An Open Letter To Book Lovers Across The World
A little note from my Dad......
We all stand on the hands of
the clock face of time. At first, when we are young the hands moved
slowly, then as the dramas of our lives unfolded, the hands of time
seem to speed up and there never seemed to be enough time to do all of
the things that living a life requires in this crazy world. Every now
and then we took a moment to reflect on the things that have happened
in our own little world, we watched as our children grew from babies to
adulthood, and we wondered where the time had gone, and this is the
place that I find myself in now. The doorway has opened to the autumn of
my life. I look back through weary eyes, and I reflect on the things
that were, those that I knew, and those whose lives were never
fulfilled. I am at the final fork on the road of my life and I wonder
as to where it shall lead me.
I recently wrote a book about my journey through life. It starts out with me as a child in an orphanage in the 1950's in Australia. The road that I travelled as a child along with other orphan children was littered with pot holes of despair and caverns of darkness. From my earliest recollections I was searching for a father who had once loved me, but had left me when I was three years old with no explanation. The authorities said that I had no right to any information about my family. I was 16 when I asked for their help. It would take me another 31 years to find out the truth. I spent 47 years of my life in total trying to find out the truth about my fathers death and where we had come from, and who I was. Along the road I was involved in the death of a young policeman. The death of that young man played an important part in me finding what I had been been searching for, for so many years, and I dedicated my book to his memory. My search took me across the world to Ireland and to the land of my family who I had never known.
My book is called A Long Way To Goulacullin. Goulacullin is pronounced Gill A Cullin. It is Gaelic and means River By The Glen. It is a place that is dear to my heart and on Sunday the 30th of March I will be travelling back there. You can follow my journey over the following two weeks on my Facebook page. John Kingston McMahon. I live in a small town called Gordon in the state of Victoria, Australia. Now the reason that I'm writing this post is to promote my book. It was released on December the 5th 2013. Just 15 weeks ago. It already has some good reviews, two from newspapers and one from that eminent book review company Kirkus. There are also some good reviews on the Amazon Kindle site. So far people in New Zealand, Italy, America, Ireland and Australia have read my story. I am very gratified by this, but a book is a commodity like any other product, and if the commodity is not marketed then hardly anyone will hear about it.
So I am asking book lovers and people from around the world if they could please share this post even if they don't want to buy and read my story.
I would also love to hear from anyone that has read my post, and, or my book and if you could email me to let me know what country that you live in, that would be great. I will reply to your email. I'm an old bloke who is trying to keep up with the technology that seems to change almost every day. So I thought that if I used the internet to promote my story, I could also see if this technology does connect people from around the world.
My email is goulacullin@gmail.com and my name is John.
Writing my story was emotionally very hard for me, for it is a sad story, and those of you with a soft heart may cry a little when you read it, but that's okay, because if you read my story and you shed a tear, then you shed tears for the children in my story that had no one to cry for them, and that can't be a bad thing. But as hard as it was to write this story, it pales into insignificance in trying to get a book published. I don't have the time to wait months, or possibly years for a mainstream publisher to decide if they wanted to publish my book. So I took the bull by the horns and self published my story.
All that means is that I paid for the publishing costs and in doing so, it allows me to get my book into the market place sooner. But like all amateurs I had no idea on how to market my book. But I'm getting there, and with your help I can promote it more. I don't have a publishing budget like the big publishing houses, in fact, I don't have a budget at all. I'm not a wealthy man, I just had a need to write this story, and it seems to have struck a chord with people who have read it, so I am grateful for that. You can buy my book on lots of internet sites, for a variety of prices. I found that Amazon Kindle is about the cheapest place to buy it from, either as an Ebook, paper or hard back. But recently I was invited to sell my book with an American magazine company. The company is called Focus on Women and you can see my book on their web site http://www.focusonwomenmagazine.net/books-fowm.html. I was happy to become involved with this company and 15 per cent of every copy of my book that they sell goes to the Afghan women's charity that assists abused and mutilated women, so if you have a mind to buy my book, you may pay a little more, but if it helps those who need a helping hand, then that can't be a bad thing.
In this so called enlightened world that we live in, there is still so much suffering and hardship and I wonder why. The picture on the cover of my book is me with my Teddy bear. I was three years old when the photo was taken, probably at the orphanage. My old Teddy is still around, he seems to have worn the years better than I have.
