Peter Jones, Author

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Book Signing 10th Feb! Help me celebrate the re-launch of ‘How To Do Everything And Be Happy’

February 4, 2013 by Peter | 0 comments

So, the new paperback version of How To Do Everything And Be Happy has been out for a good couple of weeks now and if you missed the flurry of activity on facebook, twitter, various radio stations up and down the country and, oddly, Spain – where have you been!??!

Needless to say, I’m pleased as punch, and for the first time in my short writing career I suddenly feel the need to celebrate with all those people who helped me get to this point. In other words, YOU. How does the afternoon of Sunday the 10th of February sound? From 1pm. Here in sunny Southend on Sea, at Waterstones Bookshop. Put that in your diary.

There’s no need to feel compelled to buy a new copy of the book if you’re an existing reader – I’ll sign whatever copy you have – but most of all I’d like to shake you firmly by the hand and thank you for your support.

As well as handshakes I can say with reasonable certainty that there’ll be FREE pens, badges, lollies, and glasses of fizz! Possibly with alcohol in them! And if none of that’s enough to entice you then there’s always the official How To Do Everything and Be Happy Balloon Hat! With his big smiley face and out-stretched arms, your smiley-balloon-hat will either communicate love for your fellow man, or stand in for you should you be feeling a little light in the love-giving department. And when you’re finished with him, just pop with a pin and pretend like it never happened. Definitely recommended for kids of all ages.

Obviously feel free to just ‘rock up’ if you find yourself walking past the store that Sunday afternoon – though it would be mildly useful to get a feel for the number of people likely to show. You know, just so that I have enough bottles of fizz. Use the comments below or click here to let me know on facebook. Oh, and bring your friends.

Waterstones Southend is opposite Marks & Spencers at 49-51 High Street, SS1 1HZ. Map below.


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Go With The Flow Day

December 2, 2012 by Peter | 0 comments

Don’t tell everyone, but one of my dearest friends – author Wendy Steele – turns 50 this week. She also publishes her fifth book! Fifth! I’ve barely managed to announce my second, and I’ve only got myself to think about – whereas Wendy has a houseful! How on earth does she manage it all? And more to the point, does she ever find time to just ‘be’? Well apparently so. Here she is to tell us about ‘Go With The Flow Day’

With the evenings drawing in and less sunshine to brighten our days, I can feel lethargic and unmotivated. For me that suggests I need to book a ‘Go With The Flow’ day.

Do you sometimes get tired of the same routine? Do you find that your weekends feel just like working days? Do you sometimes wish you could do just what you feel like doing right now? You need a Go With The Flow Day.

This day is easy to achieve for some, requires forward planning by most but is impossible for very few of us. In order to make this time, you need to book a day in your diary to do it. For those with small children, this may need to be when grandparents are available to babysit, or with partners, decide if you’re going to ‘go with the flow’ together or separately.

A possible Go With The Flow Day for me would be when my children have plans where they are staying over, I’ve seen my mum the previous weekend, there is tasty home made food in the freezer and I’ve worked hard to get washing, shopping, chores etc relatively up to date. Upon waking, I might decide to have my first cup of Rooibos in the garden or the summer house. A leisurely bath with essential oils gives me time to think; a walk in the woods feels like a good idea. Wrapped up warm while walking, I remember the book I bought about spirals on ancient monuments and I indulge that feeling on my return home and curl up in front of the fire with my book. A cat or two comes to join me and I relish their warmth and their company. Before the light fades, I retrieve dahl and rice from the freezer and as I decant it into oven proof dishes, I remember the cooking apples in the cupboard, wash them, de-core them, fill them with brown sugar and sultanas and pop them in the oven with the curry. I return to my book but my mind recalls that I haven’t read one of my favourite books, ‘Moon Magic’ by Dion Fortune for a while and I abandon one book for another.

Everyone’s Go With The Flow Day will be different but try not to get distracted and fall into everyday mode. If you want to work, then please do so. Sometimes I write on these days but don’t feel you have to or you should. If you want to paint the spare room, go ahead, but only if you want to. Treat yourself to a day of doing what you feel.

Book a Go With The Flow Day in your diary now. After one of these days, I return to my routine refreshed. Even the chores seem less tiresome and I feel more in tune with my surroundings.

