'Writers at the Gate' is pleased to welcome, Woking based non-fiction writer, Chris Bore to the blog, with his latest title Slow Walking.
About the book…
This book is about Slow Walking.
This is a short book with a simple theme: that walking is an end in itself, says author, Chris Bore.
Slow Walking is about walking for its own sake: slowly, steadily, regularly, for the rest of your life. It is about walking through the world, being in and of the world: taking the time to enjoy being there and letting yourself feel what you are doing.
Walking is back in fashion - the new fitness craze. We are all encouraged to walk more - 10,000 steps a day, to challenge ourselves, to meet the goal of distance and steps. But there is more to life than challenge, and walking is more than an exercise - it is a way of life, a way to live, to re-calibrate your life.
This book is a ramble: a slow meandering walk through walking! It is not an instruction manual or a book of walks or a walk diary: it is a slow walk through my own personal walking story, that I want to share so that you can discover - if you have not already done so - the pleasure that regular walking brings.
Slow Walking lets you focus on what you
are doing, where you are, how you feel. It lets you be there, in the moment,
being active, out in the world, being part of it. It also helps you avoid
injury, build a firm base of steady fitness, lose weight, and enjoy the health
benefits of fresh air in all weathers: but these benefits are secondary to the
main point: Slow Walking is fun!
About Chris Bore…
Dr Chris Bore is a retired consultant and trainer in DSP (Digital Signal Processing). Author and presenter of many industrial and university short courses on DSP, Chris specialises in presenting and explaining complex technical information in practical, understandable ways without unnecessary reliance on equations and formulae. Chris's courses have been presented to many hundreds of engineers, programmers and technical managers in diverse industries worldwide.
He is also a popular and entertaining speaker at informal science and technology events such as TEDx and Café Scientific and is a local organiser of his hometown of Woking's Café Scientific.
Chris is the author of several successful eBooks - on DSP and Image Processing but also on his leisure pursuits of walking and running. Chris's DSP eBooks encapsulate the wide range of his training, consultancy and teaching experience into readable, informative and enjoyable books that are widely and readily available at an economic price. Weirdly, his most successful book - Slow Running - is about running, slowly, so that shows your career doesn't define you even if you think it should.
Chris started his engineering career with a PhD in the early days of MRI: co-designing and building some of the first MRI scanners and researching their application in medicine. A post-doctoral fellowship at CERN in Geneva extended his experience into designing and building automated and robotic precision measuring instruments. Back in the UK as Technical and then General Manager of a software company, Chris then returned to the engineering field, first in MRI and then with his own company selling DSP systems - which led later to specializing in training engineers and programmers in DSP.
He has worked as a trainer in DSP to many companies in many countries: regular clients have included the UK and other MoD, GCHQ, Philips, Sony, Yamaha, Nokia, Canon, Honda, Mercedes, and others. In such work Chris broadened his exposure to some of the most innovative and challenging applications of DSP in consumer, medical and defence industries. It also resulted in a wide network of contacts that has helped with student placements, industrial projects, and employment opportunities.
Chris's current consultancy focus is in medical imaging: specifically in 3D imaging using microwaves.
Chris is fascinated by the questions that don't get asked and firmly believes that real experts know that they don't know some things. He is deeply interested in learning how to explain complex and subtle things more clearly, and in testing by experiment what may seem obvious from theory.
Brief Interview…
1) When did you start writing your new book?
I started Slow Walking in about 2014 - shortly after I published my first similar book, Slow Running.
2) What was the inspiration behind the book?
I'd previously published a book on Slow Running, but really I did a lot more walking than running - and walking I think, offers more chance to engage with where you are because you can take your time. I'd lived in a caravan at Warren Farm in Pyrford when I was a baby and toddler, and my mum mentioned I had taken my first steps there, so that set me off on what proved to be a random ramble through walking which became the book. I love that one of the worst reviews I had said the book was just me rambling on - which is, to be fair, what the blurb says.
3) Can you describe your route to publication from concept to completed book?
I'd already published Slow Running, which was an easy success. Slow Walking is different - literally, me rambling on about rambling, a very personal book and much more something I wanted to write than something I wanted people to read - so it was easy to follow the same route through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.
4) What ideas do you have for any future books?
I have one in the works called Slow Thinking - but it is taking a while :-)
My main aim, though, is to complete a popular science book on water: I worked on the early development of MRI which basically looks at water in the human body, and most of my time was devoted to studying water - which is truly weird stuff - and now I am retired I have returned to that and am drafting a book to rave about how cool (sic) it is.
5) Which publishing services (if any) would you recommend?
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing lets you
do what you want rather than fit in with an editor and publishing house. You
can make your own mistakes but correct them later - readers get free updates
when you issue a new version - and having spent a lot of time in detailed
technical writing I really enjoy not having to endure reviewers telling you
what to write.
