Monthly Archives: April 2019

… this ol’ Scots Jurassic scribbler formally joined the ranks of the global writers’ diaspora over a decade ago… I use the term ‘formally’ there, because informally, the creative pens-crafting has been with me prob’ly since birth, which seems about a coupla hundred years ago… at infant and primary school in my hometown of Docklands, Govan in Glasgow, we children were introduced to ‘Composition’, the name used before the college level description, ‘Essay-writing’… no matter how short the offering, even if only a page or two,  it was drummed into us to have ‘an introduction’, ‘a middle‘, and ‘an ending‘… as an early starter in reading books supposedly beyond my years, I habitually ‘borrowed big words’ from novels and from the dictionary, force-feeding them into my ‘Compositions’… the teen years crept up stealthily on me, and resulted in the angst-ridden poetries and short stories, so prevalent among my peers back then… fast forward to the past ten years to my Jack Calder crime thriller tomes, and not much, in truth, has changed… for sure, I hope, a tad more sophistication, and cerebral application toward plot development, character arcs, and all that good stuff the professorial tutorials demand of fledgling authors… with a back list that happily still gets regularly downloaded on Auntie Amazon Kindle, it would seem to some worthy folks that I am in a position to judge (nay, not ‘judge’, ‘pontificate’, Master Gallacher, ‘pontificate’!) what constitutes being a successful writer…

…for me, it is quite simply, transforming the desire to write into actual writing… no more and no less than that… it is NOT about selling a million copies of your wee masterpieces (although, that is not without merit)… nor is it about garnering any of the Nobel Literature Prize, the Man Booker Prize or any other labelled literary honour… similarly, rankings in bestseller lists, or the Noo Yawk Times ratings… no, sir… no, madam… How to be a Successful Writer is simply writing for yourself… taking pleasure, delight, and sum’times anxiety and mental pain, and just getting it down on paper, or laptop, or whatever, is ALL it takes in my not so ‘umble view… so, go be successful!…see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!

ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE OR RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH – BE MY GUEST

…around this month in 2008, Master Gallacher first experienced the absolute delight of ‘being on that pink cloud’, having just typed ‘The End’, on my first ever Jack Calder crime thriller… it’s a feeling which thankfully returned with pleasing regularity as the subsequent books became a series… apart from my Granny, hard-pressed (read; ‘arm-twisted’) family, and bosum buddies, more than 100,000 wunnerful readers have seen fit to download copies of the novels since the first edition hit the Auntie Amazon Kindle ratings… I am immensely grateful to every single reader… you have made a happy man very old… the immersion in the addictive universe of the modern-day writer involves for me a constant love affair with the SOSYAL NETWURKS, where the development  of countless friends from the scribblers diaspora has been a great joy… add to that the fabulous range of reader friends and just plain, down-to-earth, honest-to -goodness LUVLY bloggers and bletherers on Facebook and other channels… laughs galore, and amusement by the tonne… none of that was predicted when the first story was completed… and I wouldn’t change one iota of the journey thus far… eleven years of Jack Calder and Co… where did that time fly?… dear pals, all of you who take any time to interact with me, please know how much you play such an important part of my life… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!

THE VIOLIN MANS LEGACY

myBook.to/theviolinmanslegacy

VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK

myBook.to/vengeancewearsblack

SAVAGE PAYBACK

myBook.to/savagepayback

KILLER CITY

myBook.to/calderkillercity

DEADLY IMPASSE

myBook.to/Calderdeadlyimpasse

…this ol’ Scots Jurassic scribbler’s writing schedules have been more than full this past twelve months… a back-burner item was the hope of producing my own personal memoirs in-between lengthy programmes encompassing ghostwriting autobiographies and family histories for other people, work which I enjoy immensely… I had begun to despair of finding enough of that elusive item that most of we authors crave — time!… one morning last week, like a flash of inspired lightning, it occurred to me, that much of the content for any memoir of mine was already ‘out there’, or more precisely, ‘in here’… on my webpages… for the past seven years as a blogger, I have shared a kaleidoscope of topics, many of which were throwback anecdotes of things I have seen,  felt and experienced during my life and career… over the past few days, I have downloaded and segmented these particular blogs into a timeline, subject matter,  and career slots… and guess what?… no less than 40,000 words of copy is there already!…

…this will be the bedrock on which I will build the telling of my memoirs… of course, I will re-work the  content to meld it with my narrative flow, but what a wunnerful realisation, that much of my writing  labour has been done through my invested time over these last years since my first blog in May 2012… the amazing gift of finding treasure in your own backyard… the impetus is now with me to get on with it, a far cry from my original expected target date of a couple of years hence… stand back, and let the smoke billow from the keypad as the record of Master Gallacher’s Life and Times see the light of day, and not remain locked away in the registers of the various police authorities and lunatic asylums of Docklands Govan in Glasgow, Tobermory, Campbeltown, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Manila, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain... see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!