Nautilus 2011 Awards – FREE chapter for you, help us celebrate!

Hello!
For us – today is a happy day. Why? We can’t simply believe it, but we just received notification that our Exotic Gardens of the Eastern Caribbean book is 2011 NAUTILUS SILVER AWARD WINNER.

TO CELEBRATE THIS FINE AWARD, we are offering FREE chapter from this book for you. Simply click this link to download or open PDF with Diamond Gardens chapter – and instantly feel like being in St Lucia!
But BEFORE you do it, please CLICK  SHARE or LIKE icon on the right, so your friends can also get and enjoy  this chapter.
Thank you!

We are humbled by the news – specially as we know this is one of the most prestigious and hard-to-win international book competitions. 
So, now our first book Tropical Homes of the Eastern Caribbean which won Benjamin Franklin Gold Award 2010 will not put the Exotic Gardens book in its shadow anymore.

It is worthy to note that it places us in amazing company of previous winners – the world’s leading voices in the fields of human consciousness, spirituality and mysticism, health, energy medicine:
Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Toole, Caroline Myss, Marianne Williamson, Gail Straub, Masaru Emoto, Susun Weed
scientist and visionary Gregg Braden,
His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
novelist, essayist and poet: Barbara Kingsolver
photographers: David McKay, Robert Kull, Ian Shive
and many others…
(please pinch me, I think I must be dreaming)

Nautilus Awards’ jury “recognizes Books and E-Books that promote spiritual growth, conscious living & positive social change, while at the same time they stimulate the “imagination” and offer the reader “new possibilities” for a better life and a better world” – says a quote on their Web site  http://www.nautilusbookawards.com
And it continues:

“With mass global communication, political upheaval, depletion and destruction of our natural resources along with religious and secular fanaticism all growing at an alarming rate, the need for books that promote viable options for positive social change is vast, and the phrase, “Changing the World One Book at a Time” is more meaningful than ever before. Authors and publishers and their books CAN and ARE making a difference.”

Many thanks to all our team, Margaret, Anna, Natasha, Lex – and of course Tony and friends at  Meida Printing!
Champagne, anyone?

Exotic Gardens of the Eastern Caribbean can be ordered from
www.amazon.com     or www.amazon.ca
more info, photos and stories at http://www.ozonezonebooks.com

Good news once again!

It was a nice surprise this morning, when i received email from England informing that winners of International Photo Competition “4 Seasons: Monochrome” are already announced.

When Lex Nowak, our friend and Ozone Zone partner-photographer entered this competition with his fine infra-red image, I told him chances of winning are small because this is the same large and prestigious competition as IGPOTY (International Garden Photographer Of The Year), just a different “wing” of it organizing seasonal themes. For each theme they receive well over thousand entries from fine photographers  world-wide.

This is what I told him – but as he entered, I decided to enter at the very last day too, just to keep him company.

Today, when I opened the Monochrome 2011 finalists’ page – I found Lex and myself to be among top 23 selected winners! You can see my green monochrome photo, and Lex’s intriguing infra-red photo which looks like a black and white, but with twisted light balance. (It is because palms absorbed sun heat, and infra-red technique shows warmer subjects as brighter ones.) Interesting  and rather difficult technique,  but it gives very impressive results when well used.

(Please note, Lex used his Polish name Leszek, and you can see his image being on bottom of the winners’ page). By the way – I find all these winning images definitely fine, and we both feel honoured to win. For me it is specially nice, as I just recently won IGPOTY main competition for 2010 with another image!

So, you are first to know as I am sharing the news with you right away! Cheers!
Thanks a lot, and until next time!
Derek