In the old days (and believe it or not, that is only about ten years ago…), people read newspapers, magazines and books by buying a copy in a shop and holding it in their hands, turning the pages. Nowadays, with fast internet connections and wireless technology, people read updates on the news, or magazine articles on their computer, or even mobile phone.

Books these days come in two varieties – as an actual printed copy (real book), or as a digital copy (also called an ebook). To read a real book, you just have to go to the shop and buy one, or order one from Amazon and wait until the postman drops it into your letterbox (or go the public library and borrow one). To read an ebook you have to download it from the internet onto your computer, mobile phone or other gadget from where you can read it. An ebook doesn’t literally exist, as a real book does.

Many people don’t like reading from a computer screen, at least not a whole book. They much prefer to curl up on the sofa to read a book – and who can blame them, I do too. The gadgets industry has found a solution for this. It is a gadget called an e-reader, which is basically a little flat computer screen. It has a large memory and can be connected to the internet to upload ebooks. These ebooks can then be read almost like reading a real book on the sofa, in the train or in bed.

So Yvonne, to answer your question. Do you buy my new book as an ebook? If you have an e-reader, you could. If you don’t have an e-reader, it’s probably better to order a so-called print-on-demand (POD) copy, which means a real book will be printed especially for you and send to your house.

I hope this explains what and ebook is. If you have any further questions, please ask. :-)

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The manuscript is ready, the front and back covers designed and last Sunday I have sent everything to Authors Online. They are going to turn my Word documents into pdf’s, which can be used for selling the book as ebook and printing the book with print-on-demand.

Wouldn’t it be easier if I made my own pdf’s? The fact is that I can actually make them myself, but the pdf’s that are used for ebooks and POD need a number of specifications, and I don’t think I can meet those. I am only a little bit computer savvy and I don’t want to screw things up.

So, now that I have sent everything off, I have to let Authors Online do their work. It will take them between 4-6 weeks to get everything ready. The fun thing is that as soon as they are finished, my book is ready to launch – not long to wait now!

In the meantime, I need to set up a smooth running marketing campaign. I need to find ways to make people aware that my book exists and that it is (will be) for sale. I have some things in mind to get this done, one of which is setting up a special website for the book. To get it the marketing right will take some careful planning. I am going to be busy in the next few weeks.

In any case, here’s a sneak preview of the back cover.

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Some of the very good suggestions were:

• Containers on the Horizon
• Travel with Containers
• About Containers, Terminals and Travel
• Adventures with Containers
• Made in China, a Sea Travel Story
• Containers Above the Titanic
• Living among Steel, Around the world on a Container Ship
• Living with Time Zones, Around the world on a Container Ship
• Three Months Among Steel and 20 Men, Around the world on a Container Ship
• Time Travelling on Container Ships
• With Container Ships through Time and Space
• On the Fo’c’sle
• Time Zone Passage with the Galactic Star
• From Savannah to Singapore, Around the world on a Container Ship
• Well Contained
• 3000 containers and only one vessel – traveling the world by cargo ship
• Floating with freight – world travel by cargo ship

It’s clear from this list that times zones is a recurring theme. The title that I came up with had them in as well – Time Zones and Three Square Meals a Day, Around the World on a Container Ship.

I suggested it to Linda and she felt it was much better than my original title, but still lacked something. Then, yesterday afternoon, while I googled the word time zone for inspiration to find something that was associated with it, I had a brain wave.

Why didn’t I drop the subtitle (which had come into being to explain the word Ship Lag in the original title) and add the word Container? This would make – Time Zones, Containers and Three Square Meals a Day. I felt like I had struck gold with this and quickly send another email to Linda. This morning she told me she liked it very much.

So it’s official! My new book is called: Time Zones, Containers and Three Square Meals a Day

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The biggest challenge Linda gave me was to come up with a new title. She thought Ship Lag, with 3000 containers on a ship around the world wasn’t catchy enough and actually, I agree with her.

Coming up with a new title for a book is a strange process. Sometimes it takes forever to come up with something good, like with the title of my first book and sometimes the title is already there before one word has been written, like with my second book.

This time finding an interesting title for my book has been the most agonising thing ever. Everything that has come up so far is either very dull, stupid or looks too much like the titles of my other books. Therefore, last year Ship Lag, a term invented by me and used in the book, came to mind as a possibility, but I always knew it wasn’t great.

