Here I am at the edge

A warm Halloween Welcome to Ireland I wish a warm, and hearty, welcome to readers from Ireland today. I spent two months over there during "The Troubles," in 1979, just before I left the Royal Air Force . The medal shown in the post is my General Service Medal , I was not near the fighting and have always stated that I didn't deserve the medal. Despite what you see in the news, the Irish are great people, full of warmth and humor.

The chills are multiplying Treat yourself to a spooktacular double for Halloween , with two of my best stories for this time of year. The classic chilling tale of The Old Church ghosts   and Carol Caitlin's debut in  Zombiewatch . Ms. Caitlin reappears in  The Overdale incident , this time learning about alien love-making techniques .

Amazon ratings Amazon ratings don't matter to me, one sale can shoot you up the ladder for weeks, but it is only one sale. I get so few on the site I don't usually add to what is there. One of my next stories is going to be written just for the sake of the boost. I have a feeling that is I write a dragon story one person in the USA will snap it up; I don't expect to be paid as they return the e-book within a day. You could say, why write it if you aren't getting paid for your time? Well, you're reading my blogs for free, what's the difference?

Amazon returns This return is the final straw for me. I will NOT be putting e-books on AMAZON again. Twice this week, I have had books returned with a day of being bought. The latest is my new story The Fortress which took two weeks to write. I realize the price has gone up, but the e-books still cost less than the price of a cup of  coffee for two weeks work.

United Nations The West needs to support Israel, or the country will cease to exist, sooner or later.  If you think Palestine wants peace, read theses articles from  Israel Today ,  United with Israel , and the   Jerusalem Post

Stranded on a strange world My new e-book mixes fantasy with science fiction  in a world populated by dragons, mages, and warlords with animals beyond your imagination.  Again, I hoped sales would motivate me to turn this short story into a series, but it did not happen.

Not for too long I thought I had a sale tonight on  Amazon . I was overjoyed to see Dragonracer had sold finally; then I checked and found the book had been returned - this happens a lot to my work on Amazon - which is why I use  Draft2Digital .

An old Bible Some years ago, while collecting Bibles I bought an old Bible and since that day I've been trying to date it. There are two main indicators of its age - one is it is leather-covered, and the other is a series of maps in the rear, which refers to what is now called the Middle East  as The Levant . I was wondering, does anybody know when the area changed its name in general usage to the Middle East? After years of searching the best approximate date I can find is the Bible could be as old as the 1920's.

Moving house In the last week, the secondary group of readers for my blogs has changed from the UK to France.  French readers now outnumber UK readers 3:1 :)

The day I will never forget What do I remember from 1966; as a ten-year-old soccer fan winning the World Cup is obvious - a victory I realized in later years couldn't have been much easier. One of my most poignant memories is the day a tiny village in Wales become a world headline for the most tragic of all reasons -  a mining disaster   - I can't say what particular reason this tragedy held me by, as there are so many elements why I felt the pain of their loss.  I come from a close family of four generations of fishermen who fished the icy waters of the North Sea/ I had an uncle in the RNLI who was involved in the rescue of a Polish ship / I was a schoolboy at the time. When I was stationed at RAF Lossiemouth, near Elgin, I used to travel home via the Yorkshire mining district, during the   miner's strike   I would pass the massive piles of coal and pray another disaster such as Aberfan befell a community. Little did the miners realiz...

Going Global In the past, this blog had a large readership in Russia , then the USA , I had a look at yesterday's figures, and you may be surprised (I wasn't, as this is the trend ), over 90% of the readers now are in Singapore . With the moving of the trending focal point, one thing has NOT changed, the UK is at the bottom of the list as far as my readers go. Some people would say I have Buddhist tendencies, I would say, as a lover of nature I won't kill for killing's sake. Sometimes, the family comes into my room, and cringe; in the wet weather and the winter, I often have a spider nesting in the room. She has her area on the ceiling, and I have mine on the ground, so long as she doesn't walk on me she is safe. I would rather catch her and release her than kill her for no reason. If you wish to know, I do believe in reincarnation , even if it hasn't been proven to exist; there again neither have the Loch Ness Monster , Bigfoot , and the Yeti . Almost every ...

Your sexy vampire romance part 1 Another of my e-books has been banned by Scrib'd. This time we got things right, my vampire romance  The Cursed   is racy but not as sexually charged as   A Sailor's Love   which passed.