So book lovers from around the world can you help me promote my book, purely as an act of kindness for a stranger? Will you all share my post and let me see as to how far it will go?
You can see the video trailer of my book at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqosk8-vBPs and the Kirkus book review is below. Thank you all for reading and sharing this.
A Long Way To Goulacullin by John Kingston McMahon
I recently wrote a book about my journey through life. It starts out with me as a child in an orphanage in the 1950's in Australia. The road that I travelled as a child along with other orphan children was littered with pot holes of despair and caverns of darkness. From my earliest recollections I was searching for a father who had once loved me, but had left me when I was three years old with no explanation. The authorities said that I had no right to any information about my family. I was 16 when I asked for their help. It would take me another 31 years to find out the truth. I spent 47 years of my life in total trying to find out the truth about my fathers death and where we had come from, and who I was. Along the road I was involved in the death of a young policeman. The death of that young man played an important part in me finding what I had been been searching for, for so many years, and I dedicated my book to his memory. My search took me across the world to Ireland and to the land of my family who I had never known.
My book is called A Long Way To Goulacullin. Goulacullin is pronounced Gill A Cullin. It is Gaelic and means River By The Glen. It is a place that is dear to my heart and on Sunday the 30th of March I will be travelling back there. You can follow my journey over the following two weeks on my Facebook page. John Kingston McMahon. I live in a small town called Gordon in the state of Victoria, Australia. Now the reason that I'm writing this post is to promote my book. It was released on December the 5th 2013. Just 15 weeks ago. It already has some good reviews, two from newspapers and one from that eminent book review company Kirkus. There are also some good reviews on the Amazon Kindle site. So far people in New Zealand, Italy, America, Ireland and Australia have read my story. I am very gratified by this, but a book is a commodity like any other product, and if the commodity is not marketed then hardly anyone will hear about it.
So I am asking book lovers and people from around the world if they could please share this post even if they don't want to buy and read my story.
I would also love to hear from anyone that has read my post, and, or my book and if you could email me to let me know what country that you live in, that would be great. I will reply to your email. I'm an old bloke who is trying to keep up with the technology that seems to change almost every day. So I thought that if I used the internet to promote my story, I could also see if this technology does connect people from around the world.
My email is goulacullin@gmail.com and my name is John.
Writing my story was emotionally very hard for me, for it is a sad story, and those of you with a soft heart may cry a little when you read it, but that's okay, because if you read my story and you shed a tear, then you shed tears for the children in my story that had no one to cry for them, and that can't be a bad thing. But as hard as it was to write this story, it pales into insignificance in trying to get a book published. I don't have the time to wait months, or possibly years for a mainstream publisher to decide if they wanted to publish my book. So I took the bull by the horns and self published my story.
All that means is that I paid for the publishing costs and in doing so, it allows me to get my book into the market place sooner. But like all amateurs I had no idea on how to market my book. But I'm getting there, and with your help I can promote it more. I don't have a publishing budget like the big publishing houses, in fact, I don't have a budget at all. I'm not a wealthy man, I just had a need to write this story, and it seems to have struck a chord with people who have read it, so I am grateful for that. You can buy my book on lots of internet sites, for a variety of prices. I found that Amazon Kindle is about the cheapest place to buy it from, either as an Ebook, paper or hard back. But recently I was invited to sell my book with an American magazine company. The company is called Focus on Women and you can see my book on their web site http://www.focusonwomenmagazine.net/books-fowm.html. I was happy to become involved with this company and 15 per cent of every copy of my book that they sell goes to the Afghan women's charity that assists abused and mutilated women, so if you have a mind to buy my book, you may pay a little more, but if it helps those who need a helping hand, then that can't be a bad thing.
In this so called enlightened world that we live in, there is still so much suffering and hardship and I wonder why. The picture on the cover of my book is me with my Teddy bear. I was three years old when the photo was taken, probably at the orphanage. My old Teddy is still around, he seems to have worn the years better than I have.
So book lovers from around the world can you help me promote my book, purely as an act of kindness for a stranger? Will you all share my post and let me see as to how far it will go?
You can see the video trailer of my book at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqosk8-vBPs and the Kirkus book review is below. Thank you all for reading and sharing this.
A Long Way To Goulacullin by John Kingston McMahon
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