We proudly introduce Rosalind Baker as a Featured Author. Rosalind writes and publishes articles about ‘match making’. In this interview she not only shares her professional insights on writing, but also tells us a bit of her rich and inspiring life story. We thank Rosalind and hope you will all enjoy and learn from this interview.
Member Since: Dec 2008
Published articles: 61
Website: http://www.entrenous.com.au/
http://www.facebook.com/entrenous.melbourne
http://twitter.com/entrenousdating
Introduce yourself
I was born during WW2 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia of educated parents and grandparents on both sides. We lived in Brisbane until I was seven years of age. I remember when a boy in my class picked up his fallen pencil with his toes. The teacher said, “Don’t do that, only little black boys do that”. Not long after Father announced that he had bought a fleet of pearling luggers and trochus boats and we were moving to Thursday Island, the most northerly tip of eastern Australia. We children were very excited and particularly interested to see coloured boys picking up pencils in their toes.
Thursday Island was not a disappointment, palm trees, clear blue warm waters, natives singing Island songs, and much laughter, but we never did see boys picking up pencils in their toes. Thursday Island was utopia for us children. The warm Torres Strait looked so still we occasionally succumbed to the temptation to dive in and skip school.
Our father loved adventure and arranged many happy weekends out on the luggers either sleeping on the boat or camping in a deserted house on an island. We ate oysters off the rocks and caught fish and other delectable delights such as turtles, turtle eggs, dugong and crabs. A favourite was the shell meat from the pearl shell. The islanders who worked on our boats dried them and they were soaked before cooking – the flavour was not unlike scallops.
Mother was the ABC radio correspondent on the island. When there was a cyclone or any other catastrophe mother would abandon us while she raced around collecting notes to be telegrammed to the ABC.
After a couple of years we moved to Cairns, quite a large country town on the north Queensland coast. It meant Father was away often but Mother was happier with modern comforts. He was away for Mothers’ day so it was up to brother Jason who was about 7 years of age to kill a chook for Sunday roast dinner. I recall Mother calling out from an upstairs window: “How are you doing Jason?” Jason hollered back, “It’s half dead Mum”. I am not sure which half was dead – judging by the amount of squawking the chook was making as it kept ahead of my brother.
My sister and I were soon packed off to boarding school at Herberton an old mining town on the Atherton Tableland. The high altitude was believed to be healthy for pre-teenage girls. The trip to and fro was picturesque driving through a patchwork of cane farms, tobacco leaf farms and dairy pasture lands. At night when the cane was set alight, prior to cutting, the fields were aglow with red and orange.
On one trip Jason leaned out to pat a cow and fell out of the car. He had to be dropped off at the local hospital before we were collected from school. I went in to casualty to pick up Jason who was covered in scratches and looked rather miserable. The nurse said he was a brave little boy. I asked, “How are you Jason?” He replied, “I got blood on Mum’s fur coat.”
Dad being away so often was an occupational hazard that led to divorce so we moved back to Brisbane minus Dad. I went to grammar school in Brisbane for a year but being a Dad’s Girl I decided I would rather leave school and join my father at Mary Kathleen, a uranium mining satellite town in north west Queensland. The plastics industry temporarily closed the pearling and trochus industry so Father had returned to his original profession of civil engineering. I taught myself to type and soon found a job typing for the Senior Mechanical Engineer. We married 18 months later when I was not quite 17 years – I was always precocious.
My first husband was from Melbourne and after 4 years we moved to Mount Eliza in Victoria. Whilst I was married I created a children’s wear business with a doll’s house and playground out the back for my 4 children. After 16 years of business and 20 years of marriage I divorced, sold the business and moved to Melbourne to live a more exciting life. I was on a course to adventure, travel and new experiences. My next business was Rosalind Shopping Tours taking bus loads of women to factory shops to buy bargains.
After 4 years I sold the business took a job as Social Columnist for a Social Newspaper which led to the job of Women’s Editor and the start of my writing career.
