Réal Laplaine's Blog, page 6

ABBA nostalgia will never fade

In 2008, my wife and I decided to watch MAMMA MIA, the film with Meryl Streep, a musical fueled by ABBA songs. I was never an ABBA fan before that, in fact, I rarely listened to them, but after watching the film, I was so inspired by their music that I went to my office, that night, and started writing the book - FINDING AGNETHA.

The story came from a place deep inside me where inspiration burns - and within a matter of days, I had finished the story about a young boy in Buffalo New York, who loves ABBA and wants to become a musician, like them, but before that, he wants to reunite the band, one which had not played together in over 25 years. He concocts a plan and runs away from his troubled home, and with the help of another unsuspecting adult who also loves ABBA, makes it to Sweden and begins his search for Agnetha Fältskog, the iconic blond in the band, to convince her to get the band to do a live performance for the whole world. Of course, his parents and police in both America and Sweden are searching for him.

It's an inspiring story, because as Morrie Norris, our protagonist, inches closer and closer to making his dream come true, the people he encounters along the way, all of whom tell him that ABBA will never reunite again, find their lives upended, and their own dreams suddenly sparked back to life. No spoilers - but yeah, I believed that ABBA would reunite some day and I wasn't disappointed in recent years when that did happen. The story stands alone and still puts a smile on people's faces.

Is human trafficking "over there"?

When I have spoken at venues around Sweden, about my book, SEE ME NOT and the subject of human trafficking, it became clear to me that many people viewed human trafficking as something that was going on "over there" - meaning, in other countries, but not their own. In truth, human trafficking is happening around us EVERY day.

Young women, both here in Europe and elsewhere, are being trafficked by the thousands, lured and tricked into the sex industry, where, under pressure and extortion of threats to harm their own children or family back home, are forced to be sexual performers for the porn industry or in sex shops or brothels.

In fact, the means of human trafficking in the porn and sex industry is more like a snare, a trap, where young women with the promise of making money and changing their economic situation, are lured into the industry. Once their faces appear in porn films and videos, they are branded. They can be extorted and are silently and brutally forced by an industry that knows very well that their faces and bodies, now being seen by millions across the world, is a mark on their forehead. Those young girls are going to be stereotyped, they are going to have a difficult time being treated as equals in the world that sees them as "different", where doors of opportunity open to others, will not be so easily open to them - and this is where the human trafficking element comes into play - they can be controlled and manipulated by the porn and sex industry, who knows this fact very well and who entice them to continue.

Human trafficking is not "over there" - it is all around us, because the sex industry, porn for one, engages countless thousands of young women, and even children, into its net, every year.

See Me Not was inspired by an actual six year-old girl we found in Calcutta, India, who was living on the streets with her one-year-old brother. Researching her circumstances, I discovered that thousands of children, just like her, are scooped up by traffickers and forced into sexual servitude at very young ages, or as drug mules. See Me Not while a literary fiction, is entirely based on the factual circumstances of what actually happens to these children and young girls.

The book has been popularly accepted by readers, and should you decide to pick up a copy for yourself, we will send a 2nd copy, at no cost to you, to any school, library or non-profit institution of your choosing, with a notation of the donor (you). We will email you at the point of purchase to get the details and inform you when the book is sent.

https://youtu.be/TQb2kVtP06Ihttps://youtu.be/Td8y1olTlPg

Would an energy desperate China go after Iran's oil?

Opening chapter to Twilight Visitor

China’s rise as a global leader and their general sense of global indispensability was best couched by their ambassador to the Asian Economic Summit held in Kuala Lumpur, wherein he announced that both Asia and the rest of the world could no longer enjoy true prosperity and stability without China.

Although almost arrogant, the statement was nonetheless factual – because over the last several decades, both western and even Asian economies, now enjoyed a higher standard of living because of the massive Chinese workforce and the lowered cost of manufacturing the essentials which fueled their own economies. China had entered the households of millions, if not even billions across the planet, and its global influence was both undeniable and irrevocable.

Economists and the banking industry all knew, in fact, predicted, that the trend would only continue. The manufacturing process had already been well ensconced into the Chinese and Asian domain and the west was now utterly dependent on them. Whereas in the mid-20th century, 80% of the global wealth resided in the west and 20% in the eastern and poorer economies, that powerbase was radically shifting. So much so that predictions estimated that in just a matter of years, China’s GDP would surpass the global giant, America, and moreover, within another decade or two, the scales would tip, with the lion’s share of global wealth residing in the eastern nations, not the west. The world was changing, radically so, and China had its foot on the accelerator and was driving that very change.

However, that global dominance came with a price, one which had been seriously threatened by the recent announcement from OPEC that oil reserves were estimated to significantly drop-off by upwards of 25-35% as early as the next five or ten years.

The looming repercussions of such had sent renewed shockwaves through the inner sanctum of Beijing’s governing enclave. And though the Chinese leaders had known years before that they had to move fast in generating new forms of renewable energy, unfortunately the giant had been far too complacent...

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/696416_bc1a8777d07b4838a53407421577899c/720p/mp4/file.mp4

The RIFT - The World in 2024

Prologue to Earth Escape

In 2024, Russia, China and several other nations including Turkey, Syria, Mongolia, Chad, and Libya in North Africa, as well as North Korea, declared themselves a united geopolitical coalition under the mantle of The Triumvirate – an allegorical reference to the three pillars of power; with Russia and China forming two of those pillars, and the other nations combined forming the third.

