Free book!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Happy-Nest-Malinding-Village-Archive-ebook/dp/B017Q5X3NM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1450441344&sr=1-1&keywords=Happy+Nest


Hope this works - it's a link to 'Happy Nest', the latest in the Malinding village series. It's the village archive, to which the villagers have contributed mini-auto-biographies, poems, and in one case, a short story which relates how the writer, a teen aged village girl with a longing for education and a career as a nurse, encounters Ed, the anti-hero of the series, with hope but little expectation. Happy Nest is on offer, free, at Amazon, for five days from 18/12/2015
Enjoy!


PS
Of course we hope you'll buy the rest of the Malinding books - they fund the charity (Gambian Occasional Emergency Support - GOES) which supports education and the provision of medical care in the Gambia.

Romantic Adventure Stories

Talking to friends at our writers' group last night some of my books were described as 'Romantic Adventures'. I certainly hadn't thought of them in this way but I see the point - they generally have happy endings and they do involve people falling in love ... OK: Romantic Adventure it is. Well, certainly 'Empty Bananas' and 'Mussukunda' and 'The Mechanical Girl' are, mostly. Not so sure that 'Mussukunda' , 'Chasing Freedom Home' and 'Story's End' are quite the same genre. You could read them and let me know? All available on Amazon Kindle eBooks as 'The Malinding Village Series'.
Hmmm. Romantic Travel Fiction, perhaps?
Just a reminder that all proceeds from the sale of the books goes to GOES to help schools and clinics and lots more.

A mixed bag!

It's been a funny sort of day. Started off by getting a clean bill of health from the clinic - they manage my asthma and angina.  Sun has shone all day!
 Thought I would admire the nice new cover for Empty Bananas (designed by Adam Vickerstaff) - it wasn't on the book. Drat! bother! Trudget!  I was certain I'd installed it last week. Checked with KDP - I had managed to download it but I hadn't pressed the 'save & publish' button. I have now - Empty Bananas has a gleaming new cover illustrating Ed's* progress from a small boat to a Gambian village (Malinding). You can even see his motor bike basking in the shade ...
 Nearly forgot - the nurse, Joanne, at the clinic this morning was interested in the work GOES does and offered to donate some equipment when we next travel out to the Gambia.
 To offset all this good news we still have no word that the parcel containing more ECG paper for Banjul Hospital has arrived. Fingers crossed - I can't see that the contents would be on any use to anyone else.





*Ed is the anti-hero chap who ... well, you could just read the books and sponsor GOES which helps real people!

GOES keeps going!

What have we been up to lately? Well, the Gift Aid arrived - thank you, UK Government! Quite a lot of it has been used already because we don't pile up money in the bank. If we have money it's our duty to send it to people and places in need.
We've helped a small school by paying the wages of a couple of members of staff.
We're paying for a young woman (her education had to pause while she had a couple of children) taking a crafts course at Brikama.
We sent support to a family when their mother died.
We paid the registration fees for a nurse who studies to become a midwife.
We have helped a couple of people develop their market gardens.
We have paid for the medical care of several people between the ages of 18 months and 80 years.
We have passed money on to a friend who is building a school.
We have paid school fees for young children to attend nursery schools.

We are running out of money again!
Please help - I noticed that 3 of you bought Malinding ebooks yesterday - or did one of you buy 3 books?
This is a good way to support GOES - and GOES supports people in need in The Gambia.
Thank you!

Another busy day

Well, busy if you include waiting as an activity! Waiting for a cheque from HMRC, that is.
Lots of interest in the latest book, 'Chasing Freedom Home' - please will some of you who now have a copy post a nice review on Amazon? If you do hopefully that will increase interest in other books in the 'Malinding' series and so make a welcome contribution to GOES funds!
 The next, and possible final, book in the series is now into its second chapter - about 3,500 words so far. We went to Gladstone's Library for the day - I took 4,000 words with me but I had read them aloud, in private, thank goodness, and I was far from happy with the result! So the scissors came out and there was a severe editing session this morning.
 After lunch, with cake, the muse was a bit kinder and I've re-written several passages - hope they'll sound better.
 Best wishes to you all, and thanks for your interest.
Tom

Free offer - 'Chasing Freedom Home'

As I promised a few days ago I have put 'Chasing Freedom Home' on free offer for my African friends. I've used your country, some of your names and a lot of your good weather to feature in this Kindle book! Only fair to let you have a free read! You can download it on your PC, laptop or tablet - Amazon have a free app which enables you to do this.
 The story warns what might happen if people in England refuse to vote at a General Election and by default a rabid racist, fascist party comes to power. Africa offers refuge to people escaping death camps and slavery and the characters of the 'Malinding' series of books come to the rescue!
 The free offer starts on Saturday 7h of June and ends on Tuesday 10th of June. I don't object if you wish to buy the book (and the others in the series!) before or after those dates because all the revenue from sales goes into the bank account of GambiaGOES and from there to The Gambia to fund education and health care.
 Best wishes from a rainy Warrington to a sunny Africa!
Tom.

