When Frank, a staid, middle-aged, confirmed bachelor takes his new, diplomat Thai bride to a friend’s apartment on the Costa del Sol for their dream honeymoon, they are in Nirvana… until the ghouls of a secret Scandinavian society torment the superstitious young woman to the point of seeking death to end her suffering. Frank is way out of his depth… What is he to do to save the first love of his life?
The Ghouls of Calle Goya is the perplexing story of how Evil can result from the happiest of circumstances and good intentions, and how madness can be the result.
It is based on a true story and is set in Norway, the UK, Spain and Thailand.
The Ghouls of Calle Goya is available in several languages in several ebook formats (Barnes & Noble, GooglePlay, iTunes, Kindle, Kobo), paperback and possibly even audiobook (Amazon/Audible) too.
The cover is an original in crayon by Aliya.
Click a link below to learn more about the availability of the book in the language of your choice:
Londoner Frank marries Joy, a beautiful young Thai, who works in town. She has always dreamed of going to the Costa del Sol, so they head to an apartment in Fuengirola on Calle Goya loaned by Frank’s boss for their dream honeymoon.
Things start to go wrong when Joy fears that the apartment is haunted. Fear leads to depression and deepens into terror. Frank has no idea what to do, except take her back to her family in Thailand, but that brings its own misfortune.
Life finally looks brighter because of the intervention of a secret Scandinavian society.
This is the story of how Evil can result from good intentions.
Daisy’s Chain – A Story of Love, Intrigue and the Underworld on the Costa del Sol
Daisy’s Chain
A Story of Love, Intrigue and the Underworld on the Costa del Sol
by
Owen Jones
Narrated by
William James Hill
Daisy, the proud daughter of a wealthy ex-London gangster, John, and his Spanish wife, Teresa, grew up in Marbella on the Costa del Sol, aka, the Costa del Crime. She idolised her parents and sought to impress her ageing father by helping him run the family businesses after uni. However, a disastrous error of judgement ends in family tragedy, and her mother puts Daisy on a safer path of helping the local community as a penance. Daisy’s Chain is a tragic tale with a pleasantly happy ending.
The weather on The Costa del Sol is quite legendary in the UK and, I dare say, Scandinavia, which is one of the biggest reasons why people from those countries flock here in such vast numbers. (One of the others being the relatively low cost of living).
The Costa del Sol faces Morocco on the Maghreb in north Africa across only 14 kilometres of Mediterranean Sea, which is less than nine miles!
Admittedly, I had never spent a Christmas here before 2017, but this was my second January, and I have been coming here off-season for decades. In fact, many people do come here for the festive season to avoid the weather and expense at home.
Well, it has been cold this season, but at the time of writing, 10:30 am in February 2018, the weather on The Costa del Sol is 2c (Real Feel -1c).
-1c!
People, even residents, are talking about how bitter the weather is around here, Fuengirola, on the Costa del Sol, so, I should imagine that there are quite a few holiday-makers who wished they had stayed at home!
There is no real wind to speak of, nine mph, and it is not raining… it is just freakishly cold. If I didn’t think I knew better, I would say that it is about to snow.
That would be something, wouldn’t it!? Snow on the Costa del Sol – The Sun Coast?
“It has happened before”, one of my long-term resident Brit friends tells me, “but the last time was twenty years ago”.
Well, if I were a betting man, and if there were any betting offices around here, I would put a couple of pounds on the weather on The Costa del Sol turning to snow over the next couple of days.
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Often, it seems that everything takes longer when living abroad, and this can make you really short of time when you are also working abroad. For example, in Britain, we tend to work for eight hours straight from eight or nine a.m, whereas in southern Spain, like the Costa del Sol, most people work from nine or ten until two p.m. and then from five until nine, which ties you up for twelve hours a day.
The locals on the Costs del Sol grew up with the system and it suits them, but it often leaves northern Europeans wondering where the day went!
Twelve hours tied up with work and eight hours sleep only leaves four hours for shopping, cooking, socialising, sport and everything else.
The ‘relaxed’ southern Spanish lifestyle leaves many Brits and other northern Europeans feeling exhausted.
This is what led Neem Jones to set up Fuengirola Home Help Services – a new business covering Fuengirola and Los Boliches.
Fuengirola Home Help Services provides mature ladies to help around the home and garden, so that busy working people have more time to enjoy themselves.
Fuengirola Home Help Services provides assistance with: children, caring, cooking, cleaning, gardening, companionship, house-, dog- and baby-sitting, shopping, although any normal household or family activities will be considered.
