G. Michael Vasey's Blog: The Wacky World of Dr. Vasey, page 75
September 5, 2014
Free Stuff and Give Aways
I always thought people liked free stuff? So, occasionally, I make things FREE for those that care to take a few seconds to download them.
For just another 2-days, my latest collection of poetry – Best Laid Plans and Other Strange Tails – is free on Kindle. after that, it will cost you money so why not grab a copy while you can?
A fifth collection of poetry and rhyme by G. Michael Vasey musing about the magic of life. From the mystery of The Story through to magic of the Hexagram and the number 6, Vasey twists words and phrases to paint deliciously vivid images of how he sees life and everything.
“Poetry is not an easy thing to write. And yet it is… anyone can do it… but not everyone can get it right; largely because there are no rules.
It used to be about rigid form, rhyme and rhythm, now the rhymes are implied and the rhythm is the sing-song voice of the storyteller or the staccato tones of everyday life, questioning the events of a harsh reality as words flow directly from mind to pen, or from heart to keyboard.
In this collection of poems Gary Vasey once more opens a door into heart and mind for the reader, asking questions about our society that touch us all; war, debt, pain and ego are all examined with brief, precise strokes, demanding an answering response.
Yet, man is a multi-layered creature and this too is reflected in this volume. Memories of young love and of long Sunday afternoons reflect a journey through the outer world, yet, in my opinion, it is, aptly, where the writer speaks of the inner journey that he finds the deepest voice.
The Mysteries are shadowed forth as they play upon his consciousness, and poems such as ABC have a different tone and raise different questions that leave you pondering abstracts. Along with his other books of poetry it is perhaps here that you get a true glimpse into the author as he opens a window to the soul and lets you in.” Sue Vincent – Author of Sword of Destiny and many other books.
Download it here.
Of course, it is really a paperback and the cover features an image from a house down our street that may be the Green Man or Pan – anyway, its a cool image. The paperback you will need to pay for unless of course you are lucky. If you want to test your luck then I am giving away two copies on Goodreads and I suggest you pop over and enter while you can here.
While I am at it, I can also offer you a new discounted Kindle price on my sensational and chilling novel – The Last Observer. Go check out that price here.
That’s enough free and reduced stuff for today…. I am exhausted already!
September 4, 2014
Is Anyone Listening?
For the last 20-years or so I have been more than involved in marketing. From being VP of Marketing for a software company in the late 1990’s to being an analyst and consultant well known for delivering insightful Go to market strategies and marketing programs, marketing is in my blood. Through those decades a lot has changed about marketing though.
Back in the 1990’s there was no such thing as social media. It was all about print ads, mailing campaigns and trade shows. You got the sense as well that most people were marketed to and a few did the actual marketing. We studied our audience and potential audience – their habits and needs – and then put in place some tactics and messages to promote the brand/product/service to that audience. These days, it seems as if everyone is marketing something and that I spend all of my time marketing.
Let’s face it, its more of a level playing field all around these days. Anyone can write and publish a book or a video. Anyone can build a website to promote a business or a venture. Anyone can make music and distribute it. And while ‘anyone’ isn’t everyone its a hell of a lot more people than used to be doing those things. Really, it does at times seem like everyone is selling something and with social media, sales pitches abound.
As an author, I am told that I must market my work. Of course I must. But how does one rise above a crowd that is ever more populous? It’s not just about marketing the book (product) but also marketing the brand – ourselves. How do I build a following? Facebook, twitter, Linkedin etc. How do I win the online popularity contest? Marketing is really hard these days because we need to find a way to rise above the noise.
I read an article earlier today criticising authors for simply posting things like ‘get my book FREE on Kindle’ on Facebook etc. or those that give away free samples etc. People don’t have the time to read these things, the article said. Instead, writers should engage with their audience and reach out on a one-to-one basis to do so. They are surely kidding? Where on earth would I get the time or even the inclination to sit here 24 by 7 reaching out to people I do not know and engaging them in conversation on the off chance they may buy my book? Where would I find the time to write another? Besides, I think its creepy as hell to have people I don’t know cozying on up to me online….. bloody perverts! That is not the answer and while I look for one, I too am guilty of shouting on the internet – Get my book its FREE on Kindle!
I am doing a lot to build a profile. I have some 5-8 radio interviews lined up this year and a blog tour and a bunch of other activities but I’m not sure that these work much either. I had a piece in a magazine earlier this year with a distribution of over 80,000 copies a month. I can’t identify a single web visit, Facebook like or sale of a book from that article. Not one. So other than perhaps create some naked selfies of myself, load them to iCloud and then hope they get stolen and published all over the internet, I’m really no longer sure how to build a platform and a following. It’s certainly not the honest and sweaty activity it used to be but now seems to rather rely on gimics like nude selfies.
