2024 Week 48: Georgia on my mind.

Posted on December 6, 2024 by mgbauer

No, not that Georgia. Not Ray Charles’ Georgia.

I mean Eastern European Georgia. The Georgia whose capital city is Tbilisi and whose population is around 4 million.

This one.

This particular Georgia is on my mind because I just received an email from the Senior Rights Manager at Scholastic Australia (one of my favourite people) telling me of an offer to publish Don’t Call Me Ishmael there.

If that publication goes ahead it will be 8th overseas edition of DCM Ishmael (Italy, Germany, USA, Czechoslovakia, France, UK, Israel) and the 6th translation.

Amazing to think that this book which was first published in Australia 18 years ago (!) can still find a new home after all that time. I’m both thrilled and very grateful.

The photo above is from the book-launch of DCM Ishmael at Padua College Brisbane in 2006. And see those three boys behind me? I have no idea who they were but looking at them now I realise they would be pretty great matches for the roles of Ishmael, James Scobie and Razz!

Apart from that good news the main thing I’ve been doing this week is re-reading Ishmael and the Return of the Dugongs and Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel checking to see if there needs to be any minor changes to the original text before they are both reprinted with updated covers in May next year.

In the end only one or two really outdated references were changed (because they would be lost on modern readers) and one typo was corrected but other than that everything stayed the same even though at times it’s obvious both books were written a number of years ago.

One interesting thing about reading your own books again years after they’ve been published is that you come across some things you’d forgotten you’d written. One was this little paragraph from Book 3 with Ishmael commenting on Orazio Zorzotto (Razz/the Razzman) dropping out of Economics.

But there were a couple of other things I don’t think I’ll ever forget from the first half of Year Twelve.
One was the (overjoyed) look on Razz’s face when he saw his Semester One report card. I’d be guessing it matched the look on Mr Farmer’s face when Razz gave him the sad news that he wouldn’t be in his Economics class any more.

This made me smile because as well as being an ex-English teacher I also taught Economics. I’d actually forgotten that I’d named the Economics teacher in Hoops of Steel Mr Farmer.

Since Bauer in the German language means ‘farmer’, the teacher was more or less me in disguise. Even though I loved the wild, unpredictable and always-joking Razz as a character, I’m not sure how well I would have coped with having a ‘real’ Razz in one of my classes.

Possibly, like Mr Farmer, I’d be more than happy to see the back of him!

(And if any ex-students are reading this please refrain from any sarcastic or hurtful comments – I’m a sensitive artiste now!)

And of course I guess you’re wondering about my overall reaction to my re-read of the Ishmael trilogy. What did I think? How would I review them?

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, I’m way too humble to say things like ‘Works of towering genius!’ or ‘By far the best comedy series to ever come out of Australia!’

But if YOU would like to say those sorts of things, then in the words of Ishmael and the Razzman, I’d be TOTALLY COOL with that!

Cheers
Michael

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2024 Week 47: The return of the Return of the Dugongs!

Posted on November 28, 2024 by mgbauer

Recently the first book in the Ishmael series, Don’t Call Me Ishmael, was reprinted (for the 27th time!) and given a slightly updated new cover.

Unfortunately though, the second and third books in the series have been out of print and unavailable for quite a while. (Which is a shame since the first book has sold over 100,000 copies in Aust/NZ alone, and I personally think the sequels are better.)

But the REALLY GOOD NEWS is that now both sequels – Ishmael and the Return of the Dugongs and Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel – are going to be REPRINTED with slightly UPDATED COVERS to match the latest DCM Ishmael cover!

They’re due for release in MAY 2025. Woohoo! Very happy about this.

Since a new cover is on the horizon I thought I’d take a quick look back at the original Dugongs cover. It was designed and created by my son Joe Bauer. (As was the original DCM Ishmael cover when he was still at school in grade 12.)

On the LEFT below is Joe’s plan for the front and back covers and on the RIGHT is how the original Dugongs front cover ended up.

