Behind The Smile

Behind The Smile

Pattaya Beach Road

Published by Chalita Majang on 26 February 2022

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The most famous Thai beach road…

A book featuring Pattaya Beach Road

Pattaya Beach Road is by far the most famous Thai beach road and is the busiest road in the city of Pattaya as far as tourists, pedestrians and vehicles are concerned. It is also the most scenic because Pattaya Beach Road runs literally the width of the pavement from the golden sand of the clean beach and only metres from the sparkling blue sea. This is the largest of the beaches in Pattaya.

Pattaya Beach Road begins at the entrance to Walking Street in the south of the city and continues in a gentle curve for approximately 2.8 kilometres before heading east away from the beach at the Dusit Thani Hotel and continuing a few hundred metres towards the Dolphin Roundabout in the south-east.

Having expressed the dimensions of Pattaya Beach Road in that way, the flow of the one-way traffic is towards Walking Street. This makes sense because the southern end is less busy, and the action tends to be at the northern, more densely populated area.

Traversing Pattaya Beach Road

This is far from being a problem though, because of the Baht Bus service. A Baht Bus is an open sided pickup. The majority of them are privately owned, but city licensed, and charge just ten Baht for any length journey, which means that you can travel from your isolated hotel in the south, the full length of Beach Road to Walking Street and only pay ten Baht.

When you want to return the other way, you take a side-street at right angles to the beach, walk to the end, where you will come to Second Road and the traffic flows in the opposite direction.

Between Beach Road and Second Road, there run dozens of side-streets, called soi, which contain most of the Pattaya bars, of which there are many and various kinds. The nightlife of this Pattaya beach is legendary the world over with all kinds of bars ranging from Starbucks and Planet Hollywood to girly bar discos. There are also fantastic restaurants, especially seafood ones, along the front mostly near the centre of Beach Road, which is around Soi 7.

If you want to get a flavour for this exciting Pattaya beach in Thailand, try searching for: ‘Youtube Pattaya Beach Road’ and you will find many videos posted.

Pattaya Beach Road is a must-see for any visitor to the city, and a trip the full length of it on a Baht Bus is a must-do.

Best wishes,

Chalita.

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Daddy’s Hobby Previews

Published by Owen Jones on 27 December 2019

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Daddy's Hobby Previews

Daddy’s Hobby Previews

Daddy’s Hobby Previews

This blog post, Daddy’s Hobby‘s Previews contains previews on Amazon of BEHIND THE SMILE – The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya” volume 1: Daddy’s Hobby in all the languages I currently have available: English, German and Portuguese. In some cases, there will be special offers and free audiobooks, while stocks last.

Lek was born the eldest child of four in a typical rice farming family. She did not expect to do anything any different from the other girls in her class in the northern rice belt of Thailand.

Typically that would be: work in the fields for a few years; have a few babies; give them to mum to take care of and back to work until her kids had their own children and she could stop working to take care of them.

One day a catastrophe occurred out of the blue – her father died young and with huge debts that the family knew nothing about. Lek was twenty and she was the only one who could prevent foreclosure. However, the only way she knew was to go to work in her cousin’s bar in Pattaya.

She went as a waitress-cum-cashier, but when she realised that she was pregnant by her worthless, estranged husband, things had to change. She had the baby, gave it to her mother to look after and went back to work. However, now she needed real money to provide a better life for her child and to make up for spending its whole youth 500 miles away. She drifted into the tourist sex industry.

The book relates some of her ‘adventures’, her dreams and nightmares and her ‘modus operandi’. It tries to show, from Lek’s point of view, what it really is like to be a Thai bar girl – the hopes and frustrations, the hopes and the let-downs, the hopes and the lies and deceit that are part of her every day life.

One day she meets a man she likes and he likes her too. Nothing new there, it had happened hundreds of times, but she feels that it is different. They have a wonderful four weeks together and then he goes home – as they all had, leaving more promises and more hopes.

This one returns, but real life with a real boyfriend is not as easy as she had dreamed it would be. They go through good and bad times, but will they stay together and for how long?

After all she has been through, will she be able to be a regular girlfriend or even a wife again? Will she ever really be able to trust a man enough again either? Or would she be better off giving up her dreams and carrying on working in the bar?

