As the unravelling of Entwined had almost come to its bittersweet ending I brought Pablo Wairua into the fold. This young mestizo (I don’t consider that terminology as derogative) man was the embodiment of the traditional Pacific cultures coursing through my veins. My father’s father’s mother was Taranaki Maori and my father’s mother was Samoan, …
Since I decided to take my awareness into my heart and move into life from this point of attention I have encountered some of the worst behaviour from what Bill Hicks called ‘fevered egos’ daily. Personal development and growth aren’t lost on me as I see these challenges as opportunities. Everyone who has gaslit me …
I had left Melbourne in early July 1997 and headed northeast after a friend, Nick, had told me of the two places in Australia that he loved the most. Cairns and Margaret River. For me to get to one, I chose to go to the other first. Being winter in Victoria, and something akin to …
The being that Iho Grace is writing the book of poetry called, A Dance Called Dwarka for has been absent from my life experience for around six weeks. I ventured into the memory of that life more than once in that time to recollect the sensations, the feelings, and awe that the Mauritian merchant felt when he saw the being from a watery world in …
Markus, is a character from the Harmon Sueno novel, United, who came to me when I heard about the Pentecostal snake handlers in the Appalachian mountains quoting this verse from the Gospel of Mark, Mark 16:17–18 ‘17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick …
I have various degrees of affiliation with the characters of the books I write. The experience of being the character, occupying their bodies, mind, and spirit is not a unique experience unto me. Many, if not most writers of novels, short stories are granted this gift when they scribe the narratives of their stories. However, for me, this experience …
I just received the pencil sketch of the cover of A Flickering Light Called Fate, by Iho Grace from Amber Coubrough my cover illustrator today. She’s due with her third child, so the effort to get this sketch out is simply heroic. I’m so grateful that she has given me a glimpse of what the cover will look like. There is a …
Taking the Oho Ake universe into Amazon KDP exclusively wasn’t a move that I had strategised. With Draft2Digital, I would have had a wide distribution for the ebooks, across the world, including with Amazon, as well as dozens of other digital book retail stores. Due to their censorship of some of the content in the books (which was taken completely …
My whakapapa on my father’s father’s side of the family goes back to Opunake, Te Atiawa (Taranaki Maori Iwi/tribe). I’ve felt that connection flowing through my veins like a persistent warmth for my entire existence in my body, but not as strong as when I came back to Te Ika a Maui in late 2002 from Vancouver, …
During the global smackdown, I have felt the call away from the hustle and bustle of the technological, residential, cultural mayhem of the city. I’m fortunate enough to live in a city that has nature coursing through it like veins of a great heart, one carved up until its parts remain in the highest and most inhospitable locales …