Genesis of Man compared to God Delusion

This at long last is the long awaited image of the brand new and soon to be printed cover in all its glory. I am sure you will agree that this will have quite an impact and help the book to be taken much more seriously, which it most definately needs.

Last night we had a telephone call from the couple who bought our old house to say that they had some post for us. This morning we went over there to collect it, and I was pleased to find that one of these items was notification from a magazine called Self Publishing, together with a complimentary copy, to say that they had printed a review of my book on page 29.

When I read the review I was truly astonished and delighted beyond words, for they have compared me to none other than Richard Dawkins, the best selling author and self proclaimed aetheist, whose book The God Delusion topped the UK and US non-fiction best sellers list for a full 6 months, selling thousands of copies worldwide (200,000 in the UK alone). Even better, they have given me permission to reprint this segment on the back cover of the new edition, which I will hopefully finish proof reading before the week is out ...

The review then reads:

"Genesis of Man covers some highly topical and controversial subjects regarding religion and science. If you have read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, then you will love this book, because it serves the opposite viewpoint.

The book is well researched - it is laden with scientific, Biblical and historical evidence to support its arguments. However, although there is sound understanding of science, the book seems to place more importance on its Biblical and historial evidence. It is also written with a lot of personal input from the narrator, which helps the ease of reading and can 'speak' to the reader. However, the first person narrative approach may appear to some readers as informal, and make the work appear less reliable.

Whilst the book is written as though it is addressing a vast and diverse audience of believers and non-believers, there are some infelicities and bias that suggests thar only certain groups of people are being targeted. The narrative focusses mainly on the Abrahamic religions, with a greater emphasis on Christianity. This may make its arguments appear somewhat incomplete to some readers, because there are six major world religions to be accounted for, rather than three.

This is a very informative and well researched book. It would be ideal as a companion to academic studies in subjects such as theology, philosophy and the social sciences. The book also achieves what it set out to do; answering all and more of the questions in its blurb"

No sooner did I ring Richard, my Editor and give him the good news, than I got an email from the UK office of Nexus magazine to say that they are also printing a review in their June edition. The magazine is based in Australia but has 4 English language editions, (UK and Europe, US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand) plus 10 foreign language editions (Italian, Greek, French, German, Polish, Croatian, Russian, Romanian and Japanese) with a combined print run of 100,000 copies. The circulation will be at least twice this amount! This then is very good news indeed.

They are also sending me a complimentary copy. I will hopefully be able to print their review in the updated edition as well. This could do amazing things for my book, since Nexus is the leading magazine for conspiracy theorists and alternative historians, read by many other authors in this field. If just one percent of readers buy a copy as a result, this will be 6000 copies sold! I am jumping for joy at the prospect.

At long last things really are beginning to happen.

New, updated edition coming soon!

I must start writing this blog on a more regular basis, as so much has happened these past 2 weeks that I hardly know where to begin.

After much deliberation, I have chosen a new cover for my book. The work was done by a brilliant new designer Clifford Hayes, based in Hastings here in the UK, and well, what can I say. I wish I could add a picture of it here, but at the moment all I have are PDF's, and I can't post them for obvious reasons. The new cover will very soon be revealed in all its glory, so I am afraid dear readers, unless you are one of the lucky ones on my personal mailing list, you will just have to wait and be patient. If you wish to join my mailing list, then you can do so here. Don't say I didn't ask!

The new cover is a total turnaround from the present one, and has a much more scholarly image which I hope will do a lot to improve my sales. Clifford presented me with three images from which to choose, two of which were his slightly different interpretation of the original concept with Adam and Eve and the serpents gradually morphing into the DNA spirals. The quality of his work was so outstanding and visually stunning that it seemed a shame not to use at least one of these images somewhere, so I asked him to let me have a black and white version, minus Adam and Eve, which I am going to print inside the book, just behind the title page and before the list of contents, with a short explanation as to what it represents. The impact will be stunning.