Lek begins to find out that getting what you wish for is not always as good as you thought it would be.

‘Behind The Smile’ refers to the fact that Thailand is known the world over as ‘The Land of Smiles’.

English

German

Portuguese

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Behind The Smile – Daddy’s Hobby

Published by Owen Jones on 28 March 2019

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Behind The Smile: Daddy's Hobby by Owen Jones narrated by Hem Cleveland

Behind The Smile

Daddy’s Hobby

Volume 1 of Behind The Smile

by Owen Jones

Narrated by Hem Cleveland

Lek was born the eldest child of four in a typical rice farming family. She did not expect to do anything any different from the other girls in her class in the northern rice belt of Thailand.

Typically that would be: work in the fields for a few years; have a few babies; give them to mum to take care of and back to work until her kids had their own children and she could stop working to take care of them.

One day a catastrophe occurred out of the blue – her father died young and with huge debts that the family knew nothing about. Lek was twenty and she was the only one who could prevent foreclosure. However, the only way she knew was to go to work in her cousin’s bar in Pattaya.

She went as a waitress-cum-cashier to Pattaya, but when she realised that she was pregnant by her worthless, estranged husband, things had to change. She had the baby, gave it to her mother to look after and went back to work. However, now she needed real money to provide a better life for her child and to make up for spending its whole youth 500 miles away. She drifted into the tourist sex industry.

The book relates some of her ‘adventures’, her dreams and nightmares and her ‘modus operandi’. It tries to show, from Lek’s point of view, what it really is like to be a Pattaya Thai bar girl – the hopes and frustrations, the hopes and the let-downs, the hopes and the lies and deceit that are part of her every day life.

One day she meets a man she likes and he likes her too. Nothing new there, it had happened hundreds of times, but she feels that it is different. They have a wonderful four weeks together and then he goes home – as they all had, leaving more promises and more hopes.

This one returns, but real life with a real boyfriend is not as easy as she had dreamed it would be. They go through good and bad times, but will they stay together and for how long?

After all she has been through, will she be able to be a regular girlfriend or even a wife again? Will she ever really be able to trust a man enough again either? Or would she be better off giving up her dreams and carrying on working in the bar?

Lek begins to find out that getting what you wish for is not always as good as you thought it would be.

‘Behind The Smile’ refers to the fact that Thailand is known the world over as ‘The Land of Smiles’.

Free audiobook link:

http://smarturl.it/BTS1-bountyIQid-MPS

Free audiobook link:

http://smarturl.it/BTS1-bountyIQid-MPS

 

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Lek – The Beginning – Review

Published by Owen Jones on 21 July 2018

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The Beginning - volume 7 in the series Behind The Smile

The Beginning – volume 7 in the series Behind The Smile

The Beginning

Behind The Smile – The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya

(volume 7)

by Owen Jones

Review by Barry Boy

The Beginning is volume seven in the much-liked series Behind The Smile – The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya by Owen Jones.

Volume One in the series began when Lek was twenty-two and already working in Daddy’s Hobby in Pattaya, Volume Seven goes back to before she was even born – just before, to the days when her mother was young and working in the ‘na’ or rice fields.

Even nowadays, life as a Thai rice-farmer is hard, but for many, there is some mechanisation, but, then, in the early Seventies, it was mostly manual labour.

Pang and her husband, Maar, lived with Pang’s parents and worked their land. They all got on well, and worked for a better future for their family. One day, Pang announces that she is pregnant with their first child, and their lives change, as it always has done in all families around the world.

Lek has a happy childhood on the exterior, but she has her internal dialogue about her fears and insecurities. Ayr and Goong, her best friends, are there to help, but they drift apart for a while when Lek is forced to leave school at the age of twelve.

The stigma is to remain with her all her life.

The Beginning is written in the third person and the cover is apposite, being the same, except in title and colour, as the previous six. It is instantly recognisable in pink, being a diluted form of the colour of Volume One, which is red.

The Beginning: Behind The Smile -The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya (volume 7) will be published on December 26th, 2017 for $3.99, but the price will rice on January 1st to $4.99. However, you can pre-order it now for $2.99 at a discount of up to 45% and have it delivered to your device on Boxing Day, while you are recovering from a hectic Christmas Day.

What could be better?

