Tallinn & Book promo

Hello subscribers!

As promised in last week’s newsletter, here’s an update on the progress I’ve made on my main website. Meanwhile I’ve uploaded three all-new chapters for Tallinn, plus one 80% newly adapted chapter as well as another ca. 20% adapted one. These are: KGB Prison Cells, Estonian War Museum, Contemporary History Museum, Maarjamäe memorial complex and Soviet Tallinn. Now I have only one big chapter left to write, Patarei prison, then Tallinn will be done. A couple more updates are needed for Riga too, but then I can leave the Baltics, as it were. One more rewrite of a Hamburg chapter will also have to be finalized but then I will have finished with this year’s (restricted-)travel write-ups.
  

Other than that I’ve been busy with some promotion of my book Atlas of Dark Destinations, including a new blog post to that effect.

The publishers finally let me have some promo material, both that used on their own UK website as well as the three pro photos they had done of the book for a press release. Apparently this was also posted on Twitter and Instagram on the release day a month ago. You can also see the images on the Amazon UK site. The featured photo above is one of them. You can find the rest in the latest blog post too – plus a few extras.

Speaking of Instagram – I tried to open an account there to be able to take a look at the book promo, but that attempt was almost instantly shot down too. I had half expected that because that platform is owned by Facebook, who have purged and banned me (full story here, for those few who don’t yet know). Apparently that applies by association too. FB must have techniques of “fingerprinting” me so they can detect me even when I’m going through a VPN and using a new machine. Their dictatorial power grip is truly scary.

But back to the book promo. The publishers have been active without my knowledge in terms of significant media outlets and are in discussion with some others regarding inside features on some of those. Let’s see what comes of that.

I’ll try and get in touch with more potentially suitable outlets and online platforms myself too. And if any of you have particular suggestions as to where I should try, then any such hints would be gratefully received.

An interview I gave a while ago has meanwhile been worked into this article by Far Out Magazine, I’ve also been contacted by a podcast, so will probably do a feature with them in the foreseeable future. Moreover I submitted a presentation proposal for a dark-tourism conference in May. This coming Thursday, a German journalist would have travelled to Vienna to interview me in person here, but for obvious reasons that can’t happen now, so we’ll have to resort to writing and “zooming”.

Oh, and that radio interview I gave a few weeks ago is no longer available online (if it ever was, I’m not sure), but I have a recording of it in MP3 format. It’s over 20 minutes long and hence a rather big file, so I wouldn’t attach it to a newsletter. But if any of you are keen to listen to it I can send you the file some other way.
  

What else is to report … I’ll refrain from any comments on any current health crises this time (last week’s were deemed somewhat off-topic by a couple of readers, and I admit they have a bit of a point), but I have to make another update comment on Ethiopia.

The situation there is worsening to an ever alarming degree. As this media article, jointly authored by some highly qualified people, points out: there are now quickly amassing signs that another genocide might be on its way before long. The arrests, increasingly hate-speech-filled propaganda moves, the words used in this, the forming of vigilante groups and much more, all bear a frightening resemblance to the run-up to the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Let’s just hope that the international reaction this time will not be as pathetic as it was back then.

By the way, on my website you can read up on the Rwandan genocide and the political fallout from it in my glossary, in an entry that is far longer than most others. And at the end of it are also some book tips for delving even deeper into this topic.
  

But so much for this time.

Have a decent week – and try to stay safe.

Best,

Peter