Oh well…. I do think that today, everyone is shouting out about something they want to sell. In fact, everyone is so busy shouting they have no time to listen anymore……
However, if you did make it to the end of this article or even found it then can I ask if you would do one or two things for me? Yes? Here we go then…
1. Would you like my author’s facebook page?
2. Would you buy and read one of my books – see my author’s page on Amazon for a list?
3. Would you then post a review?
Thanks so much…… I really do appreciate it.
In return, I promise no nude selfies……
September 3, 2014
Music and Memories
I really have a terrible memory. I cannot remember the details of what I was doing last week never mind last year and I am often surprised to be told what I had done at some particular event that I have no recollection of whatsoever. For example, I came across some old computer files yesterday – hockey statistics for my eldest son from a decade ago. It made interesting reading especially the four games played in a tournament in St. Louis. I could swear I had never been there and yet there was suddenly a glimmer of a memory and boom – I remembered the arch there and it all came flooding back. To my defense, ice hockey rinks all look the same after a while and much of the weekend would have been spent inside the rink. But my memory is poor and getting worse.
The funny thing is though if I open iTunes and play a track – any track – I am transported immediately to a memory. Yesterday, I played whatever You want by Status Quo (the album not the single) and I was back in my little student digs in Birmingham recalling the people I shared with and some of the events that took place there. I didn’t have to make any effort to recall any of this. The music was like a key that unlocked those memories. It was a Quo day yesterday as I moved on to the Hello Album and immediately I was 14 and in our front room listening to the LP with my french pen friends Jean-Luc. Lots of good memories easily coaxed out of whatever brain cells they reside in or from the ether – I am not sure which.
Music does good things for me and recalling events and places is one of them. There are Bowie tracks that place me in our house in Dallas, Bryan Adams tracks that put me at Wembley with my eldest son just 4-years old for a Bryan Adams concert! He adored Bryan Adams back then. There are Roxy Music tracks that have me back as a scout in the scout hut in Hull. Amazing. One of the best is Hotel California – it puts me back in the south of France as a teenager sitting in cafe in the afternoon heat drinking ice cold coke.
Forgive me for leaving so soon but I am about to go visit Nova Scotia as a Ph.D. student again by playing another Bryan Adams song. I will be back later perhaps….
September 2, 2014
Kindle countdown offer – The Initiate – “Hill of vision…”
A good book for those of you that haven’t read it….
Originally posted on Daily Echo:
A Kindle Countdown price promotion will be running from 30th August to 5th September on Amazon UK and Amazon.com
Her inner vision reached out into the landscape… following the lines of light between the sacred places.
Yes, now she saw it… they were trying to cleanse and heal the connections…
This was her work, this she knew.
She added her will to theirs. Three… It was always better with three…
***
…The strange thing is… the last part of the climb… although without question the steepest…I mean it is almost sheer… is the easiest. It does not feel like I am climbing at all. In fact… it feels like hands of air… have enveloped me… and thrown me… to the top…and once at the top it is very difficult not to go right on sailing off into the air beyond the peak… and for a second or more it feels…
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September Edition of Fleet Life and Elvetham Heath Directory
Thanks to Rosie Amber for including The Last Observer….
Originally posted on Rosie Amber:
Here are the books that I have had featured in this month’s Fleet Life magazine. For the online version go to http://www.fleetlife.org.uk, click on the online directory and once it is loaded find my page of book reviews on page 6.
This month you’ll see;
Archer of the Lake by Kelly R Michaels
The Silence of Juliet Mann by Joanne Phillips
Ignoring Gravity by Sandra Danby
and The Last Observer by Dr Gary Vasey.
For the Elvetham Heath Directory, find a copy of the online version at http://www.ehd.org.uk. Click on the online directory and once it’s loaded turn to page 6
This month you’ll find;
Kings and Queens by Terry Tyler
Business As Usual by E.L. Lindley
Some People Prefer Hotels by Nigel Hicks
A Woman’s Choice by Annie Thomas
Best Laid Plans – Now FREE on Kindle for 5-days.
FREE. It means you don’t have to pay anything at all. Yes – my new collection of poetry – Best Laid Plans and Other Strange Tails is free on kindle at any Amazon site from today – September 2nd and for five days. Grab it now while you can. Maybe later, you will do me a favour and write a short review and post it on Amazon?