You can find 100 more ideas to bring happiness to your days in my new book ‘Wendy Woo’s Year – A Pocketful of Smiles – 101 ideas for a happy year and a happy you.’

To celebrate the launch of Wendy’s book, you can download ‘A Pocketful of Smiles’ and all her other titles for FREE, from now until the 5th December.
Visit amazon (.co.uk | .com)

How To Do Everything and Be Happy – The Second Edition – is finally here!

June 8, 2012 by Peter | 3 Comments

Oi! Pay attention!
This post has been ‘archived’  because things have moved on quite a bit since I wrote it.
To read something a tad more current, click here 

TEN THOUSAND sales after its initial release,  the long awaited Second edition of How To Do Everything and Be Happy is now available in ebook and audio format

New Stuff

The new edition has a numerous updates throughout, including some great reader feedback, and the following new sections:

  • ‘Potential Boxing Day Problems‘ (revised and updated)
  • ‘Advanced Boxing Day‘
  • ‘Potential Now List Day Problems‘
  • ‘Determining Your Next Action‘
  • ‘Advanced Diary Tips‘

But, for me, the most exciting part of this re-launch is the fact that it’ll be available in an entirely new format!

Now Available in Audio!

From TODAY you can also download the second edition of the book from audible (.co.uk | .com), an amazon company and the internet’s largest supplier of spoken word audio entertainment, and listen to the book “read by the author” (in other words, me)!

Happy reading :-)

Peter

Ten thousand sales later…

June 4, 2012 by Peter | 0 comments

Oi! Pay attention!
This post has been ‘archived’  because things have moved on quite a bit since I wrote it.
To read something a tad more current, click here 

Fifteen months and 10,000 sales after its initial release,  the second edition of How To Do Everything and Be Happy will be officially available (in two formats) from this Friday (8th of June, 2012 ). To say I’m pleased, is something of an understatement…

Who’d have thunk it. It’s probably a little under two years since I first penned the opening chapter to what became How To Do Everything and Be Happy. And now, all these months later, a revised an updated version of the book, featuring new sections and reader feedback, will be coming out on Friday.

For me, the most exciting part of this re-launch is the fact that it’ll be available in an entirely new format – audio!

Click here to search audible and see if the book's available!

The audio version is part of a three-book deal that I signed with audible – the internet’s largest supplier of spoken word audio entertainment – back in February. This was a very exciting moment for me, not least because I myself have been a long time member of audible and many of the books that I’ve “read” over the years have actually been read to me whilst I’ve driven to and from various places of work. Some authors don’t feel fully-published unless they can pull their book from a shelf and riffle through the pages. Bizarre though it may sound I feel the pretty much the same about what my mother describes as “talking books”. Having my book available in all three formats feels like a significant achievement.

So, from this Friday you’ll be able to download the second edition of How To Do Everything and Be Happy from audible (.co.uk | .com),  and hear the book “read by the author” (in other words, me)!

Before you do that however…

Any Questions?

If you have any comments, questions, glowing endorsements, please feel free to drop me a line via the contact page or the comments box below.

In the meantime, Happy Reading – here’s to the next ten thousand sales :-)

Peter

How To Eat Loads and Stay Slim

May 21, 2012 by Peter | 2 Comments

Yes. It has a website of its own

I’m back! Did you miss me? What d’you mean you hadn’t realised that I’ve been away. Tch! Typical.

The truth is I’ve been working on a number of things – so many things that at times it’s been hard to see the spinning plates for all the broken crockery – but finally, after many weeks, a couple of these projects are coming to fruition, and I’d rather like to tell you about them.

Firstly I’m just finishing up my NEXT book. If you’ve been paying attention you’ll remember that back in February I mentioned that I was negotiating a three book deal. The second edition of How To Do Everything and Be Happy is the first book in that deal, and I’m pleased to announce (officially) that How To Eat Loads and Stay Slim will be the second.

How To Eat Loads and Stay Slim isn’t a diet book. Not in the traditional sense. It’s a book packed full of thought provoking, scientifically-provable, ideas and changes you can make to your life to increase your chances of being slim.

It’s a mixture of hard science (eg. how hunger really works), quick ‘cheats’ (eg. how to make zero fat chips), psychological techniques (eg. why focusing on your food as you eat is really important), ingenious strategies (eg. how to cut down on sugar without going cold turkey), and easy peasy recipes (eg. my roast potato & egg smashup breakfast or my co-author’s apple ginger clafouti) – all wrapped up in an easy-to-digest, humourous read from authors who’ve been where you are now.

