More Than Music

This is the third part of a joint autobiographical trilogy based on the letters and diaries of two professional singers Christopher Davies and Barbara Kendall-Davies. It also relates to their young son, Giles and his blossoming career as a singer.

There is a good deal of music, of course but also many unexpected and divergent paths as well, including a major Hollywood movie. 

Mosquitoes in Skyros

A spiritual retreat – or so this man thought – was something you go on to embrace your connection with life and (hopefully) learn a bit more about yourself. If things go well, you might end up looking to the future with added confidence. However, when the realisation dawns that you have been semi-consciously searching for “the one” for the last eleven years, and that the very essence and substance of true love risks materialising during the retreat… I mean, what is a man to do?

A light-hearted search for greater well-being on a Greek island combines with “a nice holiday” to engender somewhat more sharing than anticipated. The parallel narratives of the retreat workshops and a budding relationship begin to over-flow – one nourishing the other, to the point that a rare and very real love seems almost fated.

Written with great honesty and sensitivity and (yet!) through a male perspective, poignant memories from childhood are pieced together with reflections on relationships in general to bring such focus on the natural laws affecting us all, that a sense of underlying good purpose in every relationship starts to emerge.

With evocative descriptions of Greek cuisine and culture as the backcloth, threads of spiritual mystique interweave with a most-passionate romance. The words of wisdom that emerge organically as the story unfolds may be left to wash over, or be investigated using the cross-references to appendices that support self-development alongside the story; but in any event, there is always the sun and the feta!

Mosul Dreaming: An Australian Psychologist in Iraq

In 2017 Diane Hanna was offered a role to provide psychological services to international surgical team, 15km from the front line during the last battle of Mosul, Iraq. The mission had provided her with a restored sense of meaning and purpose, which compelled her to return and continue working in the largest humanitarian crisis since the second world war.

In temperatures above 48 degrees celsius, she forged ahead, recruiting members of her mental health team from the camps of those displaced during the conflict. She established programs and activities, for thousands of women and children who were wounded and traumatised by ISIS. On her day off, she often sat in bed and painted those whom she met from Mosul, whilst unable to leave the guesthouse due to the ongoing dangers outside.

When funding to her mission was cut suddenly, Diane made the decision to stay in Iraq which would change her life forever. Alone, and with a life-threatening condition she was now facing a corrupt medical system, and an increasingly volatile environment. Trapped in one of them most hostile countries in the world, she would need to muster all her strength, knowledge and skills, to negotiate her way out.

Her story will astonish and inspire you. It will make you reassess what it means to serve as a humanitarian worker, and remind you that whatever happens, you must keep fighting and never give up.

Mother’s Love

Mother’s Love is a series of essays about social issues. I say that my readers know my essays are good for them like broccoli, but the jokes throughout are sort of the cream cheese that makes the essays tasty. I started writing them in 2014 and then picked up where I left off in 2021. Some of the best essays were written while travelling to Brooklyn in New York in 2021. The other more notable essays were written after long beach walks where I would empty my mind out so when I started writing I would only have a heading in mind and then let the rest flow directly out of my subconscious. I often say that my life is sort of a circus that my essays are based on but the Dalai Lama says circuses are fun. 

Mr Movie Man

Films. Cinemas. Movies.  

They capture our imagination throughout our lives for whatever reason. Everyone has a different memory to associate with a film title or cinema name. Be it your very first experience at a young age, your first date and that kiss and cuddle in the back row or perhaps even a film that scared the life out of you!  

This book brings back to life a distant memory to each and every one for their own reason. Be it your favourite movie star or that musical’s song that wouldn’t leave your head for weeks, that journey to a far distant galaxy or just being chased by a giant man-eating shark.  

Cinema is the only place to capture all these adventures.

