The Innocent Man

New novel: The Gryphon Clerks

2011-11-09T13:14:00.004+13:00

I'm posting very infrequently here, I realise. I'm mostly on Facebook these days, or working on How to Be Amazing. (I don't think I've even mentioned that here until now.)

But I am dropping by to say: I've started a new novel, The Gryphon Clerks. Heroic steampunk-fantasy civil servants, wot larks! I'm looking forward to having a lot of fun with it.

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How to Stop Smoking ebook launch

2011-01-03T07:50:00.004+13:00

Happy New Year to all.

New Year is traditionally a time for resolutions to change and improve your life, and among the most frequently chosen ones are getting fit, eating more healthily and stopping smoking.

These are all great goals, but frustratingly for them, a lot of people don't go very long at all before letting them go. My belief is that this is only partly a motivation problem. If you have good resources (including resources to help you with your motivation), these are all achievable goals.

The reason I'm talking about this is that in 2011 I'll be putting together resources for exactly these goals. I've started with smoking cessation, partly because I already have a lot of good material for it and partly because the NZ cigarette tax increased again at the New Year.

The main resource I've made is free, an ebook called How to Stop Smoking. It's also part of a course which includes audio tracks to help with motivation, the stop-smoking process and letting go of the smoking habit. I'm charging $19 for the course, which I think is a good compromise between making it as accessible as possible and charging enough that people will take it seriously.

If you smoke or have a friend or relative who smokes, and you or that person wants to stop, take a look at How to Stop Smoking. I've set out to make it simple, accesible, practical and motivational.

What I'm up to

2010-11-15T10:38:00.006+13:00

I haven't been posting much here for a while. All my blogging effort has been going into Living Skillfully: Change Your Life, my personal development blog, and guest posting on other related blogs to build more traffic and subscribers. But it's time for a roundup of what's been going on.

I'm about to bring out another online course, Stop Procrastinating, Start Succeeding (there's a $20 discount offer if you sign up before 22 November 2010).

I also want to put together a small stop-smoking product before the end of the year, since cigarette tax goes up here on New Year's Day and that will stimulate a few more people to look around for effective ways to stop smoking. I'm approaching quitting smoking in terms of a personal development challenge rather than from a strict medical model.

I haven't just been writing about personal development, though. I'm doing some too. I've started getting up earlier to exercise, which is going well (I'm progressing through the Hundred Pushups challenge). Conveniently, this builds the same muscles that I use to paddle my new kayak, which is a lot of fun.

Starting in February, I'm doing a 10-week improv class. My day job may also pay for me to go to a public-speaking course run by Toastmasters.

Very slowly, I'm working on a Young Adult novel called The Y People, which is a bit of a hat-tip to the X-Men while being almost completely unlike it.

I've moved all my creative stuff over to C-Side Media at last, and I'm thinking about starting a new blog there (because I don't have enough blogs). This one will be about the process of self-publishing, basically how you can publish your book for free. It's a topic I have useful knowledge on and it would benefit other people, plus if I get people subscribing to it there'll be some splashover to my other projects. I'll announce it here as and when. (You can subscribe to get all C-Side Media updates on any of the several C-Side Media blogs.)

I'm also planning a podcast in the New Year on personal development, in which I'll interview other personal development bloggers. Steven Aitchison has agreed to be my first guest. It'll probably be monthly.

So there's plenty happening in my life in 2011. Feel free to leave a comment if you'd like to know more about any of it.

2010-11-04T11:12:00.002+13:00

A couple of years ago, I posted on this blog:

Here are my three main worries about... Barack Obama:

Despite the smooth running of his campaign suggesting that he can pick good staff, will pick the wrong people for the jobs that need to be done, as George Bush did in some - though not all - cases, and that this will, as with Bush, lead to his intended changes either being hijacked or failing to be executed properly.
Will splash money around without accountability on how it is spent or control of the consequences. We're seeing, potentially, the first example of this with the bailout for the auto industry.
Will disperse the goodwill and popularity he has by enacting radical policies that the electorate generally doesn't support.

Can I call it or what?

Not so much the first one, but the other two, definitely.

My other worry about him was that he was promising more than he could deliver, and this, too, has come to pass.

