Tuesday Talk - A bit of sunshine for a winter's day

My guest today: 
Antonia Novosel is a regular blogger at SailingEurope blog which is one of the most popular sailing blogs in yacht charter community.

It's turning cold here in the UK (well, it IS December) so let's go in search of some sunshine.....

The Top Seven Most Attractive Beaches in Greece...

Dreaming of a vacation with no worries in the world except whether your fingers have wrinkled enough to get out of the water? One of the most breathtaking options for a sun, sea and sand holiday is Greece, where both the weather and the sea are ideal from late May to early October. Due to its geological structure, Greece boasts a variety of impressive beaches, the most beautiful of which can be accessed only by sea. So if you want to see the best of Greece, rent a yacht and sail away. To give you a brief insight into what awaits you there, here is our list of the top seven most attractive Greek beaches.

1. Navagio Beach (Zakynthos)

The most famous of Greek beaches, Navagio lives up to the expectations as it is really a sight worth seeing. Turquoise sea, white sand, high cliffs and the wreck of an old ship on the shore provide for a surreal experience. If not for the crowds, you would get the feeling of a vacation on a deserted island. This is the only downside – since it is very popular, there are many tourists swarming in on large cruise ships. But if you have a sailing yacht of your own, you can peacefully enjoy this spectacular view.

2. Myrtos (Kefalonia)

A white pebble beach surrounded by steep cliffs, Myrtos is one of the most astonishing beaches, ideal for snorkelling. It was voted the best beach in Greece for several years in a row and is an unavoidable item on the top Greek beaches lists. However, winds tend to be very strong there, so be careful in the afternoons when they pick up.

3.  Sarakiniko (Milos)

This is one of the most impressive beaches to look at, as it is made of white rock with unusual shapes, reminiscent of the Moon’s surface. The whiteness of the rocks accentuates the blue shades of the sea and the sight is rather magnificent.

4. Egremni (Lefkada)

Egremni is a remote beach, and a large one at that, so if you are seeking peace and quiet, this is the one to choose. The beach can be accessed from the shore only via steep steps, so sailing is the most practical option here. It is a sandy beach with crystal clear turquoise sea with barren cliffs surrounding it, a real beauty in total.

5. Porto Katsiki (Lefkada)

Ranked as one of the most beautiful European beaches several times already, Porto Katsiki is a bit more crowded than its neighbouring beach of Egremni. It is a long expanse of white sand surrounded by high cliffs and clear blue-green water with lots of space for sunbathing, swimming, snorkelling or enjoying the slow sway of your yacht.

6. Balos (Crete)

This spectacular beach is made of several shallow pools forming a lagoon between Crete and a small island opposite. White sand and clear water provide for a Caribbean feel of the place. Because of its beauty and peculiarity, it is visited by lots of tourists, many of whom come by rented boats and leave before late in the afternoon. If you are sailing on your own, you get the luxury to stay longer and enjoy the quiet spectacle of the sunset.

7. Red Beach (Santorini)

The Red Beach is a unique sight in Greece, among the whiteness of the other beaches. Red Beach is made of volcanic sand, which gives it its special color. It is easier to reach by sea, so if you are sailing nearby, make a stop there and enjoy the spectacular view of volcanic influence on the island. The surrounding water is clear and deep so you can also spend your time snorkeling and exploring its depths.

It is hard to make a short list, but these seven are in one way or another special and it would be a waste not to visit them if you are spending your holiday in Greece, especially if you are on a sailing yacht, as you can approach them more easily. You will not regret the trip, whichever beach you decide to visit. Have an amazing Greek experience!

By Antonia Novosel

If you want to find out more about sailing to all these beautiful places, please visit SailingEurope.com

...and when you go  off to sail those beautiful blue seas and explore those beaches
don't forget to take with you ....

Awards. It’s not the winning - it’s the taking part.

Tuesday Talk 

(Or so we convince ourselves.)

My Tuesday Talk post last week was about the Lovely Blog Award - an accolade passed on from one blogger to another. I was delighted to receive it (thank you Anna Belfrage for awarding it to me!) But, and please don't think I'm being ungrateful....  it isn't quite the Booker Prize is it? 