Mundane Insurance

Manufacturing industries are a common knowledge as are the likes of the motor car, television, foodstuffs and electrical goods that exist around us every day and are forcefully advertised. Banking too but it is only true to a lesser degree regarding insurance because if canvasing the average person in the street about insurance they would think only about their life insurance, health insurance, motor cover, house and contents, pet plan insurance and so on. Put like that, it is all very wearisome and therefore hardly a subject worth writing about, or is it? That was certainly the author’s impression of insurance even up to the point of moving into the financial sector from manufacturing industry.

Pursuing the subject a step further, hazarding a guess, if those very same people were quizzed regarding the types of people they imagined are employed in insurance they would probably describe their insurance broker or simply a voice at an insurance call centre. This account therefore will, in all probability, dispel the notion that all insurance dealings are routine and in the main, predictable as did an international group of young insurance delegates at a Middle East seminar, many of whom were totally unaware that the insurance industry’s activities were so diverse.

Musings of a Grieving Mam

It’s humbling to realise that everything I’ve taken for granted over the last 13 years, touching Lils, holding her, being beside her, I now have to ask permission to do it.

That now, other mothers’ hands have the unspoken right to touch my daughter.

I have to ask permission to perform the most basic of ‘mum duties’ for my own child.

My. Own. Child.

16 days in the head of a mum during her teenage daughter’s battle with HLH.

My Brother John

The book is a collection of memories of childhood and adolescence, of growing up as one of a family of seven in a small South Staffordshire mining village in the 1940s and 1950s. The family home had no electricity and relied on an open fire for all cooking and heating. The book looks at different aspects of life, such as earliest memories, starting school, wartime experiences, chores and scavenging for fuel, Christmas and leisure activities, immersing the reader in a time, which, though still within living memory is a world away from the 21st century. It is very much a personal account of how a less fortunate family coped in these difficult times and is very different from the usual memoirs of these times. Its final two chapters deal with the death of the parents, when the writer and his brother become the legal guardians of their five younger siblings and can now be considered as finally out of childhood and adolescence.

My Christianity

Journey through the Bible’s sacred texts from start to finish, as this panoramic book handpicks pivotal moments from both the Hebrew and Christian faiths. With a commitment to simplifying the text, readers can easily digest and appreciate the highs and lows of these ancient narratives. Delve into the joys of celebration, the sorrows of the Suffering Church, and the stories of persecuted believers worldwide, echoing the lament of the Hebrews by the rivers of Babylon in Psalm 137:1. The book also features extended biographies, powerful Christian quotes, and captivating stories, all designed to inspire and engage readers on their own spiritual path.

My Friend’s Place

In this debut book, Robert calls out to the hesitant senior traveller with encouragement and caution.

With the aid of trains, planes and Tuk-Tuks, this senior traveller approaches his seventieth year fuelled with the energy and wonder of his inner child. Full of self- belief, a small pinch of common sense and a huge ego, his adventure to India proves to be a humbling, hilarious, hazardous, and often, emotional experience.

Gradually, as his adventure unfolds, his ego momentarily weakens and fleeting glimpses of his true nature manifests itself, though sometimes painfully. This process has been called ‘finding oneself’, however as the saying goes, the more one finds out the less one knows.

My Land of Counterpane or My Résumé

The author is a retired registered nurse who has published three previous works: I’m Not Allowed to Say is about her experience as an active duty army captain; At the Foot of Rawlins Mountain is a series of vignettes of life growing up on an island paradise; and Casualties of Life details her early childhood, nursing training and the vagaries of life. Although not part of a series, two of these books dealt with her early nursing training and experience. All three were published under the name J’nette C. Bryant. This current work is a comprehensive detail of her nursing career as viewed through the eyes of, and experienced by, an emigrant. It covers a wide variety of health care settings to include: nursing homes, private and public sectors, and military and veterans’ administration institutions.

The author has one daughter and lives in New York.

My Life, My Way. The Conditioning.

The meanderings and twists and turns of real-life told through the poetry of a crazy mind… or am I sane? You decide…

What if I told you all is not as it seems…

What if I told you this is the land of dreams…

Dive inside, come on, let’s see… the twists and turns of the life we see.