New Year ... New hope

Well, its New Year again.
Professionally, nothing new to report.
I continue to bug people about my pet project.
It would be nice if this VIP were to give the plan a recommendation!

Personally, I am fit and healthy.
I lost about 5 stone this year.
Having lost it in a healthy manner, I am happy with the results.
MANY THANKS TO THE TRAINERS IN GYM4ALL!! Lee and Jade in particular.

 

The charity book is still available on Amazon. Many thanks to Claus and Tilo Werner for their help making this happen.Below, Claus and I visit a town near Lobstadt to promote the book.
Both Tilo and Claus worked for free!

To read the story behind the story, and find a link to Amazon please click here.

Thanks Tilo. No endorsement for MUM. DRB-Hicom sign technology agreement.

I received a very nice letter from Sir Jackie Stewart.

 

 

Sir Jackie was heavily involved with Cranfield when I first made this proposal to Lotus as part of my 5 year plan for training.
He wished me luck. However, no endorsement was forthcoming.
You may or may not know that Sir Jackie is an Ambassador for the Lotus F1 team.
The Lotus F1 team is owned GENII and is seperate from Group Lotus/Proton/DRB-Hicom.

Many of the Malaysian papers ran stories on the Petronas DRB-Hicom signing ceremony.
DRB-Hicom/Proton bought the engine technology and intellectual rights to all Petronas developed powertrains.
This picture was run by the Malay Mail.

There are 3 people in this picture whom I have contacted about MUM.
The central figure, Dr Mahathir is adviser to both Petronas and Proton. I have met him personally, albeit only for a moment.

I wrote to him 2 days ago asking him to advise both Petronas and DRB-Hicom to support me in making MUM a reality.
Sadly, no reply as yet.

I'm looking forward to having my old Proton friend Jimmy and his wife visit me in the UK over Christmas. Then a quick trip to Leipzig to wish my Friend Tilo and his new Wife Curtney all the best at their Hochzeit.

Curtney and Tilo are on the left. The hostel Red Palm gave them an unofficial Hochzeit shortly after they got wed.
Very nice people.
I get to wear my shiny green turquoise suit. Turquoise, black and white are to be the theme colours.
Tilo, who once played in Leipzigs top punk band 50/50 (thats what his Mum told me...) is working on an acoustic piece for the occasion. I look forward to hearing it!
Currently, 50/50 have a record company. This I assume will be run from the lead singer's (Sash) home.
I'm only in Leipzig for two days. So I'm not sure if I'll get to see it. Good luck in the venture in any event.
I must say Tilo has been very helpful with my webpage, and any IT problems I have had, and continue to have!
Tilo and his Dad did the cover and graphics for my Charity book.

Tilo has a link to the book on his Media webpage SAMASAMA. All royalty payments go directly to charity. Tilo and his father worked totally for free on this project.
Many thanks to Tilo and Claus for all their help.

Help with set up. Help with Book Project.

I'd like to thank those who are helping me with the start up of the MUM project. Funding will come.
Plus the book project:
Innocence lost in the ice cream forest

I have chosen a charity. They have accepted the book. The graphics are coming along nicely.
Thanks to Tilo and Claus.
Claus is flying in to visit me today.

My Corporate Social Responsibility project. Innocence lost in the ice cream forest.

The Childrens book I have written "Innocence Lost in the Ice Cream Forest" is ongoing. The text is done. Tilo the graphic guy and his father are not impressed with it. At one point Claus started to rewrite the story on my behalf. I feel they would be happier writing and illustrating their own book.
Claus, Tilo's father is upgrading the illustrations to a level acceptable to Tilo for publication.
I have contacted Samye Ling a Monastery in Scotland. They have a charitable arm about them accepting the files upon completion. They could then publish them and get the royalties.
There are several options. You can go straight on Kindle. Add your details and upload files for pubication as an ebook. This option is free.
Alternatively you can open an account with pubishing distributers. I have targetted 3.

For ebook distribution: http://www.bookbaby.com/
This company will send the book to Sony / Amazon  /others they charge $100 US Dollars and then $19 per year thereafter.


For Paperback distribution I have chosen 2 distributers: These are Print on demand companies.

https://www.createspace.com/  This distributer is owned by Amazon. They ensure Amazon always have copies available for sale. It is $39 USA dollars to join their Pro Plan.
http://www1.lightningsource.com/   These people can distribute to the rest of the Market. $75 USA Dollars set up fee.

