iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I believed bits were funny. And of course I discovered that many readers didn't agree. I'm not bothered that the sequel – provisionally titled Stoner Lit – isn't funny, because funny was never the point. But I'm curious about why it's not funny, when some have had so much fun with Mr O. /ends

Cover of Mr O Winds Back the Clock, by I J Baker, on which the black type of the title repeats in a spiral, surrounding a sun-like yellow point in a sky-like background of orange, pink and blue.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

🧵 Will the sequel to Mr O Winds Back the Clock be as funny? I'm on draft 13, and I'm thinking it won't. And yet, Mr O wasn't written for laughs. Here's the opening page of Ch 4, the chapter that a reader – yet to complete the book – said that he'd found very, very amusing. /more

Image shows the opening page of Chapter 4 from Mr O Winds Back the Clock, titled Another Saturday Night. The first paragraph introduces a quoted short story, and the short story begins: "Roland," Debbie stormed, "You are a pig.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Nice to have found my first thousand followers, and thanks to all who've found interest in the stuff that I post. Which has been largely reposts. I'll see if I can be more original. Interestingly, my account here has grown about four times faster than it grew on X, and with few bots (unlike on X).

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

🧵 Every now and again some feedback augments my confidence that Mr O Winds Back the Clock will find its readership. This bit from someone I knew socially who had obtained a copy from acquaintance. He said he'd had to wipe his eyes while reading Chapter 4, because he was laughing so much. 🖋️📚 /1 of 3

Cover of Mr O Winds Back the Clock in 3D.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Funny. I just don't understand why people bother with espresso. All gone so fast. And I have an enviably good machine at home. And head-barista daughters who have trained me well. For me, the milk (and a touch of sugar) makes the drink. I enjoy espresso (no sugar), but it's not enough fun. 😄

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Yeah but it gives it a shot. Sometimes. Thanks for the follow, btw. That's a cycling path near Hurstbridge in Victoria, last week. But yeah, that Leipzig pic's speccy.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

So I'm just back from this shop two suburbs away that has really fresh veggies at great prices. I'd thought the bill high but had luxury items and let it go. Get home, check receipt, and my half kilo of bullhorn peppers at $3.50kg list as hot red chillis at $30kg. 🤬 Young guy serving was so chatty.

A half kilo of bullhorn peppers, for which I was charged ten times the shelf price. 🤬

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

"Hi Ian, "I recently came across Beat Your Weight, Beat Your Fat, and I was impressed by how your approach to weight loss ... I am curating a Goodreads Listopia list on effective and realistic weight loss guides ..." What next? Scammers can't even get the book right. Mine's a novel. 🙄 📚💙

Three-dimensional cover image of Mr O Winds Back the Clock, by I J Baker.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Here's some background on the rail line, which opened in 1876, after a gold rush brought settlers to the region, and closed a century later. /5 and ends www.beechworthhistoryandheritage.com/railway-heri...

Everton Station rest stop, Murray to Mountains Rail Trail.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Stopping to bathe in the misty afternoon on a gentle descent from Beechworth towards Yack. Rail trails do tend to be straighter than optimal for a bike, but it's worth it to have the road to yourselves. Pics are mine; figure on bike is my riding companion. /4

Gentle descent on the Beechworth to Yackandandah leg, Murray to Mountains Rail Trail.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Brief crest on another stiff climb, departing Yackandandah. Yeah, some funny town names in Australia. Frustratingly, this bit of the trail ran alongside a road that ascended more steadily, and therefore more gently. /3

Crest on the climb out of Yackandandah, Murray to Mountains Rail Trail.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

The climb up to Beechworth went on like this unrelenting for 16km (10 miles). It averages about 3 per cent, which gave our lower gears a workout hauling 14kg of panniers, water and camping gear. /2

Murray to Mountains Rail Trail climb from Everton towards Beechworth.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

🧵 Cycle touring near Beechworth in Victoria, Australia. We covered 160km (100 miles) over four days last week on bits of this Murray to Mountains Rail Trail, with barely 10km open to motor traffic. Lots of climbing but the scenery made up for it. And some blissful descents. More pics below. /1

Loaded touring bicycles at a rest stop on the Yackandandah to Beechworth arm of the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail, in northern Victoria, Australia.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

This is how it looks in the pan, simmering away. It'll do this for 90min or so. Wish I could post how it tastes.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

This cascade of headlines is so much the Trump era.

Successive New York Times headlines about Trump's threats to Davos attendees end with a third about his plane to Davos turning back.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

... very revealing conversation. And laugh – we did laugh a lot. Of course we could have chatted without getting high. But the getting high – we had done this before – brought with it a sense of safety and a readiness to be open. Which forms the background for much of Mr O's dialogue.

