Tag: books

Being naked. It’s like reading a book.

(and the textile world doesn’t get it.)

Paul reading
Reading,. Naked.

Maybe this subject requires a tad of elaboration.

Why do you read a book?

Right. Because you want to read it. Perfect reason.

And why are you naked?

Exactly. Because you want to be naked. Again: perfect reason.

I think that completes this blog post, doesn’t it?

Not entirely, because, as usual, there is more to this than the ‘naked’ eye can see. (Interesting phrase, that naked eye.)

Woman reading naked

I am convinced that one of the major misconceptions of the textilised humans around us is that they aren’t aware of the simple fact that we want to be naked for ourselves. It’s not for showing off or any other outgoing purpose – most of the time.

In fact, let’s be honest, most of us aren’t the model that would be ‘shown off’ in the textile world. They have different measures and standards, and they hide their own nature beneath their layers of fabric.

The subject title of this post suddenly came to me. It’s such a simple truth that I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it sooner. We eat and drink because we want to. We read because we want to. And we ‘naked’ because we want to.

There are many things that we do because we want to do them, and in general most people have the same wants, cravings and needs. Books being one of them. Put in that light, there might be a way to make the textile world understand us, provided they want to listen. Because many minds are made up, set in stone and locked behind the cast-iron doors, courtesy of their peers and leaders.

Let our fight never dwindle. Each person convinced that we’re not the loonies is a win. Each person who finally sees that wearing clothes when they’re not needed is silly, is a big win.

Let’s stay naked. It’s good. I could write a book about that…

The naturist library

The library

You may have visited the naturist library page already. It’s a big, fat list of naturist books in a lot of genres. I had a quick look for you. 12 genres. There should be something in it for everyone.

How did this start?

Basically I started this for myself as I was getting tired of running over all the book stores online to find decent naturist fiction. Most of was erotica or porn, and it was nearly impossible to find the worthy gems in there.

I knew there were books. Good books. I had read them. As the list grew, I had this idea to put them online. I was proud to see that first list of about 50 or 60 books up there on this website, and people started helping me by sending titles and references.

Reading is good for the soul. Being naked is as well. Why not combine the two?

The work

At times it takes a bit of time for a new book to ‘come online’ in the library. It’s not a fully automated process. Some is, but most of it is manual because the site is hosted on a WordPress base.

My source is a spreadsheet.

It’s a very convenient way to keep things in order, and I wrote a few sorting macros to make the exports from there more convenient. There are 2 exports, 1 sorted on Genre/Series and 1 on author.

After downloading those, I run a script and a program I wrote, that together convert those exported text-files into handy dandy HTML files. I wrote those programs because I’m too lazy to code and link and x-ref (by now) over 170 books by hand. It’s also a bit too time-consuming. 😉

With that part done, I load the 2 files into an editor (snippet here on the left, doesn’t that look cool? 😀 ) and I log into the site, where I update the HTML code for the actual sets of books on each page; the main library page sorted by Genre and the one sorted by Author. This might not sound like a lot of work (it’s ‘only’ 15 minutes) but it’s not something I want to do for each new book.

Before a new book is in there

Because that’s not all the work. When a kind soul sends me a message to tell me there’s a great naturist book out by Smarty Johnson, that’s not exactly enough to add to the library. I go online, google Smarty Johnson, run into a thousand links of use tire dealers called Smarty Johnson and finally locate 2 of them on Amazon. 1 wrote a book on selling used tires, and 1 wrote, indeed, a book on naturism and its relation to, you guessed it, used tires. Yay, that means I found the link on amazon. But the book might also be on Barnes and Noble. And Kobo. And Apple. And perhaps some obscure other place. So there I go to search as well, often without a result as most people don’t seem to know there are books sold outside Amazon. Of course then I also investigate the actual book. Is this real naturism? Is it naturism enough? There’s always this difficult fine line, so I may ask someone to have a look as well. And if then the book passes the ballot, I’ll add the book to the library sheet.

Trust me, that takes longer than 15 minutes per book. Which is fine. That keeps the quality of the books high.

It’s a good source.

That brings tweets like this to life – and that is what the library is meant to do. It’s meant to help you find books about and dealing with our lifestyle.

Reading naked in the park
Reading naked in a park

So keep reading, people. And let me know if you find a good book that belongs in the library!

Exciting book news all over

As I already posted, there is a lot happening in the book area.

Naked Crow 9 - Canadian Crow

Next Saturday Naked Crow 9 is hitting the e-shelves. But as if this is not enough, another book will be out soon, being the 21st of this month.

On that day, an anthology will see the light. Lots of it has already been posted on Twitter.

The name of this book: Murder in the Nudist Colony.

Does this sound ominous enough for you?

Let me tell you a bit more about it:

Early in 2020, naturist fiction author P. Z. Walker had the idea for a collection of mystery stories to be called “Murder in the Nudist Colony,” deliberately using the antiquated term “nudist colony” for a slightly retro, humorous touch. On social media platforms, mostly Twitter, other folks associated with the fine network of naturist authors chimed in. Ted Bun put together the call for submissions, Robert Longpré set up the page to share documents as well as the ISBN, Fabien Barabé designed the cover… and we’ve ended up with fifteen submissions within a relatively quick timeframe. Will Forest and Ted Bun volunteered to edit. The project has been a strong example of an online community working together!

So there you have it. I am the one who’s to blame for the whole thing getting to life. I’m very proud of all my co-conspirators who have done so much work to get this anthology to life.

If you want to have a look at the available bookstores for a preorder, click here for the Amazon store and click here for a selection of other locations!

The crazy stuff that is parts of America

This week I tried to publish my first Dutch naturist fiction book.

