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Jozef Imrich as MEdia Dragon

To Succeed You Have to Fail, says Samuel Beckett. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Only if you have been in the deepest valley can you know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. -Richard Nixon Allow me to fill you in on a little secret ... I’m not a blogger, I’m just pretending to be a blogger! You have a lifelong dream of writing a book and making a movie. You decide it’s high time you made good that dream. So you start a blog! The amazing degree of village atmosphere inside the blogosphere just blew me away Media Dragon has given Cold River the sort of exposure I could only dream of I could only dream of ... Special Kudos to Google and to Clustr Maps. As a result, Media Dragon has Worldwide readership: What more could I ask for? Following hot on the heels of the US release of Cold River, the book is now being printed and distributed in the UK, and is fast becoming available around the world. In the US, the book can be ordered from any bookstore and is available online from Booksamillion , Barnes & Noble , Amazon.com and more. It's also available from worldwide Amazon sites in Canada, Germany, France and Japan . And it's available in Switzerland and Belgium too. The Blog, The Press, The Media: You've got to find what you love: Vesihiisi sihisi hississä You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

• Our Sole Goal is to Stay Hungry. Stay Soulful [Simply put, stay open to new ideas and thoughts and never be content to do the same thing day after day. Never worry about doing something you want to do because you are afraid of what others may think. It’s your life. Don’t waste it doing what others want you to do. Find what you love to do and do it! Stay Hungry. Stay Crazish ;-) ; Beauty of any Blog is in the eye of the beholder What's your favourite blog? ]

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It takes as much stress to be a success as it does to be a failure.
-Emilio James Trujillo

Following Your Heart! The Kindness of Strangers - Chasing the Dragon’s Long Tail
For some unknown cultural reason we have not been taught and reinforced to address our emotional health in the same manner as our physical health. Migrants are often its greatest victims of that stange cold feeling in the bones. Loneliness must be one of the most painful experiences of life. It can gnaw away at the very soul of a person's being. What is tragic is that, when a lonely person becomes desperate for human contact, others often sense it and are scared off or repulsed by it. The lonely soul hence becomes the avoided soul and so a downward spiral begins which can push people to despair ... In a surreal way, if you try to tell your story with too much passion you could easily end up with sea of rejection letters from publishers. In fact, some editors in the industry might even accuse you of spamming and pour Cold Water on your literary baby. Even if you dare to sent them a mere single email informing them about the birth of your story ... However, every negative has a positive we just have to look for it ;-)

The phrase The Long Tail was first coined by Chris Anderson in a 2004 Wired Magazine article to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. A former Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows: "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.” Hugh Hewitt says, the tail of the Blogosphere is a concept that the mainstream media simply does not understand. "They've never worried about the tail, ever. And now they've got the tail just eating them, all day, 24/7." Long Tail in publishing is larger than the Dragon head

• Can you ever think too much about freedom? Not in my book. Cold River is of such cruel destruction that it will sweep anyone away Cold River: Paperback Edition

• Michael Schaefer - March 2005: Riding the dragon: Cold River accorded a place of honor among some heavyweight tomes at DeepBlog Books
• Michael Schaefer - May 2005 Why I Blog

• Margo Kingston - August 2005: Personal opening statement to Webdiarists
• Webdiary - August 2005: Dream as if you'll live forever and live as if you'll die today

• Jay Rosen - February 2005 I like Media Dragon


• Trevor Cook - September 2005: The state of Australian blogging
• Hugh Martin - The Age - May 2005: When are bloggers journalists?

• Tim Dunlop - January 2003: Jozef Imrich is a sort of Mitteleuropa Instapundit

• Shel Israel and Robert Scoble ... “Sunlight is the best disinfectant -- all great CEOs encourage transparency and openness as long as sensitive data is not leaked,” Cold River author Jozef Imrich told us Naked Thorns in the Roses

• Shel Israel and Robert Scoble - February 2005: Red Couch

• Shel Israel and Robert Scoble - August 2005: Acknowledgements

• Shel Israel and Robert Scoble - October 2005: The Media Dragon Loves us

• Dan Gillmor - July 2005 Citizen Journalist: Bayosphere

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Cold River, a kind of story for readers who thirst after existential foreign non-fiction - a fluid memoir You are different. So is Cold River

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Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family—but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.
-Willa Cather, Shadows on the Rock

In the woods it is surreal. Just like in life, one moment we are in almost blinding sunlight, the next pitched under a dark blanket where the temperature is ten degrees cooler ... I am neither a man nor a woman but a sole survivor

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Drowned' man resurfaces 22 years later
When I was about to turn 40 - 40 is huge as life begins at 40 - I thought, what are you waiting for? My next life? So I made a vow to myself that I would try to get my sad story across the Iron Curtain published. Indeed, Cold River is latest in long line of surreal and tragic embodiments of ordinary man that have, in loneliness, defeat and occasional glory, populated Central European stories. Rowing, like writing, is like that, it's a constant interplay of thought and emotion between boat and rower caught in the (im)perfect storm, which, to ignore, could in fact be dangerous to the rower

We freeze some moments in time. Every country has its frozen moments, events so tragic and personal that they transcend the normal flow of stories. Can one person make a difference? It's easy to be cynical about the power of one. But a person's importance, so difficult to quantify in life, is perhaps more easily measured in death – and the gaping holes left behind.

• Cold River is a surreal slice of Iron Curtain Every exit is an entry somewhere else [Towards Colder Rivers]

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi

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Quotes Dedicated to the Cold Truth of Freedom: The trouble is I don't like writing fiction: I like writing the truth

It's not how many times you fall down that counts; it's getting up again. And forget counting, it's too pedantic and after the first hundred, you loose track anyhow ;-P
Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we will change the world:

Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.
— Tom Peters

Are you placing enough interesting, freakish, long shot, weirdo bets?
— Tom Peters

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!
— General George S. Patton

Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
— Mark Twain

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.
— Ray Bradbury

People will rise to meet seemingly insurmountable obstacles and challenges if they understand the worthiness of the personal sacrifices and effort. Supporting that understanding must be mentors who provide leadership; without both ingredients, a cause will go unrealized and a mission is likely to fail.
— Glenn R. Jones

This the world of white water where we have to change to survive; where we have to develop to thrive; and, paradoxically, where the very act of change increases the risk that we won't survive.
— Randall White, Phillip Hodgson and Stuart Crainer

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
— Helen Keller

All of life is on the wire, all else is waiting.
— Overheard at Iceberg Robbie Savage or Tim of BA Alliance?

What leaders have to remember is that somewhere under the somnolent surface is the creature that builds civilizations, the dreamer of dreams, the risk taker. And remembering that, the leader must reach down to the springs that never dry up, the ever-fresh springs of the human spirit.
— John W. Gardner

If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough.
—Mario Andretti

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . . I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
— Robert Frost

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.
— Goethe

The secret to my success is that I bit off more than I could chew and chewed as fast as I could.
— Paul Hogan

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
— Robert F. Kennedy

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.
— William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Morava River

Let's make a dent in the universe.
— Steve Jobs

Progress always involves risk; you can't steal second base and keep your foot on first.
— Frederick Wilcox

Do you want to be safe and good, or do you want to take a chance and be great?
— Jimmy Johnson

Cold River does what good books do. When we look up, bitten, everything seems a little different.
— Karen Solie