How long have you been writing/publishing articles?
I wrote my first book in the late 80’s. I spoke on weightloss at a Pritikin Seminar and afterwards a publisher asked me would I write a book on weightloss. I had almost completed the book when I told the publisher that my next book would be about courtship and I was going to call it Dial A Woman. After reading the synopsis she decided to go with Dial A Woman first. Next I wrote Dial A Man.
In Dial A Woman I wrote a synopsis of the seven female personality types as I know them. The book received an inordinate amount of publicity and I noticed that journalists mainly wrote about the personality types. In Dial A Man I wrote about the seven male personality types and again found that the personality types attracted as much interest so naturally my next book was to be about personality types. I wrote Dial A Personality about the seven female types.
Towards the end of Dial A Personality I decided to add a synopsis of the male types. I sat down at my keyboard to see if I could determine which female personality was attracted to which male personality type. I knew immediately and I also knew why they were attracted. It was a life changing ‘ah hah’ moment.
I have always been a matchmaker; I even introduced my ex-husband to his next wife. After my new realisation I decided that I had a formula for matching people so set up an introduction service called Entre Nous on 13th March 1991. Dial A Personality was not completed and it was the following year before I published it myself. The three Dial series were best sellers. It’s interesting that Dial A Woman and Dial A Man are outdated yet Dial A Personality is still popular.
The publicity I received for the Dial books helped with the start of Entre Nous. Marketing to men was a challenge so I spoke at Rotary meetings. In 1993 I gave 66 talks at Rotary Clubs, one day I spoke at a Rotary breakfast, a lunch and a dinner all in the one day.
When I received my first cheque for a speaking engagement, because I had always been in trouble for talking too much. I rang my mother to remark that some people appreciated my talking.
Selling children’s wear and taking women on buses to shop wholesale were both businesses that required a sharp learning curve but after working through 4 seasons and 12 months trading there were few new challenges. Entre Nous has continued to be a challenge, attracting men is an ongoing challenge and in particular satisfying clients’ needs. The greatest needs of most clients are skills in communication i.e. managing the conversations on a date and managing the dates. Of course no one thinks they need lessons. Delivering the lessons in several modes of media including a one-on-one meeting doesn’t mean clients ‘get it’. In fact some clients are still ‘just getting it’ at the end of their 12 months membership.
It is particularly satisfying when they do use the skills we offer and end up finding their own partner outside of Entre Nous. Managing Entre Nous is my most rewarding job. Seeing people form permanent relationships is the ultimate in satisfaction. One of my proudest moments was to find husbands for four Scottish sisters. After the first two formed a relationship they sent their youngest sister who was very beautiful. We introduced her to someone who was ideal but as I was chatting to him I realised that he was divorced – I had inadvertently marked his file ‘single’ and this very attractive youngest sister was adamant that she did not want to be encumbered with a divorced man.
I said to him, “Take her out to dinner and talk to her about it and keep talking and don’t let her leave the subject until she has every doubt out of her mind, keep it up for hours if you have to until it is really and truly thrashed out”. He did and it was not long after that they announced their engagement. The middle sister was the most challenging, her older sisters had referred her but she said to me. “I don’t want a man anything like my sisters’ husbands.” It took five years to persuade her to allow me to find her a husband and only three months to find the partner of her dreams.
I met my second husband Tom Baker at dancing class in 2006. This has changed my life. I warned him I would be selfish because I had been on my own for eight years but you couldn’t be selfish with Tom, he is so unselfish. He has brought the best out in me. Tom encouraged me to transform Entre Nous into a boutique business with fewer staff. He has trained me to be cost-conscious. A retired businessman Tom supervises the bookkeeper and the accountant. We have a lovely life; we travel often, are learning French, enjoy the Arts, swimming, cycling and walking.
