P.J. MacNamara's Blog, page 2

21 Beautiful Things For You To Share

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Published on June 08, 2021 03:40 • Tags: audiobooks, authors, classical, dance, dancers, directors, film, interviews, movies, music, music-videos, poetry, pop, silent-comedy, singers, speeches, tv-comedy

Moving On

I'm happy to say that I believe I have put my recent distress and disappointment behind me and moved on. Stiff upper lip and all that. I couldn't afford to be dead forever. It wasn't doing my career a bit of good. I have left my original post (which was titled "Final Message From Beyond The Grave",) untouched here for posterity. I think it's important to remember where you've been and what you did while you were there. That's how we learn and grow as Human beings.

***

After careful consideration it is with great regret that I have to say goodbye to you all here at Goodreads. But before I go I will do you all the courtesy of explaining why.

I am a man of principles. I believe in a code of ethics. I'm a lover of truth, justice and fair play, and as such, I don't belong here. This site has made it very clear to me that they are in full support of people who are posting nothing but relentless, undiluted, hate-motivated lies about my book. People that have not even read my book, as is obvious to me, and will be equally obvious to anyone else who has and indeed will read it too.

Apparently, this is the Goodreads policy: You can say anything you like on here, even if it's a lie, even if you haven't actually read the book in question. And there's nothing the victims of those lies can do about it. This site is adamant that it will not lift a finger to defend or protect us authors against such injustices and that truly sickens me. What kind of a world are we living in now when things like this are allowed to carry on unchecked until they spiral dangerously out of control?

If people were out on the streets saying these things about me they would be in jail now, but they're not out on the streets, they're sitting at home, hiding behind false identities with looks of smug satisfaction on their faces. They are thoroughly enjoying the pain and inconvenience they've caused me. All the time I have to waste defending myself against them gives them a buzz. They are as subtle as a blunderbuss. As obvious as a severe case of acne. I imagine them as fat, ugly people who have no friends and no job who sit around the house all day bored to tears and looking for something they can get a cheap thrill out of, and there's nothing they enjoy more than somebody else's misery, especially if they are the cause of it.

Goodreads are clearly not on my side. And I don't want to be associated with any site that has such a friendly, welcoming, 100% tolerance policy towards people who want to do nothing but destroy people they are jealous of or have developed some inexplicable personal grudge against.

In the last couple of days my chief hater has somehow managed to gather 9 "likes" for his / her much-rewritten message of hate and thus jumped right to the top of the most liked reviews list, which of course was said person's direct intention. I'm not sure if any of those people "liking" are real or it's just the same hater wearing 9 different disguises, but if any real people are foolish enough to believe a "review" that in essence tell you my book is the most diabolical thing ever to be put into print in the history of the world....well my book is not really aimed at such people anyway. I don't believe people THAT foolish even read books - do you?

This (these?) hater(s) really have shot themselves in the foot if you ask me. No normal person who simply didn't like a book says the kind of things they say in a book review. Why? Because it's really not that important to them. You pays your money and you takes your chance. If the book isn't to your liking you put it down and pick up another one that might be. You don't make it your top priority in life to destroy the author's reputation, do you? If these people were of a mind to they could probably make Mother Theresa and Gandhi sound like Hitler and Pol Pot. In kicking up such a stink, causing such a controversy, surely all they've done is attract people to my book? - Make people who had no intention of reading it before want to find out the truth for themselves? That's what curious, intelligent, open-minded people do. Or at least I've always believed so.

I'm more than happy to admit now that pages 29-32 of my book (which are the 4 pages the haters keep rubbing your noses in on here,) are largely superfluous and off-putting, that I should have been more brutal in my self-editing and I should have allowed somebody to talk me into compromising my message, buy hey! I didn't, and it's too late for me to do anything about it now.

If you find the 2nd piece in my book, "Mocha Chocolata Ya-Ya (with a Certain Girl)", difficult to contend with at this juncture....and I'm sure a lot of you will....all you have to do is skip it. That whole piece is only EIGHT PAGES LONG. Don't let it spoil your enjoyment of what I still believe is a great book. There is nothing remotely like it in my entire canon. It's unique, and it serves a unique purpose that will be revealed if you stick around long enough.

As far as this site is concerned, I'm dead now. I'm not coming back. The haters can take over, wave their flags triumphantly, pull the wool over your eyes if they can, but I will not be here to witness it. I'll be off grid somewhere, living my life and thinking some very pleasant thoughts.

I discovered a few days ago that Sylvia Plath, the American poet who took her own life in 1963, has over 15,000 followers on Goodreads. God willing, perhaps one day I will too.

As always, I wish all you genuine book lovers well. I am not letting the haters win here. I am simply walking away from the battlefield because I have lost all respect for and interest in an enemy who is not worthy of me.

