Due to a proliferation of what appear to be scam emails that purport to increase online visibility through optimising my website, and keyword integration for SEO via online sites (amazon), I have removed my Contact Form to try to divert this issue. 

I recently read a book called Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds which explores and interviews the thousands of people kidnapped, conned into, and employed to work in huge compounds where they learn to write enticing emails that end up in a "brilliant" investment opportunity for the receiver. These people are often working 24 hours a day, are not allowed to contact outsiders, and are kept inside prison-like locations behind barbed wire with guards out front. They are often beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered if they don't reach target goals. Authorities have made progress in shutting down some of these compounds, but many are still in operation, hence the continual filling up of my spam email folder.

What is surprising, is that these new emails have come directly from the contact form that I added to this website, allowing access to my publishing email. It has been very clear that the writers have scanned all the necessary information from my profile, typed up an email that sounds like it is sent from someone who wants to help me reach a wider readership. But none of these emails have shown any signs that my books have been read, or that they have been bought. They also assume that I, as a writer, has money to throw away, when the reality is that what money I once had was spent on producing the physical books, and now I'm left with boxes in cupboards. 

I tried to play with one or two of the emails with replies saying "Go ahead and do the work - when I see the results and the money starts rolling in as a consequence of your work, then you will get paid." After all, the economy we live in requires the labourer to put in the hours of work before they get paid, so I applied this economic reality to my replies. The scam email writer showed some savvy, and were persistent in giving me a deal where I could pay certain amounts first over a period of time, if I wanted to. I trashed the conversations. 

Now that I know what stresses these people are under (and who knows, maybe some are independent having figured out they could do the same from their bedroom), I have decided the best course of action is just to ignore them. The more I became knowledgeable and understood the situation, the more I realised that it would simply be better to ignore all scam emails. The only way that this can truly be ended is if the scam industry has no fish biting their hooks. 

This day has not been hard.
This day I remembered that emptiness was not a negative, but was something to accept and pass through. 
This day I could have stayed at the Domain longer and wandered, climbed the hill, but I chose the return instead. 
This day I ate enough without overeating. 
This day I felt alone. 
This day I accepted what I achieved. 
This day I cooked for myself. 
This day I chose, and the choices I made were all mine. 

Do I worry that there is no dream left? Do I care not to dream any more? Dreams are for the young. 
This life, 
                this life,
                                this life, 
                                                this realness, 
                                                                       this existence, 
this escapable amount of choices. All the ends piled up high as I walk on by, ignoring the jeering, the laughing, the reminding.
I have only this, 
This I only have.
That is what I gave, 
This is what I give. 
I give. 
Some accept.
Some forget.
Some have nothing to return. 

I follow the darkness. Lead me to sleep. In this sleep with me we may find the dream, where everything is false and nothing is permitted, and love is the albatross around the neck reckoning upon the sodden boards of salty sea spray. In this dream you will garner the flowers, find the wreath to don and exclaim your kingdom with hordes of drums thrombling your songs.

When we wake, together in tandem, breath will be for keeping, light will beg the asking, and sound will whisper the sanctity of forgotten tunes. 
So it was. 
So it shall be.

• 08/10/23

You know you're dealing with A.I. bots when they first, don't get your name right, and second, are suggesting this "interview" is going to cost you. 

Dear A.I. programmers:

1. Struggling authors can barely afford to feed themselves, let alone pay for an "interview", and rich authors don't pay for jack-shit!
   
2. FUCK OFF!!! 
   

I am not a brand.

I am a writer. And writing is what I do. 

I will not be "growing my brand" in the marketplace - that is a job for marketing. 

What I will be doing outside of writing, is talking to people who love books about my writing, and about my life as a writer. (And maybe sing some songs in between some readings)

If you would like to hear about my journey from renting to living in a car and building a campfire on the riverside, and onwards to successfully publishing two Poetry & Prose books, contact your local library, art gallery, or arts event centre, and ask them to get in touch with me. There's nothing I like more (apart from finishing a story) than talking about the freedom that I have experienced once I ditched the housing and rental market!

I look forward to chatting to you. 
:-)

This is a short-story I wrote as part of the Motueka Writing Group WHAM (Write Here At Motueka) in 2024. It is set in a dystopian future where ink is at a premium. It was begun as a dialogue under the title 'Stealing Names' which was a theme I thought of during one session after one of our writing companions, Colin Clough, had told stories about stealing identities, or faking names, back in the 30s and 40s when passports weren't as vigorously vetted, and going for trips around the world on ships. His stories were always fascinating, and some of them got collected in the following book: The Tap Dance

This story functions as two sets of monologues:
Part 1 is a customer speaking directly to the assistant at the waiting room; and Part 2 is the manager speaking directly to the customer.

Here is an audio recording of my story 'Premium Ink' narrated by myself. Enjoy!

A great, positive, discussion about the fall of professional reviews and the rise of online reviews. 

Comment section is pretty funny too...

A rare occurrence for my YouTube channel is for a video to get over 1000 views. While my 'Dark Souls III - Dragonslayer Armour with Eygon of Carim summon [NG]' video has received 8.7k views since I uploaded it 9 years ago, this little ditty of a folk song I wrote while I was relief teaching in my hometown of Gisborne/Tūranganui-a-Kiwa on the East Coast of the North Island in Aotearoa, comes in second with 1.7k views. 
 