A man holds a joint between two fingers.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

And so that is whom I had in mind over the decade or more I spent composing Mr O: readers who enjoy getting high – and maybe only every now and again. Committed stoners might even see the book as naively soft-core.

A cigarette lighter is about to apply its flame to a bong bowl.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

I've replaced "for stoners" in the original concept with "for people who like to get high." Partly to make it more inclusive but mainly because most people who like to get high don't think of themselves as stoners, junkies, coke-heads or the like, even though others may so label them.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

🧵 Okay a bit of marinating has brought a small but real adjustment to my promo line for Mr O Winds Back the Clock: It's a literary novel for people who like to get high. A. Cutting the "very" that had qualified literary: it is very literary, but not because it uses long words. 💙📚 💙🖋️

Cover image in 2D for Mr O Winds Back the Clock, a literary novel for people who like to get high.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Yes, Mr O Winds Back the Clock is legitimately literary fiction, and its biggest fans so far haven't spent much of their lives getting high. Nevertheless, its literary elements will look much stronger and more nuanced from the perspective of someone who enjoys that high feeling.

A lighter is about to apply a flame to the bowl of a bong.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

They also thought it had a chance at a couple of local literary prizes, and that a deep green presentation could cruel that chance. And so we played things very straight. What I've only recently come to understand is that in doing so, we've sold the story short.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

My editor and designer, both deeply experienced publishing pros, counselled me against emphasising the intoxication in of the story, believing that this would repel many more readers than it attracted. And so we presented it as straight literary fiction, a description they thought apt.

A man smokes a joint with his face in shadow.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

🧵 As we enter a new year I've finally got the USP for Mr O Winds Back the Clock: It's a very literary novel, for stoners. Strangely, that's how I'd always thought of it. But I'd been reluctant to own its literary strength and wary of pigeonholing it as stoner silly. 💙📚 🖋️📚 #cannabis

Cover image for the literary novel Mr O Winds Back the Clock.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Never let anyone say that Zuckerberg's hellhole is completely useless. This came up today. Sums up the moment we're in.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

From a notification that I monitor just to look at the market. I live in Melbourne, an Australian capital city that is 450 miles from Adelaide and 2100 miles from Perth. So a machine is lying to me. Again. It's the era.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Smith Street, Fitzroy on a sunny Saturday morning. 😀 Actually it was Thursday and about to rain but who would know. Yes, that's a crispy pork banh mi. 🤪

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

with Fiona McFarlane and Brian Castro strong contenders for Highway 13 and Chinese Postman. respectively. But I'm yet to take a look at the remaining two of those shortlisted, and expect I will soon have a go at Winnie Dunn's Dirt Poor Islanders. /8 and out.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

I am of course vulnerable to accusations of envy or jealousy, given that I had entered Mr O Winds Back the Clock for the Miles Franklin. But I had no trouble enjoying Michelle de Kretser's entry, Theory & Practice, after having been disappointed by her winner in 2018, The Life To Come. /3

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

I had another parallel experience when reading The Lord of the Rings as a child. My parents had given me a copy of the first single-volume edition as a Christmas gift. I think I'd read The Hobbit. But the eleventy-first birthday party repelled me. I turned to Chapter 2 because I respected ...

Lord of the Rings cover, first combined edition.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

🧵 I've been reading Ghost Cities, the novel that won this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, and at 30 per cent in I've noticed that I'm procrastinating desperately rather than embarking on the remaining 70 per cent. 💙📚 🖋️📚 It's very inventive, but the invention so far feels like

Cover of 2025 Miles Franklin winner Ghost Cities, by Siang Lu.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

... I've had a few reviews come in recently from acquaintances who had read the novel and liked it, and one from a recent acquaintance who had really, really liked it. So I can't conclude that the insipid response from the giveaways implies that the text is a turnoff for everyone. /5

Screenshot of Amazon review from purchaser who has read Mr O Winds Back the Clock twice and says it is not a normal book and he will read it again.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

... character-driven, ebook giveaways don't work very well. My guess is that most subscribers are children – who else needs a free ebook that badly? – and this one isn't for them. I've persisted mainly to see whether further exposure might bring a nudge. On the upside, ... /4

Opening page of Mr O Winds Back the Clock.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

… and two-star, rating on Amazon, a couple of 3-5 star ratings on Goodreads and no reviews whatsoever. Oh and 945 pages read on KU. Outright sales? Maybe a couple. This isn't a whinge, just a progress report and more evidence that, at least for this sort of book, ... /3

Mr O Winds Back the Clock Kindle Unlimited equivalent pages read since launch in October 2024.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

... 3800. Yep, quite a few, which suggests that people subscribing to Freebooksy and its chief rival, The Fussy Librarian, like Mr O's cover. However, that 3800 copies downloaded, plus a couple of hundred more paid orders from a BookBub launch feature, has generated a single, ... /2

