…wanna rent space on my elbow?

…epiphanies, by their very definition, appear as sudden revelations or insights… one such has startled my wee grey cells this morning… that once in a lifetime ‘Eureka!’ moment has dawned on me… how to make my instant fortune… all around me, I see professional people disguised as walking billboards… switch on yer television to any sports channel… cricketers, footballers, motor racing drivers, golfers, snooker players, all-sorts-of-sporties… all of them camouflaged as advertisements for products and services as diverse as toothpaste, holiday cruises, betting companies, and even good ol’ meat pies… now, Master Gallacher does have a day job, other than the scribbler’s grail… I’m involved in the corporate WURLD, where I do mundane things like saving companies from bankruptcy through my amazing (but humble) talent for corporate restructuring and ‘turnarounds’, sum’times engaged as a guru on executive coaching and management training… boring?…yes… but, here’s the catch… in all of that activity, people have their eyes on me… comes now the brainwave… transform myself into a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of selling space!… if yer Lewis Hamiltons, Cristiano Ronaldos, Joe Roots and Rory McIlroys can do it, why not we glorious iconic office ‘9 till 5ers’?... just think, Mabel… the power of exposure of ‘RENT-A-PENCIL COMPANY’ emblazoned on my shirt pocket… ‘FAX MACHINES R US’ peeking from the bottom of my sleeve… ‘EXECUTIVE STENCIL SERVICES’ embroidered on the a*se of my trousers… and the genius piece of all, a removable daily sticker plastered on my forehead with ‘GALLACHER’S CORPORATE PROGRAMS’… they couldn’t miss that, now could they?… I shall now sit quietly  by the telephone with my coffee and a nice wee digestive biscuit waiting for the calls to come flooding in… but yeez’ll have to be quick before all my corporeal space is reserved… wanna rent my elbow?… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!

ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE OR RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH—BE MY GUEST!

…Istanbul is Constantinople is Istanbul… however many letters it takes to spell it…

…back in November 2014, I posted the following blog about ‘HOW THE INTERNET CAUSED THE DOWNFALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE’… this weekend, Master Gallacher’s day job brings me to the modern version of the city, Istanbul, for several days, facilitating a business course for participants from the Middle East… yeez might enjoy this wee reprise…

 

…sum’thing stirs in the back of yer minds when yeez hark back to when yeez were school age… for ol’ Jurassics like me, it’s further back to go than most of yeez Lads and Lassies of Blog Land… we used to have wee games and pastimes yeez never hear of nowadays…  Schoolkid 1: “‘Constantinople’ is a very big WURD, spell it”… Schoolkid 2 (Smart-Ar*se) “i-t”, ‘it’”… correct!… oh, budding geniuses we were… clever, eh, Mabel?… in a time when a living wage was a pipe dream universe away from most of the families where I lived in Docklands Govan in Glasgow, we got by with no money at all… ‘pocket money’ was never heard of… sweets and confections were usually handed out to us kids when yer Dad came home on a Friday night, usually via the pub, and the local sweet shop, where he picked up tuppence-worth of sweets ‘for the weans’ (Eng: ‘wee ones’)… tuppence-worth went a long way back then… at weekends, when it rained, which was generally only every weekend in Scotland, for indoor pastimes, my sisters and I played with paper and pencils… this was before we ever saw the arrival of our first television set in our tenement dwelling in 1960… each of us would be given a piece of brown wrapping paper, flattened out and all nice and shiny… my Dad would write down for us at the top of the page, C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T-I-N-O-P-L-E… no, it wasn’t a geography lesson, although we did know where it was… the ploy was to see how many WURDS we could make using only the letters appearing in ‘CONSTANTINOPLE’… furthermore, we were obliged to list them in columns… two-letter WURDS, three-letter-WURDS, four-, five-, and six-letter WURDS and more…

…it kept us occupied for hours… I wonder how many offspring in today’s WURLD would even contemplate doing stuff like that?… the ubiquitous mobile devices, iPhones, Smart-Thingys, computers, and the bluudy Internet have robbed the planet of most of these domestically-produced indulgences… textese has usurped the application of English spelling to a degree that may take generations to restore… maybe if we ask the modern kids to tackle the WURD, ‘M-A-L-I’, we might get a response?… but sum’how, I fear not… sigh… see yeez later… got another hundred WURDS to get out of ‘CONSTANTINOPLE’ yet… LUV YEEZ!…

ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE/RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH—BE MY GUEST!

…brave ‘new’ communication frontier for this ol’ Jurassic scribbler…

…over the past two or three weeks, I invited folks on my Facebook pages to enlist for a regular direct mailing shot from me, as I felt the lack of a ‘space’ in my SOSYAL NETWURKS to get closer to my readers, authors and blogger friends… responses to be put on the list have been gratifying so far… if yeez wanna join it, please let me know either by email to seumasgallacher@yahoo.com or by DM on Facebook… existing friends on all my SOSYAL NETWURKS will only be listed on this one if they specifically ask to be on it, as I abhor anything that even remotely resembles spamming… here’s the first email posting which went out today, to give yeez a wee taster:

Email from Seumas:

July 11th, 2017

Having garnered a not inconsiderable number of you who are willing to communicate directly by email with an ol’ Scots Jurassic writer, here’s the first foray.