A fifth collection of poetry and rhyme by G. Michael Vasey musing about the magic of life. From the mystery of The Story through to magic of the Hexagram and the number 6, Vasey twists words and phrases to paint deliciously vivid images of how he sees life and everything.
My last collection of poetry – Moon Whispers – was downloaded over 200 times when it was FREE on kindle and I’d like to beat that number this time so please – feel FREE to download it for FREE!
My Poetry Reviews
“Dr Vasey drags the reader onto a roller-coaster of profundity from the word go. I can honestly say that I devoured every poem.”
“This continually fascinating and ever-maturing writer has succeeded in assembling a cornucopia of new ideas, visions, and comments on his personal universe and the world ‘out there’.”
“A true bard in the old sense, Vasey writes with passion and truth, his truth and a little magic :)”
The Sea
I think my favorite place to be is by the Sea, which is strange because I live in a land locked country now. But for most of my life, I have lived close to the ocean either in Hull or Houston. Perhaps the Sea is in my blood coming from a fishing port on the east coast of Britain – an island. Whatever it is, the ocean sings to me whether azure blue or broiling grey, the smell, sights and sound of an ocean raises me up.
I think of water as essentially a feminine element influenced by the Moon. A magnetic element that draws you to it. One that cleanses and washes away dirt, tiredness and sin reinvigorating the body and the soul. A body of water is like the mind – rarely still but when it is still, it reflects the heavens or the higher aspect of ourselves and if we think or speak or move, we create ripples that slowly move outwards to the ends of the water body impacting in some small way everything they come into contact with. Those ripples are in fact waves – waves of water and also an example of a waveform that eventually collapses and breaks upon the shore. If we can be still, still like water, our meditations will bear fruit in terms of reflections or/and waves of understanding.
As I stated a few days ago, water has some very magical qualities too and it can be made to carry an intent or a quality – after all, what is holy water but water that has been blessed and purified by intent? Whether you believe in the magical properties of the elements or prefer to think in terms of psychology, imagine the next time you shower or wash that the water is washing away from you some personality trait that you would like to be rid of – see that trait being dissolved by the running water and flowing away into the drain cleansing you and reinvigorating you.
In the book The Mystical Hexagram, you will find more water exercises that can be beneficial.
When I see the ocean, I am calmed. When I see the ocean, my heart stirs. When I see an ocean, I am glad to be alive.
September 1, 2014
Life is But A Dream
I recall singing that song when I was a small child and wondering what did it mean? – Life is just a dream?
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
But where did this come from and who wrote it? A bit of research suggests that the earliest printing of it was in 1852 but who wrote it and why seems lost in the mists of time. If anyone knows, please let me know…
I thought life a dream when I was a child or rather, I thought it a game that I controlled. It was a sort of virtual reality (as it would be called now) and I was sat in a box connected to a machine that gave me vision and senses. So to be honest, I didn’t puzzle too much over the idea that life might be a dream. I rather accepted that it was.
I have lost so much as I have grown and yet I have gained so much. My imagination as a child was beyond equal. I could create other worlds right there in my head and my dreams and my waking life seemed interconnected and one. I could fly back then. Magic – physical magic was real and so were elves. There was a girl I loved so much trapped on an island of towering cliffs looked after by her wicked witch of an Aunt that I dreamed about over and over again. One dream ran into the next even weeks apart until I finally rescued my love and the wicked witch met her destiny.
There may have unlimited imagination as a child but there was no experience of life. In the Mystical Hexagram, I talk about the hardened horny matter that is built up by life. We talk about the burning away – the transformation through fire – of life’s experience. The breaking down of this hardened horny material that we build up through life.
It’s as if we build ourselves a prison.
It starts early with our parents who, knowing no better, burden us with some of the hardened life material. Next, its other kids (peer pressure) and our teachers (culture, way of seeing things etc.). We lose our ability to just imagine and it is replaced with the straight jacket that is normality and acceptance. We no longer ‘row the boat, gently down the stream’ but rather fight the currents going in God knows which direction and to what end? Oblivion?
Life loses its innocence, its gaiety, it’s merriness. It’s no longer a dream but a nightmare.
That is until you remember how to imagine. How to center yourself and imagine. Learn how to dream again. How to cast off the horny matter and transform the experiences – no matter what they are – into something of eternal value and meaning. Something spiritual and energizing. The combination of childish imagination skills and the adult’s experiences of life to at first remember to row, gently DOWN the stream (with the current – Just as Asteroth said ‘don’t fight, go with the flow merrily understanding, it is YOUR dream and you can create your own reality.
Originally posted on Asteroth’s Domain.
