off hand manner. I had nightmares as a youngster about seeing – what I now know to be called Tsunami – rearing up and rolling at a furious pace towards the harbour walls, our perceived bastions against the rough seas of winter. And for me, for whom the thought of suicide has so often imposed its presence on my consciousness, I fully understand and respect the urge to ‘end it all’.

Depression is an illness. It’s not a black dog begging outside your door – it’s an intangible virus inside your mind, your gut, your heart, and it does not bark loudly, it arrives stealthily, malignantly, surging upwards from a depth situated between the heart and the stomach to meet waves soaring downward from the mind above, to clash with a desperate but soundless scream in the place where a belaboured, tormented psyche resides, there to play let’s-end-it-all games with everything that is bothering you. And it is a past master at torture, for when one depression hits it gathers and accumulates all the past miseries that have plagued you, to pile on top of the current sadness saying, ‘See, loser, you’ve always been on the wrong side.’ Or ‘You never made a right decision in your life, did you?’

On December 2^nd, last year, Kevin Myers, a fearless and controversial journalist (with whom I do not always agree but respect) had an article in The Irish Independent on the death of Gary Speed, a well-known sports celebrity, who took his own life. The article deals with the fallout from that death. “For in the strange inversion of values that has occurred in recent years, what was once profoundly taboo is now almost hailed.” He discusses how the man is being remembered and honoured almost like a hero, but Myers’ chief concern is for the wife and two teenage sons Speed left behind. He ended the article with a wonderful piece of journalistic analysis – the role duty should play towards family members. “It brings on many changes.” And those changes affect the ones left to deal with the results when the besieged person drops out of life never to return. Anyone wanting to read this can contact The Irish Independent info@independent.ie or see www.independent.ie. How long they leave things on-site, I do not know but this (Suicide is self-murder and must remain taboo) (“Of course Speed was of unsound mind. But we have removed the taboo from self-murder. That taboo, at least, added something on the scales in favour of survival.”) is worth a read.

That role of ‘duty’ has kept my stealthy virus at bay, screamed at it to back off and leave me alone. My husband was cheated out of his life by a brain tumour; my children and I were cheated out of sharing the life of a good man. I would much preferred that I had been the one to die because I believe with all my heart that he would have made their lives better, easier than I could. But I did my best to be both mother and father. I still have that sense of duty, even though at times friends of my age speak of how our children expect us to be eternally mothering or grandmothering, forgetting, at times, that we are also people with the need to have lives of our own. But then, that giving and sharing is a two way process. I receive a lot in return.

There are two other factors that I have in my personal armory, for which I am so grateful, the genes inherited from my courageous mother and the fact that she fed every creative instinct I had as a child. I have found escape in ‘doing’. When the virus starts to worm its way upward or downward, I find something to work on. In that I am lucky, I can create my own distractions. I can manufacture them out of my mind. This helps me to steer thoughts away from the destructive force welling up within. For a long time, I had a plan on how I would end it. It was not formed in regions of insanity, but like Saga’s plan in TO DIE OR NOT TO DIE, in a calm frame of mind for a time when I would not be able to resist and simply had enough. I have another deterrent, due to my sense of duty – to leave everything shipshape, so my daughter would not deal with a mess. Given the Sloppy-Joe I am, that would take some doing! However, I have been given a gift, my books are out there. For that I owe Haris and Miriam at Armida Publications, a vast spiritual debt.

Not everyone is so lucky but, a word of advice to anyone feeling too tired to fight anymore – don’t give up, talk about it, ask for help – cry out loud. There’s no shame in admitting problems, everyone has them. There is no weakness in the thought that you have failed. We all fail at somethings, sometimes. Failure is another chance to try again with more experience of what did not work. Kahlil Gibran said “Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.” He also quite rightly said, “Much of your pain is self-chosen.” If we can weather the pain, as he says, we can watch with serenity through winters of grief. Is it any consolation that many famous people suffered from depression and they, to all extents and purposes, had it all? Depression is no respecter of class or status! The big difference is, the rich suffer in comfort.

Loneliness is the misery one has to suffer to understand, yet that too, can be dealt with. Viruses can be beaten, but we have to accept that they are there and deal with what is making us ill. Sitting alone nursing a problem never helps – get out! Suicide is not pain-less and perhaps a few hours of holding-on can change someone’s life for the better? The precious few hours or even days they did not give themselves. There are people like my husband who loved life and would have longed to hang onto it. Almost blind as he went into the operating theatre he said, “Colette mou, I want to live to see my children.” He did not.

How I wish that before that handsome, vital man took his own life, Gary Speed had gone and embraced

Image via Wikipedia

his sons, felt the warmth of the blood racing in their veins, and thought twice. I do not blame the man for his decision; some may be stronger than others in differing ways. It’s not always the strongest tree that withstands the hurricane but the one that is able to bend. I believe that if we bring children into the world, as Myers says, then duty has to be a foremost consideration. The mantra word to cling to.

Having children you love is all about being as selfless as possible, not as selfish as it takes to leave them with a gap where their parent ought to be. Don’t give up, fight! Because if you have been a loser, a failure as the world sees it, there is one battle you can win – kill the virus before it kills you. And yes, I know – this is not an all out win; it’s a daily battle we face like the alcoholic and the gambler. The thing is there and all we can do is keep the beast at bay. There is no harder fight than the one that goes on daily. It’s like being trapped by a sniper and needing to get out on the streets to do what a person has to do to continue living. That kind of battle is exhausting simply because it does not go away. Only the toughest survive and perhaps that has nothing to do with me or you but what generations of fighters have added to our DNA as backup on the soft drive that we all know is there alongside the weightless, brutal enemy-within that even the best trained medical minds cannot pin down and eliminate with a scalpel.

