Overplaying One’s Hand

Overplaying One's Hand
Overplaying One’s Hand

Overplaying One’s Hand

I love to see an arrogant man or woman overplaying their hand and wondering stunned how it happened that they lost. I watched it unfold today. A contributor to ‘Asian Shorts’ decided he had me over a barrel because he has access to staff at Asia Books. He said he’d try to get our book sold there if I gave him a load of free books and a percentage of the sales.

I agreed to the percentage, but at the moment, I can only get paperbacks from Amazon in Europe or America at about $10 each including postage to Asia. I said i would rather remove his story from the book. ‘But what about Asia Books?’ he protested. ‘If I walk you can forget them, and you want in, eh?’ ‘I’ve forgotten them,’ I replied and set about removing his story from the anthology. ‘You’d better do it,’ was his parting shot, ‘I didn’t sign a release!’

But he had already disappeared from the book. I could picture him sitting somewhere thinking ‘How the Hell did that happen?’ Easy, by overplaying your hand, old son, you assumed that everyone is as greedy as you are. Well, you’re not hijacking our book for a few dollars.

Anyway, that did us a favour, actually, because, as I wrote yesterday, experts say that 30k words is perfect for an anthology and ours is now 33k.

The cover for the new book is going to be difficult using the images that I have at my disposal and the image-manipulation software I have. If an agent or publisher doesn’t take the book on, i think I will have to outsource this one. The only other ones I have done that for were the Leks, Behind The Smile.

All the best.

Owen

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Podcast: Overplaying One’s Hand


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Owen
Owen

Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.

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