Pre-order here:

Smashwords: http://smarturl.it/lek7?IQid=mps

Amazon: http://smarturl.it/lek7am?IQid=mps

Kobo: http://smarturl.it/lek7kobo?IQid=mps

It also gives you 25 days to catch up on any Lek Books that you haven’t read yet.

See the full list here: http://smarturl.it/my-books?IQid=mps

That makes two of the volumes that are NaNoWriMo Winners!

The Beginning - Lek 7

NaNo-2017-Winner!

All the best,

and enjoy December despite the rush,

Owen

Podcast: Lek – The Beginning

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Lek – The Beginning Progress Update

Published by Owen Jones on 10 December 2017

The Beginning - volume 7 in the series Behind The Smile

The Beginning – volume 7 in the series Behind The Smile

Lek – The Beginning Progress Update

I just made progress on Lek – The Beginning! So far I’m 71% complete on the Revising phase.
[mybookprogress progress=”0.7141034949665417″ phase_name=”Revising” book=”4″ book_title=”Lek – The Beginning” bar_color=”CB3301″ cover_image=”8784″ mbt_book=”7781″]

Place your pre-order for Lek7, The Beginning of Behind The Smile – the story of Lek, a bar girl in Pattaya, now and have it delivered on Boxing Day with a saving of 45%

http://smarturl.it/lek7am?IQid=mps

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Lek – The Beginning Progress Update

Published by Owen Jones on 22 November 2017

Lek - The Beginning

Lek – The Beginning

Lek -The Beginning

I just made progress on Lek – The Beginning! So far I’m 59% complete on the Week 4 phase. 7 Days remain until the deadline.
[mybookprogress progress=”0.58744″ phase_name=”Week 4″ deadline=”1512000000″ book=”4″ book_title=”Lek – The Beginning” bar_color=”CB3301″ cover_image=”8741″ mbt_book=”7781″]

Lek The Beginning, now shortened to The Beginning, is now available as a pre-order from Kobo, Smashwords, iTunes, and Amazon at $2.99

Pre-orders really help the author gain sales ranking, as the sales all go through on the day of release, 26th December 2017, when the book will be delivered to your ereader or computer automatically.

What a nice present to wake up to on Boxing Day!

To thank you for committing your money early, I am giving a 40% discount on all pre-orders. If you buy it on the 26th or after, it will cost $3.99. In the New Year, the price will rise again to $4.99

Some useful links are:

Smashwords – http://smarturl.it/lek7?IQid=blog

Kobo – http://smarturl.it/lek7kobo?IQid=blog

Amazon = http://smarturl.it/lek7am?IQid=blog

If you want to catch up on the series before the release of The Beginning (volume 7), see its predecessors here:

My Books: http://smarturl.it/my-books?IQid=blog

Regards,

Owen

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Lek – The Beginning Progress Update

Published by Owen Jones on 18 November 2017

Lek - The Beginning

Lek – The Beginning

Lek – The Beginning

Behind The Smile volume 7

I just made progress on Lek – The Beginning! So far I’m 82% complete on the Week 3 phase. 2 Days remain until the deadline.
[mybookprogress progress=”0.81784″ phase_name=”Week 3″ deadline=”1511222400″ book=”4″ book_title=”Lek – The Beginning” bar_color=”CB3301″ cover_image=”8741″ mbt_book=”7781″]

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Lek – The Beginning Progress Update

Published by Owen Jones on 8 November 2017

Lek - The Beginning

Lek – The Beginning

I just made progress on Lek – The Beginning! So far I’m 68% complete on the Week 1 phase. 1 Days remain until the deadline.
[mybookprogress progress=”0.68048″ phase_name=”Week 1″ deadline=”1510012800″ book=”4″ book_title=”Lek – The Beginning” bar_color=”CB3301″ cover_image=”8741″ mbt_book=”7781″]

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Lek – The Beginning Progress Update

Published by Owen Jones on 8 November 2017

Lek - The Beginning

Lek – The Beginning

 

Lek – The Beginning

I just made progress on Lek – The Beginning! So far I’m 63% complete on the Week 1 phase. 1 Days remain until the deadline.
[mybookprogress progress=”0.56424″ phase_name=”Week 1″ deadline=”1510012800″ book=”4″ book_title=”Lek – The Beginning” bar_color=”CB3301″ cover_image=”8741″ mbt_book=”7781″]

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April 5th 2016

Published by Owen Jones on 5 April 2016

April 5th 2016

April 5th 2016

April 5th, 2016

April 5th is important to many people in the UK because it is the start of the new tax year. I and millions of other Brits had to devote hours this week every year in order to get our taxes out of the way.

