…small but perfectly formed…ambition should be encouraged relentlessly…

…on my library shelves, adjacent to a well-thumbed Webster’s lexicon and the Idiot’s Guide to Learning 3 Chords for Guitar (Spanish, the plonking use of, for), sits my collection of Master Steinbeck’s best, a miscellany of Chuck Dickens’ works, and sundry other superb proponents of the scribbler’s art…Pride of place, however, is steadfastly reserved for just about everything imaginable written by and written about, Sir Winston S. Churchill, including his rather splendid four-volume offering , ‘The History of the English Speaking Peoples’, for which  he knobbled (Nobelled?) the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature…Why, I hear you ask, is Master Gallacher rabbitting on about his bookshelf population, and particularly a long-deceased British Prime Minister?…quite simply this—the finest phrase to come from ANY statesperson’s mouth belongs to old Winnie…NEVER EVER GIVE UP… I’ll say that again for those of you snoozing at the back, there…NEVER EVER GIVE UP…I have tried all my life, and not always successfully, to follow that dictate…but I’ve found that when I DO stick with something I believe to be worthwhile, the payoff is incredible gratifying…Relevance, Master Gallacher, relevance??… get on with it … The relevance is this…having bumbled my way into this curiouser and curiouser labyrinth of self publishing author-dom, there have been many (call that hundreds) of ‘crossroads’ , moments, any one of which could easily have meant just packing it all in and doing something simpler, like climbing Everest backwards, or finding an honest politician…but Winnie’s growl kept rumbling away in the background there…and I’m delighted it did…to date, the trappings of being a writer include eyebags under my eyebags under my eyebags, insane mental committee meetings in my sleep of characters from my novel, (yes, Matron, I KNOW you record these), and an irrational but very tangible love for each and every one of the fabulous internet relationships I currently enjoy bantering with…step by faltering step, the masochistic manuscript marathon has led to Kindle best-selling success, and this month, seeing my beautiful little printed offspring decorate the commercial bookstores in Abu Dhabi…where it leads next only a band of gypsies with a dozen crystal balls could possibly foresee… and here’s the rub…I don’t care where it is, just so long as it IS…all of you intrepid fellow quill-scratchers out there will know the feeling… I exhort you to imagine a deep, gravelly, throaty, cigar and brandy-edged bass voice in your head, muttering…NEVER EVER GIVE UP…I know Matron.. I know..yes,..I’m getting back to bed now …