Tobias Roote

I retired this year from a lifetime of running my own businesses and am now sitting in a rural hillside villa overlooking the Ionian sea. It's cold and wet in winter and blisteringly hot in summer. In between these extremes my wife and I work the land and cultivate crops to sustain our frugal lifestyle. We're not big spenders; enough to live on, a few luxuries (chocolate, wine, good food, friends), and an opportunity to live closer to nature giving us that feeling of connectivity. All in all it's a pleasant existence after a lifetime of trudging through the grist mill. Now, we look forward to time to read, write and watch Netflix (in any order) and when my books sell, we celebrate a little. The monthly royalty cheques become the high point of the month and we decide if we can afford a new chainsaw, or a strimmer, or maybe the fencing needs repairing to keep the wild goats from eating our crops. The Island suffers from poor infrastructure, so we are often without water in summer and electricity in winter, but it's getting better every year. We manage. In summer we are surrounded by guests, friends and family who come to share the abundance of Greek hospitality, the sunshine, sea, sand, and Mediterranean lifestyle. In winter, we're hard-pressed to get out of the driveway, most places are closed. Friends live a half hour drive up hilly tracks or goat paths that are as beaten and muddy as ours and we all huddle near the open fire and read our Kindles. Our semi-wild cats decide they suddenly want to be indoors and curled up and the wild animals get our olive groves and land back until the spring. The life of a writer doesn't get any better than this. Enjoy my books and think of me in my Island retreat, where I use the time left to me to write what's in my head in a way that gives you a little of what I experience - a temporary escape from a reality that holds us down. ~ Tobias