I love Amazon and the Kindle and all ebooks. I also love ACX (Amazon's audible platform for creating audio books). However, I realised how flawed this system is when I wanted to share a book that I 'owned' with my brother.

If I buy an ebook from a non-Amazon supplier (Indie, etc), I get my pdf, epub, and emobi (Kindle) files. I can then share these files with my friends and family. If I buy from Amazon, I need additional technical knowledge before I can 'crack' the file and send it to friends and family. OK, this is annoying but not insurmountable.

I buy a LOT of audio books from Audible (another Amazon company). I love them. I walk for 3-4 hours a day and there is nothing better than doing so with a new book narrated into my ear. As I don't have many friends (yes, boo hoo me), I have never wanted to share my books that I have 'purchased'. Now, my brother has signed up and has become addicted to the siren-call of quality audio books. It is great value and allows you to listen to fantastic titles from business to classics to romance and thrillers. No argument there. BUT, I can't share my books with him, nor him with me. 

This made me think about what is happening to our society in general. Microsoft made the brilliant business decision to licence its software to IBM. IBM didn't care; it was only interested in making computers. Who cared about software? Over the decades, this licensing arrangement has become the norm. No one owns anything. Everything is a licence. You can't share or sell or enjoy any of the usual attributes of ownership.

In my research into the First Nations of Canada, I was struck at their members not being fully cognisant of the concept of ownership. I would suggest that many non-legally trained people also lack the full understanding of ownership. Over the centuries, we have sliced (salami-like) our ideas of ownership into various categories: legal, beneficial, reversionary, and so on. People would receive life-tenancies, or fixed tenancies. The government would regulate and enforce these forms of ownership and people became confident enough in the structures to start funding those with ownership. The banks/lenders would take security against one's legal, beneficial, or reversionary title. They would take security against leases or freeholds. They would take security against projected cashflows. All of this requires ownership.

In London, and throughout England, the richest families have been allowed to retain freeholds while leasing out the property that sits on top of it. Think of the Portman Estate, and much of the best parts of central London. All of this allows people who sit along that ownership spectrum to licence, lease, borrow against, sell and do what they want with the asset in question (subject only to the contracts to which they have  restricted themselves).

​However, if all we own are licences such as the ones we receive from Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and other proprietary business models, we are doomed to head in one direction--serfdom. Many people rent their homes (in Germany, it is almost 70%, in the UK, almost 30%). Almost all software is licensed. We are expected to act as a consumer or use the software to create more value. Most of us simply consume. It is like a piece of fruit. We never own something like this. It is perishable. Like fruit, we can eat it and become strong or we eat it and do nothing. Most of us eat and subsist.

Licencing of software has been a wonderful innovation to allow for companies such as Microsoft, Apply, and Amazon to become insanely big and powerful. But, it is also eroding our ability to be the masters of our own destiny. Instead, we are becoming pawns on a chessboard, constantly monitored and sold additional consumable 'add-ons'. Merely being on the chessboard doesn't make us players. Someone else is always in charge.

Until we recognise this vulnerability, we will continue blindly down this alley until it may be too late. The next generation is growing up without a concrete sense of ownership. They are growing up in systems created by others where nothing is owned by those within the system. 

Just a thought.

I am enjoying a break from writing. My brother has flown in from Canada and I am enjoying the finest cuisine. I knew he was a good cook, but this is ridiculous! We are going to all the tourist sites--places I haven't seen in over twenty-five years. It is a great break from my routine.

So...I'll post this short blurb and see you next week, same place, same time(ish).

I have been undergoing a bumpy ride these last few weeks. The engines have stopped and I am gliding, uncertain as to where I'm going and unable to adjust my course. My muse stopped whispering in my ear and writing output has been reduced to editing, emails, and business correspondence. No new work.