Then I moved here to Thailand and that all stopped for me, because I was not earning in the UK or resident there. To be honest, I wasn’t earning much anywhere, but I had assets and the cost of living in rural Thailand is low compared with Thai cities and especially the West, although it is rising quickly and has been for a few years.

This week of April 5th is important to Thais in general, because it will be Songkhran in nine days and people have already started to come back for the Thais’ favourite annual festival, the old New Year (before they fell into line with the West and adopted January 1st). I have greeted four Thais returning from abroad already today.

It is the best time of the year to be in Thailand without a shadow of a doubt.

Then there is my on personal reason for liking today. On the night of the 4th April, four years ago, I sent the manuscript of my first novel to Kindle and CreateSpace and told my family.

It was Daddy’s Hobby, the first in the series Behind The Smile and it had taken me five years of anguish and self-doubt to write. It was approved the next day; I ordered five copies and so did a few others – my family, presumably.

It was a very happy day for me and the beginning of a new career.

Funny old life, isn’t it?

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: April 5th, 2016

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CreateSpace

Published by Owen Jones on 17 November 2015

The Dream - BTS 6 on CreateSpace

The Dream – BTS 6 on CreateSpace

CreateSpace

Behind The Smile v6: The Dream is up there online, but I didn’t rush the other two out. I am out of the house now, having a pint and writing to you, but when I get back, I will finish the job by putting some advertising up. By the way, for those of you who collect the paperback version of my books, Lek6 will be available from CreateSpace and Amazon tomorrow afternoon (18th Nov). Ebook readers will have to wait until two weeks today.

I think that I will make a habit of putting my books on CreateSpace first from now on.

Yesterday, I was wondering what to do with my novel, Andropov’s Cuckoo. Well, I had a flash of inspiration, I think, but it involves Amazon, so needs to be thought through carefully. They are not my favourite publisher at the moment (because KindleSelect is such a rip-off for writers). However, they still sell more books for me than any, or even all of the other big four combined.

Even CreateSpace sells more books for me a month than XinXii and Kobo combined!

The market is not good though. Much worse than last year and even much worse than the first half of this year, which was showing a lot of promise (for me). It is depressing and somehow, I don’t think that adding three more novels to my inventory this month is going to buy me a better Christmas Holiday.

I still haven’t been able to figure out why the market collapsed so viciously. In May, I think it was, sales fell month on month by thirty percent, and have not stopped diving since. They are over sixty percent down at the moment.

That is quite something, especially when you factor in that the number of books I have to sell has risen by 17% so far this year. In fact, thinking about it, depressing doesn’t cover it at all. I will attempt my monthly analysis tomorrow, but I think that the governments of the world are trying to talk their way out of this recession, since their policies of austerity have failed dismally, and now we’re got to go and waste billions wasting ISIS in revenge for Paris.

Where will it all end, eh? I doubt that anyone has the foggiest notion, but I don’t think that it is going to be where and when most ordinary people would like it to.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: CreateSpace

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The Solution

Published by Owen Jones on 24 October 2015

The Solution

The Solution

The Solution

As my regular readers will know, life has been pretty frustrating for me for the last couple of days, but last night the thought occurred to me that the reason why Amazon and Facebook might be behaving oddly was the image driver because they are heavy users of images. So, I told my browser to check the Flash app and it was number thirteen; the latest is nineteen. It took two hours to download the update, the solution was that simple.

However, the solution was simple, but why did it take so long to fix? There must have been tens of millions of us with the same problem, because a Flash update usually takes ten seconds, not two hours. How did we get to the state where one company, like Adobe, can ruin the Internet experience of so many people?

My personal solution was to get out of the clutches of the idiots that allowed that to happen. I remember reading a few years ago, that Apple had dumped Adobe. Was this why? Had they foreseen that that problem could happen?