If you would like to book a meeting with Neem Jones to discuss your requirements, it can be done through her business’ Facebook, Fuengirola Home Help Services:
Neem Jones says that she will take on any type of home help, but she is particularly interested in becoming involved with children and the infirm or house-bound, because she is a people person.
So, if you are working abroad in Fuengirola and feeling a bit frazzled, get in touch with Neem and let her give you some of your life back.
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There is a new Home Help Service in Fuengirola, called, not surprisingly, the Fuengirola Home Help Services. It is run by Neem Jones, a Thai lady who is living on the Costa del Sol with her British husband of fifteen years, the Welsh writer, Owen Jones.
“I have always had a special interest in helping those who cannot care for themselves”, she said, “People such as children, the sick, the aged and the infirm. After all, they deserve a decent life too, they just need a little help to achieve it”.
“In Thailand, it is quite normal for women of my age to take care of their parents, elderly relatives and their grandchildren”, she added, “and I would like to do the same thing here in the area where I live in Spain on the Costa del Sol”.
When asked whether not speaking Spanish might be a problem, Neem replied, “It can be, if people want it to, but I have been here a year, now and it never has been yet, although we have had a few amusing misunderstandings. That’s all right though, having a laugh is mostly what it’s all about, isn’t it? Life can be so boring when you can’t get out to meet people”.
When asked for further details about her new venture, she supplied the following information:
Neem said that she speaks Thai and English, but is learning Spanish and the services that she is offering at the moment are those to do with running a household. When pressed, she said: cooking, cleaning, laundry; baby-sitting, caring for the house-bound including taking them out; shopping, picking up the kids from school, gardening, running errands and anything else that is considered ‘normal’.
Neem explained that she didn’t want any ‘problems or misunderstandings’ with single gentlemen, so she would prefer not to work for them, unless they came recommended by an existing friend.
“It would be nice if we could set up an on line community so that the house-bound can keep in touch. In, fact, I have started doing that with a closed Facebook Group, which is attached to my business’ page on Facebook. Friends, or clients, if you like, and their friends and family will all be welcome to join and take part”.
“I live near to the border of Fuengirola with Los Boliches very near to the sea,” she added, “and since I don’t have any transport, I know that area the best… well, we have lived from Las Lagunas to where we are now, but often walk in Los Boliches, so that would be where I would like to work, but I am open to any request”, she said cheerfully.
If you want to contact Neem, you can do so through her Facebook page Fuengirola Home Help Services, which also carries her email address and telephone number.
“I just want to bring a smile to people’s faces as I help them,” said Neem, “but I have to charge for it to be able to live here too”.
When asked what sort of clientele she was expecting, she replied: “Anyone who needs help, but I expect most of them to be retirees… retired ex-pats living or holidaying in Fuengirola and Los Boliches, but it could just as easily be a busy, working family… perhaps with children”.
Click here to contact Neem at Fuengirola Home Help Services:
A Story of Love, Intrigue and the Underworld On the Costa del Sol
by Owen Jones
Daisy, the proud daughter of a wealthy ex-London gangster, John, and his Spanish wife, Teresa, grew up in Marbella on the Costa del Sol, aka, the Costa del Crime. She idolised her parents and sought to impress her ageing father by helping him run the family businesses after uni,. However, a disastrous error of judgement ends in family tragedy, and her mother puts Daisy on a safer path of helping the local community as a penance. Daisy’s Chain is a tragic tale with a pleasantly happy ending.
Teen & Young Adult>Mysteries & Thrillers>Law & Crime
Teen & Young Adult>Mysteries & Thrillers>Thrillers & Suspense
Hi,
I just finished Proofing my latest novel, Daisy’s Chain, a NaNoWriMo 2016 Winner and put it into the KindleScout publishing competition.
Woohoo!
Please vote for Daisy’s Chain here: (It is important to note that you will not be asked your opinion of the novel as a whole, as it has not been published yet. You will be voting on the cover, the excerpt and the concept).
Click:
Thank you! If my novel wins, you will be sent a complementary copy of Daisy’s Chain for taking the time and trouble to vote for it and helping to discover an unknown author!
We awoke at nine a.m. on St. David’s Day 2017, March 1st., in Fuengirola, Spain. It had been a late night saying ‘Goodbye’ to friends, but we had to get up, finish our packing and leave the luxury apartment as per our contract. Neither of us were in the mood for this, but the lure of an even better, three-bed-roomed penthouse suite for the same price was attractive. We hadn’t seen it yet, but we had to be in the estate agent’s office by noon..