 An autobiographical article by Colette Ni Reamonn Ioannidou, author of the two short story collections “To Live or not to Live” and “To Die or not to Die”, Armida Publications, Nicosia 2011.

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If you don’t believe it, you’re a candidate for Christos Tsotsos’ “The Secret of the Elements“.

Image via Wikipedia

Paus Auster wisely said…

Becoming a writer is not a “career decision” like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

Being the least talented member of my family has given me the opportunity to ‘live and breath’ creative people from a unique perspective. Auster’s words do not come as a surprise to me but they are absolutely true. Creativity does come at a cost for both the artist and his/her family. Creativity is a long and hard road indeed, filled with many pitfalls, traps, mazes of circular logic on the one hand, and utter bliss, pride and contentment on the other. As a publisher, one of the questions I often ask authors is “are you a lonely person” and more often than not, the response is “not really, I’m constantly surrounded by the characters and the voices in my head”….

But in order for these voices to come to life, writers need to stay the course, be focused and organized and persevere. Andre Dubus states…

Image via Wikipedia

Don’t quit. It’s very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it’s very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can’t get fired if you don’t write, and most of the time you don’t get rewarded if you do. But don’t quit.

And with regards to planning and organizing, Annie Dillard and John McPhee suggest….

Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art; do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength.

Image via Wikipedia

You begin with a subject, gather material, and work your way to structure from there. You pile up volumes of notes and then figure out what you are going to do with them, not the other way around.

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All professional editors and publishers know that communicating with authors can be a bit tricky. So we’ve put together a short list of insightful advice for authors, by fellow authors. More tips will follow…

Tip 1

Jeff Greenfield once said

Respect your reader. The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn’t worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed.

Tip 2

JAMES ATLAS

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was from Dwight Macdonald: “Everything about the same subject in the same place.”

Tip 3

RUSSELL BANKS

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was probably something Ted Solotaroff told me years ago when he was my editor. Going over a manuscript line by line again and again he kept reminding me, “Remember, this is your book, not my book. You’re the one who’s going to have to live with it the rest of your life. I might publish 30 or 40 books this year, you’re only going to publish one, and probably the only one you’re going to publish in two or three years.”

Tip 4

ROBERT LIPSYTE

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was, “Rewrite it!” A lot of editors said that. They were all right. Writing is really rewriting–making the story better, clearer, truer.

Tip 5

NICK TOSCHES

The best advice on writing I’ve ever received was given to me, like so much else, by Hubert Selby, Jr.: to learn and to know that writing is not an act of the self, except perhaps as exorcism; that, in writing what is worth being written, one serves, as vessel and voice, a power greater than vessel and voice.

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Reblogged from armida books:

Police arrested yesterday controversial author, political activist and concience objector Christos Tsotsos, the well known author of  “The secret of the elements” , in Eleftherios Venizelos airport after they found out that both his passport and id card had expired. They demonstrated excessive force upon his arrest and bystanders claimed that they heard a police officer shouting “move you atheist anarcho-wanker” to a handcuffed young man showing clear signs of distress, screaming like a little girl. After …

Publisher fears for his safety.

Publisher filled for restraining orders against the author fearing that he might seek revenge against them on suspicion that they tipped the police in Eleftherios Venizelos Airport two days ago leading to the arrest of the known controversial Author of the Secret of the elements (aka the Hulk of words). Offices at Armida Publications look like a fort, heavily guarded by armed security and police fearing a violent outburst of the seemingly calm and collected writer that escaped Greece yesterday. The writer posted on his twitter account “The ruffian will pay for this!”. Armida publications assure the public that no horses are involved in this, although “there was involved pleanty of ink, recycled paper and many hours of bad spelling and crappy syntax correcting from those slackers who avoid their responcibilities”.

Government officials take actions to deflate the situation, the Security Council is concerned. Markets plummet. Amazon worried….

The President of the Republic of Cyprus Demetris Xristofias issued a statement that at present “There is nothing to announce. We discussed procedural issues further. Of course, I was given the opportunity to clarify that the violation of the process is unacceptable to us and that if the terms set by the Security Council are not implemented as preconditions for convening an international conference, then in no way will we accept an international conference.” Although many believe that the above statement was irrelevant to Armida Publications and author Christos Tsotsos, however, both parties involved in this peculiar conflict assure reporters that they should read between the line and take nothing on ‘green’ face value. The secret is out!

Proof of Christos' high powered friends...

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After questioning the publisher for the incident, though denying the accusation of turning the author in, did make the following statement: “Well, the rest of us who spend 2 years of our lives in the army are not malakes, have we peed in the well?”.

FREE CHRISTOS, THE VOICE OF HIS GENERATION!!!!

Artist’s rendition of the brutal arrest. Although the ordeal scared the green out of him, the composure on the troubled authors’ face speaks volumes! Bravo young man, bravo….

Incontrovertible proof of Christo’s alienship

Image via Wikipedia

ask ourselves if it is our or the world’s perception of love that is wrong. I stumbled upon this nice blog post which includes a list of well-known “Love Stories” that in this blogger’s mind (and most of the times I tend to agree) “aren’t really Love Stories”.

The last real love story I read was ‘Chrysalis‘ by Richard Romanus, but in all honesty, it isn’t just a love story, no. It’s an enthralling novel about a girl, Maria-Christina, who grows up in Metsovo, Greece, during the time of World War II and the Greek Civil War. The reader gets to know a lot about (a woman’s) life during those years. And the setting familiarizes you with Europe and Greece’s history. I really enjoyed reading this book and was so amazed by the development of the story!

So if you kind of like love stories, but are not such a big fan of the cheesy aspects that usually come along with them, I would definitely recommend you read this novel! And let me know what you think of it…!

Have a great Valentine’s Day!

Miriam

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