Still, President of the USA is a pretty thankless position these days. Whatever you do almost half the electorate will disagree with it, you're short of money, the economy and the environment have both been in trouble for years, internationally you're stuck in an unwinnable war and regarded with resentment even by many of your allies...

The whole US political model is overdue for an overhaul, but because of the way it's designed it's almost impossible to overhaul it. What kind of worked and was radical and cutting-edge in the 18th century is now an entrenched system which, while theoretically accountable to the people, in fact offers them no option that really represents their views in most cases.

It's a worry.

How to sell stuff you haven't made yet

2010-09-14T10:46:00.005+12:00

I haven't ranted about bad marketing here for a while, partly because I've been busy learning how to do good marketing. (My definition of bad marketing: Marketing that is clueless about what the customer actually wants, mainly because it doesn't care what they want.)

I've done several different courses from several different people, but the one that has really stood out is Clay Collins' "Interactive Offer". (It's actually saved me a lot of money. When you start poking round in the marketing field, you tend to get a lot of offers from people practicing what they preach, that is, trying to sell you stuff. For several months now I've been looking at those offers and thinking, "Yeah, that would be really good. But I don't need to buy this, because Clay's course will teach me that.")

Clay's thing is very 21st-century. You build a relationship with a group of people, and ask them what their problems are and what would help them solve those problems. And then you presell them a solution. And after that, you make the thing, because at that point you know it's going to succeed.

It's basically distributed patronage. In the 18th century, you had to find one rich person to pay you to make things. In the 21st century, you can find a whole lot of people who have a relatively small amount of money each, and make them things they want.

It's also the complete opposite of the kind of advertising and marketing I hate, where someone has a product that they want to sell, and they will interrupt you and try to sell it to you regardless of whether you need it or want it.

So, it's a brilliant concept, and Clay has used it to launch his last several products and got it down to a system, which he explains really well. (He's a nice guy, as well, which helps.) I'm very happy with my purchase.

I got in on the ground floor, the very first time he offered it. He's now created a whole lot of excellent material for us (asking us what we wanted at several points in the process, of course), and he's relaunching it all under a new name: The Presell Formula. (That's an affiliate link, but I'm not just recommending it to make some money. This is genuinely good stuff.)

What really sold me on the course was that Clay's free preview material for it was about three times as useful as the average marketing guru's paid course. And for this new version of the course, he's doing the same again: great preview material that you can actually use, even if you never buy the course.

Here's the link again: The Presell Formula. Go and take a look, sign up for his videos and enjoy his enthusiasm.

Review: The War of Art

2010-07-24T13:26:00.001+12:00

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a 4-start book until near the end, when Pressfield sets up what I consider a false opposition between creating for an audience and being true to yourself. We don't consider J.S. Bach a lesser artist for having produced his works for patrons, do we?

The War of Art was published before the idea of "1000 true fans" gained currency - a group of people who are, in effect, your patrons, who you create your material for and who, in turn, will buy pretty much anything from you. I wonder if Pressfield would still make such a strong dichotomy and cling so hard to the Romantic myth of the loner artist who produces brilliant work that often isn't appreciated by the masses. The modern reality (which the publishing industry needs to embrace, or it's doomed), is that there's no future in making things at random and firing them out at an uncomprehended public in the hope that they'll like one for some inscrutable reason, and buy enough copies to compensate for all the failures. Being in touch with your audience is just as important as being in touch with yourself, and the two are not mutually exclusive.

The earlier part of the book, though, on overcoming resistance, is excellent and worthwhile, and I do recommend it.

View all my reviews >>

More on why I'm disappointed with the iPad

2010-01-28T14:08:00.002+13:00

I've been thinking some more about my reaction to this morning's iPad announcement. I'd said to myself beforehand, "Even if it's just a larger iPod Touch, that will still be cool." But - it's just a larger iPod Touch, and it's not that cool. Why not?

I think Apple are victims of their own hype machine (not all of which they control - Apple fans, I'm looking at you). What I was really expecting was that it would not be just a larger iPod Touch, that Apple would come up with something transformational that nobody had ever thought of before. And they didn't. Every element of this device - the e-reader, the touch interface, the slate form factor, the positioning "between a smartphone and a laptop" - all of it already exists. Not in one device, maybe, and if in one device, not in a device this well-designed, but still - it's evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Hence, underwhelm.