At the same time I am also making some changes to the text - adding new information and slightly re-wording certain things. I shall also be changing the font size, from 10 pitch to 11, since many readers have commented on how small it is, and a bit difficult for anyone who is dyslexic or has less than perfect eyesight. I originally planned to use 12 pitch, but as Richard pointed out, it would have increased print costs to such an extent that it would have negatively impacted upon both his and my profits. So I chose the middle ground of 11 pitch, which is apparently their standard font size anyway. At the time of writing, the book has increased from 272 pages to 326. There may be a few more pages, since there is some very exciting information that I want to try and add as an appendix or postscript. I will say no more other than if you want to know what this is, then you will just have to buy a copy and read for yourselves. There is nothing else for it.

The Nothing Binding Site seems to be making a difference already. I see that my YouTube file has been Googled, and continues to get plenty of hits. Apparently I was the featured author on Nothing Binding yesterday. Unfortunately I didn't get to see it, since I was out all day, but never mind. The authors are rotated on a regular basis, so I will have another shout soon.

One very exciting piece of news is that I am soon to appear on US radio, on a show entitled "All That Matters" which is hosted by Phil Harris, himself a writer, from his own profile at Nothing Binding, of some repute. Phil tells me that his show is one of the top ten rated shows on the eastern seaboard, according to Adastra. This could do great things for me, as one never knows who might be listening ... I am booked in for June 11th, at 7.30pm eastern standard time, which is 5 hours behind GMT. I will have to stay up late, but I get the feeling it will be more than worth it.

I hope to deliver the final text for the new edition by the end of this week, so all being well it will go to print sometime during the first week of May, and I will then once again be seen hovering around the letter box waiting for the postman to call.

Back from Lundy (again)

I got back from another week on beautiful Lundy on Sunday 1st April (April Fool's Day), and what a wonderful week it was, as usual. It was the first sailing of the year. I wondered as the day approached, whether we would be sailing at all, or going by helicopter instead, as the weather seemed to be worsening, with the winds getting stronger and stronger. As it turned out, the day dawned bright and clear, with seas as a calm as a mill pond, and it was one of the smoothest sailings I have ever had. As the week progressed, the winds returned, until we got to last Friday and a gale warning for the island, which meant that, you guessed it, we ended up being helicoptered off all the way to Hartland, near the Cornish border. That was exciting then. I have been on the helicopter several times before, so it was nothing new in some ways, but it was the first time I have had to be coptered off when it should have been the boat.

I am back now and slowly getting back to normality. Paul is still embroiled in the court case re Graham Cook, who is proprieter of a self publishing company called Writersworld. The more Paul tells me about this man the more I am astonished by his business misdealings, and the more grateful I am that I had the foresight to walk in the other directon, when I sniffed a rat coming from his website.

While I was away, Richard had a call from from a television company called Films of Record, who are based in London, and have been commissioned by ITV to do a series called Web Lives. One of the programmes will be on print on demand, and that is how they found Richard, as his company is called Authors OnLine Ltd. Richard referred them to Paul. who has given them details of a dozen or so authors that he works with, myself included. Tom will check out all our websites and be in touch with those that he likes the sound of best. Fingers crossed that one of them might be me.

Paul tells me that ITV are interested in covering the Foyles book signing, which is still going ahead, although there is no confirmed date as yet. All I do know is that it is likely to be on a Saturday and some time before the middle of May. I had better get cracking on that new book cover ...

Today I am celebrating

Today I am celebrating, as not only am I off to my favourite place (Lundy) in the whole wide world tomorrow, but I have just received an extra special present from the postman - a big fat royalty cheque for the princely sum of £83.07! It may not be a fortune, but it is a lot bigger and fatter than my last one, which was for just £19.11. It will help to cover the cost of this trip to Lundy if nothing else.

Yesterday I recorded a lovely interview with Ben Ruddy from Nothing Binding. Ben is the business partner of Jerry Simmons, who is setting up the independent authors programme that I mentioned yesterday. He has a nice American accent as you will hear when you listen to the recording. I never thought I would say this, but it was almost worth missing an extra week in Lundy to be able to do this, as it could do wonderful things for my writing career. The sound is a litte distorted, but not too bad. You have to expect a few glitches with international calls. It was worth the cost of the phone call, as one never knows who may get to hear these things ...

Nothing Binding

My writing buddy, Nadine Laman emailed me some time ago regarding a programme that is being set up in the States for international independently published authors, by this I mean all those who are in some way self published, either short print run, or as I did, print on demand. The project is headed by Jerry Simmons and sounds very exciting. It could potentially do great things for me, by bringing my work to a much greater audience.