‘THING #1’

Many (many, many) years ago, loads of us had penpals. As youngsters, we’d send missives off by airmail to lands we could only dream of.

24/7 television was a thing of the distant future. National Geographic programs were not yet vogue. The eagerly awaited return post, often some weeks later, would contain photographs of our pals’ families, locations and all were handwritten. Letters from America usually had the distinguishable cursive flurry, more flamboyant as I recall from that we employed in the UK.

And it was FUN.

I would like to try to re-establish the idiom, but not by handwritten stuff (it’s too laborious now, I’ve found… I’ve lost the techniques of pen and paper), but by using laptops and compoooooters.

‘THING #2’

It would be totally unmanageable within a matter of days if EVERYBODY on the mailing list was copied to everyone else, but I’d like to take permission from all of you that when we agree that our items of correspondence may have broader interest, then I can open such conversations/discussion, perhaps via my blog. Whadd’yeez think?

‘THING #3’

For those amongst you who are writers, give me some feedback if you will — as well as my non-writing day job, which pays the bulk of stuff like the light bulbs, rent and food, I’m currently engaged in three scribbling projects — (a) the 6th Jack Calder crime thriller, (b) a more ‘literary’ book on the wanderings of an old Arabic teacher in the Middle East, and (c) ghosting an autobiography on behalf of a man with a fascinating life story to tell… Is this too much to bite off at one time?  Answers on a 100-dollar bill please.

‘THING #4’

What kind of stuff would you like to see/read in these emails? The world is our/your collective oyster… let me know.

See yeez later … LUV YEEZ!

Seumas 

ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE OR RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH—BE MY GUEST!

…my immersion in DEADLY IMPASSE… in more ways than one…

…occasionally Master Gallacher dabbles in poetry… NUTHIN to scare the Laureate Selection Panel, I can assure yeez… I’m a firm believer that the most avid follower of emb’dy’s poetry is usually the Poet/Poetess himself/herself… in essence, it’s a highly personalized thing… and so it is with me… however, there are times when I indulge the bardic Muse when certain trains of thought are bouncing around in my head… when I was squeezing onto the laptop the most recent Jack Calder thriller, DEADLY IMPASSE, I wrote the following as CHAPTER 2…

               DEADLY IMPASSE – CHAPTER 2

‘…The intense darkness engulfed the dinghy. Wave after wave crashed heavily along the sides, the spray soaking the passengers. Four dozen people crammed into the craft as its grossly underpowered outboard engine struggled to make headway against the roiling water. The promised lifejackets had not appeared prior to setting off from the Libyan shoreline two hours earlier, but desperation to make the journey had overcome the hesitation to board. A new life beckoned at the end of the voyage. Several families and a few young, single men had clambered in and arranged themselves to balance the dinghy as they pushed off. The handlers told them the crossing would take no more than three hours. The safety of the coastline of Italy beckoned across the pitch-black night. Parents hugged the younger children tighter with words of reassurance they were almost there. With each successive pounding from the sea, many of the children began to cry.

The sweeping searchlight from the approaching coastguard vessel picked them out just before the huge, rogue wave hit the craft broadsides. The slew of bodies from one side to the other was too much to keep it stable. The inevitable capsizing turned the dinghy upside down, pitching everyone aboard into the water. The screams were inaudible against the screeching wind as the crew on the cutter reacted as swiftly as they could.

Less than fifteen passengers were pulled aboard alive. Deterioration in the weather made rescue efforts increasingly hazardous as the coastguard men retrieved seven bodies. An estimated further two dozen souls drowned. The captain decided further recovery was impossible after half an hour and headed back for the Italian shoreline.

The waiting international news cameras recorded the next day’s photographs for the world’s consumption. They could barely capture the depth of the survivors’ horror.’

…that Chapter scene was riveted in my mind for weeks after I wrote that… and here’s the ensuing piece of poetry that evolved (which is not in the novel)…

How many more migrants must we lose?

Hold on tight, don’t cry, my son,

This will not last too long.

Listen how your Mama sings

Your favourite nursing song.

This water will not harm us now

We’re nearly at the shore.

Be strong and brave, my boy

And we’ll be wet no more.

 

Yes, yes, that wave was huge, I know,

But hang on tight, be safe with me.

This darkness merely hides the land

We’re getting closer now, you’ll see.

The sea is wild but brings us fast.

This wind behind our back

Will blow us into land quite soon.

Watch us veer and tack.

 

No, please don’t cry, my lad,

I’m here to hold you tight

This angry sea won’t harm you

We’ll be safe ere blows the night

Talk to Papa, tell me things,

All the things you’d like to say.

Tell me how we’ll live our lives

On the shore we near this day.

 

Papa, truly, truly I am scared.

These waves are far too tall.

And this darkness blinds my eyes.

I hate this, hate this all.