We made it on time exhausted with all our luggage; paid the next month’s rent and handed over our keys. We were passed another set of keys, and a contract to sign.
‘The penthouse suite is not ready yet – the walls are still wet and mouldy, but we have another three-bedder for you. Sorry. However, it is perfect for a writer – very quiet’.
So, we set off for the new apartment, which was not far, feeling rather cheated out of the luxury, front-line penthouse that we had been looking forward to with great excitement for the past four weeks.
It turned out to be a nice, typically Spanish townhouse apartment on the first floor. It is large-ish and with two extra bedrooms that we have no use for. There is no Internet and no foreign-language TV, but it is only a hundred metres from the sea. It is quite a significant downgrade and disappointment really, and not at all quiet – there is renovation work going on all around us. I will never trust an estate agent again, AND we have to move out on June 30th with nowhere else to go!.
Look for a review of AMC Inmobiliaria (estate agency) elsewhere on this blog.
That afternoon, we went exploring the ‘new area’. We are a hundred metres from a brilliant, local, Spanish restaurant-cafe-bar, that is cheap and comes with Wi-Fi. It is a great compensation, so we had lunch there and went ‘home’.
In the evening, we went out again looking for a bar that might be sending out the Wi-Fi signal called ‘Costa del Sur’. Our first find was an Irish bar, but they didn’t have Internet, so we had a pint, picked up some local knowledge and moved on. One of the things we learned was that an English bar nearby was having a Welsh night for St. David’s Day, so we moved over there, promising to return to watch the Wales-Ireland rugby match on Saturday.
The English bar, Her Majesty’s was friendly and we met lots of expats, two of whom, a Welsh couple, had produced a buffet of British food with a Welsh bias, including bara brith and Welsh cakes. My wife and I were impressed and had a great time there although Neem was dog-tired after lugging one of our bags that morning. Halfway home, I realised that I no longer had my writing pack, which I take everywhere with me, but still often lose.
I wanted to return to Her Majesty’s to look, but Neem suggested checking the Irish Bar first, although it wasn’t the closer of the two.
However, she was right, as usual, and after retrieving my writing case we went home.
Our St. David’s Day 2017, had started off in a disappointing manner, but by the end of the day, we had found three new local establishments, which were full of friendly people, who would make the following few months more enjoyable.
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The Sultan Kebab shop is situated in Calle Jacinto Benavente, which is the street running to the beach opposite the bus station in Fuengirola, but is at the beach end, fifty metres from beach road, opposite the Zig-Zag Bar, which I have written about elsewhere on this blog.
The lady we see working there most often is named Couta, and she is from Morocco. She is one of the most friendly Arab women that I have ever met – she took to my wife instantly, although they do not speak each other’s language.
They try to get by in English and have fun doing that, but she taught me some Moroccan (Arabic?) too.
‘Beslemma’, which means something like ‘Until the next time’.
The Sultan Kebab does not offer a lot of choice, but we have tried the beef and the chicken kebabs and they were large and filling. The best kebabs I have ever eaten, and far better than the Turkish kebabs back home, which seem to be made from pressed meat, perhaps lamb, that more resembles reclaimed scraps.
If you are staying in Fuengirola, you could do a lot worse than have an evening out in the Zig-Zag bar, and then cross the road to buy a couple of kebabs to take home.
If you do, tell Couta that you read about The Sultan Kebab on this website.
The Sultan Kebab Shop, Calle Jacinto Benavente, Fuengirola.
We still had three days left to run when we found our apartment, but the staff at the Hostel Jomarijo understood our predicament and allowed us a refund of a day. So, we have had the unnecessary luxury of having two places to be able to stay today. We spent the afternoon looking around our new apartment, familiarising ourselves with the amenities in it.
It is by far the best place either of us has ever stayed in. There is everything anyone could ever want except the Internet, although there is a computer desk. It also has a washing machine, dishwasher, toastie-maker, oven, microwave, spit roaster, fridge, intercom, and two motorcycle helmets!
However, it doesn’t stop there; not by a long chalk. There are six bottles of wine and cava in the cupboard, eight opened bottles of spirits, ten litres of Coke Cola, five litres of olive oil, a dozen packs of sausages, unopened butter, jam et cetera, packs of toilet rolls, toothpaste, soap and shaving foam… In short, the place reminds me of a dry-land Marie Celeste stranded ten floors up.