And that positioning itself - do I actually want something "between a smartphone and a laptop"? No. I want something that combines the convenience of a smartphone and the functionality of a laptop, rather than having a bit more of one and a bit less of the other.

I have no doubt that the iPad will be an extremely cool device, and I still want one, but I don't plan to be an early adopter. For now I'll be sticking with the iPod Touch for convenience and the laptop for functionality, and putting up with the small form factor (and difficulty of reading/web browsing) on the one, and the bulkiness and lack of a touch interface of the other.

Damn, now I put it that way I'm leaning towards the iPad again. But only a bit.

Apple iPad: Lower price and fewer features than I'd hoped

2010-01-28T09:33:00.002+13:00

I've just been catching up on the coverage of the big Apple iPad launch. I've been eagerly awaiting this, because I have an iPod Touch, which is the coolest device I've ever owned, but is too small to browse the Web or do anything with documents. (It's easy to use, with the touch interface; it gives me instant-on internet, although, as I say, web pages are a bit of a pain to read; and I can carry it everywhere.)

The iPad is basically a very large iPod Touch or iPhone (it'll come in two versions, both of which connect to wifi networks, one of which also connects via 3G wireless). Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be a whole lot more than that. Don't get me wrong, an iPod Touch that's four times the size (twice as wide, twice as high) is actually very useful, and I had already decided that I would (eventually) get one even if that was all it was. And the pricing is better than I expected: entry pricing (16GB, wifi only) is $499 USD, and the most expensive version (64GB, with 3G) is $829, or about $1200 NZD. Based on what happened with the iPhone, that will also come down. But those are attractive prices already.

It's got a supposedly pretty good onscreen keyboard that you can use with both hands, and they've already announced a keyboard dock (or you can use Bluetooth keyboards). The iPod Touch keyboard, because it's tiny, is hard to type on. This should be better, so that you can actually use it as a laptop. They're making a version of the Apple Office equivalent (iWork) for it, and pricing the apps very reasonably, though I would probably use Google Docs in any case and have my documents automatically in the cloud where I can get at them from any web-connected computer.

I can see myself possibly using it in my hypnotherapy practice instead of writing on a clipboard as I do now (the advantage of a virtual keyboard is that there's no typing sound, unless you want there to be), assuming that someone builds an app that can be a front-end for a database. (If not, I can always build one myself on my website, appropriately secured.)

The problem is, I'd like to use it also to record the sessions and - here's the key area where it falls down - write them to CD. There's no provision for connecting to standard USB devices - external hard drives, memory sticks, CD writers, and my good-quality USB microphone, for example. I could record using the built-in microphone or the lapel mic I currently use to record on my laptop, but I'd then have to synch across to my laptop before I could write the session to CD for my client to take away, which kind of takes away some of the convenience.

The other thing it's missing which would have been cool (though it's not, for me, a killer app) is a built-in video camera so that you could sit on the couch, or in bed, and have video calls with someone on the other side of the world. (People are screaming "You can't make phone calls from it!", but of course you can. Skype is in the App Store already.) Maybe they'll do this for iPad 2.0. Of course, if they supported USB, I could just plug in my existing webcam...

I like living in the 21st century

2009-11-02T14:07:00.001+13:00

Several times recently I've noticed extremely blokey blokes, happily and unselfconsciously wheeling their kids around in strollers. Mother nowhere in sight.

I'd call that progress.

Mike's Tooth FAQ

2009-08-30T14:37:00.002+12:00

Here are the questions I'm most commonly asked about my left front tooth (or rather, the gap where it used to be). Actually some of them I haven't been asked but they're logical questions, so I'm answering them anyway.

Q: What happened?
A: I'm not completely sure. Apparently at some point that I don't remember, my tooth got a knock, and this started off a process of "resorption" - that is, it started to self-destruct. So it had to come out. Out of my head. All the... bits of it.

Q: Did you really have it out without anaesthetic?
A: No. I had it out without sedation - drugs to help me relax. I can relax perfectly well without drugs. I had local anaesthetic, though.