As authors, we write because we want to. For some of us, though, we write because we have to. It’s compulsive. We scribble away into the dark hours of night (or in the early silly-o’clock hours of the morning,) taking every opportunity to get another line, paragraph, page, or chapter committed to paper or hard-drive file. When not writing our thoughts are swirling with what we intend to write: planning that next scene, thinking about how a new character can be developed more, or whether we ought to ditch the one who doesn’t seem to be toeing the line plot-wise.

Then there is the editing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the editing process, improving that first, somewhat raggedy draft into something that resembles a readable story, then fine-tuning and polishing it. And doing so all over again after the first technical edit, again after a copy-edit and yet again after the proof read. But does anyone know how those pesky typos still manage to get missed?

With excitement we look forward to publication day, eagerly anticipating dozens of five star reviews on Goodreads. Of shooting to the top of the Amazon ranking list and receiving a nice royalty cheque at some point in the near future. Maybe we will be offered that movie deal and reach the dizzy height of the cherished Best-Seller accolade. Or holy of holies, find our labour of love and hard work placed on a long list for an award, and see it move up to the short list. And the final…

Unfortunately the world of writing novels isn’t quite as simple as that. Especially if you are an Indie author. By Indie I mean self-published, which in this instance is any author who has paid a financial contribution – large or small - towards producing their book, be it for the entire production, editing costs, cover design etc.

Indie writers are gaining in respectability in the literary world; we are, at last, being taken seriously. Many authors, now, like myself, are what is being termed as “hybrid”, we have a foot in both camps, traditional mainstream and Indie. With the big publishing houses often deciding not to re-print our backlist titles we have found the option to regain the copyright and re-publish under our own steam. What’s more, we are doing it quite successfully. Enough to make the publishing industry start to think twice about the previous negative attitude towards self-publishing.

Novice indie writers are also realising that to be taken seriously as an author they have to produce a book with quality presentation as well as quality writing. It does not matter how fantastic your writing style or the narrative is if the book you intend to self-publish is printed in the taboo Comic Sans font, with double-line paragraph spacing, incorrect indents, too wide or too narrow margins, and the text set as left justified. No one worth their salt is going to look twice or take you seriously.

“No!” I hear you cry, “it is the content that is important, not the layout!” Wrong. If I pay good money for something – be it a book, dress, pair of shoes, cd or whatever, I expect it to meet a certain standard. If it looks wrong or amateur then it does not qualify as ‘professional’. If you are going to do it – do it properly!

Authors  hope for that illusive possibility of an award, but there are few opportunities for Indie writers. Most award presentations carry a high entrance fee, and with no publishing house to support us we have to pay for everything including supplying at least one copy of the book, which entails printing costs and postage. Nor are there that many prestigious awards for the Indies. We need a high profile Booker equivalent, but whether it will ever come about is anyone’s guess. Most literary associations do not even accept indie-written books for review, let alone consider them for an award.

But there are a few openings and we eagerly pour over them in case they might give us the opportunity we need to be placed and get noticed.

Here, the Indie author is no different to the mainstream. We would love to win an award. We enter and tell our friends and avid readers that we are not worried about winning, we are just delighted to be recognised enough to be placed on that long list with the other hopeful authors. And we hide our disappointment when we don’t reach the shortlist, or that treasured Winner Result.

An Indie B.R.A.G medallion is a good achievement for indie authors to gain - basically, it is a mark of a "good read" and worth aiming for ( details here ), Worth getting. But it isn't a 'prize'.

When Ann Author, who we ‘know’ quite well in the virtual world, gets to the shortlist and we don’t we graciously say “congratulations” on Facebook and Twitter (all the while seething inside because her books are nowhere near as good as ours). But we are writers by trade and we have the ability to produce believable stories, don’t we?

 We are pretty good at convincing ourselves that it doesn’t matter, that awards really are not that important. We shrug, think, ‘Ah well, another prize has passed by, maybe the next novel will be The One.’

Or the one after that.

Or the one after that…

Maybe...?

In addition to being a traditional and Indie-published author, with a best-seller listing to my credit, (no awards though L  ) I am the Managing Editor for the Historical Novel Society Indie Review.

The HNS welcomes submissions from all Indie writers of Historical Fiction, and with the aim of encouraging quality writing and production of self-published historical fiction is proud to announce a newly-initiated Historical Fiction Indie Award.

There is no entrance fee; novels will be selected for potential long-listing from all novels submitted for review.

For full details:

http://ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/hns-indie-award-2014.html