We both felt very much at home there this afternoon looking at the mountains surrounding Fuengirola from two windows and the sea and fishing harbour from the other. My wife likes to walk along the beach, but has always made me go with her in case she got lost. There is no chance of that any longer as our block is fifteen metres up a side street off the beach road. It will be perfect for her.
I have nothing to gain by recommending the people who helped us, but they deserve a mention, as I am sure that they will help you too if they are able to.
We arrived at our hotel, the Reyesol, Calle Marbella, in Fuengirola at ten past midnight on Saturday. I had been hoping for a beer when we arrived, since leaving my sister-in-law’s place in Bangkok at six a.m. the previous morning. However, I was out of luck – everything had closed between eleven thirty and midnight.
The receptionist offered to find me a tin of Coke, but I decided I would prefer sleep. My wife was dog-tired anyway, and only wanted to go to bed.
The Reyesol is comfortable, well-situated, and includes an excellent cold breakfast, after which we went flat-hunting. Last year, we had been told that the summer was the wrong time to look for accommodation, and we were told exactly the same this time, although it is January. ‘Business is three times heavier than usual!’ estate agents told us wherever we went.
Despite that, we did find one that suited us at Kasa Coast, but they refused to answer my text messages and emails confirming the deal. So, we walked up there this morning, only to be told that we could have the flat, ‘if my employer would guarantee my job’. I told them that I am a writer of novels and have no boss. They shook their heads. ‘Do you receive a pension?’, asked one of them. ‘No, too young’, I replied. ‘Can you pay a year’s rent up front?’ asked another. ‘I could, but I’m not prepared to’, I answered.
They promised to call me later, but haven’t.
On our way back to the hotel to pick up our bags, as our stay there could not be extended either, we called in to see an estate agent called George, next door to the Reyesol. He had nothing either, but he phoned around his competitors and found a hopeful. That turned into reality, and we just secured the nicest apartment I have ever been in in Spain for five hundred a month all in!
We can stay there until July when the price quadruples and then quintuples in August as the property is almost on the beach (15 metres). However, another, brand-new penthouse apartment comes free on March 1st (St. David’s Day), and we can have that for a year at four fifty a month plus bills. It is front line and on the fourteenth floor.
We can move in today too, but in a panic last night, I booked into a hotel for three nights, which I now have to honour. A small price to pay for peace of mind, I suppose, but the flat is luxurious compared to the hotel.
So, our first five days in Fuengirola started off disappointing, then became hopeful, but only to be dashed by unreasonable requirements from the estate agents and landlords, but the lovely George went that extra mile for us and got us the best deal I have ever been offered in Spain, because he was willing to take a chance on me and his friends trusted his judgement.
Hallelujah for sensible people!
If you are looking for somewhere to stay on the Costa del Sol, you can contact George here:
I have entered this book into a competition for a publishing contract – the first time I have tried such a thing. You can help me to get that contract by voting for my book.
It is important for me that you know that I am not asking you to lie. I am the only person in the world who has read this book, I am asking you to say that you might like to read it too.
That’s all.
You can read the first 5,000 words on Amazon’s site, where you can also cast your vote.
Please help, it could change the lives of me and all my family, and you don’t get an opportunity to do something like that often, do you?
This is from the back cover.
When malice results from good intentions!
When Frank, a staid, middle-aged, confirmed bachelor takes his diplomat Thai wife to a friend’s apartment on the Cost del Sol for their dream honeymoon, they are in Nirvana… until the ghouls of a secret Scandinavian society torment the superstitious young woman to the point of seeking death to end her suffering. The Ghouls of Calle Goya is the perplexing story of how Evil can result from the happiest of circumstances and good intentions, and how madness can be the result. Based on a true story
Daisy’s Chain, my latest novel, will be released soon, but I want your opinion on which cover you prefer. I’ll give you some of the story to help you decide.
Daisy is the daughter, 22 years of age by the end of the book, of a rich exat, ex-London gangster and his Spanish wife, who live on the Costa del Sol near Marbella. Her father, John, has not been involved in any violence since the day that Daisy was born, but she got to hear of his reputation from other children at school.
When she left university, she went back to Spain to help him run his businesses there. She was anxious to impress him, and caused many problems while doing so, including death and suffering.
Daisy’s Chain is the story of her coming of age, accepting who she is and stopping trying to impress others by doing what she thinks they want her to do.
Please indicate your preference for a cover in the comments box below, or email me in ‘Contact’.
