With Astral Messages now out and a Kindle version of Inner Journeys (my very first book) having also just appeared, my first novel doing quite well and…. a kindle version of The Mystical Hexagram about to appear, I thought perhaps I would just write a quick article about all of my books.
The first book was Inner Journeys: Explorations of the Soul. Having completed the first degree course with the SOL, I asked Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki if she would mind if I published a sort of autobiographical book about why I had done the course and what I had experienced. Not only did she think it a great idea but she helped me find a publisher and to promote the book. It was published by Thoth in 2005. Interestingly enough, I recently worked with Tom over at Thoth to make a Kindle version of Inner Journeys that is now available for sale.
Having written one book, my mind being what it is, thought what about publishing a book about ETRM software – which is the software I work with for a living. As a more or less independent analyst, I thought we could self publish it and get one or two clients to sponsor it. The general idea was that it would be paid for via the sponsorships and then earn some reasonable royalties as a self published book. This concept worked amazingly well raising $40,000 in sponsorships which more than covered production of the book. Of course, my employer saw the money as opposed to me though I most likely got it in salary of course. The result was “Trends in ETRM Software: A Primer” co-written with Andrew Bruce that appeared in 2006 via Createspace. This book is no longer in print as it was superceded by a second edition this time written with Patrick Reames and also paid for via sponsorships and published in 2010.
Around that time, I was also interested in hedge funds and how they were beginning to trade commodities. My partner in crime on hedge fund research – we undertook the first research project on the funds in commodities – was Peter C. Fusaro who had had a best seller with his Enron book. He was able to get Wiley Finance interested in a book and even got us a nice advance for the work. Energy & Environmental Hedge Funds: The New Investment Paradigm was published in 2006. It did OK but I think Wiley priced the book way too high at well over $100.
In 2006, I had the bug for publishing and I also had a file full of poems written by me over the years – from 1972 to 2006 in fact. Of course I couldn’t resist and a selection of the better poems duly appeared as Weird Tales: Otherworld Poetry in 2006.
Patrick and I also used the lucrative sponsorship and self publish model again to write and publish “Selecting and Implementing ETRM Software: A Primer” in 2008. Interestingly, this became the course book for a graduate program at the University of Houston and is my best seller so far with well in excess of 1700 copies sold to date.
Around about 2006, I also had an idea for a novel discussed with my eldest son, Paul Vasey, in a pub in London. I ended up writing a chapter and a half but then my pen fell silent. The book was to be named The Last Observer.
From 2006 until 2012 I was obsessed by a symbol – The hexagram. I really had some strange insights into the symbol that seemed important. Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki saw some of the early material around 2008 and told me I was on to something and maybe so but I couldn’t finish it. I had the core chapters but somehow I was stuck until that is I asked Sue Vincent to take a look and trial some meditation exercises associated with the text for me. I didn’t want to kill anyone with the material and having an experienced practioner like Sue go through it would be reassuring to me that my exercises would be beneficial as opposed to destructive! Of course, I next asked her to help with diagrams and then write the introductory chapter and finally she was the catalyst that got the thing finished as she edited and added some of her material on the Qabalah to round out the book. I wanted to keep it in the SOL family and so Datura Press published The Mystical Hexagram in 2012.
In 2012, I also took a few more poems along with some photos taken by Gabriela Vasey and used Lulu to publish Poems for the Little Room. It seemed to me that people liked having short photo and poetry books in their little rooms and why not mine? It hasn’t sold well at all so I am guessing I got that title and market all wrong!
Having gotten over the hump so to speak with that one, I returned to the chapter and a half of The Last Observer. Strangely, Sue was again involved as I sent her a preview of that material and she responded “What, you are going to leave me there? Where is the rest?”. I began to write and the book wrote itself. I sent updates to Sue throughout the process and she kept me going. By January 2013, it was finished and I had a publisher – Roundfire Books. In late July 2013 it finally appeared.
By now, I was writing like a fiend. So it seemed reasonable to go ahead and pull together my latest and best poetry combined with short articles and publish it as Astral Messages…..
And now I am writing two books at once…. One is about The Fool as an aspect of The Deity and the other is the prequel to The Last Observer…..
well – I don’t make any money but boy -is it fun!
Here are all my books….except Poems for the Little Room that you can find on Lulu and Amazon.co.uk.