So, I looked at the price of an Apple Mac, an Apple Air, and was surprised at the cost. $1,000 for an eleven-inch screen and $3,000 for a fifteen-inch. $3k is 90,000 Baht, but a fifteen-inch PC is only 20,000 Baht. It is hard to justify the expense, but I would dearly love to escape Microsoft and Adobe’s stranglehold on me, to say nothing of Windows 10, which I dislike too.

All five of the current volumes of Behind The Smile and their new covers are now live on Amazon, so anyone who wants to own the very first set of them should buy now, as they have only been on sale for a few hours.

On a completely different tack, as I was walking here today, I had the strange sensation that I was a lot shorter than usual. I am six feet tall and weigh 120 kilos, and have always felt big, but earlier I felt a foot or more shorter. Does anyone know why I might have imagined that?

We all shrink when we pass a certain age, did I just experience a real drop in physical stature, albeit very small?

Please don’t tell me that the solution is to grow up a bit…

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: The Solution

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Dreary Day

Published by Owen Jones on 23 October 2015

Dreary Day

A Dreary Day

Dreary Day

That dreary problem with the Internet seemed to be over this morning and I got three new versions of Lek up (new covers and updated interiors). It would normally have taken thirty minutes each, but I didn’t mind spending three hours on the job. Then, shortly after six a.m. the dreary problem started again.

Four hours later, I still haven’t been able to get number four up on either of the Amazon sites, so switched to Kobo, Lulu et al, and they were working fine, so the problem has to be with Amazon. However, I couldn’t get into Facebook either, so perhaps they are both under attack.

Therefore, I have come out to write to you again, much to the chagrin of my wife, who commented that I was leaving an hour early. I don’t see the point of sitting there though, getting angry with things that no-one can fix for me though – I might have a stroke or heart attack!

It is nice out, but too hot to go for a stroll. It’s funny, a week ago people were saying how unusually cold, dreary and wet it was. It was (25c), and now it is unusually hot for the time of the year (35c). In fact, the shopkeeper, the tightest woman in the village, as anyone would tell you, has put a fan on me. I might be exaggerating if I guess that this might be the fifth time she has done that in ten years.

I am still trying to think of a title for my NaNoWriMo novel, and it just came to me that this would be the ideal opportunity to write a Christmas book. Not that I have had much experience with Christmas for ages – perhaps forty years.

I’ll put my mind to it when I stop talking.

I hate oilcloth on a table, don’t you? It makes your forearms sweat and retains the condensation from the beer bottle leaving difficult-to-see puddles for you to put your Kindle down in.

I shouldn’t complain though, I am sitting at her private table because it’s too hot for me where I normally drink.

Oh, if anyone is thinking of buying the Behind The Smile paperbacks, the new cover should be approved tomorrow, 23-10-15, so start with the new number one, but I will be keeping two-to-five available in the old style, for those who want a set of sorts. Number six will only be with the new cover. And, if you display your ebook covers as some do, tomorrow you will be able to refresh what you have and they will all match again.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Another Dreary Day

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Lek 6 – Behind The Smile

Published by Owen Jones on 19 October 2015

Lek 6 - Behind The Smile

Lek 6 – Behind The Smile

Lek 6 – Behind The Smile

I haven’t been around much for the last two months, as my regular readers will know, because I have been writing the sixth book in the series Behind The Smile, commonly referred to as Lek 6.

Lek 6 took quite a long time to write. OK, the first one took five years and the second six months, but I did finish the fourth in thirty days (for NaNoWriMo 2014).

Lek 6 took me fifty days. For the sake of comparison, I should point out that all the Leks are 112k words long. It was the hardest of them to write.

Anyway, while I was ‘away’ writing Lek 6, several other things happened.

We had a four-foot Clouded Monitor lizard move into our garden, but my wife and our dog hassled it so much that it moved out again. Then a two-foot version moved in and a week later moved on as well. In my eleven years here, they are the only two I have ever seen or heard of. I think that that’s quite something.

Gail, our granddaughter, was one on September 21st, and it seems that all of a sudden she is learning to speak and do things she hasn’t been taught. She speaks several words now that tell us she wants something like food and water, but if she yawns and you say ‘sleep’, she puts a hand to her head and tilts it over. She also switches the fan on and off, opens sliding doors and looks for the remote.

