Revisiting The Old Hag
Last night I re-edited, re-titled and re-covered my book originally called ‘Riding the Old Hag’. I thought that an excellent title by the way but….. maybe not. So now it has the title – Basic Instinct: Erotic Paranormal Contact – The Old Hag and the Mysterious World of Sleep Paralysis. The content remains the same but this book didn’t seem to get the attention that it deserved. You see, after a life time of paranormal activity and as a result of my clairvoyance and magical training, I slowly came to a startling conclusion. I had long had my suspicions and throughout all of my paranormal books, I will comment on the nature of reality. However, when researching the black-eyed kids and trying to explain whet they were, I started to
Read More »The Lesson of Sam White
After having quite a few successful books out – all in the supernatural category. I put out a beautiful set of fictional short stories on a metaphysical theme. I had it professionally edited. I released it under what I thought was a pretty good title with a lovely looking cover…. The Pink Bus and Other Strange Tales from LaLa Land…… It sort of died. I couldn’t believe it. It was my favorite work and some of the stories I had thought were really quite good. I recall the editor – who I tremendously respect as a write in her own right (Alienora Taylor) told me she loved it. But despite free give aways, discounts and so on, it barely sold…. just 40 copies in 6 months with 98 free copies
Read More »Spammers’ Karma
Last week, in my business email account, I started getting a lot of messages coming back saying – undeliverable. Puzzled, I asked our internet guy to take a look. He soon figured out that someone was sending emails and making it look as if they came from my account. Yes – they can do that. They aren’t coming from your account but it looks to the receiver as if they are. What can I do? I asked. Nothing really, was the response. Great! However, I was wanting to know who was being emailed by Notme. Our web guy took some time but soon came back with the scary fact that somehow, the emails being spammed by Notme were the people who had sent us a message at our general email
Read More »Burning Witches
Tonight in the Czech Republic is know as Burning Witches. Pretty brutal name right? So, it’s 30th April and the day before Beltane and right there is a clue perhaps to the origin of Burning Witches. What people do is make an effigy of a woman suing two sticks and whatever else they can find and then they burn the effigy on the bonfire while celebrating with beer, wine and food. Of course, it is a pagan tradition in which the old woman of winter gives way to the maiden of springtime, rebirth and fecundity. What I find interesting is that it is similar to the broader slavic tradition of burning and effigy of Marzanna – the Goddess of winter – usually around the Spring Equinox. In the latter case,
Read More »The Quality of Humanity
I saw a post on a musicians forum today – it was a meme pointing out how many likes a female selfie got versus a song someone spent hours working on. Another person commented maybe it was the quality of the music? I was scrolling through instagram last night and I noticed how some twenty something had posted a selfie of herself more or less naked. 22k likes. A photographer had posted a beautiful picture of a church. 2 likes. Sums up the modern world really doesn’t it. Artistry and talent – 0 Pointless nude selfie – 6 I wondered what that meant about quality, people and their values. I went back to the musicians forum and posted my thoughts – What does it say about the music? Nothing. It
Read More »Unfriendly Prague
I have lived in the Czech Republic for more than 13-years now and I have to say that it is an unfriendly country in the main. Czech’s are – generally speaking – morose, rude and jealous people. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here but occasionally, you have to get away to experience good customer service and people who are happy in life…. Case in point was last week when visiting Prague to see my brother and sister in law who were visiting this country for the first – and probably last – time. Before I met with them they had already been subjected to pure rudeness, lack of basic manners (hello, please, thank you etc.) and treated as unwanted tourists – ten a penny in Prague and a
Read More »ACX Gets Tyrannical – Warning!
For many years, I have published some of my books as audio books using ACX. I have never had any trouble with them and barely ever log on the website except to check sales from time to time. Apparently, I have sold almost 3000 audiobooks. In October, I got an email from ACX about ACX University – or something similar. They have a bunch of videos and blogs as resources for authors. That is interesting, I thought and went over to look. I found out they had reintroduced ‘promo codes’ whereby you can give away a copy of your book. They tell you how to do this and suggest you use them with reviewers or as rewards for readers. I decided I would experiment a bit and order promo codes
Read More »Marketing – It’s all about Marketing
I have just spent hours this week trying to find ways to market my music and books. I’m a professional marketing person with a reputation for doing solid work but when it comes to marketing my stuff we are talking a different level of scale. Let me give you an example. I release a song – like this last one. I post it to twitter, Facebook, etc. – all the usual sites. I write a blog about it. Result – nothing …. people are too busy and quite honestly I’m selling something new every 5 minutes…. OK – let’s get clever then. I know, lets make a video to promote a song – like this one perhaps? Now that takes time… hours. I like the result – so now what?
Read More »Other Eyes
Sometimes I see things. Its been that way all of my life. Now, when I say ‘see’, I’m not sure this is an accurate description yet it is the only word I can use. I see and feel all at the same time and the two ‘senses’ are somehow merged as if one. As an example, a few months ago, as two friends and I stood within a stone circle close by the Scottish border, I ‘saw’ a lady step out from behind one of the stones and smile. Her hair was loose and flowing in the wind and she wore a flowing gown of sheer simplicity. As I mentioned to my friends “Oh, we have a visitor!” They both looked down the approach path expecting someone, well, physical. Then,
Read More »So You Think You Know Me?
One idea that constantly occupies some aspect of my thoughts is how transparent people really are. I can think of a couple of examples immediately and in each case, I confess I am often troubled and upset by it. It seems to me that these people believe they know me. They plainly have a picture of me in their mind. A sort of working model. The problem is is that while that picture may have my outer appearance, it is almost certainly a facet of themselves that occupies that outer form in their mind and yet, they do not know this. It makes for an endless source of irritation in our communications. It means that everything I ever say or do is seen against their expectations of how I will
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