Chasing Freedom Home!

Chasing Freedom Home is the title of the latest 'Malinding' series of Kindle ebooks. I've just downloaded the text to Amazon and, fingers crossed, it should be available to buy ( $3) from this time tomorrow. As usual, income goes straight to the GOES bank account, where I hope it will soon be joined by the Gift Aid income from HMRC.

Where does the money go? To the Gambia - recently providing support for a very small boy to have an eye operation, to a young woman who, with your help, needed proper medical attention to discover that the lump she had found was not cancerous, and to support the family of a lovely old lady who died recently.

 We have just taken a little time off to play with our latest grand-nephew in the park, and enjoy singing nursery rhymes at full volume in the back of the car.

 I'll report again soon!

Tom

To everything there is a season ...

And this was the season to be bone idle for a couple of days! We went to visit my daughter and be waited on hand and foot. It didn't quite work out like that because I decided that it was high time the latest book was finished! Didn't quite happen but the first draft is on paper - only numerous edits and re-writes and the design of the cover to worry about! GOES was presented with a very welcome cheque, which will be paid into the bank on Monday and immediately sent via BAYBA to help a young family in a small fishing village. So, the being bone idle intention didn't quite work but we had a most enjoyable few days together - apart from our host - hope you're better soon!
 The smog, laden with dust from the Sahara, might have been the prompt to finish the book?
Must find out about the copyright laws relating to 18th Century art work - 'Am I not a man and a brother?' It would make a great cover picture.

Free Ebooks!

The entire Malinding series - all 4 of them - Empty Bananas/Mussukunda/The Mechanical Girl and The Alkalo are on Kindle Books (Amazon) for 5 days on free offer. Stories for Gambian Children is there too. If you're familiar with The Gambia, or thinking of taking a holiday there they might be just the books you're looking for. Happy reading!
Tom

Fundraising - what we've tried so far ...

We have tried sponsored cycle-rides, writing books (five so far - Google 'Malinding'), and selling things on Ebay ( a hat-sizer, a very small locomotive, a 40 year-old Seagull outboard, two scooters, a bike, a boat and an unidentified navigation device, to name a few.) We use Easyfundraising as a search engine, which pays GOES 0.5p per search - it all mounts up. We beg for donations and old reading glasses and new medical supplies: I think people run away when they see us approaching

Telephones!

Wonderful invention, the 'phone. They don't seem to have got it quite right yet; I decided to dump my old Nokia, the small brick-like gadget that had served me well for about ten years, surviving being dropped, drenched in the wettest rain the The Gambia's rainy season could deliver (that's pretty wet, if you haven't yet visited GOES territory from July through to September!). I gave myself a present of an up-date which is supposedly able to take pictures and deliver them to blogs and web-sites within moments. It's lighter and smaller than the brick. Pity it doesn't do what it says on the tin/box. Yes, it takes pictures. Then it keeps them. I've been trying for the past three months to send the pics to this web. They don't arrive - somewhere, in outer space, there are pictures of clinics and hospitals and schools floating about, looking for a home. What the 'phone does do, and seems very good at, is costing me money. It leaks money. If I check the balance at the end of one day and then switch it off for the night then switch it on next morning the balance is lower. Somehow it has spent money while being switched off! Is it going out to all-night parties? Is it connecting to Amazon and buying ebooks? What is it doing?
Sorry about the rant - I like technology when it works, really I do!
Best wishes,
Tom.

By the way, the fifth 'Malinding' book - Chasing Freedom Home - has reached 40 thousand words - half written.

Words make money - I hope!

I spent another pleasant day at Gladstone's Library in Hawarden, near Chester, yesterday. It's a wonderful resource for writers: desks to work at, food to eat (the cakes are tasty) and even beds to sleep in if you want to stay overnight!
As darkness fell I drove home with 2000 new words added to the latest book in the Malinding series. Just 20,000 more to go! This will be the fifth (and possibly the last) book in the story of life in a Gambian village, seen through the eyes of a mixed-race family. Malinding village exists only in my mind, as do the characters who inhabit it, and who travel between there and the North West of England.
The books are for sale on Amazon for Kindle readers. All money from the sales go directly into the GOES Co-op Bank account, and from there to help the humanitarian work of that charity in The Gambia. Much of the work of the charity which has been described in this blog has been funded, at least in part, by these works of fiction. So, imaginary people help real-world men, women and children: fiction becomes fact.
Back to cake - no! I meant back to work!
Tom

Really must do some packing soon!