Joe also created the Dugongs Logo and the Dugongs cassette case below. The Dugongs themselves are actually me and three friends (from an old photo) disguised in purple. I’m second from the left.

Our first attempt to create the cover (which had a background of a school gymnasium floor) took place at Mt St Michael College in Ashgrove.

This was the school both my wife and daughter attended as pupils and the school where my wife and I first met when we were young teachers.

The photos we took on that day weren’t quite what the publishers wanted so Joe and I had to try again another time.

Unfortunately the MSM gymnasium wasn’t available when we needed it so we had to quickly find another venue with a gymnasium-like floor.

We ended up hiring a court at the Taylor Range Squash Courts in The Gap. We didn’t play squash.

Joe and some other folk who contributed to the creation of the cover were duly thanked in the Acknowledgments.

(I case you’re wondering about ‘The Human Domino’ mentioned in the acknowledgments, that was a joke nickname from my soccer playing days. I used to do a lot of slide-tackles (my one football talent) and often ended up on the ground – usually tangled with an opposition player.)

And so that’s basically the Dugong’s original cover story, covered.

Cheers
Michael

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2024 Week 46: You’ve got email!

Posted on November 20, 2024 by mgbauer

One of the great things in my writing career has been that every now and then, out of the blue, I receive emails from readers telling me something about what my books have meant to them.

Usually it’s good stuff. (The bad stuff turns up on review sites like Goodreads.)

Recently I’ve received a couple of really lovely emails about the Ishmael Trilogy.

It seems a little strange that for a series with a male narrator and dominated by male characters, that most of the correspondence I get about the Ishmael books comes from female readers whose emails are invariably touching and heartfelt.

This week I got an email from a girl who first began reading and enjoying the Ishmael series when she was 12 years old and in Grade Six which is quite young for these books. Now she is 17 and has read the books numerous times.

The final book of the series (Ishmael and the Hoops of Steel) ends at a Year 12 Graduation night with the character of Ishmael contemplating going on to University and all the possibilities of an unknowable future.

As Ishmael muses – sometimes life is like one of those movies with a perfect, happy-ending. And sometimes it’s definitely not.

My most recent email correspondent wrote to me because she now finds herself in the same situation as Ishmael in the last pages of the trilogy. She is a high school graduate contemplating university, the future in general and the glorious uncertainty of it all.

Or to use her own beautiful words: “I sit at the edge of high school and university, childhood and adulthood.”

In her email she explained her thoughts and feelings at this important moment in her life journey.

What a lovely privilege it is when a reader takes the time to share with you, not just their views about something you’ve written, but also a little bit of themselves and their life as well.

In my reply I told her that her email had made more than just my day. And it really did.

Cheers
Michael

BONUS EXTRAS!

I call this photo ‘Me and a Creek’. I’m the one in the foreground.

And here’s some of my recent reading:

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2024 Week 45: A mixed bag.

Posted on November 13, 2024 by mgbauer

So I been desperately trying to think what I might put in this week’s blog.

A shot of me looking far too excited beside our most recent bunch of bananas?

Nah. I’ve done that before.

A compilation of shots of the wildlife I’ve come across on my most recent walks around the neighbourhood?

Possibly. But that would only serve to remind me that the one time I forgot my phone while I was out walking (THE ONE TIME!) was the day I saw a KOALA.

In the end I decided to look for inspiration for this blog by glancing over the blogs I’d written ten years ago. (We are encouraged to recycle, right?)

Anyway I found this piece about something I’d written in a diary way back in 1999 – the year before I resigned from my teaching job to try to write my first novel.

What I’d written was this small poem:

The Words

I will lay them down like jewels
Like sleeping children
Like gold foil – delicate and fragile.
I will place them gently
And they will be rich
and wonderful
and glow like the moon.

Jeez, nothing like setting your writing sights impossibly high.

Needless to say, I’m still trying.

Cheers
Michael

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