Yesterday, late afternoon, black clouds could be seen on the horizon, then a wind appeared from nowhere and suddenly the clouds were overhead emptying their contents all over us. When I say suddenly, I mean, I knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t have time to finish my half a bottle of beer.
The shopkeeper let me take refuge with her and when we ventured outside thirty minutes later, three houses had been blown down, a friend had lost his garage roof and a neighbour his whole garage. Most of the debris is probably twenty or thirty kilometres away, but somehow nobody was hurt.
The monsoon is three weeks late, so I asked whether it had started, but I was told it hadn’t. I have been here ten years but never seen anything like that before.
I’ve changed my mind about the snake I saw the other day, it was a Wall’s Bronzeback, which the book says is olive green. Confusing, isn’t it? However, it also says they are plentiful in the northeast, and that’s where I live, so that’ll do me.
The book I was supposed to start writing yesterday, I actually started a week ago, but I typed it all up yesterday and today. 18,656 words, so that’s a nice little boost in production. I’ll start chapter seven out of about twenty when I go for a beer later on, if rain doesn’t stop play.
I have been keeping book sales records for five years now, and May has been worse that April four times, including this year, but it was still 52% up on last year. Since I write several books a year, that would seem about right, so it doesn’t look to me like the book-buying public is buying much more than usual.
It was my best sales month in the USA ever though, so if books are considered luxury items, perhaps their economy is doing better too. Worst print book sales since May 2013 though, and that was my worst ever.
On the plus side, June has always beaten my May sales 🙂
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”.
