At the time I downloaded The Moon Poster, it was free on Amazon and at the end of the story, the reader was asked for an honest review.
The Moon Poster is a short story told in the first person by a devoted daughter. The narrative starts when the girl is eight years old. She recounts waiting for her father to come back from missions into outer space and sneaking into his home observatory when he is away to try to catch a glimpse of him or his spaceship.
Despite being a devoted daughter, when she goes away to university and later finds a demanding job, she finds less and less time to go home to visit her aging parents. Eventually, the inevitable happens and one of her parents dies.
During the remainder of the story, the narrator philosophises about the way she has treated her loving parents and vows not to let the same happen to her own young family.
The cover of The Moon Poster is appropriate to the story and the contents have been well edited.
The Moon Poster is the sad story of family life that is repeated millions of times a year around the world, because we tend to forget that our family will not be around for ever, and we allow our busy, self-obsessed lives to take over.
The Moon Poster holds a good lesson to all of us whose parents and elder siblings are still alive and and a comfort to those who have made the same mistake as the storyteller.
I liked The Moon Poster by Debra Wattes and give it full marks as a short story with an important message for all young people of every nation, but especially those that are Western-oriented, where families are more fragmented.
Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.