Munich in October Munich , Germany , and October go together like fish, chips and vinegar - no need for the salt - if you buy the fish at the seaside. To all beer fans, a dream must be to visit the  Oktoberfest . When I was in Germany, I had the opportunity to go to the festival, but never went not being a heavy beer drinker and having bad memories of the city. Besides, German beer is vastly overrated, the beers I did have were very gassy, and you get a massive foamy head - you'd never be allowed to serve this in the UK. I think the gassiness of the beers, not the amount I used to drink - is what caused me to become alcohol intolerant.

It won't cost a lot For a cheap gift, that will mean a lot to me; treat yourself to a book from Barnes & Noble .  Any of my e-books you buy, I won't see the money as I am donating it to #charity in Israel via   Israel Today  and  United with Israel . If you doubt my sincerity, the goods I get from the sites are paid for with sales monies.

Going for my birthday In a short while, I'll be going out to have an early celebration of my 60th birthday - my birthday is on the 18th.  When I was in my teens, I didn't plan to live beyond 30.

Going global As my expanding reader list spreads, today we are welcoming readers in Belgium . I only passed through Belgium, I've never stopped there.

Rule 101 My rule 101 is NEVER work for Asians. I formed this view from trying to work for 20 or more on various sites.  They are rude, arrogant, pushy, and won't take no for an answer.  This company - Weaving Thoughts - is a typical example; the CEO has a rep for scamming writers, and if you object he gets abusive and tries to ruin your reputation online. He has been trying to con me for over a year - despite being told several times that I have no interest in working for him.

The winner Praised by a former police sergeant from Queensland  for its authentic feel. My original e-book returns to the shelves.  The cover of the book is the only thing I won in a competition. If you enjoy a good thriller , this book is for you. Dockland Murders is the first of four stories I wrote about Pat Canella, if this does well, I shall release the others.

PLF Unbeknown to the world, there is a new underground freedom party with a growing membership - the PLF - the Penguin Liberation Front .  Their aim is to keep humans off  Antarctica , all they want is a regular supply of fish and to be able to live in peace.

The Middle East Unlike the press in the UK , I am not concerned about Russian planes in UK airspace. This practice has been going on since my days in the RAF (1974); we used to send out Hercules from RAF Lossiemouth , and Phantoms from RAF Kinloss to check what was going on.  Kinloss had to close down because the Phantoms were destroying the runways each time the pilot turned the thruster engine on for take-off he'd burn the tarmac off the runway so badly, the runways had to be resurfaced every three years. My concerns are more about the Middle East situation. I have always thought the unstable Middle East is more of a threat than Russia . If JFK couldn't cause a war over Cuba , I think we are safe from Russia. I see the threat coming from either Iran , Iraq , or Syria . The biggest threat to peace in Europe is the Muslim Invasion - https://hereiamattheedge.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-islamification-of-uk.html  - ignore pleas from the like of Lily Allen and Jeremy Corbyn t...

Is it only me? I wonder at times if I am the only person in the UK who reads my blogs 

All for less than the price of a cup of coffee    Now my ebook selection is on Google Play    https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=Alan+Place , one of the things I am asked to do is add the number of pages for each short story to the information for the book . I could understand this if I was asking a lot for my work, but when I ask for only a few nickels and dimes for my writing , I don't see the point of it. If I was asking pounds for an ebook I would see the point, so the reader can see they are getting value; but, when all I ask is less than the price of a cup of coffee for hours of work there is no point. My books cost as little as £1.00 each, what can you get for that price these days?

Mark's highlight Mark Johnson, what became of the award-winning e-book ? In a nutshell - nothing - that is correct, four years ago the book won an award and then nothing. This month on  Amazon , he had his first sale since the award.

Baal updated From his demeanor, it is hard to understand what this man did to the city of Meldritch. The once thriving city now lay in ruins, their demise was brought up on them by their desire to appease the man who stood at the city gates.  He was not rich or powerful. To look at the poor wretch, you would imagine he’d had a hard life, for he was thin with broken teeth and unkempt in his appearance. When he spoke or sang, his words and music gripped the imagination of the people like a fever. His words and music had the ability to drive normally sane people to do anything to stop him from leaving.  When he entered Meldritch - as he had many cities before - the people had no idea what they had let enter their village. To the world outside, he was no more than a wandering scribe, trying to buy a meal and a place to rest by telling stories. On his departure, he left in his wake a city dazzled by his stories of far off lands, but he had an agenda that nobody knew about unt...

Modern Fantasy Romance My latest e-book is a departure from my usual SciFi zone, as we travel to the realms of fantasy romance with shapeshifters , don't expect Twilight from me. This story  is more like the classic Dracula.