Jerry is setting up a website (Nothing Binding), which will go live on April 2nd, which will feature as a showcase for the 200 authors who have initially signed up (I should add that it is all free). We will have the chance to add links to our own sites, and various places where our books are available, add events, author bio and lots, lots more. Today I also recorded a short interview with Jerry's business partner, Ben Ruddy, which will be put on YouTube. I am free to link to this from any other website, including Jerry's and my own.

Only 200 authors have signed up for the initial stage, from all continents of the world, although mostly within the United States, since the project is based on that side of the 'pond'. Ben said that I was the first author from abroad to be recorded, so it doesn't sound like there are too many of us outside the US. Anything that helps to promote my work in the States has to be good. It is after all a much bigger market than the UK.

Feedback re New book cover

I added a new page to my website a while back and also posted on several of the writing sites I frequent, to see what peoples views would be re the proposed new book cover, shown in the post below. The feedback so far seems to be very good, with 99 percent of them saying that they much preferred the new orange cover. The one person who didn't like it said that no matter what I did he would not be interested in my book, so I am going to worry about him !

The general consensus though seems to be that they love the orange, and the idea of a bigger font. What they are not so keen on is the characters on the front cover, with most stating they needed to be more lifetlike (no one volunteered for the job of being a model though ....). One person suggested that the cross should be changed to an ankh, since this is a symbol of life whereas the Christian cross is a symbol of death - something that I may well ask the designer to look at. It has also been suggested by some that I drop the of Man from the book title, stating just Genesis: the answer to life, the universe and everything in between. An intriguing thought that does have some merit, only the bit about the answer is not really a subtitle, but a strapline. The book has been bout there now for 7 months already anyway, so not sure about the logistics of changing the title anyway, it will no doubt involve more expense for re-registering etc, something else to talk to Richard/Paul about.

Life is Change

Was it really 28th February the last time I posted on here? I find that hard to believe, yet the screen doesn't lie.

A lot has happened in that time. I have started to work as a volunteer for the National Trust, I have done some more invigilating work, but perhaps the biggest news is that I have temporarily left the Internet discussion site that I lauched, together with three friends in November last year. I will not go into full details as to exactly what happened, since these blogs are read by people who are still on there, and I do not wish to ruffle feathers, but suffice to say there were what is commonly known as "creative differences".

At the same time, Coran, my partner, who was acting as webmaster was unceremiously sacked after some outbursts on the admin forum which left both us quite literally realing. It was this more than anything that led to my leaving the site, as I needed to have a long hard think about what I wanted from the site and whether the direction it was and is going in is compatible with my own ideals.

It is difficult to walk away from something that I helped create, but life is change. The fact that this has now happened four times leads me to question whether I should be doing this whole forum thing at all. It seems to me that being involved in these sites as admin or a moderator leads to nothing but trouble, as the moment anyone starts to have different opinions the bitching starts, and before you know where you are words are being misconstruded and it all ends in tears. That is the nature of the beast, for the simple fact that Email and Internet forums are not a valid means of communication, but a short cut where 80 percent of communication that is non verbal is missing, so for the moment at least, I need to sit back and let the dust settle. As for my friends on there, well, if they are the true friends they claim to be then they will understand my need to do this, and still be there for me if and when the time comes to go back, if not, then I guess we will all know where we stand.

On the writing front, I have been busy, or rather, Coran has been busy redesigning the book cover. I have made a lot of changes to my website and added several new articles, plus a press and publicity page and also a page asking people to vote for which cover they like best, the old white one, or the new orange one which Coran has designed. Most people so far seem to prefer the new one, but some have said that the figures need to be changed to look more realistic, so it may be back to the drawing board to ask my original designer, Sandra, to redo them. One person also suggested that I change the cross to an ankh, as he said that the cross represents death but the ankh represents life. There is much to think about before I make the final decision. I would like to have it done before the Foyles book signing, which looks if it will be put back to some time in May.

The other thing that has happened is that I had a call from the organiser of the local WI (Womens Institute) to say that my name has been added to a list of people interested in auditioning to become one of their approved speakers. So, continue to watch this space ...