Yesterday she was crying, which is unusual for her, and the only thing that was wrong was that her nappy was soiled. She did that again today. I love to watch her learning, but God knows how she can understand when adults use Thai baby-talk on her, because I can’t fathom it and I’ve been here ten times longer than she has.

On a less happy note, this blog spent two weeks switched off due to the incompetence of my host, Hostgator. They said that it is all right now, but it was down twice this morning for a few minutes. Steer clear of them until they sort themselves out. Oh, and if you want to keep tabs on your own blog, install the free Jetpack plug-in. It’s great – loads of features.

I am missing writing already, but I will stave off the pangs by posting to you every day until November 1st, when NaNoWriMo 2015 starts. I hope that you will join me in that. I still don’t have a clue what to write about.

And lastly for today, going back to Lek 6, the artist who made the first five covers for the Behind The Smile series has disappeared (from me), so I am having to redesign them all so that they match. (Writers of series take note).

So, if you have a few volumes with the original covers, you will still be able to purchase the first five the same, but Lek 6 will be different. Those starting to read the series from scratch should buy the new covers. The new Lek 6 cover is above, what do you think of it (on the latest one, the writing is not so cramped).

Amazon Image   Update 26-10-15: I have reread half of the first draft, so am on schedule to complete Lek 6 before the deadline. Please pre-order here: The Dream: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya (Behind The Smile Book 6)

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Lek 6

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The Lek Series

Published by Owen Jones on 10 October 2015

The Lek Series

The Lek Series – Behind The Smile

The Lek Series

I call it the Lek series, although it is always billed as the ‘Behind The Smile’ series, which is its official title. It is just that the name Lek trips off the tongue more easily, and after writing about her for ten years, I am more comfortable calling her by name. In fact, so much so, that it was not unknown for me to call my wife Lek, which she did not appreciate, but, like Pavlov’s dogs, I have learned not to do it any more, although I couldn’t remember my stepson’s daughter’s name today, even though I have known her since she moved in with us three days after she was born more than a year ago.

The only name that would come to mind was Shell, the name of the baby in the Lek series.

At this point, you might be thinking that that is understandable, but my stories do not mirror their lives at all. The real reason, and my headmaster told me that a reason is only an excuse with substance, is that I become so engrossed in my writing that I lose touch.

I go too far away.

Some of you will know what I mean.

I become so engrossed in the story, the lives, of the characters, the people, in my novels that I am no longer where my body is. No, that is too far, but certainly no longer where my real-life friends and family are. It usually takes me a good thirty minutes, after stopping writing, to be able to talk to living people again. Perhaps less with my wife, but certainly thirty minutes with others.

What do you make of that?

I know that it sounds weird, but that’s how it is.

I have written forty-odd books, but the Lek series is the only one that affects me that intensely. I get it with the Lily Series too, but not as much.

I mean that I am deeply involved with every book I write, but they don’t all stay with me, like Lek and Lily do.

They are constant companions, the others are more like good friends that you don’t see very often any more. Great when you do, but not a part of your life.

Lek is a part of my life and has been for ten years, Lily is too, but only for three. The common factor is not that they are women or Thai, I think, but that they have had bloody hard lives but are doing their best to overcome their pasts and make a better future, not only for themselves but for everyone around them.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: The Lek Series

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Full Circle – Lek6

Published by Owen Jones on 9 September 2015

Full Circle - Lek6 - Behind The Smile

Full Circle – Lek6 – Behind The Smile

Full Circle – Lek6

I have not been getting on well with Lek6, the sixth volume in the series ‘Behind The Smile ~ The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya‘ or at least not in comparison with the others. I have written 16,000 words which amounts to about fifteen percent of the 112,000 words I want the book to eventually be in length.

I have also more or less decided on the title, Full Circle, which ties in with a lot of what I have written already and the ideas I have for future chapters.

I am not going to give anyting away about the storyline of Full Circle at this stage, which is chapter four, but I will try to think of something that won’t spoil anyone’s enjoyment of the full book after chapter five, or possibly ten.

I can tell you this though, it will be a miracle if I can get the same artist to do a matching cover. I have been emailing her but she is not replying. It is very worrying. Another thing that I can reveal is that my daughter, the cover girl, would like the sixth volume to be pink.

If anyone has any useful suggestions for a cover designer for Full Circle, please let me know as soon as possible, because I like to get the cover out of the way before I finish the story.

