Funny. I just don't understand why people bother with espresso. All gone so fast. And I have an enviably good machine at home. And head-barista daughters who have trained me well. For me, the milk (and a touch of sugar) makes the drink. I enjoy espresso (no sugar), but it's not enough fun. 😄

Yeah but it gives it a shot. Sometimes. Thanks for the follow, btw. That's a cycling path near Hurstbridge in Victoria, last week. But yeah, that Leipzig pic's speccy.

So I'm just back from this shop two suburbs away that has really fresh veggies at great prices. I'd thought the bill high but had luxury items and let it go. Get home, check receipt, and my half kilo of bullhorn peppers at $3.50kg list as hot red chillis at $30kg. 🤬 Young guy serving was so chatty.

"Hi Ian, "I recently came across Beat Your Weight, Beat Your Fat, and I was impressed by how your approach to weight loss ... I am curating a Goodreads Listopia list on effective and realistic weight loss guides ..." What next? Scammers can't even get the book right. Mine's a novel. 🙄 📚💙

Here's some background on the rail line, which opened in 1876, after a gold rush brought settlers to the region, and closed a century later. /5 and ends www.beechworthhistoryandheritage.com/railway-heri...

Stopping to bathe in the misty afternoon on a gentle descent from Beechworth towards Yack. Rail trails do tend to be straighter than optimal for a bike, but it's worth it to have the road to yourselves. Pics are mine; figure on bike is my riding companion. /4

Brief crest on another stiff climb, departing Yackandandah. Yeah, some funny town names in Australia. Frustratingly, this bit of the trail ran alongside a road that ascended more steadily, and therefore more gently. /3

The climb up to Beechworth went on like this unrelenting for 16km (10 miles). It averages about 3 per cent, which gave our lower gears a workout hauling 14kg of panniers, water and camping gear. /2

🧵 Cycle touring near Beechworth in Victoria, Australia. We covered 160km (100 miles) over four days last week on bits of this Murray to Mountains Rail Trail, with barely 10km open to motor traffic. Lots of climbing but the scenery made up for it. And some blissful descents. More pics below. /1

This is how it looks in the pan, simmering away. It'll do this for 90min or so. Wish I could post how it tastes.

This cascade of headlines is so much the Trump era.

... very revealing conversation. And laugh – we did laugh a lot. Of course we could have chatted without getting high. But the getting high – we had done this before – brought with it a sense of safety and a readiness to be open. Which forms the background for much of Mr O's dialogue.

And so that is whom I had in mind over the decade or more I spent composing Mr O: readers who enjoy getting high – and maybe only every now and again. Committed stoners might even see the book as naively soft-core.

I've replaced "for stoners" in the original concept with "for people who like to get high." Partly to make it more inclusive but mainly because most people who like to get high don't think of themselves as stoners, junkies, coke-heads or the like, even though others may so label them.

🧵 Okay a bit of marinating has brought a small but real adjustment to my promo line for Mr O Winds Back the Clock: It's a literary novel for people who like to get high. A. Cutting the "very" that had qualified literary: it is very literary, but not because it uses long words. 💙📚 💙🖋️

My editor and designer, both deeply experienced publishing pros, counselled me against emphasising the intoxication in of the story, believing that this would repel many more readers than it attracted. And so we presented it as straight literary fiction, a description they thought apt.

Never let anyone say that Zuckerberg's hellhole is completely useless. This came up today. Sums up the moment we're in.

From a notification that I monitor just to look at the market. I live in Melbourne, an Australian capital city that is 450 miles from Adelaide and 2100 miles from Perth. So a machine is lying to me. Again. It's the era.

Smith Street, Fitzroy on a sunny Saturday morning. 😀 Actually it was Thursday and about to rain but who would know. Yes, that's a crispy pork banh mi. 🤪

with Fiona McFarlane and Brian Castro strong contenders for Highway 13 and Chinese Postman. respectively. But I'm yet to take a look at the remaining two of those shortlisted, and expect I will soon have a go at Winnie Dunn's Dirt Poor Islanders. /8 and out.

I am of course vulnerable to accusations of envy or jealousy, given that I had entered Mr O Winds Back the Clock for the Miles Franklin. But I had no trouble enjoying Michelle de Kretser's entry, Theory & Practice, after having been disappointed by her winner in 2018, The Life To Come. /3

I had another parallel experience when reading The Lord of the Rings as a child. My parents had given me a copy of the first single-volume edition as a Christmas gift. I think I'd read The Hobbit. But the eleventy-first birthday party repelled me. I turned to Chapter 2 because I respected ...

🧵 I've been reading Ghost Cities, the novel that won this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, and at 30 per cent in I've noticed that I'm procrastinating desperately rather than embarking on the remaining 70 per cent. 💙📚 🖋️📚 It's very inventive, but the invention so far feels like

... I've had a few reviews come in recently from acquaintances who had read the novel and liked it, and one from a recent acquaintance who had really, really liked it. So I can't conclude that the insipid response from the giveaways implies that the text is a turnoff for everyone. /5

... character-driven, ebook giveaways don't work very well. My guess is that most subscribers are children – who else needs a free ebook that badly? – and this one isn't for them. I've persisted mainly to see whether further exposure might bring a nudge. On the upside, ... /4

… and two-star, rating on Amazon, a couple of 3-5 star ratings on Goodreads and no reviews whatsoever. Oh and 945 pages read on KU. Outright sales? Maybe a couple. This isn't a whinge, just a progress report and more evidence that, at least for this sort of book, ... /3

... 3800. Yep, quite a few, which suggests that people subscribing to Freebooksy and its chief rival, The Fussy Librarian, like Mr O's cover. However, that 3800 copies downloaded, plus a couple of hundred more paid orders from a BookBub launch feature, has generated a single, ... /2

Uptake from free promotions vs results vs fan feedback: a 🧵. 🖋️📚 💙📚 Last month I ran another free ebook promotion, via Freebooksy, for my literary novel Mr O Winds Back the Clock. That brought in 441 orders, and takes the total e-copies given away since launch to ... /1

🧵 I've resisted putting my private life online but having responded to this reply a few days ago thought I'd dip in a toe, having confronted a small test overnight that felt big – and that turned out to have been triggered by false assumptions. 💙📚 🖋️📚 /more