SAM NORTH -: an archive

Words & Comment

Happy Year of the Dragon. May your hopes and dreams come true. Failing that at least find a good book to read... I ought to let someone else ring in 2012 with predictions that will most definitely turn out to be wrong. Then again I can be just as wrong as the next guy I guess. Life is changing so much around the world so quickly and there are are so many trouble spots, so many impending elections in major countries and minor - 2013 will start with a whole new set of people running the world- all of them full of ideas of how to put right all the stupid stuff that the previous lot set in motion. They will all fail no doubt. Ready for Ron Paul for President? Really? I'm all for honesty in politics but are you ready for that? Fortunatetly it seems that Mitt is making the running and will be the Republican challenger. Of course given the poisonous vitriol that Newt has thrown at him he's already spoiled goods and Obama is a 'known' safer choice. Seems crazy way to elect a president. What of the Marine Le Pen winning the election in France. It could happen, she has 20% of the vote they say and rising. She might be there in the run-offs. Pandora's little box of tricks is out now. Extreme right and left will come to dominate politics as a direct result of the austerity we all must now face. And don't think China is going to be all rosy. You can't grow a country as fast as they have without massive financial strains and massive corruption - all of which will implode very soon, as they too have a changing of the guard. A property crash in Shanghai and elsewhere could bring down their banks just as easily as ours. The Chinese economy is slowing already (but wouldn't we wish for only 9% growth). Luckily the law of unintended consequences will take care of everything. Revolutions in the middle-east will produce new dictatorships - but this time fundementalist ones and women will lose out big time right across the region. There will be lamenting for the previous set of dictators. (But perhaps not in Libya or Syria). Can't be anyone who doesn't wish for democracy and peace in Syria, but the regime seems to prefer to fight to the death. Question: Which country will take in Assad and his evil brother? Hand them over to the World Court guys, wash your hands of them. Greece might be pushed out of the Euro and who knows a revolution might take hold with major unintended consequences for the region. If one goes, why not three, or four? There is too much fluidity to predict anything other than tomorrow is another day. By next December everyone will be obsessing about the Mayan calendar. (It's just a calendar - get over it, the world isn't going to end.) Unless Iran takes us all down first of course. They seem just crazy enough to want to do that and there's enough Republicans and Tea Party fanatics to take the bait. Want to escape it all? Going to get harder to find somewhere to go to that isn't in turmoil. It's all so up in the air. If you seriously think you can predict the oil price, gold price or price of bread one month from now you are doing well. One year away - impossible. One year ago Japan thought it was going to have a good year in 2011. Fate can play horrible tricks. Japan is now recovering but those laws of unintended consequences meant that the important factories that made the bits that make the whole were all in Thailand, which had the worst floods for 100 years. Diversification and off shore factories have their problems too. I am not going to predict anything for sure except that I'll be another year older and no doubt deeper in debt. With luck I will have met some new friends and drunk a few good bottles of red on the way. Right now I'm just going to think about writing (and procastinating). Raymond Chandler gave good advice about writing all those years ago: “The important thing is that there should be a space of time, say four hours a day at least when a professional writer doesn’t do anything else but write. He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t try. He can look out of the window, or stand on his head, or writhe on the floor. But he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write checks. Write or nothing... There are two very simple rules, a: you don’t have to write, b: you can’t do anything else.” Please note you can buy my Sherlock Holmes novel The Curse of the Nibelung as an e-book direct from iTunes now or from Barnes and Noble or Amazon of course. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If you like a rich character driven quirky novel to read - order my novel Mean Tide. A personal haunting with a difference set in Greenwhich on the River Thames. Better yet the story is almost true... All my novels now e-books. Available on Lulu.com or on iTunes Download here or Here for starters

'An engaging, unusual and completely engrossing read' - Beverly Birch author of 'Rift' Print and e-book Lulu 25% off right now

Mean Tide by Sam North (Young Teen) 'Extraordinary novel about a child's psychic awakening' ISBN: 978-1-4092-0354-4 Print and e-book http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/mean-tide/15665337 Kids can survive anything, they say. Oliver, aged twelve, has a missing father in Africa, his mother has had a breakdown, and he is recovering from chemo. He is sent to live with his only relative. On a foggy day, one bald boy, with his cat, Flop, arrives at his Grandma's house at the water's edge in Greenwich. Oliver discovers to his horror that his Grandma, a famous psychic, hates cats. Her housekeeper, Lena loathes kids, and silent Justine seems to hate everyone. Add crazy Harriet, who has seen every fortune teller in London; Aura, a mysterious, aspiring beautiful actress and Bullet, the homeless kid with a very mean streak, trouble can't be far behind. When Oliver and Justine find a beautiful dog with it's throat cut washed up on the riverbank, Oliver feels a strange connection to this dead animal and so begins his own induction into a psychic world.

Since 1999 Sam has been running the on-line magazine Hackwriters.com a site for international writers in all subject areas. It continues as a place for new and 'experienced' writers to showcase their work. As of writing there are 6800+ articles posted on site and it as archived by the British Library for the digital web archive - Sadly now ending January 2012

Thanks to all who have been ordering my books recently, particularly the flu pandemic novel 'Another Place to Die' - much appreciated. Spread the word. Now available as an e-book as well as print. 'Swine Flu infected almost every country on earth but it 'only' killed just over 18,000 people. Bad luck for those who died, but good luck for us it was such a benign virus. But there is a virus coming, something bubbling up, awaiting the right circumstances. Swine Flu was just 'practice'. When it comes - we will be so blasé about it we won't even take it seriously. That's the danger of a benign virus, we think we can handle it. We wont. You are warned. Read 'Another Place to Die' and prepare yourself for the worst...' 3000 sold so far and rising. *Saw Contagion the movie. Another Place to Die begins just as that movie ends...

This update January 2012 - find The Repossession by Sam Hawksmoor - pre-order now

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