Casablanca Blues by Tahir Shah: Book review

☆☆☆☆☆ Casablanca Blues is another exciting, gripping, fast-paced, well crafted and atmospheric read from travel writer turned fiction author Tahir Shah. Personally, I found this to be Shah's best fictional work thus far.

The central character of the book, Blaine Williams, is obsessed by the classic film Casablanca and its own stars, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and is going through a mid-life crisis. This doesn't last very long, however, for early in the book, Shah pulls the rug from under him, again and again. Although written in different genres, this reminded me of Catherine Cookson's trademark, in which time and again, she'd shock the reader or wake them from complacency by deliberately thwarting a character or throwing them in the deep end.

As the story and Blaine Williams' character develops, however, we see that what seems like cruel fate or bad luck is perhaps a blessing in disguise. What impedes Williams and pushes him into crisis actually drags him out of a hole. Rising to the occasion – however challenging – he is propelled forward into a whole new life, and liberation, that until then he could only have obsessed and fantasized about.

All the while the author, who lives in Morocco with his family, paints an entertaining and perceptive picture of life in the land, enticing the reader to go there and share the wonderful experience. As for the eventual outcome, I don't want to give away the storyline, except to say that it greatly pleased me.

In summary, Casablanca Blues is a great read and I heartily recommend it.

Disclaimer: I first began reading Idries Shah's work (Tahir Shah's father) in the mid-1980s and later came across Tahir Shah's own writing. I was asked if I would read through a pre-publication draft of the work in PDF format, but I was not asked to write a review. This is a voluntary and honest review.

Casablanca Blues was launched in London on 20 October 2013 and will be published in November 2013. You can find it at:

• Goodreads
• Amazon US: Paperback • Kindle
• Amazon UK: Paperback • Kindle

You can find the author Tahir Shah at: 

• Official web site
• Facebook
• Twitter (as @HumanStew).

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

Escape From the Shadowlands, free 24-28 July 2013 (updated)

Update: This title is now back to its regular price of $2.99.

Free promotion updated and extended:

Escape From the Shadowlands by Etienne de L'Amour, a soft scifi / mystical adventure ebook, is FREE for your Kindle from Wednesday 24 to Sunday 28 July 2013, inclusive, Pacific Standard Time.

☆☆☆☆☆ "Astounding, dizzying journey! Entertaining, enlightening."

If you like Doris Lessing's Shikasta, James Hilton's Lost Horizon, Idries Shah or the legendary Sarmoun Brotherhood, then give this book a try. Escape From the Shadowlands is preceded by two prequels, but it stands on its own and is self-contained, so this is probably the best book to begin reading the Shadowlands series.

• Amazon US • Amazon UK • Goodreads • Blog post

Enjoy! :)

Job seeking: Online diagnostic profiling

Well, here's something to think about. I've to sit an online employment profiling diagnostic test in a couple of weeks, for the Department for Work and Pensions' Work Programme. It's to help them match me up with jobs in the most appropriate fields.

My new mentor told me that this test would involve agreeing or disagreeing with questions such as "Adverts contain hidden messages."

So what would you do posed with such a question? Because some adverts actually have used subliminal images and messages and other subtly pursuasive and sometimes questionable psychological techniques, then (since there is no means by which to qualify or clarify my responses) the honest answer would be "agree". That should at least get me a a +1 on the scale of honesty, one would vainly hope.

Now, if the assessor is also aware of this possibility, then my response would be fine and dandy. But if s/he is not, then I could potentially be profiled as a "conspiracy theorist" or "crackpot". Given that, is it wiser to disagree – feigning ignorance – at the risk of being diagosed instead as "ignorant"? And if I were to express my uncertainty, would the diagnosis be "indecisive"?

God, I love this boffinry. Or is that buffoonery?

Tips for writers #6: Read, read, read

 “Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.

Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”

~ William Faulkner.

JK Rowling and the Secret of The Cuckoo's Calling

JK Rowling: What's in a name?