A naturist book which is a crime story. As usual I chose a platform called Draft2Digital to get the book ‘out there’. That, combined with Amazon, gives me a good reach for books. Except this one.

Imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail from Draft2Digital telling me that most online bookstores do not accept pornographic content on the cover of a book. Let me show you the cover:

High-Tech Recherche

I assume you are shocked over the pornographic content displayed here. If so, accept my apologies. If not, I’m glad to meet a human being with a sensible mind.

To make sure I was indeed offending some policy, I went to wikipedia to have a look at their (Wikipedia’s) definition of pornography: “Pornography (often abbreviated porn) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal.”

If a man’s back and naked behind is sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal then I wonder what kind of people decide this image is exactly that.

Considering the fact that Draft2Digital is an American company, I should not be surprised about this rejection. Still, being stubborn, I decided to try my luck at Amazon because there is a Dutch Amazon-website for books. And lo and behold… American company Amazon sent me this: Congratulations, your book “High-Tech Recherche” is now live and available* for purchase in the Kindle Store!

I decided to publish the e-book through a Dutch e-book distributor. This means it will
a) be a bit more expensive
b) not get to Apple iTunes or B&N
but that’s something I’m not going to be bothered about.

I know, this is not my typical kind of post but I had to vent this somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. If you want to know more about the book, please let me know. The plan is to get an English version out too, and I would like to point the Dutch visitors to my Dutch author website where I will announce the book shortly.

A naturist’s view on reading

A view on reading?

Okay, if this surprises you, you haven’t been paying much attention. Hibernationists excluded of course, they have a valid (I hope!) reason.

Paul readingYes. Naturists read books. And whenever possible this naturist likes to read in the nude. There’s nothing to it really. Just make yourself comfortable, get a good book, and you’re ready to go.

It’s that easy. Although finding a good book might throw you at times.

Why in the nude?

Well, I did say comfortable, didn’t I? As long as you’re comfortable, you’re in the right state to read. If you feel great and ready to read for a while when you’re uncomfortable, I’d love to hear from you how you do that. And certainly also why.

And what do naturists read?

Anything. Literally anything. Horror like you can expect from Anthony Crowley (@crowley_anthony on Twitter, he’s a naturist), poetry and introspective works like Robert Longpré writes (find out more about him on our new site NaturistFiction.org!) but there’s no limit to what naturists read. Romance? Historical fiction? Sure. Detectives? Fantasy and Science Fiction? Why not? And no, that doesn’t necessarily have to be naturist-related fiction. I can enjoy a good Agatha Christie story, or most anything by Ursula Leguin.

So who reads in the nude?

Probably more people than you’d guess if you’re not a naturist yourself. People in parks can do that, people at home, at a camping or anywhere that you can take a book to. In New York there’s an actual group of woman, ToplessPulp reading in parkunited in ToplessPulp, that get together and read topless in parks all over New York. This because women can legally be topless in that city (even when many police people don’t seem to be aware of that).

When I go to our local nude beach I always have a book with me. Reading’s fun and you can do it in most places.

So there you have it. Reading in the nude isn’t something awkward or mad or new. It’s nude, nothing else.

Next time you get your hands on a good book, try it yourself. Experience the ease of reading without clothes pulling in places you don’t like pulling. You could be in for a nice surprise!

 

Bookish update

Hi there.

With July on the way out which means that most of 2016 is already behind us, I thought I’d give you a little update on what’s going on here book-wise.

Mirror Earth 2

Mirror EarthThe end of that book is in sight. I’m working on getting the last chapter in order and shape, which should not take too long now. After that I will let the entire book cool off a while and start reworking it to get the worst blunders out of it.

It’s become a good story I think, but in the end I’m not the one to say so. That’s up to you, the readers. I do what I can, you do what you can, and so we make a good team

Please don’t expect this book to hit the shelves in a month or so, reworking and editing takes time and attention. I just wanted to give you this good news. 🙂

Naked Crow

I’m thinking about part 6. I have a basic idea for it, but there has to be more than just that. If you have ideas about naturist issues, problems or bits of interest you would like to see in book 6 please let me know. I can’t promise it will be used but it is a great asset for me to know what you would like to read about.

NakedCrow5_320

Historical naturist fiction

Vintage nudistsIt’s still in view but so much has been going on these days (like publishing Naked Crow 5) that this story has moved to the background a little. I hope I will have some time to return to this story soon. It’s coming along quite well but there is some research on history I need to do. Everything in this story has to be correct and make some kind of sense, as opposed to real life. 😉

Be happy, well, and naked, as much as you can!

Mirror Earth

Hi!

I thought I’d tell you a bit more about the new Scifi I’ve been working on for a long time. “Mirror Earth”. You may have seen the post where I showed off the cover already.

What I want to tell you is: it’s almost there! Now… what the book is about…

Earth. The future. Researchers have discovered how to detect fluctuations in time and found that there is the possibility for alternate realities. Complicated calculations, big laboratories and big interests are at stake.
A group of researchers is dedicated to pursuing the biggest experiment in their lives: to see if there are indeed other worlds like ours. And what will they look like if there is anything like another Earth?

Step into the world of Mirror Earth to discover what’s out there…

For the paper version I had a very funny idea. This is the front, as you may have seen already (which is also the front image of the e-book):
Mirror Earth Front
This will be the paper version’s back:Mirror Earth Back

🙂 My aim is to get the e-book version out into the world (our world) by next Saturday. As usual, the paper version is slower but that will come out as well.

Did I mention a new naturist scifi?

I may have. It’s not all done yet but it’s coming closer to the end. As today is Author Chat day with @homeclothesfree I thought it a good moment to show you the cover of the new book. Mirror Earth

So there you have it. I hope to finish the work on it soon. My aim is to get it out into the open in December or January. Let’s hope the world isn’t interfering too much!