Goodbye!

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Published on May 18, 2021 04:02

Signed & Dedicated Copies At SPECIAL OFFER PRICES Direct From The Author On Ebay

I have over 50 brand new copies of my first book MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA that I am selling personally on my EBAY page.

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SPECIAL OFFER ENDS 31st May 2021

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Published on May 08, 2021 13:20 • Tags: half-price, personal-dedication, signed-by-the-author, special-offer

New reviews on the WATERSTONES website

Reviews: Man Struggling With Umbrella (2)

“Somebody put a blindfold on me and gave me acid” by Bethany Myers

That's what this book is like. Half the time something's happening to somebody but you don't know what it is or why it's happening, and the rest of the time nothing seems to be happening at all. At least not in the real world. A lot of "the action" takes place in dreams, or in fiction within fiction. When reality of a sort does bite it bites hard. The author appears to have done his fair share of suffering and living in general and his work is very difficult to pin down to any kind of movement or genre. There's a lot to be said for that in these times of micro-pigeonholing.

This really is very internal. It's about alienation. It's Kafkaesque. It's like the surviving pieces of some amazing, mysterious artefact that got broken. Sounds weird, and it is weird, but don't knock it till you've tried it. Plenty more of this in the pipeline apparently and I for one am intrigued to see where it goes next. I have a need to make what I've experienced here make more sense.

What's it about? Well, reincarnation, I suppose.

And fate.

And love.

*************

“Not "easy" but well worth the effort" by Ben Jameson

This is a real mixed bag containing some absolute gems. Not everybody is going to be 100% happy with all of them, but as Forrest Gump once said...."Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get". That was never more true than here.

You need to think of this like a meal on a plate. If you like your ingredients all kept separate with shiny white plate showing between them you might find this a little difficult to deal with. This is more like a hash or a stir fry. Or is it? Actually I'm not sure. Maybe I meant that to be the other way round? This is an anthology. But it also isn't. It's elusive, evasive, deceptive, ambiguous, allegorical, enigmatic, almost dreamlike in nature. Put together with great care and attention to detail. Occasionally awe-inspiring, and I don't say that lightly. I loved it.

I suppose everyone will have their favourite piece. I think mine is "Sirens".

The last two are companion pieces. "The Protected Area" and "Seen But Not Seen" could and should be made into a TV series. "Game Of Thrones" eat your heart out. Another TV series could probably be made out of "Killing Time On The Other Side" - it's very VERY different.

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Published on May 06, 2021 08:27 • Tags: anthology, book-reviews, enigmatic, fantasy-fiction, kafkaesque, reincarnation

Book Two accepted for publication

I neglected to mention on here that BOOK TWO in "The Killing Time Legacy Series" was accepted on march 16th last and will be available to buy in 2022.

I'm keeping the title under my hat for the time being, sorry!

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Published on April 21, 2021 03:37 • Tags: killing-time-legacy-series

Two good Amazon reviews for "MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA"

Amazon Customer

5.0 out of 5 stars
"An intense and thought provoking read by a talented new author and well worth the effort"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 April 2021
Verified Purchase

I bought this book as I was intrigued by the title and the author’s description of himself. It’s refreshing to read something from a new author who is not following a mainstream formulaic style of writing but engages the reader immediately with his unique style of writing. What is clear is that Man Struggling with Umbrella is very obviously not a novel but an inspired work of often but not always independent short , some very short, autobiographical pieces , fantasies , thrillers and horror fiction that flood your mind with thought provoking images.

The author challenges conventions with his gritty, intense characters and vivid descriptions and each one left me wanting to know more. It is a clever and very well written book . It’s not at all what I expected but very much what I needed and I look forward to the author’s next offering.

One person found this helpful

*****

Bookworm Babe:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"A remarkable piece of work that demands your respect and your full attention"
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 March 2021
Verified Purchase

Never read anything like this in my life. Not sure whether to describe it as a fusion or a hybrid. There is no real word for it that I'm aware of. It's pretty radical and uncompromising in its format and thus extremely difficult to describe, let alone pigeonhole. It is pretty damned good though. I read it twice in a week. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I'm so glad I bought it. I would have given it five stars but the second piece in the book was really hard work. Personally I'm not sure it should be in there, but I wouldn't like to presume to know this author's intent. He is full of surprises. It was only 8 pages. I'd suggest you skip it, at least on the first read through. Maybe "Mocha Chocolata..." will make more sense in the light of further books in the series, but right now it stands out as peculiar.