Yes that’s right. Authors. Plural.

I’m co-writing the book with author, teacher, editor, dog-whisperer, regular contributor to Writers’ Forum magazine and slimming guru, Della Galton. Della has had about a thousand short stories published in various magazines over the last twenty years (I’m not exaggerating – 1,000 short stories) as well as goodness knows how many books (every time I think I know about all of them she casually mentions another published under a different name, or by a different publisher, or in large print only, or on Mars). It’s a little daunting writing along side a real author. Obviously I’m a real author too, but she’s, well, you know, MORE real.

Good grief. Another book by Della Galton.Actually, whilst we’re talking about Della I might as well mention that today is her twenty eighth birthday (hang on, doesn’t that mean that she was first published when she was… hmmmm..) And, just to prove my earlier point, it coincides with the release of a short story anthology series, ‘Daily Della‘ – bite sized chunks of fiction ideal for your daily coffee break.

But less about Della. She’s got her own blog. Back to me.

How To Eat Loads and Stay Slim will be available in paperback, for all amazon Kindle-reader enabled devices (such as that smart phone you’re reading this on), and – wait for it – audio! (from audible.co.uk) – soon. To be notified exactly when subscribe to this blog, the How To Eat Loads and Stay Slim website, or LIKE the How To Eat Loads and Stay Slim facebook page, or follow us on twitter @eatlotsstayslim. Or all of the above. Phew!

In the meantime, here’s to completing a few projects.

Destiny of Angels

April 21, 2012 by Peter | 0 comments

Click the cover to read the first few pagesToday, Saturday 21st April 2012, is somewhat momentous. After many months my lovely, lovely mate Wendy, finally becomes “fellow author Wendy Steele” with the release of her cracking début novel ‘Destiny of Angels’.

I persuaded Wendy to take five minutes out of her busy day to answer a few searching questions about the novel, and Wendy Steele in general

1.    What’s ‘Destiny of Angels’ about?

Destiny of Angels is about Angel Parsons, who experiences two traumatic events in her childhood. She decides to revisit the scene of her childhood pain and, with the help of her new ‘family’, offer the perpetrators of her distress the opportunity of redemption, rather than exact revenge upon them. She offers them the choices and opportunities to change their lives for the better but only they can choose.

Angel and her partner Aidan, a landscape gardener and former strippergram, enjoy a passionate, strong relationship. The ‘family’ Angel has brought together are Sophia a slim, smart and sassy young woman who runs her own company, carrying on the philanthropic work of her granddad, Maddy a petite, doll-like young woman who runs her own events company, Eli a big, triathlon running hunk who adores women and has a laid back approach to life, Zach a broad, dark, quiet man who runs his own fitness centre and Jed a rugby playing Adonis who runs a security firm and helps Aidan expand his business into vertical gardens.

Angel also meets up with her one childhood friend from school, Jenny, and she and her family play a fundamental part in the story. Angel was welcomed into their family as a small child and so, it is from this experience she bases her belief of what family is.

The story unfolds as Angel’s ‘family’ present the childhood miscreants, Clare, Rob, Tiffany, Justin, Danielle and Vincent, with opportunities to improve their lives and the choices they make, as well as Jenny and her brother Tim, moving forward with their lives.

Angel too, with the help of Lilith, the dark goddess, learns about what really matters in her life and that, all the money in the world won’t bring you happiness if you don’t have love.

 2.    What inspired you to write ‘Destiny’?

I’ve always been interested in where people come from, their start in life and how this affects them as adults. Some people carry their past as a burden while others break free of the past and start their lives anew.

The knowledge that Angel acquires during her childhood and young adulthood, gives her an unusual perspective on life and with these powers at her disposal, she takes control of her own destiny by deciding to close the chapter in her life that caused her so much trauma.

I wanted to write a story about a different character, someone living her life from an unusual starting point but still a story about everyday people that readers would recognise.

3.    Angel Parsons is a fascinating character. At times it’s quite ambiguous whether she’s a ‘goodie’ or a ‘baddie’ – can you tell us more about what inspired you to create her?

