He was born with a defect he could not change. He was different and could never be like other boys, other men, other people. His disfigurement eventually drove him from his family, from the village and out into the world as a troubadour, a teller-of-tales … well, more precisely, a listener-of-tales. In solitude, with his trusty horse, he found a softer world without sniggers and demands and a world of peace and the silent whisperings of his soul. However, the solitude never lasted for long. The more he searched for that softer world, the more the sharp and abrasive one encroached...

This book has many uses:

• An exquisitely simple gift,
• For daily meditations,
• For personal/spiritual development workshops,
• For teaching children (of any age) life lessons,
• As a coffee table book
• A conversation starter, and
• To remind you of who you are each day - simply exquisite

I've collected the images appealing to my twisted sense of humour, over many years, and the words came about a little weirdly too ... in 2015 I heard about a local (Brisbane) competition for flash fiction, something I'd...

53 SMILES is about life - your life, my life, our lives - and its tiny stories address the big questions of the human condition and tell of our simple greatness, our foibles and how to let go of the need to be something for somebody else. This book, then, has many uses:

- For daily meditations,

- For personal/spiritual development workshops,

- For teaching children (of any age) life lessons,

- As a coffee table book

- For table topics for Toastmasters

- A conversation starter, and

- To remind you of who you are each day - simply...

We’re a story-telling lot, us humans.

Sometimes it’s an earnest actor in a white lab-coat or a black suit, trying to convince us that his toxic fluoride toothpaste is good for our health or that his party’s million-dollar spend on weapons is for peace. And they do it with such a straight face!

Sometimes the story’s presented with a chuckle and we know another fiction is on the way: “did you hear the one about …”

And, sometimes, just sometimes, there’s a story parading as nought but itself – a clear fiction...

Short stories and articles about and for men.

The Women's Liberation Movement burst into our living-rooms some thirty years ago with a strident, demanding, angry, divisive and separatist energy. And that's as it should be for it was about women reclaiming their masculine (yang) energy. While it is recognised that the public persona of the Movement was probably the tip of the iceberg, with most women just asserting themselves in a quiet (and often unsupported) way, it came across as a Women's Movement with masculine energy.

Ask people today about the Men's Movement and most...

The Writers of Ipswich are a group of writing enthusiasts who attended a 6-week summer writing school – in the middle of a heat wave!  The stories in this book are a response to a weekly topic set by facilitator Philip Bradbury, and reflect the great diversity of style, approach and life experience of the participants.  There are big ideas, small gems, touching accounts, high drama, satire and lots of humour.

Topics including chickens, fairy tales with a twist, embarrassing incidents, ‘how to’ descriptions, and poems about clothing, have resulted in a...

Arthur Bayly has an ordinary life, marriage and job. He’s bored. He hates them in his quaintly gentle way. He dreams of dangerous adventures. He arrives at work to find he is being stood down in suspicious circumstances and his dreams of being a James Bond come to fruition, all too dangerously.

Meanwhile, Mary had moved to London from Scotland, hoping for wealth and romance. Apart from a lingering affair with her sometimes-available boss, neither of these hopes eventuated … till she and Arthur are thrown into an insurance scandal that involves Britain’s foreign aid...