That being said, last night was the first good sleep I had for weeks. I have been going to bed late and waking early for quite a while. In some ways, I enjoy the pressure of minimal sleep combined with the recovery from any excesses of the previous day. For weeks, I wanted to sleep well, but I couldn't fall asleep; when I did, I woke up half a dozen times during the night. When I woke up this morning, there was no tension nor a sense of a tsunami-like wave of work I needed to attend to. I had fallen asleep around 9pm and woke around 4.30am. For me, that was great. I stayed in bed until 5am, thinking I might even fall asleep again. Instead, I began to sense that my muse had forgiven me.

I have started and abandoned two manuscripts since the New Year. My muse began to show me in my mind how the two stories were actually one. Scenes began to appear in technicolor again.

I was afraid to jump out of bed in case I frightened my muse off (I haven't named it--it definitely isn't a she or he). I luxuriated in the images and then tested the scenarios presented to me. I then, cautiously, exited my bed and made my way to the computer. I refused to allow any distractions as I opened my abandoned files. I began to re-read with this new inspiration in mind. It worked. I began the process of reconstruction and started a list of notes and characters so that continuity wouldn't be affected. When I was done, I sat back and smiled. My muse was back.

Then again, maybe it was never gone. Perhaps the struggle is the most important part of the writing process. I'll let you know how it goes.

TTFN
​Baron

I have never experienced anything like it. I blame my hubris from last week's vlog. By saying that I write 2,500 words per day (when I'm writing), I must have triggered something in my brain that made me complacent. I brag that I have written as many as 10,000 words in a day and that 500 words would feel like failure. 

Result? I haven't written a word since last week. The book I'm working on ceased to speak to me. My muse has gone silent. It is as though the gods want me to atone for my reckless exuberance. To that end, I no longer make any assumptions about output.

What have I learned? The book I have been trying to write may not be the book I should be writing. I have decided to put it aside and allow my mind to open up to the infinite and find me a new idea that will allow me to be what I have always been--an amanuensis for my muse. 

​Good luck to the rest of you who are still on good terms with your muse!

Many authors (like Stephen King) write that it may not be possible to learn how to be a great writer. You either are or you are not. I think there may be some qualifications to this and it comes down to two points:

1. If you have talent and do not learn the necessary tools to write, you will never be a great writer. You will definitely never write a great novel.

2. If you have the desire and learn every tool and study great writers, you may become a very good writer.

Either way, we must live with the consolation that only others--and time--will judge us. My philosophy is to treat writing as an extension of myself. In this manner, I don't use pen names or look at my books as 'income streams'. They represent me at particular times in my development--as a person and as a writer. 

For me, I begin the process of writing in a meditative state, allowing my mind to wander until it finds the tendril that it wishes to pursue. I allow myself the time--whether this means days or weeks--to let this grow into a form that I can see. I then begin writing a first scene. A character forms and I begin to see her personality. Another joins, and he or she begins to interact. Soon, a path becomes clear. 

In my meditative state, I try to understand the general arc of the novel and the direction of the plot. I don't know or understand how it is to transpire. Everything is very tentative, very fragile. I don't know if I will need to abandon the line of the story or whether it will grab me and embrace (or strangle) me until I finish the book. It is scary, exciting, and exhausting all at the same time.

While there have been times when this inspiration comes to me as I finish the final chapter(s) of a manuscript, I find that I am utterly depleted after I finish a book. I tend to treat myself to a cigar (or three) and a few days off to clear my head. I will busy myself with editing, other business, cleaning--anything--until my mind resets and is ready to begin its next journey.

I am assuming you all know how to read and write. And I assume you are all able to write a novel. The question is whether and how to write a great novel.

My answer: even the great writers do not always write a great novel. Great novels are an accident intended by great writers. All we can do as writers is to become the best we can be and pray for such an accident.

