Change of Life

Apr Sat, 2011 admin blog, Life No comments yet

It’s been exactly one year since I retired from the European Commission and became a civilian. The transition hasn’t exactly been smooth. Myself and my wife had been hoping to move into our new house in a small fishing village in Connemara but we had put a little too much faith in the Irish workman. The house certainly wasn’t ready to move into and getting it to the stage where we could actually reside in it took around a month. Since then we have been at the mercy of the great Irish builder who turns up when he likes and can blame a whole range of events, weather, broken down transport, the situation in Syria whatever except his own failings. One year later and we are in the final stages of organising the outside of the house with Tarmacadam and attractive red granit peebles. So although it’s been a bit of a trial that part is now over.

Before I left Zambia I had signed a contract to produce a book on exiting development aid for Zed Publishers. I had tentatively given the completion date as the end of July but given the housing issues that date went out to the end of August and then the end of September. The title that we eventually settled on was ‘Managing an aid exit strategy’. The manuscript took a lot more work than I had anticipated principally because the book covers such a wide range of issues. It really could have been much longer but the reader might have suffered from information overload. The editor and I decided that it would be better to have a concise book which gave the message without burdening the reader. Bringing the manuscript in required several re-writes and the manuscript was completed just after Christmas 2010 and transmitted to ZED in early January. If you’re interested you can look at the advance blurb on Amazon at http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Manage-Aid-Exit-Strategy/dp/1780320302/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327401666&sr=1-1

I have written both non-fiction and fiction and I can tell you that non-fiction is much more labour intensive. The amount of research that is required to produce a work which will not be lambasted is substantial. That’s not to say that non-fiction requires no research. Depending on the background of the story and the experience of the writer, non-fiction can require either a little or a lot of research. I once wrote a book with a lot of the action set in Saudi Arabia without ever having been there. This involved reading five books on the history and politics of Saudi along with several travel books. Anyway after finishing my contractual obligation to ZED, I decided to put by previous novel CARTEL onto KIndle. It took a while to get it in the right format and then some time to update some of the text. Mobile phones were not as prevalent when it was published and the euro hadn’t been introduced. I must say that the uploading process into Kindle was amazingly easy. Amazon have really been a boon to people like me who know there was around a keyboard and a couple of  Microsoft Office products but (even after producing seven non-fiction books and one novel) I am still a neophyte in the publishing game. If anyone out there reading this has a manuscript that they want to launch on Kindle the process could not be easier. CARTEL is now available on Kindle ane you can find it on http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cartel-ebook/dp/B006ZWURAK/ref=sr_1_3_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327402154&sr=1-3 at 79 pence Stirling on 99c US. Give it a read. It’s no high brow fiction but it will pass a couple of rainy afternoons.

The last point is that I’m interested in passing on some of the things I’ve learned to the next generation. Rather stupidly, I contacted the Deans of the Business Schools in both Galway and Limerick Universities. Prior to leaving Zambia I sent them an e-mail offering my services  for free if that could see some area in which my experience might be useful. I should add that my e-mail had the usual ending indicating that I was the EU Ambassador to Zambia and the EU Representative to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. Neither of these august gentlemen bother to reply. So much for offering something for nothing. I must say that since returning I have had the opposite reaction from Trinity College and University College Dublin. Trinity were quickest off the mark and I gave a presentation on the preamble to ‘Managing an aid exit strategy’ during a development week in November. The other presenters included Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland, and Denis O’Brien, the entrepreneur. If you’re interested you can listen to my presentation and view my slides at http://itunes.apple.com/ie/itunes-u/the-business-aid-trinity-development/id426141353?i=108263576.

So that’s it for my first effort at blogging. I hope that there is at least a little food for thought and that you’ll check in with me again.