Q: Did it/does it hurt?
A: Actually there's been hardly any pain through the whole process (and there was hardly any blood in the extraction either). The periodontist did a great job. It's been a bit uncomfortable, and the temporary false tooth is very uncomfortable so I don't wear it unless I feel I need to look professional. But not much pain, per se.

Q: Can we see a photo?
A: No. See remarks above about looking professional. I have considered taking a photo of myself and photoshopping in a banjo, but...

Q: What happens now?
A: The periodontist has implanted a socket which is going to hold a crown in due course. The bone has to grow in around it first, so that it's securely held. This is about a 3-month process, so I should get the crown in November (then no more temporary false tooth - yay!).

Q: Was it expensive?
A: Ohhh, yes.

Quality advertising and marketing

2009-08-21T12:16:00.003+12:00

It's been a while since I ranted about advertising and marketing (or anything else, but those are among my favourite rant topics).

I just saw this piece of quality work today:

[Name of publication] enjoys an influential and affluent readership and seeks to maintain that profile by those brands it represents.
If you would like to know more about our rates and availability, please feel free to make an enquiry our team we will do thier best to assist your in achieving your campaign goals.

Sign me up.

And on marketing, I've noticed a few annoyances lately.

First was Healtheries' decision to stop decaffeinating their green tea. Their website still assured consumers that all Healtheries green tea was caffeine free, but this was no longer the case if you checked the label in the shop. When I emailed them about it, I got an informative reply, very quickly, from a real human being (not a marketing droid) who explained:

The reasons we have moved away from decaffeination are:

1) Being a health food company we were keen to produce a product as
close to un-processed as possible, the decaffeination process adds
additional processing and uses chemicals to strip out the caffeine

2) The cost to decaffeinate the tea is quite substantial, by removing
this cost we have been able to pass this on to our consumers making us
more competitively priced

3) A side effect of removing caffeine is that this can also remove some
of the antioxidants in the tea, we wanted to maximize the antioxidants
naturally found in green tea.

If you would like to remove the caffeine, research has shown us that if
you brew a tea bag for approx 2 mins and throw out the first cup of tea
the second cup you brew with the same tea bag will have over 80% of the
caffeine removed (as caffeine is the first thing released out of the tea
bag).

All of which is well and fine, but nobody else in the NZ market decaffeinates their green tea either, so the consumer is left without choice (and Healtheries have removed what was, to many people including me, an important point of difference). The brewing for two minutes thing didn't work for me, I noticed a bitter taste and was getting edgy on it. I've now switched over to (non-Healtheries) rooibos tea instead, which is supposed to have, if anything, even more antioxidants, which is regarded as a good thing.

I now discover, searching Healtheries' site, that their chai teas are decaf - when did that happen? I could swear I'd checked the packets and they weren't.

Not bad marketing, as such, but their business decision is odd (and inconvenient) to me from an overall market perspective, and their consumer communication could use some work. Good marks for their response to me, but as far as I can tell they didn't follow my suggestion to put the explanation on their website (it's not in their FAQ). I had to check the new packets to find out they weren't decaffeinated any more, and I completely missed the fact that the chai, which is my favourite, is decaf (perhaps it wasn't to start with and now is?).

On the other hand, some companies still practice the good old "marketing through outright lies" approach. I had a minor example in the supermarket recently. A woman was there with one of those little demo tables they use for new foods, demonstrating a new breed of apple next to the fruit section. I'm always up for some new fruit (fruit is my treat, instead of sweets or chocolate), so even though she had only one rather browning segment of apple on offer I gave it a try. "It's really sweet and juicy," she told me. Well, it wasn't particularly, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt because it had obviously been sitting for a while, and bought a couple.

In fact, this is one of the least sweet and least juicy breeds of apple I have ever encountered. I wish I could remember its name so I could warn you off it. It has yellow skin, anyhow, and its marketers lie about it.

And then there's the iCON fan. We have one of these. In fact, we've had three, because the first two burned out. They were the size recommended for a bathroom, which is where we have it, but they were clearly underpowered, so last time I got the larger one.

