by Heidi Kyser 

The Australian author of a new book, "Curiosi-tea," is looking for ways to distribute the book in the United States.

Working under the pen name Camellia Cha and house name Absurd Publications, Anne Norman wrote, illustrated and published the dense, yet tongue-in-cheek history of tea "from antiqui-tea to infini-tea," as the description puts it.

"Curiosi-tea began, most unconventionally, as a collection of puns on some of the thousands of words in the English language that end with -ty," the forward states. However, Norman's tea muse, dubbed Camellia Cha, "hijacked" the project, turning it into a more substantial work.

Norman was raised in a family that drank high-quality, loose-leaf tea with reverence for the ritual of the tea tradition. While in Japan at age 25, she studied the shaku hachi, a bamboo flute, with a master who also drank much tea with great ceremony.

Now a professional musician and one of only a handful of concert-quality shaku hachi players in Australia, Norman is on the road frequently, which gives her ample time for research and writing, she told WTN.

"Whatever city I'm in, I go to the public library and have access to an enormous amount of knowledge," she said. "Wherever there is a tea master, I make sure to meet them and find out what they know."

"Curiosi-tea" can be purchased on the Web site for $25 AUD, and Norman recently signed a deal with a distributor to place the book in shops and libraries in Australia. "When I'm finished with that, I'll focus on America, then England," she said.