For the first time in years we haven't received an extra baggage allowance from Thomas Cook. THIS GIVES US A BIT OF A PROBLEM - WHAT DO WE LEAVE BEHIND? It's a headache. People have been very generous again and the spare bed is swamped with donations. Clothes, educational materials and medical equipment. We would like to take some odds and ends for ourselves, too! It's surprising how quickly 20kg mounts up. We have a ritual of weighing everything on the bathroom scales, remembering to include the weight of the suitcases.
 I have been given the loan of one of these new phones which not only can take pictures but can send them to blogs and web-sites and whatever. I'd been perfectly happy for years (and years and years) with my old Nokia - it was just a phone (oh, and it could turn into a torch, very handy on a dark night in a village!). This phone has survived rainy seasons, being dropped, being generally ill-treated, but now it's starting to fall apart. The keyboard bit is detaching itself from the rest of the phone and it's lost part of its memory (it's not the only one!)
 So I have a loan of one of these new (how new?) multi-purpose phones. So far I've learned to switch it on. If and when I learn how to take and send pictures I will 1) post some on here, just to show off, and 2) set about finding a similar camera for myself.
 Oh, and a big 'thank you' to Barclay's Bank for the gift of lots of pens - should keep a couple of schools happy!
 I've not posted on here for a while because I've been busy re-writing 'Empty Bananas' - the first of the Malinding series of books. The original version was a disgrace, I'm ashamed to say. The new edition is much improved (so I'm told) and will soon be on free offer for a few days on Kindle. I hope you enjoy it and that it encourages you to buy the other books in the series. All money from the sales goes to GOES and then on to The Gambia.
 Thanks for reading this - I know I ramble on!
Tom

The sun shines but I go to work!

You might think that at my age I'd have more sense! Still, there's another book to be finished. In it Ed's eldest son, Ed-Lamin, has finished Uni in England and has settled down to live happily ever after with Jane, his beautiful girlfriend. There was a General Election six months ago but the people of England were either too lazy to vote or too disillusioned to care. So, as a result, an extremist party - the Purity People's Party - gained power and set about ridding the country of 'undesirable aliens' by rounding them up into concentration camps. Ed-Lamin is captured by manages to escape by  -  well, that would be telling and I need you to buy the book and support GOES! Anyway, it may or may not end happily!
 So, that's why I've spent a sunny day indoors. The pile of reading glasses donated by kind people in Cheshire for use by short-sighted people in West Africa grows - more please. We're not sure that we'll be able to take heavy stuff like reference books out this time because we've not heard from Thomas Cook about an extra baggage allowance yet. Fingers crossed. Light stuff we can manage in our pockets - mobile phones (always welcome), memory sticks, spectacles and such like, please !

Thinking about another free promotion for two of the 'Malinding' books ...

The first of the books, 'Empty Bananas', and the third, 'The Mechanical Girl' could be put on Amazon's Kindle ebooks free offer again. I thinking about what to do.
'Empty Bananas' was the book that started it all off. The first chapter, about an unhappy little girl, was a short story I wrote many years ago. I read it to my local writing group - Vale Royal Writers' Group - and put it back in the drawer. I kept thinking about the old man in the story and he grew into Ed, the anti-hero of the first book. I was concerned about the little girl, and she became Jodie, a world class wheelchair athlete.
I wrote the book and decided to publish it on Kindle. I was so keen to put it on sale that I published the wrong version; it contained all sorts of mistakes, and made a generally poor impression. Col gave it a very fair write-up and I was encouraged to wrestle with the technology and publish a better-edited version.

I wrote 'The Mechanical Girl' as a fictional autobiography of a youngster in one of the villages who enjoyed making toys out of scrap materials for the smaller children. She showed great ingenuity, making tools to help her in her task. I gave her a different name and wrote a fictional account of what her life might have been. She is the only one of my characters based on an actual West African. All of my other characters, and the village of Malinding itself, are pure fiction.

Right then; decision made. I'll put 'Empty Bananas' on free promotion, some time next week. Probably. I'll let you know! It won't bring any money to the charity (GOES, in case you'd forgotten) but it might encourage the sale of the other books ... hint, hint!