You’re living a life that many of us would dream about, said Matt. It’s a life I dreamed about myself for long enough. Especially in the grey of winter I had a recurring dream of walking across the hills of a small Greek island, the deep blue sea down below. It got so familiar that I knew my way around it. I suppose it was based on all the Greek islands I’d been to, from family holidays when I was a teenager to the year I spent in Athens after university, to the places I’d discovered in recent years on late summer trips.
And then I had a particularly bad winter: my boyfriend left me unexpectedly, and a lot of plans and hopes crumbled. Just two months later, someone else I’d started seeing suddenly remembered he ‘didn’t do relationships’. I collapsed, a weeping wreck. I realised I needed to do something for myself, give my life a shake and find out whether I was living the life I really wanted. I booked myself a month on a tiny Greek island called Tilos where I’d spent a week before. It seemed a good place to spend time alone and refocus.
Tilos, in the hot and rugged Dodecanese in the southern Aegean Sea, is eight miles long by three miles wide. The population is about 500, the people far outnumbered by goats which roam wild. Rocky hillsides are dotted with chapels and bee hives. That month, every morning I glimpsed blue sky and hills and sea when I woke up and brushed my teeth. I held octopus and starfish in my hands. The joy of connecting with this wild place brought me back to life.
I also experimented with working from the island. I could do a lot of my job by email, and Tilos, in spite of being slightly remote, has good internet access. I felt better at my work when I could swim at lunchtime and walk off any stress in the evening. I started to think about a way to move here.
My work is finding, commissioning and editing books for an independent publisher based in a creaky, leaky Georgian house in Chichester. When I explain to people what I do, it sounds like the most amazing job in the world, and of course it can be, though like any work it has its share of headaches. Summersdale publishes all sorts of non-fiction books: gift, humour, health, stories about dogs and gardening and – well, as we like to say, ‘something for everyone’; but what originally drew me to the company and what inspires me most is the travel writing. We publish entertaining, informative and inspiring personal accounts of life-changing travel experiences. It has warped my perspective a little, because our authors are continually doing extraordinary things. Right now one is cycling and rowing around the world (Sarah Outen) and another is setting off on a solo expedition across Antarctica (Felicity Aston). I know people who have walked the Amazon and skateboarded across Australia. The idea of working from a Greek island doesn’t seem that strange if you look at it that way.
For almost seven years I’d been working from that office but I’d also been doing more and more travel writing myself, and it felt like time for a change. I told my boss I’d like to demote myself from Editorial Director and become a freelance Commissioning Editor focusing on travel and other quirky non-fiction: a job that can be done by email and Skype from a home office on a Greek island. And my lovely boss said yes.
So now I’m renting a pretty stone house next door to a little honey factory on Tilos, and I work from my kitchen table with a view of the mountains and the sea, amid the sound of bees and cockerels. Goats walk past my window. I buy vegetables straight from the farmer, and of course have an unlimited supply of delicious thyme honey. At night I can see the Milky Way. In spite of the Greek economy going to hell in a hand basket, I am blithely becoming more ensconced in island life. I’ve started teaching English to the schoolchildren two evenings a week, so when I walk through the square there are cries of Kyria! Hello Miss! I’ve therefore committed to staying here all winter, which has raised a few eyebrows. From November to April, most things shut down and many people leave. Some say it’s terribly quiet, others say it’s wonderfully tranquil. There’s only one way to find out. I am hoping for lots of time to read and to look after the winter vegetables in the garden.
I’ve been keeping a blog about life here (www.octopus-in-my-ouzo.blogspot.com), and a friend said many of the experiences have a timeless quality: going out on a fishing boat, dancing with the villagers at traditional festivals. There is certainly plenty to write about.
A few years ago I published a book called Meeting Mr Kim (http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Meeting+Mr+Kim) about how I travelled around South Korea and fell in love with the country. I’m still blogging about the country via CoolstuffKorea on Facebook and Twitter. But now I’m writing a new book about my love of Greece, and about love and Greece. It’s tentatively entitled Greek Honey, and it will be out in July 2012 (I’ll be updating my blog page with information, so please sign up!).
If you’ve had an extraordinary adventure yourself and are thinking of writing a book about it, please check out our list at summersdale.com and drop me a line at Jennifer@summersdale.com. If you’re simply interested in travel books, I’m on Facebook as Summersdale Traveleditor and have started a group called Great Travel Reading. If you prefer to tweet, I’m on Twitter at @SummersdaleGO so please say hello there.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a travel-related book, I’ve pulled together many of my favourite inspiring words from great travellers from over the centuries, and found interesting snippets of information about the lives of legendary people like Patrick Leigh Fermor, Freya Stark, Isabella Bird and Bruce Chatwin, and have recently published them in a book beautifully illustrated by Kath Walker called The Traveller’s Friend: A Miscellany of Wit and Wisdom. It might be a good gift for someone you know. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Travellers-Friend-Miscellany-Wit-Wisdom/dp/1849531897/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1318776568&sr=8-3)
Jennifer
www.octopus-in-my-ouzo.blogspot.com
www.coolstuffkorea.blogspot.com
http://www.twitter.com/CoolstuffKorea
www.twitter.com/SummersdaleGO