A bit of a surprise, really, considering the song is in two odd time signatures, usually only found in Classical Music or Progressive Rock songs. The verses feature and 11/8 rhythmic figure based around E and a slide into C#m9, that descends down through A, Amaj7, and F#m as the verse progresses through the lyrics. The chorus is a simple 7/8 using basic A, E, and B chords. Although this entire structure works, more or less, like binary composition (A, B), with 4 reiterations, the lyrical contents of the verses help to progress the song forward. 

Starting with the title 'Hello Morning' the lyrics describe a protagonist rising at dawn, embracing the sunlight and bringing flowers to the windowsill for the sun to bring its light into their world. This embracing of the world continues on, first with the partner and reassuring them that 'Love will never let you down', then to a cobblestone path, the metaphor for life's journey; and finally, the day has passed and the protagonist looks up at the stars, to consider them as friends while bringing 'telescopes and observant eyes' to gaze and let the light of the stars into their world. 

This last verse is, in all its simpleness, is what I like the most about the song. A journey from dawn to dusk and meeting the darkness with the light that is offered, and accepting it as a friend. In other words, whatever troubles are in your life, there is always light somewhere that can be found and love embraced. 

It is a simple song, with odd time signatures rooted in a rhythmic feel, proving songs don't have to just be in 4/4 all the time, or in standard song structures; that they can have odd twists to their foundations and structures, and still be appealing to many listeners. 

When I first started writing songs, I felt a certain affinity for song structure. I always had a sense of understanding form and seeing how it could be manipulated out of its verse/chorus patterns. Partly, if not mostly, I think this came from Led Zeppelin, who never felt it necessary to supply a chorus with vocals (When the Levee Breaks, The Wanton Song), or having new/different lyrics for each chorus repeat (The Rover). My songs from 1993 all the way to 2016 would often tweak the standard song form: suddenly inserting the upcoming bridge riff between second and third verse before the second chorus (Oh Joyous Song), bringing in the guitar solo after only the first chorus (I can Feel), shortening a song to just 2xVerse/bridge/chorus/verse/guitar solo (Coattails). Helmet were another band who had an obvious influence in this department. A typical Helmet song structure is: verse/verse/chorus/bridge (or solo)/chorus - bringing songs down to bare necessities and never overstating their point.

Learning about Sonata Form in my composition studies from 2004 through to 2006 allowed me to take a brand new look at the verse/chorus structure, but flipped around in an A/B form, with the development section replacing what I understood as the guitar solo section of a song. While my first two symphonies were mostly failures (the third movement of the first pushed way beyond my capabilities by attempting a Sibelius-like composition), they did teach me a lot about sonata form and how to use, reuse, and develop each theme. 

I even took this straight into a guitar composition that I wrote in 2013's 'A Minor Sledge'. Another tweak: here I start developing the second theme during the repeat of the exposition, and it is this early development that transitions the themes into the new key for the "official development" (the coda transposes the last part of the development into the original key). The jazz guitar piece 'This is Yours' (2014), uses standard sonata form (although, a slight tweak, in that it develops, mostly, one particular section of the second theme instead of the first theme).

Back in 2004, I was having issues with a musician friend who couldn't commit to band work, and I dramatically proclaimed that I was going to quit music because nothing ever worked out for me. My guitarist friend who I was starting a rock/metal band with, laughed, and said "You can't quit music. Even if you tried, I'd come over and visit, and you'll be scrawling notes and ideas onto your bedroom wall." 

Years later, I did quit music. When I had no more songs to write, I really had no more to give to music, and put the guitar away for about five years, and only really played occasionally when I walked into music shops. Of course, my bandmate was right: I did always go back to musescore and see what i could make of some ideas. Usually the results were atrocious, and the pieces got filed with titles like 'Mr Stubbs sucks, again', 'the reason why you don't do this' ... etc. Last year, while writing The Falling City (finished and soon to be released digitally, if no publisher can be found), I did stumble across some ideas and wrote a piece for a chamber sextet, with Bassoon as lead instrument. It's okay, not great, but it serves as a completed piece. 

I have since been playing guitar again for the last three years, realising I should never have put it down - I lost all my thumb strength and much of my shredding speed (although I never mastered sweep-picking, I was pretty quick with multiple hammer-ons), and have only got both back in small doses now. This String Duo here, like the cello theme from the third movement of Three Orchestral Scores (2006), began on guitar. A simple, but interesting idea, that, even after the key change, I could not think of how to develop it further without it just being looped (I don't have a loop pedal). So, I transcribed it to string quartet, starting with cello, and then adding the viola part. However, it seemed pretty contained within these two instruments, and I soon deleted the two violins. Although I'm not a fan of Mozart's String Duo's, I had dabbled a little in Duos with other instruments, but never completed anything with any true degree of success. I actually feel like this Viola and Cello Duo is a success (whether people like it or not, is another issue...), and it takes the sonata form again, and tweaks it by not repeating the exposition, but repeating the development only, while also adding a transitional third theme. 

I am now working on a fugue for this duo as the second movement, using two themes that have come out of this Allegro movement. 
 

• 14/03/26, Ōhaupō