On a different topic, if you have been following the exploits of our garden visitor, the Clouded Monitor, I have an update. Lizzie was spotted roaming the village yesterday, but no-one has seen her today, which is probably a bad sign.

However, Angun, our dog was going potty this afternoon, pointing at a bush. I had a look, but couldn’t see anything. A few minutes later, she ran into the bush and I saw something about two foot long flash through the fallen leaves. I think it was a snake, but my wife thought that it was Lizzie’s tail.

I hope it was.

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All the best,

Owen

Our Bookshop

Podcast: Full Circle – Lek6

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Mental Cruelty

Published by Owen Jones on 24 June 2015

Mental Cruelty

Mental Cruelty

Mental Cruelty

I have turned my attention away from ‘Asian Shorts’ temporarily, because it is ‘out there’ already and my novel isn’t. Not only that but 2,000-odd links on my websites will stop working on July 15th. thanks to Amazon and that would be a catastrophe. I have to start tackling that problem tomorrow. Mental cruelty though I consider it to be.

This morning, I was putting my submission package together looking for representation for the new novel, when I realised that the publishing industry considers it slightly too short for its genre – about three thousand words. I had never thought about matching expected novel length to genre before. You learn something every day, don’t you?

If you’re lucky you do, I suppose.

I think my next novel will be sixth in the Behind The Smile series and I’ll probably call it a day then. That will make the story a combined 675,000 words long and most stories are only about 75,000 words. I put nine books into six, so that has to be good value, doesn’t it?

You can read more about this popular series here:

http://behind-the-smile.com

Going back to ‘Asian Shorts’, I would like to enter it onto some websites that specialise in promoting temporarily low cost books, does anyone know of any? I have never tried that particular form of promotion before.

I don’t seem to be able to concentrate today, I feel a bit snowed under and it is so hot too. A strange metaphor to pick when it is so hot 🙂 but I really am not looking forward to having to change over two thousand links – it’s a nightmare of boredom for someone like me who thinks that having to rewrite a Tweet is mental cruelty. Two thousand links! That’s more than mental cruelty, especially when it forced upon-you by another.

Well, that’s it for today, I can’t bring myself to bore you any longer.

All the best,

Owen

Please visit my bookshop

Podcast: Mental Cruelty

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A Few Days Ago

Published by Owen Jones on 13 March 2015 1

Dead Centre II - Bangkok

Dead Centre II – Bangkok

A Few Days Ago

This early afternoon, my friend Dave came calling. I think that that is the earliest by three or four hours he’s ever come around. Anyway, the reason was that a mutual friend, Murray is leaving the country in two days and he thought that my email from yesterday inviting him to join us for a farewell drink was about today.

No problem, a lot of good came from our meeting, and Davy learned to check the date that emails are sent.

This is easily done, but it is still often overlooked.

—–

While on the subject of emails, you can tell where a legitimate email was sent from by highlighting it (in Outlook), right-clicking it, selecting Options or Properties and reading the metadata. The sending address will be a string of numbers, which you can copy into dnsstuff.com and it will tell (resolve it for) you.

An automated version of this is how advertisers know where you are.

I say it only works with legitimate email, because professional spammers usually falsify this data to cover their tracks.

—–

I finished editing Dead Centre II yesterday morning, so I got straight on with the cover. I have only had the covers of the Behind The Smile series designed for me, the other thirty–odd book covers I did myself.

I like to complete my editing, then the cover and finally the blurb for the back cover. I like to do it that way, but it is probably better to get a few different covers out earlier, so that readers can express their opinions.

The way I do it doesn’t leave a lot of time for that, because I am always wanting to get on with the next novel.

Perhaps I’ll see if it works better next time.

Update: I sold a copy within hours of it being published without using pre-ordering, so I’m happy about that.

—–

I am already being asked for the next 112,000 words in the BTS series! I published 225,000 in the last quarter of 2014. It’s getting to become hard, but enjoyable work. Like working in a soap opera, I should imagine. Perhaps I should have made the novels half as long, because all five are 112k+ making almost 600,000 words so far.

For comparison, a thirty-minute soap would run to about 8,000 words or less!

Amazon Image   Dead Centre II: Even The Wrong Can Be Right Sometimes! (Volume 2)

by +Owen Jones

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