In April 2013, an ex-military policeman, Robert Galbraith, published his debut crime novel, The Cuckoo's Calling. Though critically-acclaimed, according to the New Statesman it only sold a little more than 1,500 copies. Then something spectacular happened.

Richard Brooks, the Sunday Times' arts editor was of the opinion that the quality of the writing was too good to be that of a new author. Later, a columnist at the Sunday Times received a tip-off that the book had actually been written by JK Rowling; and finally JK Rowling admitted that it was indeed her work. Rowling told the Sunday Times, "I hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback from publishers and readers under a different name."

Before this news broke, according to an article in the New Statesman, The Cuckoo's Calling was ranked #4,709 at Amazon. Within a couple of days, it had hit the top of the charts at #1, and journalists have been falling over themselves to write-up this extraordinary event. Again by the New Statesman's reckoning, at the time it hit the #3 slot at Amazon, the book had made a 150,000% "increase in sales over just one day."

Can you spare any change?

Sadly, #BuyMyBook! is an ever-more-frequent and insistent message to be seen in the social media, and the screen shot from Twitter, shown below, really is a classic example of how not to hawk one's wares:

Old school marketing

This kind of approach, which you could call legalized spam, is based on old school marketing, the erroneous belief that one is in competition with tens of thousands of other authors, and that the only way to have your message heard is to shout more loudly and more frequently than all the others.

Things are not made any easier by a minority of authors who shamelessly abuse the new linebreak feature at Twitter (which is great when used in moderation) to post multiline "display adverts" so that they stand out in the crowd. Nor are things made easier by authors invading or hijacking hashtags used by genuine readers, such as #amreading, to advertize their books when they have so many hashtags of their own that they could use, like #kindlebook and #99cents.

It goes without saying that adopting this approach, the "tweet-readers' experience" can only go from bad to worse, and that for the tweet-authors, there will be a rapidly diminishing rate of return. And there is sure to be an angry or frustrated backlash, especially from the old guard of traditional publishing, who just love to crow about the failings of the unwashed masses, the hoi polloi and the dire threat posed to civilization by latter day "vanity publishing".

Is there a niche for reviews of ebooks by readers?

The Guardian newspaper has a weekly reader reviews roundup. To post a review, you first search their database to select a book, and you find that, alas, ebooks are not listed.

There are lots of groups at Facebook and Google+ where authors self-advertize, and book review bloggers who have a waiting list measured in months or years, or who are all-too-often "currently not accepting submissions".

Is there a niche for moderated groups or blogs catering for hopefully genuine reviews of ebooks by readers?

Obviously, a group or blog would need to have clear rules and guidelines and enforce them. Groups would be faced with quality control and style issues and would most likely require several moderators working in different time zones. Blogs would be more labour-intensive, as it's difficult to establish the real identity of the poster, and the owner rather than the reader would have to collect, edit and post the reviews on the readers' behalf.

Anyhow, if there is a niche for this kind of thing, then please go straight ahead. The best of luck to you!

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

Writers and their inspiration

“Inspiration can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be quite fickle ... If you want to be able to call on inspiration reliably then you need to work on it with regularity.

Someone once said that if you only go out with a bucket to collect water when it's raining, sometimes you'll get water. But if you go out with your bucket every day, even when it's not raining, sometimes you'll catch unexpected rain. And also, a strange thing may happen: that the very act of going out with your bucket may actually provoke such rain.”

So write something -- write anything -- come rain, shine, hell or high water.

~ Etienne de L'Amour, Time and Time Again.

Image: The Muse of Poesie (1886) by Konstantin Yegorovich Makovsky (1839–1915). Source: Wikimedia Commons.
• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

The peasants are revolting!

Radicalization and the activist

There has been increasing talk about radicalization in the UK press in recent months and years. For the most part, post-9/11, this has been about a minority of Muslims who have become radicalized by Salafist and Wahhabist fundamentalists and extremists, something which the vast majority of decent and moderate Muslims abhor.

Of course, there has been a backlash and physical reprisals, led by far right and racist factions, which are increasingly radicalizing people and swelling the ranks of their own followers, and again the vast majority of decent and moderate people find this equally abhorrent.