It is that time of the year again where we reassess what we are doing with our lives. For me, I am enjoying writing and the life of authorship. I have finished my tenth book and am doing the editing/pre-publishing elements for books 7-10 (Man on the Run Volumes 6, 1, 2, and Concentration Camps of Canada). In the last twelve months, I have published Revelation, Faust, Art of Wealth, and Man on the Run Volumes 3, 4, 5, 6. It has been an enormous effort and I look forward to writing more one-offs than series. I will only write volume 7 of my series once I have sold at least 100,000 copies of the series. This means 2017 will be about getting to grips with marketing. I have held off on this until now because people have proven resistant to starting a series at volume 3. I thought it was clever (a la Star Wars) but I have been proven wrong.

In addition to publishing to 35,000 outlets (so I am told), I have made (and am making) all my books into audio books. I have become hooked on audio books as I enjoy longish (20km) walks 3-5 times per week. They are the perfect companion. Naturally, for those of you who have friends, it is better not to be listening to audio books when you are walking together. 

I continue to have books translated into other languages, but I am going to halt this until my sales increase. Translators want to see track record. That being said, I have had Art of Wealth translated into French, Spanish, and Portuguese; it is currently being translated into Chinese (Mandarin). Revelation has been translated into three languages and is also being translated into Chinese. Faust has been translated into three languages. I anticipate these books to hit the market in the next three months.

I look forward to 2017 for a number of reasons.

1.  My newest book, Concentration Camps of Canada will go on sale. I hope to get it onto the curriculum of schools in Canada and the United States. If there are any of you reading this who can help, please contact me. It relates to Residential Schools in Canada and is a powerful story of a young boy told from his point of view from his first day in school to adulthood. I look forward to working with the First Nations in Manitoba and Canada in educating people about this chapter of Canada's history.

2.  My series will be ready for marketing. Man on the Run will be my primary focus and I look forward to getting the message out there. Naturally, I would be over the moon to talk to a distributor about this. The reality is that the Indie market is now more lucrative than traditional publishing for authors. Theoretically, I will make more money doing it myself. In reality, I am not doing this for money so I am happy for someone to take marketing off my back. The difficulty is that if I do nothing, my books will languish in obscurity. I would like them read!

3.  This is the most important: I look forward to spending more time with my wife.

4.  I look forward to getting back into the saddle re: business and development. I have been living the life of a retiree for five years. While it has allowed me to study French in France and Hebrew in Israel and write these books all while travelling the world, I find that I miss the buzz of business. Hyper-tech greenhouses, green energy, and creative financing are the most likely avenues I will pursue. Whatever I end up doing, I will ensure that I maintain my 2-4 hours of writing per day (either creating or marketing).

5.  Paper. I look forward to paper books (again). As I am travelling a lot, I converted to e-books. I love my kindle but it remains a sterile experience for me. I still love the feel of paper. I love to see the books on the shelf after I have read them. I miss the tactile interaction with 'real' books. I find that living in the ether of a paperless existence to be lonely. One one hand, I have the world at my fingertips. Google, downloads, and endless books, movies, documentaries, and research are available to me anywhere I can get wifi or an internet connection. While the world is theoretically limitless, I find that the algorithms of Amazon, Google, and the rest feed me what I am interested in. As a result, my world horizon narrows the more 'they' get to know me. I think there is still something lacking (for me) in the ether. I want to search, explore, and enjoy what is out there. The more I do, the more I come across the e-mining of emails and contact details from vendors and users of the net. This is because everyone is trying to accumulate their email lists independently. So, as I approach a site, I am required to enter my details. I dislike this so I click away. If I do enter my details, my inbox is bombarded. I can mark as junk or discontinue but somehow they continue to send me stuff. In the internet, you never truly ever leave a site. In real life, the door opens and then closes; you enter or leave as you want. You are drawn in or not and it becomes part of who you are. In the ether, an algorithm is defining who we are. The problem is that it is a reflection of who we are at the time.

I feel optimistic about the future. There are many reasons to dispair at local, national, and global news; but there are more reasons to be excited at the opportunities available to us--as individuals, communities, and nations. It is a good time to be alive and participating in history.