They're supposed to be quiet. They're not. They're very noisy, in my opinion. They're also advertised as "surprisingly low cost". What with the cost of the fan, the cost of the initial installation (in a house which is a little tricky, admittedly), and the cost of having the first two removed and replaced when they failed, I have spent well in excess of $1000. Still, at last we have a fan that removes the damp from the bathroom, which I suppose is something.

The Y People begins

2009-05-15T14:13:00.004+12:00

I've started a new novel, The Y People, over on my City of Masks blog. It's a YA piece about four young people with mysterious powers.

My plan is:

Write it on the blog. Get comments if I can, but I'm not holding my breath.
Use Lulu's new affiliate in NZ to get proof copies printed for a few of the Usual Suspects to read. This will give me a chance to practice with Adobe InDesign for layout, as well.
Revise it in line with the feedback and release it as an ebook (on Smashwords) and POD.

Because I won't need to do an actual print run, the time it will take to break even will be significantly reduced. City of Masks is still in the red, because I did a print run of 50 to give to people, send to the National Library and sell in NZ, and NZ sales have been, to say the least, slow.

In fact, all sales of City of Masks have been slow, despite the fact that everyone who reads it likes it, because I can't be bothered to relentlessly promote it. That's not nearly as much fun as writing is, and the additional happiness from selling a few more copies isn't worth the extra effort to me at the moment. I'm pouring most of my promotional efforts into my hypnotherapy practice, and that isn't exactly going stratospheric yet either.

Marketing is a lot of work, at least by the non-Baboon's Backside method.

Facebook

2009-05-13T11:02:00.002+12:00

I've finally given in (I'm the classic late adopter) and joined Facebook. Hopefully that link takes you to my profile. Feel free to friend me if you're a regular reader of this blog.

Not that it's really possible to be a regular reader of such an irregular blog, but you know what I mean.

The Baboon's Backside approach to marketing

2009-04-03T14:13:00.004+13:00

You know what bothers me? The kind of marketing that is like a baboon's backside. You know, the kind that says, "Woo! I'm so extreme, you can't take your eyes off me, can you? Huh? Huh? You want some of this? You do, don't you?"

And what bothers me most about it is that it's generally more successful than the kind I prefer, which is, "Here is something that you might like to be aware of, as it is good and useful for people in a particular set of circumstances, viz, these circumstances here. If those are your circumstances, consider this product as something that might meet your needs."

I love living in the 21st century, but unfortunately my sense of a good ad is straight out of the Victorian era.

That's all. Just a complaint, no solution offered.

The Name of the Wind

2009-03-15T11:59:00.000+13:00

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'll be honest - I picked this book because I needed something thick enough to last me through an overseas trip with a lot of time spent on planes and in airports. But it turned out to be really, really good. I rarely give five stars to anything, but The Name of the Wind deserves them.

Not only is it a well-written, well-plotted and fascinating adventure, but it has a richness of allusion and a sense of so much happening offstage, so many threads to be woven together, that it not only keeps you reading but leaves you eager for the rest of the series. The main character is complex and multifaceted and an interesting rogue with principles who is constantly in strife. I was reminded of the Locke Lamora books, except that Kvothe is less of a rogue than Locke and at least some of his troubles are not self-inflicted.

The editor needs to work harder - there are a few misused homonyms ("make due" instead of "make do", "discrete" for "discreet" and the like). But the writing, the dialogue, the worldbuilding and the characterisation are all very good indeed.

View all my reviews.

City of Masks on Authonomy

2009-02-19T13:35:00.004+13:00

I've just added my novel City of Masks on Authonomy, which is a website Harper-Collins Publishers have set up to get the reading public to help them choose books for publication.

If you want to help me out, especially if you've already read City of Masks and enjoyed it, please hop over to Authonomy, sign up, and add City of Masks to your bookshelf (by clicking the "Back the Book" link).

More detail on the City of Masks blog.

University results

2008-12-16T15:55:00.003+13:00

I'm studying part-time at Massey towards a Certificate in Health Science. I'm now a quarter of the way there - just got my results for this year's classes. I got a B+ in Psychology and an A in Nutrition, which I'm happy with (especially since the psych assignments were marked really hard).

I'm studying two papers over the summer too - Applied Science for Health Professionals and Human Bioscience: Normal Body Function. Lots of anatomy and physiology. It's interesting.