The mainstream media have placed far more emphasis on the radicalization of Muslims than on radicalization by the far right, but even that is only the tip of the iceberg awaiting our old steam ship.

Radicalization and Jo Public

What the mainstream media have not really addressed, but which is increasingly being covered by alternative, online media -- the real, if at times biased story -- is the perfectly understandable and growing radicalization of ordinary, everyday, liberal-minded and otherwise peaceful people, just like you and me, by the actions and inactions of their own governments; by what some have termed the military-industrial complex; and by the rich, powerful and sometimes secretive elite.

Demand for foodbanks rises as austerity kicks in

As recession, austerity and Government cutbacks in the UK begin to bite, it has been reported that foodbanks now feed an unprecedented 500,000 people a year.

What is even more disturbing is the news that one provider has implemented its own list of criteria for eligibility, stating that families with sick members, victims of crime and those faced with an emergency (such as an appliance breakdown at home) are eligible to receive charity. However, those with "chaotic lifestyles" or "money management issues" will be turned away.

“Please, sir, I want some more.” ~ Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist.

#austerity #cutbacks #WelfareReforms.

The question asked in an article about these important issues in The Word is: If foodbanks reject the "undeserving", where can they go?

Image source: http://pinterest.com/pin/54606214204631564/
By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

Thanks for your generous ratings and reviews

Many thanks to the kind readers who have generously posted star ratings and reviews at Amazon US, Amazon UK and Goodreads. Not having an established fan base, this feedback really is much appreciated and keeps me going through the low points of self doubt. Each star rating and review is a delight and something to treasure.

You can help

If you've read and enjoyed any of the books, I'd be very grateful if you could post a quick short review. This will help others find the material, which I hope will be both entertaining and useful to them.

Etienne de L'Amour

You can find Eteinne de L'Amour's books listed at Amazon here:
http://viewauthor.at/EtiennedeLAmour

And at Goodreads here:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5818501.H_M_Forester

H.M. Forester

You can find H.M. Forester's books listed here at Amazon here:
http://viewauthor.at/HMForester

And at Goodreads here:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5397207.Etienne_de_L_Amour

Blog articles about each book

If those links don't work for you, you can find a list of blog articles about each of the books, and links to the books, here:
http://mystical-faction.blogspot.co.uk/p/our-books.html

Many thanks again for your time, your interest and your consideration.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

Author H.M. Forester on the writing process

Phase 1: Pantser

When I first started out writing in my pre-teens, in the late 1960s, I didn't plan at all. I just wrote down the first thing that popped into my head ("wrote by the seat of my pants"), or pretty much copied whatever I'd read or seen on television. I guess that's how we begin to learn things: by imitation? Five decades later, I look back and cringe, and yet for all its deficiencies, I'm thankful that I found an early interest in writing, and I'm immensely grateful to my junior school teacher, Gordon Sharpe, for actively promoting this interest, not just in me but for the whole class.

Phase 2: Planner

Fast forward a couple of decades to the early 1980s, when I was by then working in science education, and I found myself increasingly and meticulously planning my writing. I'd surround myself with a barricade of reference books and spend half my time checking spellings and meanings and hunting for apt quotations. I guess that there were five elements at work here: at that time, I was unsure of myself; words did not come easily for me; I still hadn't found my own voice as a writer; I felt that other writers expressed their ideas much better than I could; and, probably due to my technical education and work, I was what we once incorrectly termed "left brained", that is logical, linear and methodical rather than lateral thinking, intuitive or inspirational.

Working in education, there was quite a relaxed environment and I could at times rest on my laurels. However, when I next came to work in industry, I encountered a game-changing culture shock. Here I found that I was only as good as my last customer helpline call; I had to multitask; and I had to do everything on the hoof, with a steep and often frantic learning curve. This, too, probably contributed to a dramatic change in my writing style from long, spoon-fed descriptive passages to fluent dialogue and action, often leaving the reader to exercise their own imagination.