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Uptake from free promotions vs results vs fan feedback: a 🧵. 🖋️📚 💙📚 Last month I ran another free ebook promotion, via Freebooksy, for my literary novel Mr O Winds Back the Clock. That brought in 441 orders, and takes the total e-copies given away since launch to ... /1

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

🧵 I've resisted putting my private life online but having responded to this reply a few days ago thought I'd dip in a toe, having confronted a small test overnight that felt big – and that turned out to have been triggered by false assumptions. 💙📚 🖋️📚 /more

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Someone deserves an award for this album cover. The advance track's not bad, either. And they're from Melbourne. 😃 www.jambase.com/article/folk...

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Encouragingly, it appears that someone has read Mr O cover to cover recently on Kindle Unlimited, which is a first and therefore represents progress. I'd begun to wonder whether the ebook format didn't work for it. Note that the page count is KU specific: it's a 330-page novel in print. /3 of 3 🖋️📚

KDP graph showing 439 normalised pages read in April 2025 for Mr O Winds Back the Clock, by I J Baker, which represents the full extent of the novel.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

That takes free orders for the title over the six months since its release past 3380, and still almost no online feedback from purchasers and few paid orders for a deeply engaging literary read. This stuff ain't easy. But it's about finding fans. /2 of 3. 💙📚 🖋️📚

3D cover image for Mr O Winds Back the Clock, by I J Baker.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Gave Mr O Winds Back the Clock another run on the free ebook circuit, this time on Freebooksy and Fussy Librarian on successive days (with Best Book Monkey thrown in on the second day). Result was just over 700 orders, roughly a third of a similar effort when the novel was released. 💙📚 🖋️📚 /1 of 3

KDP dashboard showing 704 free orders for Mr O Winds Back the Clock, by I J Baker, over the promotional period of 2-5 May 2025.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

... it had sold two copies and would like to leave its other four consignment copies on display for a bit. It is a small boast to say that a brick-and-mortar bookshop has sold two copies of your novel but it's bigger than it sounds in this case, since Farrells is the only such shop that ...

3D image of the novel Mr O Winds Back the Clock, first edition, by I J Baker.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

🧵 🖋️📚 💙📚 Several chapters of my novel Mr O Winds Back the Clock are set in Mornington, a seaside town 65km south of central Melbourne by road. A very fine bookshop there, Farrells, agreed to stock Mr O, and recently notified me that ... (Pic Georgfotoart via creativecommons.org/licenses/by-...)

Pier at the Victorian bayside town of Mornington, the setting for several chapters of Mr O Winds Back the Clock.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Has @nytimes.com been hacked? Or is it me? I've a subscription, and suddenly this is what I see when I attempt to open a home page link.

Notice saying I've been blocked from the New York Times website because it suspects I'm a robot.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

... demanding about AU$56 for the hardback, more than double what it was asking for the paperback and well beyond my RRP and the typical price of a hardback novel in Australia. The Nile, bless their hearts, had offered the hardback soon after it came out in October at $39.11 – actually under ...

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Well whaddaya know – Amazon.au has price-matched Au-NZ competitor The Nile, and slashed the hardcover price of my novel Mr O Winds Back the Clock. 😱 🖋️📚 💙📚 #BookSky It's available natively on Amazon in paperback, but only through IngramSpark in hardback. Until recently, Amazon had been ...

Amazon.au citation for the hardcover version of the I J Baker novel Mr O Winds Back the Clock, now available in Australia for $39.11.

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

... to read literature. Nevertheless another 723 people have copies of Mr O on their Kindles, and the result confirms that the cover, title and Kindle-page blurb is attractive. The best fiction offers more than meets the eye, and so it is a matter of finding readers who'll get it. /2 of 3

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

I ran another ebook promotion over the weekend, and it brought 723 downloads for Mr O Winds Back the Clock. 💙🖋️ I used Freebooksy, which was the most successful of the two services that I used in November. This was a free offer, and I've little evidence that Freebooksy subscribers want ... /1 of 3

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

... that it offer Mr O from a member, and it seemed unlikely that this member had been known to me. On the strength of its setting, Mr O was accepted before Christmas for consignment sale at the prominent Mornington bookshop Farrells. Had someone purchased a copy, read it, ... /4 of 5

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I J Baker @ijbaker.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Interestingly, I learned of Frankston City Libraries having listed Mr O from Google, which cited its availability for loan in a sidebar to search results for the title. I was puzzled about why the library had selected it, and therefore lodged an inquiry. /2 of 5

Google search result for Mr O Winds Back the Clock on 4 Feb 2025 showing its availability for loan at Frankston City Libraries.

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