Human bodies are amazingly complicated things. I'd hate to have to run one.

Oh, wait...

Preorders for Changing Health Behaviours

2008-11-24T13:07:00.002+13:00

(Crossposted from my hypnotherapy blog)

I'm very happy to announce that my book and CD Changing Health Behaviours (formerly entitled Life Leverage) is now available for preorder from the Hypno NZ shop at the special preorder price of $17.50 (NZD) plus postage and packing.

(As at when I'm posting this, that's about $9.50 USD, 7.5 Euro or 6.3 pounds, but currency conversions can change quickly.)

The files go out today for printing (of the book) and duplication (of the CD). The preorder period lasts until 31 December 2008, after which I will begin shipping, and the price will rise to $25.00 NZD plus P&P.

Preorder books will also be personally signed by me - please provide a note with your PayPal order if you want me to write anything in particular in them.

Changing Health Behaviours is based on several sources of material. One is this very blog, Living Skillfully, and you can check out a sample of what will be in the book by reading my series on Health Behaviours and Change Techniques. Naturally, I've reworked the material, expanded it, and incorporated more from the courses I run, Befriend Your Stress and Change Your Mind, but reading the blog will give you an idea of the topics I cover, what kind of things I say about them and the quality of my writing.

The book gives sound basic advice on what a healthy lifestyle consists of and, more importantly, personal change techniques that actually work to enable you to adopt a more healthy lifestyle. It includes a simple but practical introduction to using self-hypnosis and material on habit change, emotional management and change planning and execution.

The other main source is my hypnotherapy recordings. Again, you can listen to free samples of these in my podcast.

The CD which accompanies the book holds 20 MP3 tracks, all of my Healthy Lifestyle and Transformation Skills recordings, plus several extras. The total comes to over three hours. These are tracks that I give as bonuses to my clients, and the feedback I've had has been excellent.

At the end of each chapter of the book, I indicate which tracks to listen to in order to help you make the shifts of thinking, feeling and behaviour that I've been discussing in that chapter.

I normally sell these recordings on three audio CDs (Transformation Skills is a double CD set) for a total of $25, so $25 for all them (and a few extras) plus the book is a great deal, and $17.50, the preorder price, is an excellent deal.

So order now, and I'll ship you a personally signed book and CD to help you actually carry out those New Year's resolutions this time.

Typealyzer

2008-11-21T13:23:00.007+13:00

Apparently I'm a different person on my different blogs.

From fellow hypnotherapist Adrian Tannock I found out about Typealyzer, which analyzes a blog and gives you a Myers-Briggs type for the author.

Like Adrian, I'm an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs, at least I was last time I was tested, and this is indeed the result I get for Living Skillfully. Genderanalyzer says, 69% chance I'm male, as well.

But here at The Innocent Man, I'm apparently an ESTP (81% chance I'm male):

ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

When I'm writing Gu - which I've just finished doing, by the way - I'm an INTP (59% male, but "quite gender-neutral", which is encouraging because at least half the dialogue and most of the viewpoint is from female characters):

INTP - The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

City of Masks, by contrast, is ISTP (and 75% male):

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

So... which is the true Mike?

Perhaps we all are.

Magic Lost, Trouble Found

2008-11-20T11:51:00.000+13:00

Magic Lost, Trouble Found by Lisa Shearin

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
A nice piece of work, with standard fantasy tropes (elves, goblins, magic, a sinister High Priestish guy, a magical McGuffin) used skillfully to create a story that goes well beyond the usual boring, repetitive genre fantasy.

I liked the main character (who's also the narrator), who's in the popular Kickass Heroine mold but definitely not a Mary Sue. She struggles and suffers but never abandons her friends or her principles for any reason.

The other characters could be told apart from each other easily (not always the case in fantasy), and the setting is evocative and interesting.

I'm looking forward to more.

View all my reviews.

Election results

2008-11-17T13:10:00.003+13:00

more animals

Well, the US and NZ elections have both delivered the results I was expecting and, with reservations, hoping for. I'm reasonably confident that both Barack Obama and John Key will produce some notable screwups during their term of office, but in both cases I preferred them - again, with reservations - to the alternatives. I'll be interested to see what happens, in a "waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop" kind of way.