Having my suspicion about the title confirmed by a professional, now obviously gives me the following challenge. To find a new, catchy, title for my book and find it asap. I really want the people from Authors Online to start working on the layout next week and the final title must be known by then – so no pressure.

Any ideas are welcome at this point. For the last few hours, my mind has been completely blank concerning titles of books. Nothing at all has come out and I am starting to panic.

<sigh> This is probably going to be a long weekend.

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Quite a few people have already read my manuscript. Some have read the whole text, others just parts of it, but all of these people knew me when they read it. And although I told them to give me their opinions of the text as if they had never heard of me, they had, so they might still have been somewhat biased. I must add at this point that I really appreciate all the tips and comments my friends have given me about my new book, as without those, the book would never have gotten to where it is now – ready to be read by the first person who doesn’t know me.

Linda is a freelance editor and often works for a company called Authors Online. Authors Online are helping me publish the book and feeling I could only benefit from Linda’s expertise, I send my manuscript to her about a week ago. So that’s why I am rather nervously waiting to hear from Linda, hoping that it will not take too long anymore.

In the meantime I have made some changes to my website (the one you are reading this blog on), and started another website for my publishing company (FTK Publishing), which will publish the book in association with Authors Online. Nothing much to see on that site yet, but that should change in the next few weeks.

For now, I will end this post with a sneak preview of the cover of my new book. I would love to hear what you all think of it.

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This two months break however, would not only have given me time to spent on my quest, but also to do some very important time to work on the final editing of my new book, which I desperately want to come out this year.

Now I have to work through the summer, I feel that I won’t have enough free time to do both – the quest and my book. Therefore, after a lot of thinking, I have decided to build in a bit of a break from my quest. My book is just more important at the moment. This will obviously mean that I won’t be writing any blog posts for a bit. I am hoping to start again with my quest in September.

I can hear you all thinking, ‘has this quest actually led to any conclusions yet?’ Well, yes it has. One of my most important conclusions is that I am probably not a direct descendant of Bishop Radbod. Of course we will never know for sure, but from all I have read about this guy in the last four months, it all points towards the fact that he was a very pious, studious man, who most likely didn’t have any children of his own.

Hopefully sunflowers will bring a sunny summer

Does this mean that my quest has ended? No. It is still very (and I mean, very) likely that my family are descendants of King Radbod, who was an ancestor of Bishop Radbod as well. I still need to delve much deeper into that story and it opens avenues for my quest, I had not thought of before. So, I still have a lot of searching to do.

I hereby want to wish everyone a very good summer and hope to see you all back as readers of my blog in September. Obviously, I will let you all know when I start posting again.

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Daarnaast zouden deze twee maand mij ook de belangrijke tijd gegeven hebben om de laatste hand te leggen aan mijn nieuwe boek – een boek die ik toch wel erg graag dit jaar uit wil zien komen.

Nu ik de hele zomer doorwerk, heb ik het gevoel dat ik niet genoeg vrije tijd over zal houden om zowel met mijn queeste als met mijn boek bezig te zijn. Ik heb hierover lang nagedacht en heb besloten dat het beter zou zijn een pauze in te lassen in mijn zoektocht. Mijn boek is op dit moment gewoon belangrijker. Uiteraard betekend dit dat ik voorlopig even geen aantekeningen meer zal maken op deze site, maar ik hoop dat ik in september weer volop bezig zal gaan met mijn zoektocht.

Jullie zullen wel denken, ‘zijn er tot nu toe al wat conclusies te trekken uit deze queeste ?’. Ja, die zijn er. Eén conclusie die heel belangrijk is, is dat ik waarschijnlijk niet een directe nakomeling ben van Bisschop Radboud. We zullen het natuurlijk nooit zeker weten, maar uit alles wat ik tot nog toe over deze man gelezen heb blijkt dat hij een vrome man was die niks anders deed als studeren. Het is dus onwaarschijnlijk dat hij zelf kinderen gehad zal hebben.

Hopelijk word het een zomer vol zonnige zonnebloemen

Betekend dit dan niet dat mijn queeste voorbij is? Nee. Het is erg (en ik bedoel, erg) waarschijnlijk dat mijn familie afstamt van Koning Radboud, die ook een voorouder was van Bisschop Radboud. Ik moet dit allemaal nog veel meer gaan bestuderen, maar het opent wel interessante nieuwe wegen waar ik tot nu toe niet op had gerekend. Ik heb dus nog een boel graafwerk te doen.