This is NOT a novel. It's more of an anthology. But a lot of the 20 separate pieces contained are connected or intertwined in subtle and / or unexpected ways. It's mostly fiction but there are non-fiction pieces too and even a couple of short poems. It really is difficult to categorise this but right now I would be tempted to describe it as a fantasy-tainted memoir. It's surprisingly music-related, but the main themes I would say are reincarnation, dreams, deja-vu, spirituality, karma and fate. The longest piece in the book (the third one) is like a skeleton upon which the rest of the book (and I would assume the whole series of five books to come) will hang. In his preface, the author describes the book as a museum showcasing the freshly unearthed relics of a lost civilisation. It is the task of the reader to make sense of them. This is just the first layer of discovery. Each book to come will bring forth more discoveries, filling in the blanks but at the same time raising more questions. The book often comes across like some kind of a kind of waking dream. It's hard to know where the line between fiction and non-fiction is drawn sometimes. And the timeline is deliberately confused. The book makes no attempt to be linear. In fact it benefits greatly from being exactly the opposite.

There is a lot more to this book than the cover blurb suggests. The love, for one thing. There's a lot of that in here. It's an honest, unvarnished, unconditional love, and a very powerful one too. Most people will never know a love like that.

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Published on April 21, 2021 03:31 • Tags: amazon-reviews, anthology, deja-vu, destiny, dreams, fantasy, fate, ground-breaking, love, memoirs, new-age, philosophy, radical, reincarnation, romance, spirituaity, unorthodox

BOOK THREE update

It's pretty much done now, clocking in at around 355 pages. It contains too many short pieces for my liking and I may well lose a few of them before submitting.

I was rather concerned that this was the only book of the five that contained no new material, but I have effectively plugged that gap now with three new pieces totalling 29 new pages.

BOOK FOUR beckons.

I'm still waiting to hear something from my publisher re BOOK TWO, which they've now had for about ten weeks. They have people on furlough and people working from home, and of course I submitted the manuscript on paper and it's longer than the first book as well, so I may be waiting a while yet.

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Published on March 10, 2021 09:19

BOOK FIVE, Grand Finale!

Further to my last post, on 25-26/01/21 I wrote 24 more pages that were inspired / suggested by the previous four pieces I wrote for Book Four. They were specifically designed to end the series, give it a closure it did not really have as it was. I think they still need some work, but overall I'm happy.

The only book of the five that doesn't contain any new material at all now is Book Three. I'm feeling an imbalance there now, so I'll have to come up with something at some point to redress it. Not in a rush right now though.

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Published on February 04, 2021 04:05

4 new pieces written for BOOK FOUR in a week!

I think the title says it all. I always said I would be adding a few extra bits to the source material I'm working with to create this new series of books. Book Two is with the publishers already, being given the once over by their editorial department. Book Three is in preparation (128 pages of it are printed out already). Book Four, which I must confess has kinda been looking like the ugly sister, is now benefitting from about 35 pages of unexpected new material which has come along basically because something interesting has been happening in my life of late that I wanted to have preserved for posterity in my Legacy Series. The four new pieces are all related to one another and also to a piece called "The Last Can Of Worms", which is the next to last thing in Book Two. I'm thinking that the last piece I wrote (finished 48 hours ago) actually has a part two that I am still turning over in my mind. I do hope so. If there is any more new work I'll let you know.

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Published on January 22, 2021 16:02

BOOK TWO Is Coming...!

I have about 3,000 pages of source material from which to draw the lion's share of The Killing Time Legacy Series books, so it's not that easy to decide what to put in what book, and what order those pieces should be in. I tried last year and made a complete hash of it. There were perhaps six pieces I knew were definitely going to be in the second volume but everything else was up for grabs. I had a lot more luck this time. During my two days away from the dull day job I located and printed off 332 pages and then wrote a 5 page foreword as well. I'm VERY happy with it. It should be ready to submit in about 3 weeks time, and, assuming my publisher likes it - which they jolly well ought to because it's brilliant, even if I do say so myself! - it will be out at around this time next year, if not before. More details can be found on my Facebook page - just search for MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA on there. Book two is not only longer than book one, it's more adventurous and more daring too. Trust me, you're going to LOVE it!

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Published on December 18, 2020 15:17

P.J. MacNamara's Blog, page 2

June 8, 2021

21 Beautiful Things For You To Share

May 18, 2021

Moving On

May 8, 2021

Signed & Dedicated Copies At SPECIAL OFFER PRICES Direct From The Author On Ebay

May 6, 2021

New reviews on the WATERSTONES website

April 21, 2021

Book Two accepted for publication

Two good Amazon reviews for "MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA"

March 10, 2021

BOOK THREE update

February 4, 2021

BOOK FIVE, Grand Finale!

January 22, 2021

4 new pieces written for BOOK FOUR in a week!

December 18, 2020

BOOK TWO Is Coming...!

P.J. MacNamara's Blog