This section covers posts that in general do not fit into other sections easily. They will mostly be made by admin on whatever I am adding at that moment, which is usually something to do with writing, publishing, websites, eating or Thailand, which is where I live :-)
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August 2017 This is the month I have tried to take off every year since I left school. August falls in the school summer holidays in the UK. When my father remarried, it was my sister’s birthday on the first, my dog’s on the fourth, my brother’s on the seventh, mine on the fourteenth, my real mother’s …
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Search Engines I should imagine that if I asked a hundred people, which is the best search engine, at least ninety percent would say Google, but how many of them ever consider using other search engines? Google has done such a tremendous job of PR that it now attracts at least 85% of search queries. …
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Free Books and Amazon I started a page on this blog called Free Books and, needless to say, it is very popular, receiving well over three hundred views a day. ‘Free’ is an extremely powerful word, so that is not surprising in itself. What does surprise many people is Amazon’s attitude towards free books. In …
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Facebook Friends Part 1 I recently ran a campaign to drum up support for for my latest novel, and a large part of that took place on Facebook. However, I only had 1,100 Facebook friends and it soon became apparent that I would need at least double that for a campaign of thirty days. Now, …
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The Reviews of Books on Amazon I have been with Amazon for a relatively very long time – since a few weeks after it started, I think, but I can’t help thinking the the people at the top – the ones running the firm (that might not include Jeff Bezos, the guy who set it up) are …
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Most people who know Bangkok, would say that the Bangkok Red Light District is centred around Soi Nana, but it is bigger than that.
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Growing Old Abroad Old age creeps up on us, as does getting older in general. Parents regularly wonder what happened to their youth, and older people wonder why they hadn’t noticed it happening to them. These are common experiences, but when you have been growing old abroad, there are other factors. Those who are growing …
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This article is about how and where to obtain Thai Food in Fuengirola and Los Boliches and where to get Thai catering to enjoy at home
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Pirated eBooks – Writers There seems to be two schools of though amongst writers concerning pirated ebooks: those who think it’s a good thing or irrelevant and those who would have pirates walk the plank. I am in the latter group after discovering that one site was claiming to have given away 1,755 copies of …
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Google Bias and Blacklisting If you are still not convinced that there is such a thing as Google Bias and Blacklisting, there is a simple test that you can try. In May 2016, I wrote an article for my blog called ‘Living in Remote Thailand’. Today, I noticed in my logs that my blog had been …
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Citibank and Gambling I have had my main bank account with the American giant financial organization Citibank for thirty years, but have spent more than half that time abroad and had very little contact with them, which suited both me and, I think, them perfectly. Anyway, whatever, Citibank never gave me cause for complaint, and …
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Your Computer: The Spy You Trust We all have some sort of computer these days, don’t we? If you don’t have a desktop computer, you may have a laptop, and if not those then a tablet or smartphone. If you don’t have any of those, perhaps you have a new smart TV or fridge or …
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British Bureaucracy My Thai wife and I arrived back in the UK for the first time in five years last Wednesday, so our first encounter with British bureaucracy was at Rhoose airport’s immigration. My wife was coming in on a five-year Spanish Residency Card, and the official had never seen an Asian with one before. …
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Beware Amazon Book Rankings! If you are a reader, or a writer, you probably use Amazon book rankings at some time or another. Even if you are a bookshop owner’s dream and buy your latest reads locally, the chances are that you do your research online and, therefore, on Amazon. And why wouldn’t you? ‘What …
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A Life in Twenty-Two Kilos Forty-four kilos is the average luggage allowance for a couple flying abroad – twenty-two kilos each. That is how much you can take with you, even if you are starting a new life – even if you are emigrating. It is the airlines’ norm. I can see why that is …
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MPS Blog Reaches New Heights! May 2018 was a record-breaking month for my MPS blog in terms of readership figures. The blog, which strives to inform readers and writers about the easiest and or best ways of doing things, continues to go from strength to strength. We almost reached 10,000 pagereads last month! The record-breaking …
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Arrival in the UK was far simpler than we had anticipated. Immigration was confused by our documentation but could not fault it. However, things did not work out as we had expected…
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This is my author interview with M. K. Theodoratus, who talks about her her books and herself in this interesting interview.
