It’s widely recommended that fiction writers best start their work with an action scene, not only to catch the attention of the reader but also, perhaps more importantly for them, to catch the attention of a publisher. Though I have generally learned to comply with this practice, I still struggle with the its universality. In …
This blog is mainly about my journey as a self-publisher author. However, today I am uploading a piece about a chance conversation with Barry, once a senior proofreader for some major Sydney newspapers. This conversation took place at Easter. How circumstances change! It’s now only June and, since then, I have been informed Barry has …
I obtained a copy of The Babylonian Woe by Canadian author David Astle after I heard a passing comment on a podcast of how this book unveiled the historically manipulated nature of the value of money. I was keen to get the author’s take. However, I found that although the book seems deeply researched, and …
In interviews since the publication of Call of the Reed Warbler, a book about regenerative farming, its author Charles Massy says it was written over seventeen years. Reading this work, I am reminded of the wonders of the printed book when I estimate that it would have taken Massy somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 hours to write the book (I have …
I am happy to announce I am sharing a fresh translation of a landmark Chinese meditation text previously known in English as The Secret of the Golden Flower. The text has been popular in the post-war Western world following the endorsement of Swiss psychiatrist, Dr Carl Jung. This book contains both Chinese and English versions …
I just listened to a podcast (Heretics Woven Energy) on the Chinese martial art of bagua quan (pa kua) and feel the people on that podcast had some misunderstandings about this art and, as a result, I feel compelled to put this information on the public record. One of the speakers commented that pa kua …
In this post, I share some reflections on my high school English teacher, Douglas Webster St Aubyn Berneville-Claye. This includes revisiting a creative response of mine to revelations about him which appeared many years after his death in 1975. I left high school in 1976 and for decades, like many of my school colleagues, I …
Nutrition is an important ingredient in any writer’s toolkit. When asked why people today appear unable to develop and act according to all they learn and seem to know, philosopher, Rudolph Steiner, replied: this is a problem of nutrition. We all need the proper proteins, fats, minerals, sugars plus all the rest for our brain …
Musings is a book that just sailed into my life one day and I’m so happy it did for it’s a remarkable work with a wealth of fresh observations of life, politics, culture, religion and a whole lot more that gets you thinking about how good life on this earth could be if we were …
It is with a great sense of satisfaction (and some relief) as I put down my copy of Thomas Pynchon’s first novel V for, with that action, I have joined that club of erudite readers who have read the complete works of Thomas Pynchon at least once. I was introduced to Pynchon over ten years …