Tagged: Childhood memories, dreaming, Happiness, imagination
Best Laid Plans – FREE on Kindle for Five Days
Starting tomorrow Best Laid Plans and Other Strange Tails will be FREE on Kindle at all Amazon sites.
Best Laid Plans is my fifth collection of poetry and comprises over 30 new poems about life and reality. It includes the following poems;
The Story
Enough
Okay
Rumors of War
Talk, Talk
Sixes and Sevens
Debt
The Question Song
Love is All it Takes
Divine Mind
Fame Seeker
Atomic Antics
Hexagrams
Young Love
Theology
Texas Summer Sun
ABC
Dogma
Sunday Afternoon
Lazarus
Painting with Words
Conformity
Big Man
Summer
Eternally Divine
Best Laid Plans
Deeper
Reality Defining
The Plot
Mistaken Priorities
Other Strange Tails
Get it while its free on Kindle and if you like it, buy the paperback.
August 31, 2014
Inner Dreaming – World Blog Hop
Sue Vincent passed on the baton of the World Blog Hop to me as it moves from writer to writer across the blogosphere. Apparently, I am to describe my personal writing process and then pass on the assignment to another writer and blogger. Sue and I wrote a book together a while ago but it was all done by email – sort of writing by correspondence! I think it worked though and the book stands as testimony to that process.
Just recently, I have done a few interviews and there is always a question or two about the writing process as if it were formulaic. Perhaps for some it is. For me, there isn’t so much as a process as a frame of mind. Firstly, I need to feel the urge to write and secondarily I need to raise the vibratory level a notch or two and tune into another part of my self. I can achieve that through meditation or music both of which seem to calm my inner space and raise my awareness somewhere beyond me. From that lofty and serene position words flow like streams and rivers towards the sea. Where they will flow I often don’t really know to be honest but flow they do and I bob along following the inner currents where they take me.
The result of this process can be a blog article, a poem (I now have 5 poetry collections published) or indeed, a book. My novel The Last Observer was written in that state of mind and I enjoyed the writing process because the twists and turns in the plot were equally a surprise to me to be honest. The stream of consciousness flowed through some very twisty canyons writing that one!
So, I would love to make it all seem more complex and more high brow than it really is and tell you I did research, edited and edited and rewrote and all the other things that the craft of writing is supposed to entail. Instead, I will tell you the truth. To me writing is like painting. I throw words at a canvas and see what looks good. I do it in a higher mental state. I very rarely do any research and although I do edit progressively, my intention isn’t to be perfect nor win awards for my prose. Nope, its to tell a story and tell it well and that’s it. There is far too much high brow nonsense in writing – a sort of snobbery – its designed to intimidate people who want to write. Well, this is the punk era of writing – anyone can do it and should do it. That’s my view anyway.
Before me
A blank piece of paper
I paint with words
Swirling deep vowel hues
Pictures emerge
With every word I choose
It’s a thrill
To slap those words around
Messy fun with letters
Alliterations
Descriptive nouns
Verbal variations
Masterpiece
Letters joined together
Similar sounding sounds
Discordant vibes
A mixed vocal pallet used by
Artistic scribes
(Painting with Words from my Moon Whispers collection)
To be honest, I write for a living. I am a commodity markets technology analyst and I write blog articles, ghost written magazine articles, white papers, research reports and so on. You can check out some of this on CTRMCenter - our firm’s professional portal. My first book was Inner Journeys: Explorations of the Soul and it was a sort of autobiographical account of growing up psychic and then studying with a school of esoteric science and how that impacted me as a person. I must have got the bug because shortly afterwards, I published my first collection of poetry – Weird Tales. My latest efforts are my novel – The Last Observer – and a couple more poetry collections in Moon Whispers and the brand spanking new – Best Laid Plans. I am sure there will be many more. I like writing and I like sharing it with people too. Surely, thats all the reason I need right there?
The Last Observer was published by Roundfire Books and through the publisher, I have been united with a whole host of other wonderful and marvelous people and writers. Roundfire is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing and it is there I find the writer that I will pass on the baton to in Daniela Norris. Her book, On Dragonfly Wings: a skeptic’s journey to mediumship, was published earlier this year and she has another due out soon called Collecting Feathers: tales from The Other Side. She also blogs over at her site. She is a former Israeli diplomat, turned writer and her stories, articles and essays have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, and first collection of short stories, titled ‘The Year Spring Turned into Winter’ was out in December 2008. Crossing Qalandiya – Exchanges Across the Israeli Palestinian Divide, co-authored with Shireen Anabtawi, was published in the UK in May 2010.
