Songs from Another Era
I started writing poetry or more accurately perhaps lyrics, at the age of about 12. At that time, I had just received my first acoustic guitar for Christmas and had already formed a ‘band’ with Andy Wells, my next door neighbour. Andy has, I think, played around bands ever since in the USA where he now lives and owns a huge collection of guitars. We would sit in our front rooms strumming the odd malformed chord and dreaming in the way only adolescents can dream. Of course, the early 70’s really was a great time for this with wave after wave of new bands coming through and cranking out three chord singles by the bucket load. I particularly loved T.Rex I recall and fancied myself as another Marc Bolan. In
Read More »A Conversation with G. Michael Vasey by Nick Wale
A Conversation with G. MICHAEL VASEY Author of THE LAST OBSERVER Expat Brit located in the Czech Republic G. Michael Vasey is one of those unique writers you come across on a hot summer day. I have marvelled at this interview, and I’ve wondered what I can really say about it. I like this writer—a lot—and I can’t wait for you to like him, too! His book The Last Observer is a bit of everything, and that is the best way to describe this interview. It’s a bit of everything! Who do you have in mind when you write? Me. I write about my interests and things that I am passionate about. I trust that the end product is something of interest to others and that I have something unique
Read More »Reality Really is Weird
I am reading a book about the nature of reality. It has an interesting way of working its theme as it has you conduct experiments. This last two days, I was doing one of the experiments where you simply look everywhere and expect to see something. In my instance, I decided on a pink car. Don’t ask me why. It just seemed like something fairly rare…. I actually finished reading the instructions on my Kindle riding a bus to pick up my car from service on Friday. I decided, pink car and looked up. As my eyes refocused on the view through the back window of the bus I noticed another bus. It was white but…. it had huge pink stripes on it. I thought to myself “OK, thats not
Read More »Thinking of Poetry
Just recently, I have been popping a lot of rhyme. Poems have been and continue to spill out of me and you know, thats just fine and dandy. I enjoy poetry. I enjoy playing with words and sounds. Somehow, poetry gives us the flexibility to play and joke with words and structures without having to worry too much about whether the result is correct or not. There surely in no correct in poetry – no right and no wrong. Poetry just is and it either works for you or it doesn’t. It doesn’t even have to rhyme! When I write a poem I usually start with just a feeling. Not an idea. There is no plot, no characters to develop, no story line. Just a feeling. Poetry is, or should
Read More »What is with all the poetry?
This last week or so, poems have been at the end of my pen it would seem. I have no idea why. Anyway, I enjoy writing and poetry is a form of writing right? Whether my poems are any good is up to you to judge but if you do enjoy them please consider procuring one of my three poetry books all available in paperback and Kindle formats at all Amazon sites. You can also go to my poetry page and follow the links there too. Meanwhile, although poetry is dribbling out of me daily, I am making no progress whatsoever on the prequel to The Last Observer. I feel no compelling reason to move forward with it at the moment and need to wait until the moment grabs me
Read More »What Am I Becoming?
I never saw myself as a grammar nazi. I make mistakes. We all do when writing. We also use short cuts like ‘u’ for you and so on. To me that is acceptable. I know that I am clueless about commas. I have no idea where commas go so I kind of make it up as I go along. This too must annoy comma nazis. However…. Just recently I have become really quiet appalled at the mistakes people make in written English. Many of these people are totally unaware that they make mistakes too, which makes it even worse. The ones that really, really bug me are as follows; 1. There, Their, They’re 2. Were, Where, We’re and, would you believe – Wear? 3. To, Too, Two 4. Your, You’re
Read More »An Experiment
I have blogged for years – actually since about 2004 – always using my own hosted custom site. I originally started out using Drupal but about 3-years ago or so, I switched to WordPress. Now I am experimenting with something equally dramatic….. moving from my own hosted custom site to a blog hosted on wordpress.com. I have always avoided wordpress.com as it stops you from running any advertising. The truth is, I have made about $300 in those ten years blogging from ads maximum and so I have come to the conclusion it simply doesn’t work. Still, I write books and I use amazon ads for my books and that won’t fly here….. There are ways around that issue however which is to direct people interested in buying my books
Read More »Book Stuff
Periodically, but with decreasing frequency, I have another shot at promoting my novel The Last Observer. I ran out of ideas a while ago on how to promote it to be honest. I was hoping it would do quite well and maybe drag a few of my other books along with it but I am forced to conclude that I need to start writing eroticism to make a break through. My best sellers remain my business books and my very best selling book has now sold more then 1,700 copies. It doesn’t sound a lot does it but to be honest I am amazed. There were 300 give away copies of that book too so there are actually 2,000 of them floating around. I wouldn’t ever have believed there were
Read More »Finding an Audience
How do you find an audience? Some people manage it. Others don’t. Is it luck? I don’t think it is necessarily talent – although my perceptions of talent my not be your view. I have blogged and written pretty much twice or more a week on this and other blogs since about 2004 or around 10-years. I don’t have much of an audience. My books don’t sell well. I have failed to find an audience. The hint though on how to build an audience was always right there. My single blog post about sex in the Czech Republic still gets more traffic than all my other writings put together. Is that a sad indictment of me or just a sad indictment full stop? Maybe I should give up? When I
Read More »Goats! Sex! and…… Builders!
An unusual blog title borrowed from a blogosphere pal Alienora Taylor. She is a pretty amazing writer and an avid (possibly addicted) blogger. She writes about her life with a brutal frankness and a bawdy sense of humor that can and does have you literally ROFLing…. (Roll on floor laughing for anyone who doesn’t know). How this lady isn’t a household name as a writer is beyond me as she has a golden pen and a viciously twisted and maliciously funny way of seeing things……So what about the Goats and Sex and those Builders? Well, for just a couple more days, you can download her hilarious novel Long Leggety Beasties for FREE! Go on, download the bugger. You will laugh until you cry and find out what the Goats, Sex
Read More »