Simon Varwell's Blog, page 17
January 16, 2014
A few media pieces
The Return of the Mullet Hunter continues to sell slowly but steadily, and I’m grateful to everyone who’s bought a copy. This is the second of five free days, as well, and quite a few copies are shifting through that too.
It’s all been aided by a few bits of media attention that the book has got.
Firstly, there was a brief mention(see left)on Saturday 11 January in the Brisbane Courier Mail of the book in a big feature they were doing about travel writing.
Despite them missing the last word off...
January 15, 2014
The Return of the Mullet Hunter – free for five days
Just a quick note to say that The Return of the Mullet Hunter is now free on Kindle, for five days. That’s up until Sunday.
Don’t say I’m not good to you.
It’s free right across the different Amazon regions, and here for your convenience are the links to The Return of the Mullet Hunter on the Kindle stores in:
UK | New Zealand and Australia |USA | Canada
So if you’re not already persuaded by the free extracts I’ve put up from the book, then now you’ve got nothing to lose!
Happy reading.
January 13, 2014
The Fluid Druid
If you’ve read The Return of the Mullet Hunter, then you’ll remember that towards the end of my mullet-hunting adventures in New Zealand I visited Mullet Bay (right), near Invercargill at the south end of the South Island.
I stayed in a hostel in the city, and when I left in the morning I realised I’d been sharing a dorm with what appeared to be a Gandalf lookalike. However, we exchanged only a few words as I headed off, beginning my long journey north back to Wellington.
I’d often wondered abo...
January 9, 2014
An #indyref worldview
So many bizarre, myth-clad and downright wrong articles about the independence referendum fly by my attention these days that I’m now usually immune to them. I stop getting angry about them, stop tweeting about them, and stop blogging retorts to them.
Two recent articles, however, have made me put finger to keyboard, and what they have in common is that they are aimed at overseas audiences and are highly critical of independence. This is important, because it shows that firstly there is intern...
January 3, 2014
New year, new website
If you follow my website in an RSS reader, you’ll perhaps not see that my website has had a significant makeover.
Over the years I’ve very much changed the way I’ve used my website. It’s no longer a “blog” in the original sense, with a need to follow things chronologically like a diary. If I need that at all these days, social media provides it. Instead, I use my website as a showcase for my writing or a home for my interests. So for some time now, I have wanted my website to help me arrange t...
January 1, 2014
The European overland adventure
All my posts about 2012′s overland trip to France and Austria (plus some other countries) are not only all here on my blog, but I’ve also put them up on a Google Map. See below or, even better, follow the story directly at the map’s own page.
It was a three-week, five-country, food-packed, castle-packed, sun-kissed odyssey, and aside from a road trip through France it was all done by train.
And to see all my photos from the trip, visitthe set on Flickr.
View European Rail Trip, 2012 in a larger...
2001 travels
In 2001, after university, my friend Niall and I undertook a three and a half month journey from Frankfurt to Cairo, exploring Eastern Europe and the Middle East at a time of considerable political change in both regions. A trip that took place before I had either a digital camera or this website, I have few records of it and no coherent “write up” – other than some reminiscences in my first book.
However from time to time I doretrospectivelyblog about the adventure, often sparked by events in...
A work trip to Bucharest
Here are a couple of posts I wrote following a 2012 work trip to Bucharest, Romania; in which I reflect on the artificial reality of a large hotel that could be anywhere, and the surprising awareness among the locals I spoke to of goings-on in Scotland.
Luxembourg, by train
Find all my posts from our 2012 long weekend in Luxembourg here, including an introduction to our trip, the sights of Luxembourg City’s upper and lower parts, the obscure Luxembourgish language, the highlights of the country’s food and drink, and our stops en route home in Brussels and London.
Glasgow church search
In 2006 when I moved to the west end of Glasgow for eighteen months, I hunted around for a church. I visited a large number, and reviewed them on my website.
The search gained a considerable amount of attention online, and while some of what I said was controversial and close to the bone, and while I might regret some of the bluntness all these years later, it was an accurate portrayal of my experiences of the different churches at the time. The search taught me a lot, too, and led me to a chu...