My son Bruce’s marriage to a beautiful Thai woman called Kamjilar in 2001 has had a tremendous influence on lives. He was married in Phaya Meng Rai north east of Chiangrai in the Golden Triangle, Thailand. Prior to the Buddhist wedding he had arranged a Christian wedding at the local Presbyterian Church. It was the first wedding in the church at 8.30 am. The pastor played Lohengrin’s Wedding March on a ghetto blaster. Only immediate family attended which was fortunate because the service was held in his loungeroom. The pastor showed me a picture of the church he would like to build.
I couldn’t resist the challenge of supporting him until we bought the land next door and built the church. I not only supported him financially but continued giving him ideas to increase his congregation. Each year we travelled to Thailand to visit Kamjilar’s family at Christmas time.
I took an interest in the local hospital which I toured each visit. After I was married to Tom we acquired second hand defibrillators and other useful hospital equipment from Australia. Tom provided beds for a new ward. The medical director told us: “I can afford cement to build a new ward but I cannot afford to furnish it.
Bruce and his family moved over to Thailand, built a large home with several guest rooms and stayed for three years. During that time, Tom and I visited three times a year. On one of those visits the pastor took us to visit another hospital with even greater needs, an HIV centre and an orphan school for 26 students. The orphans captured our hearts. Each year we organise a charity auction afternoon to raise funds for the orphan school. Last year we raised $9300; it provided classroom equipment, additions to the vegetable, mushroom and fish farms the children manage which we set up earlier. I asked them what else do they need that is educational and the reply came back: “funds to set up a poultry farm”. Not my idea of education but I guess if you live in the backblocks of northern Thailand feeding oneself is very educational.
What was the impact of publishing your articles on ArticlesBase?
I have posted 61 articles to date and they have been read over 33,000 times. My friend, a philosopher, told me that in academic circles it is said that one’s articles are read three times, by one’s department head, by one’s spouse and by one’s mother. What a contrast to the readership on ArticlesBase. Since I began publishing my articles on ArticlesBase, I have found that when I google my name my articles are found all over the world. My articles have become World Famous, thanks to ArticlesBase. On Google Analytics, ArticlesBase is a dominant source of hits.
Tell us about your writing process.
When I wrote my published books my system was to come up with 10 subjects which gave me 10 chapters. As I wrote, whenever an idea came to me I decided to which chapter it belonged and popped it in that chapter until I came to it. When I arrived at that chapter by the time I had sorted out my notes I was well on the way with that chapter. When I had completed the 10 chapters all I needed was a preface and a summary. My first 3 books took about 3 months each to write. Dial A Personality took a year to write including the research.
For the past 20 years I have mainly written about my professional subject which is dating and relationships, once I have a topic it flows out of me faster than I can type. However because of the encouragement of ArticlesBase I have started my next book and am well into the second chapter. This one will be a sequel to Dial A Man for women on how to select and attract the right partner and then maintain a life-long relationship.
What tips or words of wisdom can you share with other authors?
When I was writing books, I printed out the chapter or part thereof that I had written that day, correct it with a pen in the evening and next day by the time I had made the corrections I was into the work again and never suffered from writers block. I am of the opinion that writers block is mainly caused by not knowing your subject. If you are short of material read more. I read 3 books a week whilst I was writing Dial A Personality.
If you are using ArticlesBase you already know how amazingly user-friendly it is. It’s important to check your articles on a regular basis. If they are not attracting readership, change the heading, reword the preface to attract readers. I was pleasantly surprised how I could increase readership just by changing a heading. Read your articles right through on a regular basis to keep them up-to-date and avoid including times that can date your article.
All our featured authors receive a gift from us, and Rosalind was kind enough to take a picture with hersJ
If you wish to become a Featured Author, send your profile to ronit@articlesbase.com.
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From all of us at ArticlesBase.com, we thank you Rosalind for this wonderful interview.
Ronit & the ArticlesBase.com team
All our featured authors receive a gift from us, and Anna was kind enough to take a picture with hersJ 