Ik wil hierbij iedereen een hele goede zomer wensen en hoop dat jullie de draad van mijn blog weer oppikken in september. Uiteraard zal ik jullie laten weten wanneer ik weer begin met het maken van aantekeningen op deze site.

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The city of Deventer seen across the River IJssel, photo taken by Mippe and distributed by photobucket

Yesterday I had planned to visit the city of Deventer, which is about a two-hour train ride from my hometown, but unforeseen circumstances prevented me from hopping on the train. I was a bit disappointed, as I would really have liked to see the large Lebuinus Church, which has some remains of an older church in its basement or crypt.

However, I am sure I will get to Deventer one of these days and in the meantime, I will continue with the story about Radbod’s life. Radbod had by now, the year is 899, been chosen as Bishop of Utrecht and had moved from Tours to Deventer, a town on the River IJssel.

The Vita Radbodi, a book that was written around 960 and which describes Radbod’s life, concentrates mostly on the part that Radbod was a bishop. Unfortunately, Vitas can’t be read as a proper historical and chronological account of someone’s life. The people who have Vitas written about them have all become saints, so the writer of a Vita was particularly keen on pointing out the virtues and good works of the person he was describing.

This is also the case with Radbod’s Vita. For example, when the old Bishop of Utrecht died, the clergy and people of the See of Utrecht had to chose a new bishop, and they easily came to the decision to chose Radbod, because ‘his works were good and he was worthy of God to become their father.’ King Arnulf had also heard of Radbod’s good deeds and besides that, ‘God let the king know that Radbod was the right man for the job’.

Old Fresco of Bishop Radbod, this picture is in the public domain

I have no doubt that Radbod was a good guy, but his appointment as bishop was most likely in large part due to him being from noble descent, with very good connections to the Frankish nobility and royal family.

According to his Vita, Radbod thought he wasn’t worthy of becoming a bishop. As before, this is something the writer of the Vita had to mention, because otherwise his subject might not have been worthy of becoming a saint. As seen in the first 50 years of his life Radbod loved studying, and it must have been clear to him that he had to give that up when he accepted his new job.

Nevertheless, Radbod became the new Bishop of Utrecht and moved to Deventer, where he found his see in turmoil due to Viking attacks and the fact that part of the see fell under the rule of the kings of West Francia, while another part fell under the rule of the kings of East Francia. This was not an easy situation for Radbod to work with, but more about that next time.

Related Posts

• Deventer The New Residence Of Radbod

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Uitzicht op de binnenstad van Deventer met de Lebuinus Kerk, foto genomen door Mippe en afkomstig van Photobucket

Ik was van plan om gister naar Deventer te gaan voor een bezoek aan de stad, maar door omstandigheden ging dat niet door. Eigenlijk was dat wel jammer, want ik wil graag eens een kijkje nemen in de Lebuinus Kerk aangezien daar in de crypte wat overblijfselen zijn van een oudere kerk. Maar ik weet zeker dat ik binnenkort wel eens een bezoek aan Deventer zal brengen.

Ondertussen zal ik verder gaan met het verhaal over Radboud’s leven. We zijn ondertussen aanbeland in het jaar 899 en Radboud is gekozen tot Bisschop van Utrecht. Hij was daarom verhuist van Tours naar Deventer aan de rivier de IJssel.

De Vita Radbodi, een boek dat rond 960 werd geschreven en dat het leven van Radboud beschrijft, concentreerd zich voornamelijk op het bisschoppelijke deel van Radboud’s leven. Helaas is het niet zo dat Vitas gelezen kunnen worden als een mooie opsomming van iemands leven, waarbij rekening word gehouden met historische gebeurtenissen. De mensen die in de Vitas worden beschreven waren allemaal heilig geworden, en dus was het de schrijvers van de Vitas er vooral om te doen om deze heiligen zo heilig mogelijk af te beelden.

