LOCAL LEGEND
I always look forward to my sleep because the nights are so often full of vivid and exciting adventures. Even as a child, some dreams would seem to foretell the future too. When these déjà vu events actually started happening in the everyday world later, I realised I was on to something. And since nobody believed me, I taught myself to wake up and record significant dreams so I could prove precognition was real.
Psychic and paranormal events became second nature, knowing what others were thinking and seeing ‘signs’ that warned me of trouble or encouraged me when I felt unheard. I knew that I was not alone, even if I never knew who, or what, was guiding me. Mindfulness was not in fashion back then, but it was my way of life.
“To every thing there is a season
and a time for every purpose under Heaven.”
However, I’m sure everyone knows the frustration when it never seems to be the right time and you’re not sure what the purpose is! My burning ambitions to understand the fundamental questions about human consciousness (“How does telepathy work?” “What happens when we die?”), and to be a writer, took a back seat to providing for my family and developing my career as a Maths teacher. These things were rewarding, of course, and my training in Sciences and Philosophy saved me from swallowing the excesses of the New Age gurus. One must never be so open-minded that one’s brains fall out.
Never give up on your dreams!
Where do books come into the story? The first one I wrote, at primary school, was an eight-page fully illustrated exposition on the life cycle of frogs. Possibly not very original. And later, using every spare minute that career and family life allowed, I wrote a comedy spiritual novel set in the afterlife (surely that world is full of just the same silly people that have just left this one?) and a detailed account of my hundreds of precognitive dreams and spiritual synchronicities.And like so many other aspiring authors, my drawer filled up with rejection letters, some of them quite complimentary, which only made me feel worse. Yes, five Maths books were published but they were never part of my ambition so don’t count. One novel was even accepted by a major publisher – but they pulled out when their accountants said that my work was “too risky”!Then The Plan swung into action…
A spinal injury suffered in my twenties was affecting my mobility and I had to retire early from teaching. With just one year to go, I made a new friend who knew people who knew other people… and Spirit Revelations was published (warmly and kindly endorsed by Dr Rupert Sheldrake). I was invited to give talks at festivals, the College of Psychic Studies and the Society for Psychical Research. Then my comedy novel Signs of Life was runner-up in a national competition.
A new career beckoned… but not the one I had imagined. My publisher, Beth, with whom I was now friends, had to give up the company. But she had established it in a very ethical way and was unwilling to sell out to one of the big traditional houses. She offered it to me.
Once I had recovered from the shock, it didn’t take long to accept. Here was the life of books that I had wanted since childhood, albeit I would be caring for other people’s writing rather than developing my own. One somewhat daunting problem was that I knew absolutely nothing about the publishing business so I made a nuisance of myself with the brilliant design and print subcontractors and picked every brain I could get hold of. To test myself, I then wrote and published Lighting the Path, a guide to using the extraordinary Chinese oracle I Ching, or Book of Changes. It worked!
Mind, Body and Spirit
I refocused the company, Local Legend, to the Mind, Body and Spirit genre that was always my true passion, maintaining its ethics and non-profit nature. (I don’t take any salary for my administrative and editing work.) The company’s marketing has expanded across social media, while developing close relationships with leading MBS magazines and offering spiritual writing competitions.
It has been a joy to help other authors, as frustrated as I was, to see their spiritual writing beautifully designed and edited and on sale worldwide. We have embraced digital books too, available on all platforms. We have won national awards.
And somehow I have also found time to continue my study of the mind and to write many magazine articles and more spiritual books. So finally, and I believe with much guidance from Someone, Somewhere, I have come to understand one of the great spiritual truths:
“The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.”
David Viscott in Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times, 1993
Please visit https://local-legend.co.uk to see our exciting range of titles.
They will entertain you, guide you on the spiritual path,
and perhaps even change your life!