A Great Surprise...

The embedding has been removed on this video and that's a shame because I desperately wanted to have it on my blog. 

Susan Boyle is a name you'll be hearing a lot of in the coming days. 

Check out this Youtube video and see why.

Endo out in Trade Paperback

Endo

After discovering the body of a pro cyclist at the bottom of a cliff, former detective Keely McAdam's mountain bike race ends, plunging him into the start of an evolving mystery. Soon a second cyclist is missing and Keely feels compelled to help solve the murder and find the missing woman.
 
Murder mystery becomes nightmare when Keely's wife, Elise, is kidnapped. Her abductors demand an unusual ransom: find the missing cyclist or Elise's life is over. With the help of some old and new friends, Keely battles countless road blocks in pursuit of his quest. He soon realizes that fate has brought him back to the very case that forced his early retirement. Now he must deal with the past if he and his wife are to have any future at all. 

Endo is now available in trade paperback at the following sites: 

Amazon.com

Amazon.ca

Amazon.uk

Amazon.de

Amazon.fr

Barnes & Noble

Alibris

Abe Books

You can also link to these sites from my publisher's website: BookStrand.

Pick up your copy today!

Life On Mars Ends

One of the most imaginative television series to come along in years saw its finale last night. Here's a piece that wraps it up nicely. Personally, I'm indifferent about the ending. It smacks of "Who shot J.R." and feels a bit cliche though, once the final title sequence ran, it brought everything together quite nicely. 

I'm going to miss it, but the big question is, will I buy the DVD box set? What a cliffhanger.

Safe Journey Mom

Alice O’Neill
June 6, 1935 – March 8, 2009

My mom passed on early on March 8th and though we’d been preparing ourselves for this time, it was nonetheless very difficult to accept. My mom was extremely important to me, her family and her friends which showed in the number of people who came to pay their respects at her visitation and memorial service. I want to thank everyone who in their own ways showed support for our family. Many kind words made there way to me and I cannot express how important they were in keeping me strong through this very trying time.

I can take solace in the fact that I remained a big part of my mom’s life and helped her as much as I could in her waning years. I can also feel good knowing that I have followed her final wishes to the letter (and will continue to do so until every last one is taken care of). I have to thank my wife Sandy and our daughter Alex for all their help. If not for them I don’t know what I would have done. Our friends have been incredible not only by offering to help, but by jumping in without being asked and doing whatever they could. Raquel, driving Alex and Sandy to the hospital so that I could stay close to mom. Tony delivering food to the hospital knowing I wasn’t going to leave her side. Richard, who answered his phone any time of day or night to let me vent. These are just a few examples and may sound like small things, but they were huge to us.

I can’t sleep. I close my eyes to sleep and I get angry at some things that have happened. I don’t have all that stuff that has to be taken care of to distract me anymore (not that I wanted all of it, but there was a positive). I get sad that I won’t see my mom again. I can’t shut off my mind enough to relax. Sleep is in short half hour spurts. I know it’ll get better and life will return to some kind of normalcy (whatever that is) but for now I’m troubled.

I know why I’m having trouble letting go. The scale is tipped too far in my mom’s favour and I can’t find ways to balance it out. My mother did what mother’s do – she cared for and nurtured me. She helped put a roof over my head and food on our table. We didn’t have a lot but what we had was more than enough. My father and mother helped me become a better person and develop into a man. She showed me how important life and love are. That things can be replaced but people are gone forever – choosing which to love is pretty easy.

She gave me a home when my world collapsed and never asked for anything in return. I got back on my feet and she was so proud of me. Funny how she was as responsible for that as I was but never said it or asked to be recognized. I would never look at her in a ‘what have you done for me lately’ kind of way. Mom did so much for me throughout my life – going to my hockey games (until it got too rough), cleaning up all the wounds, taking me to my doctor and dentist appointments, the birthday parties, the lessons she taught me without me knowing it, the amazing stories she told while we sat around the kitchen table, playing scrabble with me, making me the Peter Cottontail costume for my kindergarten play, always finding and stressing the positive, letting me think that I found my own way. I could fill pages of things for which to thank her and that is why I feel the scale is greatly tipped in her favour.

If I live the remainder of my life by the incredible example she set I may be able to come close to balancing the scales.

Mom, I love you and I will miss you terribly. 

Safe journey.

The Secret Ain't No Secret...