Life isn’t black and white. Angel is a real woman, full of emotion and passion and she too, like everyone in the book, has choices to make based on her own experience. Those choices make her who she is and it’s up to the reader if they want to see her as ‘goodie’ or ‘baddie’. I see her as the whole package.

4.    Did you already have the story planned, or did it develop as you were writing it?

It started out very differently! I had an idea and wrote about four chapters before I began to see how the whole book would work. I’ve been studying the Qabalah for a couple of years and using the paths on the tree of life to develop the story seemed the natural way to continue. I then made a skeleton plan but, it was the characters themselves that then drove the story.

5.    Have you already written the next book in the trilogy?

The second book in the trilogy, Wrath of Angels, has a skeleton plan, so I know where I’m going and I’m looking forward to my characters propelling the story forward.

6.    Is ‘Destiny’ going to be available as a paperback?

Yes, definitely! I’m a lover of paper books and now, with the eco way of printing books on demand, I want to give my readers the option.

7.    Aside from writing, what else makes Wendy Steele tick?

I’m a simple soul. I love to dance and Tribal Unity has provided me with a wonderful group of sisters to dance with and I hope to take Tribal Bellydance toWaleswhen we move. My children inspire me every day and my partner is a constant source of support. Our home is always full of people and music, oh and cats!

8.    What’s next for Wendy Steele, and more importantly her readers?

The paperback of Destiny of Angels is next. The second book Wrath of Angels is under way, as is my cook book for those of us with food intolerances, Wendy Woo’s Tummy Friendly Cookbook. I’ve a number of other projects simmering on the back burner but I’m concentrating on The Lilith Trilogy at the moment.

‘Destiny of Angels’ is available as an ebook from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for a mere £1.99 (or equivalent).

If you like the look of the book, you can do Wendy a huge favour by LIKING her facebook page.

You don’t need a Kindle Reader to enjoy the book – download the FREE kindle app for your iphone, ipad, blackberry, android phone, pc and mac from the amazon website.
Download from amazon.co.UK | Download from amazon.COM

(Don’t have an e-reader? Bit busy right now to download the app? Buy the book anyway! It’ll be there waiting for you for when you’re ready)

Find out more about author Wendy Steele at wendysteele.com

Fancy more of the same?

February 11, 2012 by Peter | 2 Comments

Oi! Pay attention!
This post has been ‘archived’  because things have moved on quite a bit since I wrote it.
To read something a tad more current, click here 

So how ya been? Sorry I haven’t been around but life’s been… interesting.

For starters, if you follow me on twitter or you’ve ‘liked’ the facebook page you’ll know that I’m in the process of striking a three book deal. And that’s about as much as I’m prepared to say on the subject right now because – being the superstitious sod that I am – I’m terrified that if I say much more it’ll jinx everything. That probably sounds very paranoid, and maybe it is, but consider this – just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you! Hmmmm. Not feeling so smug now are we.

SO ANYWAY… what I will tell you is that one of the titles in the deal is my current book How To Do Everything and Be Happy. Yes, almost a year after it was first released in ebook form, the book that I wrote on a whim is going to be republished. And not just republished, but updated and revised! Since Christmas much of my time has been spent working on a second edition.

I’ve never written a second edition before. Heck, I’m still getting my head around the fact that I wrote the first edition (which, can I just point out, recently celebrated it’s 6,000th sale), I certainly never expected to be updating the thing less than a year after it first came out.

The plan is to release the revised version in ebook form as soon as I can, and follow it up with a print version in June-ish. The dates are a little flexible right now because of other secret reasons which I am bursting to tell you about.. but can’t (see second paragraph). There are also a couple of other ideas I’m toying with – for instance I’d like to be able to give a free electronic copy of the revised version to anyone who shelled out on the first edition (be that electronic or paper), and anyone who’s supported me in any way (my way of saying thank you to all those people who left nice reviews, posted a comment somewhere, came to a workshop or talk, or just told someone about it – the list goes on and on). Quite how I’m going to do that I’ve yet to work out but it might be a good idea to stay subscribed to either this blog (use the box in the top right hand corner), the book’s blog, the facebook page, my facebook profle, or follow me on twitter, to ensure you don’t miss out.

The second edition will contain plenty of new material – some of which has been suggested by readers. If you like to make a suggestion feel free to drop me a line, but there’ll be more about that in a day or two over at the How To Do Everything and be Happy website - but in the meantime here’s to an ‘interesting’ life.