I was, as I think I said, hoping for an outcome where National needed the Maori Party to govern. They don't, strictly speaking, need them, but they're inviting them into the coalition anyway (presumably insurance to keep ACT in line in case they go over the top with their ideology), and that creates a much-needed balance and a direct connection to people who are likely to suffer from economic upheavals and the unintended consequences of government policy.

So here are my three main worries about each of the election results.

I worry that Barack Obama:

Despite the smooth running of his campaign suggesting that he can pick good staff, will pick the wrong people for the jobs that need to be done, as George Bush did in some - though not all - cases, and that this will, as with Bush, lead to his intended changes either being hijacked or failing to be executed properly.
Will splash money around without accountability on how it is spent or control of the consequences. We're seeing, potentially, the first example of this with the bailout for the auto industry.
Will disperse the goodwill and popularity he has by enacting radical policies that the electorate generally doesn't support.

I worry that John Key's National-led government:

Will pursue a hard-line economic ideology at the expense of real people and in the face of evidence that it isn't working.
Will be a chameleon which tries to be everything to all people and ends up being nothing to anybody.
Will turn around and be just as paternalistic and interfering as Labour was, though possibly about different issues.

It will be interesting to watch.

Minor Party Leaders' Debate

2008-10-31T10:21:00.002+13:00

I watched the minor party leaders' debate the other night (only just getting round to blogging about it).

It was a lovely piece of meaningful randomness that, purely by the luck of the draw, Act's Rodney Hide was at the extreme right (from the viewpoint of the leaders) and the Greens' Jeanette Fitzsimons at the extreme left. Both of them showed themselves to be highly ideologically driven, which to me, even if I agreed with more of their policies than I do, casts doubt on their ability to implement sensible change. I'm all for having principles, but I believe that if you're too ideological about how your principles are to be implemented, it hinders your ability to adapt to the realities of the situation. I'm more pragmatic than idealistic, in other words, so parties that are more idealistic than pragmatic don't appeal to me.

United Future's Peter Dunne reminded me of a rather fussy manager who was originally an accountant (he wasn't; he used to be a senior bureaucrat, which explains his high-level, managerial, government-run, "let us make haste slowly" approach to the issues).

Jim Anderton of the Progressives, the party I was thinking of voting for because I agree with many of their policies, failed to impress me, and in fact I'm now less likely to vote Progressive than before the debate. He seemed uncomfortable and defensive.

Winston Peters of New Zealand First was his usual blustery self, and in his "vision statement" painted a picture of an ideal past which, as far as I'm aware, never existed outside his imagination, but which he wants us to return to in some unspecified way. He made, I think, the only really petty personal attack, on Rodney Hide, despite mentioning almost every time he spoke that now was not the time for petty bickering. He was in a good mood, though, which is unusual for him in a media context.

Tariana Turia from the Maori Party was impressive, I felt, and I'm going to give their policies another look, even though, because of vote-splitting, voting for them is throwing my party vote away. (I'm probably doing that anyway, to be realistic, so it should at least be for a party that I respect.) Of all the parties, the Maori Party is the most in touch with its constituents, and Turia advocated community-based initiatives rather than Government bureaucrats as the way forward, which I liked.

She also refused to be bulldozed into making commitments that she wasn't ready to make, such as which major party the Maori Party will support after the election. At the moment the Maori Party is the only one which is still prepared to go either way. Act and United Future have declared for National, who have unilaterally ruled out working with NZ First (should they by some miracle get back in). The Progressives have been in coalition with Labour all the way along and that's not going to change, and the Greens have analyzed the policies of the two main parties and said that National is going in the opposite direction from them on most things and Labour on only about half, so they are prepared to support Labour but not National.

There was actually a surprising amout of mutual respect being shown in the debate, reminding us that under the MMP system parties do have to work together. Winston Peters and Rodney Hide are daggers drawn, of course, but I was interested to hear Rodney Hide being supportive and respectful of the Maori Party and their wish to entrench the Maori seats constitutionally. Perhaps he's under instructions from National to play nice with the Maori Party because National may need them.

