genesis of the book

When Faith and I arrived in Kalymnos to start our new life together, a sign on the arrival quay announced Welcome To The Sponge Divers' Island. But nowhere could we find published information to satisfy our curiosity. Just word of mouth or museum exhibits.
Faith's journalistic instincts prodded her into research and over a couple of years she began to unfold the story on the island's website. Reaction encouraged her to widen the research and write a book.
Finding a publisher for a book apparently aimed at such a limited market was daunting, if not impossible, so we decided to do it ourselves. Easier said than done? Not really, we thought. Faith was a published author and I had aspirations to design skills. Anyway, it was a project. And we wanted to spread the word of the island's astonishing history. It would repay in some small way the filoxenia - the instinctive Greek hospitality - which we had enjoyed since arriving here.
I taught myself the basics of QuarkXpress (with the aid of a 900 page door-stop from Amazon) while Faith rattled away at the laptop. I fed the words and pictures into the creaking PC and the finished files were sent off on CD to a book printer in England.
There were some technical glitches, delays and anxieties but then came the day when we were offloading cartons bulging with mint, shiny blue copies of Bitter Sea - The Real Story of Greek Sponge Diving.
"All we have to do now is sell them," said Faith.
That's another story . . .