An ISBN would be about £12 British pounds.

Samye Ling would need to pay out about £150 pounds to go this route.

I have tried calling my contacts (Samye Ling) Victoria and George on several occasions. I have gotten through on two occasions. No decision has been made. Victoria is happy with the script. She said it was delightful. (Someone likes it!)

I must say, I thought this would be really simple and plain sailing. It hasn't been.

My timing was. Text complete. Two day per illustration plus cover about one month. File conversion to meet the publishers requirements a day or two.
Send to Samye Ling. One day to open account and upload.

Fortuneately, we are all working for free. It would have been nice to have got the book online before the Christmas sales 2011. Tilo said maybe 2012.

Once competed and uploaded it will be interesting to see if it sells. I think it will. Others disagree. Thats life.

I had to change the script on several occasions to make it totally suitable for young children. I approached three charities that are secular and local to me with a view to gifting them the story.
For different reasons they fell by the wayside.
Hopefully Samye Ling will co operate in this venture.

Today, Sunday 13 Nov '11 I read in the Sunday Times. Penguin, are going to put a series of short stories on ebook platforms for between 99p and £1.99p.
The heading for the story was:
 Penguin to boost short story with ebook only series

Here is a small portion of the article:
The low price means the Penguin ebook collection is unlikely to be very profitable...
It goes on to say:
(David Roth-Ey Digital director HarperCollins) He said: "For example, information books, for example a Collins bird guide, could provide very valuable real estate for advertising- in this case potentially a binoculars manufacturer."

I will probably include the "text donation" to SamyeLing info + the graphic company of tilo SAMA SAMA and also a mention of the Motorsports project.

So the charity will generate income (royalty + text donation) and publicity. My project will get publicised as will SAMA SAMA.

Claus the illustrator will send me some of his work today. Baby steps.

CSR project ongoing. No reply after 10 years on MUM proposal.

Last week I sent the copy of my childrens book to a potential charity.
A little history. When I was last in Malaysia, my martial arts teacher asked me to write a childrens book.
Yacob my teacher is an artist and a professional childrens book illustrator.
I wrote an imaginative piece called "The Sensai and Whitey."
Yacob didn't want to illustrate it.
I left it a while. my friend Tilo, a web designer has a father who likes to do cartoons. He did a graphic diary on his Asian holiday. It was good. Tilo put some of his work on his webpage:

http://www.backpackingasia.com/Article/Backpacking_in_Asia_an_introduction/14



His father, Claus has been kind enough to work on my project. Tilo has been overseeing his contribution.

It is my intention to publish this book and give the royalties to Charity.

So as to avoid any revenue coming to me, I have requested the charities open a Kindle account. They can upload the file. The revenue will go directly into their account.

Firstly, I was going to put the book with a local (Basildon Essex UK) charity. They were totally happy to accomodate me.
However, without going into details, I felt very uncomfortable with their constant political waffle.
I decided against using them. I then went to my local Citizens Advice Bureau. I used to work there. They were between managers and did not seem interested.

I then went to a local Hospice. They were very professional, and ethical. I was impressed. However, they did not feel comfortable opening into a contract with Kindle/Amazon.

They did however tell me that they would not be associated with a book that used the term "Whitey" as it could be misconstrued. Political correctness was important.

The first book was about Whitey, his mum (Sensai) and his sisters. Some hugging and kissing took place.

At this point I rewrote the book so that nothing can be misconstrued. It was an interesting process. I feel that Yacob would illustrate this version. He wanted to put it forward for the Malaysian education board for schools.

My new illustration team were less impressed! They, without asking me came up with their own storyline and illustrations!

It caused a little friction, and for a while I thought the book was still born!

My latest charity is not secular. I am sorry for this. However, I hope that any money generated is used for the good of everyone, not just fellow travellers in their belief system.

A few weeks ago I sent a letter to some Lotus contacts, making them aware I have written an Open Letter to Dr. Mahathir.

Dr. Mahathir is adviser to Proton/Lotus and Petronas.

http://motorsportuniversitymalaysia.com/index.php?id=31

It's been ten years since I first annoyed Lotus management with this proposal. Their inertia is amazing.