Papa, Papa, the boat is tipping over,

Papa, Papa, where’s your hand?

Papa, Papa, catch me please.

Papa, Papa……….. Papa?

Seumas Gallacher

October 16^th, 2016

…all too sadly, much of our fiction as writers is born in fact… this scene was meant as fiction, but it sticks vividly with me almost every day… thanks for reading it…

myBook.to/Calderdeadlyimpasse

…see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!

ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE OR RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH—BE MY GUEST!

…time after time… Authoress, K.J. Waters has another glorious book launch…

…it’s always a great delight to watch a fellow scribbler follow up a terrific novel with an equally compelling read… my great pal, Authoress, K.J. Waters has delivered Shattering Time in a continuation from her tremendously successful Stealing Time… but let her speak for herself…

KJ Waters on Time Travel

I’m so excited to be back in your blog Seumas. It is a delightful honor and I hope you find my post worthy of your wit and charm and exceptional blogging platform.

I wanted to share a little bit about my writing and celebrate my new release, Shattering Time, the second book in the Stealing Time Series. As a fellow writer I think you will understand the bliss of releasing a book you’ve spent a year or more writing and the immense sense of relief at the freedom to focus on something else for a while.

First, I would like to ask your readers an intriguing question. If you could go back in time where would you go? One of the beautiful things about being a writer is you can dive into this type of conjecture and explore in a deeper way what this would entail. Choose wisely, for my research has shown that perhaps the imaginings of being in that particular place may far exceed the reality of that visit.

The Stealing Time Series addresses this time travel question in depth. Of course, after I’ve made the book a page-turner and put my poor heroine, Ronnie Andrews, in such terrible trouble repeatedly, I would NOT choose these times and places to visit in reality. It has been a great adventure to do so as a writer though.

The areas I have chosen for Ronnie to explore were just the kernel of desire and intrigue that put me on the path of discovery. In Stealing Time, I chose 1752 London at a time where there was a literal shift in time from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar. The English along with its colonies, lost 11 days that September. I couldn’t resist this gold mine of intrigue and mystery as a back drop for my debut novel.

In the next book, Shattering Time just released last week, Ronnie is taken to three different places and times. First, she is deposited on a beach in the Bahamas in 1952 with beautiful crystal clear waters and a handsome man to join the fun. Only problem is that they are shipwrecked and like the genie that grants your wishes there is a twist that ends up biting you in the…um, I don’t want to give away too much.

Her last destination in that book has always been intriguing to me – The Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. It is one of America’s first mysteries where we find English colonists attempting to create the first colony in the New World in 1588. To this day no one knows what happened to them. It was a challenge to come up with my own version but I hope you do check it out and see what happens to Ronnie in that special time and place.

I would like to invite you to a special sale on the first book in the series, Stealing Time, that is available as an eBook for only 99 cents until July 7 on Amazon here: http://geni.us/StealingTimeGuestBlog.

If you prefer paperbacks, I can offer you both books in the series for $25 plus shipping, that’s a savings of $5, click here: http://geni.us/webpromo. Please visit my website at kjwaters.com and join my newsletter.

Please check out my newly released Shattering Time. http://geni.us/shatteringguestblog

 

KJ Waters Bio

KJ Waters is the Amazon best-selling author of the short-story called Blow and #1 best-seller Stealing Time. The second book in the series, Shattering Time, was just published on June 27, 2017 and the next day reached #6 on the UK Amazon site, and was #2 as a hot new release for one category, seating neatly after Michael Crichton’s Dragon Teeth.

In addition to her writing, she is the CEO of Blondie’s Custom Book Covers and the co-host of the popular podcast Blondie and the Brit.

She has a Master’s in Business and over 15 years of experience in the marketing field. Before quitting her job to raise a family and work on writing she was the Director of Marketing and communications for a national behavioral healthcare company.

Shattering Time Blurb:

The number one best-selling thriller Stealing Time continues its “breathtakingly original” journey.

Ronnie Andrews returns from eighteenth-century London shell-shocked from her first terrifying time travel encounter. Her boyfriend, Jeffrey Brennan, casts doubt on her sanity leaving Ronnie wondering if she went back in time or is having a mental breakdown.

To add to the tension, Hurricane Frances, a storm the size of Texas, is barreling towards Florida and her fears of a repeat time travel experience mount. Ronnie’s best friend Steph, along with her friend Nick and Steph’s younger brother Ian, shield Ronnie from the dangers of Frances but cannot save her from traveling back in time. Unfortunately, their meddling brings Ronnie to the brink of destruction as they are caught in the throes of the hurricane’s wrath.

Once again, Ronnie is transported to dangerous places and plagued with desperate situations, while experiencing perilous cultures including one of America’s first mysteries — the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.
A stunning conclusion brings Ronnie face to face with a dangerous ally who may hold the key to her past while offering salvation for her future.

Links:

• Social Media:
• Twitter:@kamajowa
• Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/kjwaters2,
• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kj-waters-12098360
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kamajowa
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kamajowa/

…thanks for this, m’Lady, K.J. … see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!

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