Weeks ago I made a joke about The Secret and it made me laugh but was pretty derogatory toward anyone remotely interested in this…program? Way of life? Philosophy? Ruse? I didn’t feel guilty about the comment, but I did wonder if I gave it a fair shake. After all, Oprah devoted several shows to The Secret. Maybe there was something I missed the first time I read the back of the book. Maybe the short intro on Oprah about a boy wanting a bike, thinking about the bike, cutting a picture from a catalogue of the bike and sticking it to his wall, then the bike magically appearing wasn’t the whole story

I had to investigate more thoroughly.

It was still the same pie-in-the-sky nonsense I researched when it first arrived. I watched the first twenty minutes of The Secret film on YouTube and was in awe of the production values. The producers spared no expense in dramatizing The Secret and how it has been guarded and passed down from generation to generation. At the core of this philosophy is the law of attraction. What you think about, you attract. If you think negative, I’m going to get nothing but bills in the mail, I’m going to be late, I’m never going to succeed then that is what you will attract. Think positively. Think about what you want and you will get it; you will attract it.

What works most effectively about The Secret is not a law, but a power. The power of suggestion. If people buy into The Secret they buy the book or the DVD. Marketing is the best way to describe its success.

Are you seeing what I’m seeing? What’s really at the heart of this philosophy isn’t thinking about something and getting it like the kid getting the bike he was thinking about. It’s the power of positive thinking, something Norman Vincent Peale suggested in the 50s. And like Peale’s philosophy which had no way of being substantiated, so too, falls The Secret.

No one can prove unequivocally that simply thinking about your wants will reward you with them. Nor can anyone say for certain that thinking positively will alter your life for the better. No one leaves their home in the morning thinking they want to be hit by a bus, but it happens. This is the flaw in the theory of positive thinking and likewise, in The Secret.

However, in my thirst for knowledge and while researching whether to delve further into The Secret phenomenon, I made a conscious choice. I decided that I would focus my attention on being positive and recognizing the positive over the negative. It’s been almost a month now and I have to say that it has not brought me fame or fortune. However, it has changed me in a very significant way. I am happier. It may sound strange, but it's the truth. I feel better. I wake up feeling good and go about my day feeling better than I’ve felt in a long time. Does that equal getting everything I ever wanted. Of course not. But it does make a difference in my life and in the lives of those around me.

Thinking positively has not stopped, nor will it ever stop, bad things from happening (bills will continue to arrive in the mail). Positive thinking makes those unpleasant things in life a lot more tolerable.

So, The Secret isn't a secret after all. 

 

Endo Out Tomorrow!

It has been a long road but my mystery/suspense novel, Endo, is out tomorrow. I wrote part of this novel as participation in the 2007 National Novel Writing Month. When the month was over I was half way through and that was a great feeling. It didn't take me long to finish the manuscript and I set it aside for a few weeks before starting the next step - the edit. 

Having come through the entire process I have to admit that the real work of writing a novel is rewriting the novel. Flushing out the idea behind your story, creating your characters, developing the plots then sitting down and writing the story are all fantastically enjoyable in comparison to the long, brutal process of editing. And, it turned out to be a very eye-opening experience for me since after my editor got through with it, I learned that my self-editing skills need a lot of work. 

Sitting on the other side of what I know was a heavy workload, you'd think I could take some time to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment. Not a chance. Now I have to let people know that the book is available.

There are a few things you can do to help. First, and most importantly, please buy a copy of Endo. It's a great book and I know you'll enjoy it. Second, and equally as important, please tell everyone you know to buy a copy of Endo, because it's a great book and you know they'll enjoy it. 

If you do buy a copy and give it a read (which I highly recommend), please drop by and let me know what you thought of it. Thanks in advance for giving me your time. 

The One Hour Plan

I’m a slow reader, always have been and that makes reading, at times, a chore. So, to combat that feeling of ‘mucking through’ I devised a plan – a one hour plan.

I’m going to read one hour a day for pleasure. No pressure. No page count goals. Just read what I can in an hour and no more. I can lump it all together or spread it out. Either way, I’ll be getting back to doing something I love – reading.

I’m going to do my best to stick to this plan and post the names of the books I’ve completed. I read Kelley Armstrong’s Broken and just finished her seventh book in the Women of the Otherworld series, No Humans Involved using the one hour plan. Great reads if you haven’t heard.

Well, I’m off to choose my next book. So many…