Dit is ook het geval met de Vita van Radboud. Zo straat er bijvoorbeeld in dat toen de oude bisschop van Utrecht stierf en de geestelijken en leken van het Bisdom Utrecht een nieuwe bisschop moesten kiezen, dat het niet moeilijk voor hen was om Radboud te kiezen aangezien ‘Radboud zich door zijn verdiensten al dusdanig had bewezen dat ze hem wel moesten vragen om hun vader te worden, omdat deze man God al waardig was gebleken’. Ook koning Arnulf, had al gehoord van Radboud’s goede daden en bovendien hij had ‘met Gods wil de naam van Radboud ingegeven gekregen’.

Fresco van Bisschop Radboud, deze foto is vrij van copyrights

Ik twijfel er niet aan de Radboud een goede en oprechte persoon was, maar het is toch meer waarschijnlijk dat hij zijn benoeming tot bisschop vooral te danken was aan het feit dat hij zelf van adelijke afkomst was en goede connecties had met de rest van de Frankische adel en niet te vergeten de koninklijke familie.

De Vita verteld ons ook dat Radboud dacht dat hij niet geschikt was om bisschop te worden. Net als eerder is dit iets dat de schrijver van de Vita wel moest zeggen, want anders was de man over wie hij schreef misschien wel niet geschikt om heilige ‘te zijn’. Radboud had het grootste gedeelte van zijn leven studerend rondgebracht en studeren was duidelijk iets wat hij erg graag deed. Hij heeft natuurlijk heel goed beseft dat hij zijn study voor het grootste gedeelte op moest geven als hij de baan van bisschop aanvaarde.

Ondanks dat werd Radboud de nieuwe Bisschop van Utrecht en verhuiste hij naar Deventer. Hij werd de leider van een bisdom dat in problemen was niet alleen vanwege de aanvalen van de Vikingen, maar ook omdat het bisdom onder twee verschillende koninkrijken viel. Dit was allemaal niet makkelijk voor Radboud, maar daarover de volgende keer meer.

Verwante Verhalen

• Deventer De Nieuwe Woonplaats Van Radboud

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Taxes and Common Lands

Image of medieval hunters on the Bayeaux tapestry, this picture is in the public domain

In 944 the Frankish King Otto I, gave Bishop Balderik the hunting right on the common lands in Drenthe. No doubt, Balderik was honoured to receive this important gift, but little did he know that this gift would soon get him into trouble with the free farmers, who until then had had the use of the common lands. The free farmers were also important local leaders and regional magistrates. Not really people Balderik wanted to get into trouble with. To avoid conflict, Balderik decided to make a compromise with the free farmers, which allowed Balderik’s newly acquired hunting right to exist next to the old user rights of the farmers.

In the deal made between Balderik and the farmers, the compromise reads as follows: every farmer who in 944 owned his own complete farmyard, had to pay every year 100 litres of rye to the bishop as tax for using the common lands. This tax had to be paid on the 29 November, the day our Bishop Radbod had died and who was by now declared a saint by the successor Bishop Balderik. It is important to know that this tax was placed on the farmyard, and not on the person.

As the tax was placed on the farmyard, they are easily tracked back through time, and in an old archive of 1545, all the farmyards that had to pay this tax are actually mentioned. These farmyards stayed the same for generations, so it is very likely that the yards that were mentioned in 1545, actually already existed when the tax was first set up in 944. This is why historians know that in 944, 600 farmyards existed in Drenthe, who had the hunting right and the use of the common lands.

Replica of the type of early medieval farm that might have had to pay the tax

It is interesting to know that of the list of farmyards from 1545, two areas in Drenthe didn’t have to pay the taxes. One is an area in south-west Drenthe and the other the whole village of Emmen.

The explanation can only be that Bishop Balderik, even though Emmen fell outside the jurisdiction of the Bishops of Utrecht, had property in the village of Emmen. Therefore, he didn’t need to collect taxes in Emmen itself, as it all belonged to him anyway. How was it possible that Bishop Balderik had private property in Emmen? The answer might lie with Duke Radbod and his rebellion against King Otto. Did the king give Balderik Duke Radbod’s estate in Emmen, an estate that had been in Radbod’s family for generations? It looks that way.

The conclusion can be that the descendants of King Radbod had owned the area in south-west Drenthe and the village of Emmen. Is this why our Bishop Radbod chose Emmen to build his farm estate? Did he build the estate on land he had inherited from his ancestors? This would explain why of all places, he chose this small village to build such an important building, especially as it fell outside the See of Utrecht at that time.

Related Posts

• A Little Excursion To The Time After Bishop Radbod

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