Although the announcement of the Triumvirate caused shock waves around the globe, the truth is that the signs were there to be seen long before.

For years, Russia and China had been warming up to each other. Ever since the aggressive stance taken by Russia against Ukraine during the Crimean debacle of 2014 and later in 2022, and the sanctions imposed upon Russia by Europe and America as a result, Russia had been distancing itself from the West.

The Syrian war, which had resulted in a literal ocean of human beings forced from their homes, millions of people who were either killed or who had fled into Europe to escape that brutal conflict, had brought about a divisional state of mind, where Europe began to systematically close off its borders. Russia and China, who backed the Syrian regime of that time, and America and its allies who opposed the regime and were financing rebel forces to fight against it, had only deepened the rift between East and West.

An attempted coup in Turkey in 2016 began the devolvement of that nation from a pseudo-democracy to a dictatorship which had closed-down relations with many Western lands.

And of course, North Korea’s tyrannical regime and its continued aggressive stance against the West, not to mention threats of nuclear attack, made it the perfect rogue recruit for the Triumvirate.

Overall, the stage had been set for Russia and China to invite these other nations into their league – forming a brotherhood of sorts, capitalizing on their sense of disenfranchisement from the West and using this to form a partnership that would enhance economic ties as well as political and military might. It was a clear intent to announce to the world on which side of the fence these nations stood.

China, being the global manufacturing leader at the time, stood to lose the most. However, the need for global commerce to remain intact proved a greater force, so, China’s commercial ties were not affected – but relationships were certainly strained, and trust and credibility began to fray at the edges – an incremental breakdown that would eventually reach a boiling point.

Within the year of that announcement, the Americas, that is, the United States of America, Canada and South America, the Oceania, the European Union, Great Britain, South Africa, South Korea, and Japan, announced The Alliance – a cooperative partnership of nations, the oppositional-global-power to the Triumvirate.

Amid this wave of change, a council of the most powerful Imams declared the formation of the Republic of Islam – a league of Islamic-faith-based nations, who, without compromising borders, unified themselves as an embodiment, an avatar of sorts. These Imams declared to the world that they, as a unified league, would no longer permit rebel extremists to exist within their composite borders, those who claimed that their violent jihadist campaigns were compelled by religious conviction, and that they would take unified action to rid their lands of these terrorists while also closing the door on further western intervention. This new umbrella-republic, which included such nations as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and several others, also demanded that all foreign military powers leave, forthwith and immediately. And while trade and diplomatic accords remained intact, the days of American and other allied boots landing wherever they chose, were over.

As man faced off with man, Mother Earth was not taking the back seat and she too was flagging her own issues, demanding restitution for the impact on her domain. Global warming, the progressive polar ice-cap melt, dramatic climatic changes resulting in blighted farmlands around the globe, flooding, drought, oceanic-pollution compounded by the depletion of marine life, and more, were all on the rise as Mother Nature declared her right to defend her one and only child - Earth.

In 2028 two Canadian scientists announced to the world that they had broken the code on something which would change the very nature of quantum physics, in what would come to be known as Quantum Propulsion – a technology of repulsive electro-magnetic-force, one which could catapult humanity to the stars in the lifetime of one human being.

Three global forces were now racing against inevitable time; the ticking-bomb of tensions between the geopolitical powers, Mother Nature and the new frontier, deep space exploration, which had suddenly opened new vistas, including the opportunity to find a new home for us.

The question was – who would win?

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/696416_b9dce55a6fa742f3b814d2331a2d4bda/720p/mp4/file.mp4

A Tribute to Radiator Don as the Buffalo Kid

The Buffalo Kid, my first book, was inspired by homeless people I had met in my life, living in Los Angeles, and then Buffalo, New York. It was also very much inspired by the city of Buffalo itself, a town which I fell in love with, and yet one whose streets and broken neighborhoods reflected its tragic background, and yet whose resilience and inner beauty caught my heart. Buffalo personified the very character I created in the book, a destitute man in his early 70’s whom they called the Buffalo Kid because he was the oldest homeless person in the city.

For years I searched the web for the perfect person to match my concept of the Kid, someone I could use for the front cover of the book, but it wasn’t until I met up with Cindy Anderson, a brilliant artist and designer who lived in Paso Robles, California, who told me about a friend of hers named Radiator Don, whom she thought might be willing to pose for a new cover edition of the book.

When I heard his story and saw the image of him, I was taken. In his face, his eyes, the very air about him, without ever having met the man, I knew that Radiator Don would embrace the virtues I depicted in the book and that he was, and is, The Buffalo Kid.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/696416_2a8691d6232344ae98442563ad73c5ab/360p/mp4/file.mp4

Why ABBA?

When I launched my writing career a decade or so ago, I never thought or planned whatsoever to write a book about ABBA - the Swedish pop group. And yet, sitting in our 3rd story loft in Buffalo New York, my wife and I wa...

Everyone deserves a 2nd chance

Like most people, I find the plight of the homeless and the destitute incredibly disturbing, especially considering the fact that we have the resources, in terms of excess food and materials, to ensure that no one starve...

Let's put the term "celebrity" in perspective

I'm going to vent a pet peev of mine.

People who inspired me...

The other day I started thinking, "Who has inspired me in my life?" and to my surprise, the list was quite long. Here's a short recap:

When pizza interrupts the writing

This is a silly little article, but I had to say it anyhow.