Why Batland? Mostly because I'm a dreadful old bat, but also because I have a house in Transylvania, home to the most stylish bats in the business.
For the time being (and for the last 18 years) I live in Liverpool – the original, not one of the 15 or so around the world – and almost make a living as a publisher of gorgeous looking, life-enhancing non-fiction books under the imprints of Capsica and Garlic Press. Have a look at http://www.loveliverpoolbooks.com for some of them.
Garlic Press, incidentally, had nothing to do with the Transylvanian connection. I was taking drawing lessons, and we had to bring in a kitchen implement to sketch. I brought in a garlic press and it occurred to me that it would be a great name for a publishing house. At the time (1992) I was a business journalist and it hadn't occurred to me that it might be me doing the publishing. It's an odd world.
Gagging to know more about Transylvania, eh? It IS a real place and ISN'T full of vampires. Full of vampire-chasers, certainly - lots of foreign (ie not Transylvanian) nutters running around the mountains looking for Dracula. But although Vlad the Impaler's 14th century castle is in the valley below my house, and the village next to mine is named after a bat cave, and you can occasionally hear wolves howl from my back door, the place is idyllic ather than Gothic. Not dark and dangerous, but light and full of wildflower meadows. Much more of that later.
For now, the sun's out and it's Chinese New Year, and Liverpool has the oldest Chinese community in Europe, so I'm off out.
T'ra.