The poll trends are interesting. National's lead is reducing as the election approaches, but at the moment they are still ahead in the polls and, by the numbers in the last poll, could still govern alone (something I wouldn't like to see). Best outcome from my viewpoint would be that National/Act/United Future fell just short of a majority of seats but had more than Labour/Greens/Progressives, and the Maori Party supported National on confidence and supply in exchange for concessions but voted freely on everything else. Then we'd really see some interesting times, as everyone would have to talk to everyone else to get any legislation passed, and we might not see as much ham-handed and unpopular social engineering, if we're lucky.

What it would do to the economy is anyone's guess.

Publicity Officer

2008-10-13T08:59:00.002+13:00

Well, I'm now the Publicity Officer for the NZ Association of Professional Hypnotherapists.

I've been thinking about offering to do that for a while, so I approached the secretary at the NZ Hypnotherapy Federation conference this weekend just gone. (Good conference, by the way.)

I said, "Would the NZAPH like a publicity officer?"

She shook my hand and said, "Welcome, publicity officer."

She then took me to the president, who literally embraced me. Apparently it's been difficult to get anyone to do anything lately, so he was delighted to get a volunteer.

My colleague just down the road, who has been the newsletter editor, also took the opportunity to offload that job onto me, which is fine.

I really want to improve the positive profile of hypnotherapy in public consciousness, so here's my opportunity.

Fiction review: Urban Shaman

2008-09-22T08:34:00.001+12:00

Urban Shaman by C.E. Murphy

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've been sampling a bit of urban fantasy lately and this is the best I've found - or at least the one that matches my particular tastes best. There's an endorsement from Jim Butcher, one of my favourite authors, on the cover that says, among other things, that the main character is likeable, and she is (in contrast to some other urban fantasy main characters I've been reading recently, Marla Mason being the main one that comes to mind). She's strong, courageous and has a clear moral centre, but is also flawed and aware that she is going to have to deal with her flaws and that it will be painful.

The other thing I liked was that the story is redemptive. The main character sets out to heal the villain - not destroy him. We could do with more of that.

Well told, with a good touch of humour that isn't overdone. I recommend it.

View all my reviews.

Elections

2008-09-12T15:17:00.005+12:00

So. Upcoming elections.

Not the US ones, no, let's not go there, they're becoming just another branch of the entertainment industry now like everything else in the US. The NZ ones, which have just been announced as taking place on Saturday 8 November. (The announcement was turned into the start of campaigning, too.)

By the way, there's been a real turnover in world leaders lately, hasn't there? First Helmut Kohl, then they started falling like flies: Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair, John Howard... people who'd been around for years. George Bush, one way or another, come January. Even the dictators who've ruled for decades - Fidel Castro's gone. Saddam Hussein, of course. Rumour is that Kim Il Sung isn't well. Mugabe's days are, hopefully, numbered.

And the way things are going, if the NZ PM counts as a world leader, she's going to be another casualty. The Labour Party failed to take the hint at the last election from their very reduced majority that people were sick of being overtaxed and overlegislated and having their opinions ignored, and barring a really major screw-up by National or some act of total heroism by Labour, they're going to be out and National will be in.

Last election, the National leader was Don Brash, whose economist's personality and inspired "Let's turn the clock back 30 years!" message just didn't resonate enough with the electorate to make National a viable alternative to what we, rather reluctantly, had. Now it's John Key, or "Mr Keys" as my mother always calls him. He's her local MP, and she can't stand him - reckons he's egotistical and self-serving, a hollow man. He's a politician, so she's probably right, but that's not how he comes across on TV, so he remains electable. In fact, he sounds reasonable, sensible, doesn't do the usual National-in-opposition thing of simply criticising the Government at every turn - has even agreed with a lot of their policies, which is a new tactic. Like I say, barring startling events he's almost certainly going to be our next PM.

Which lands me up against the vexed question of who to vote for, again. The question, as always, is, "Who represents my views least poorly?" Last time I voted Progressive, because of Jim Anderton's anti-drug policies (and much good it did - they lost their second MP and he got in on his electorate seat, like he has for donkeys' years, through three changes of party).

For the sake of any non-New Zealand readers, NZ has an MMP (mixed member proportional) electoral system, which means everyone gets two votes. You vote for someone who is standing in your local electorate, who also belongs to a party, and whoever gets the most votes in each electorate goes into parliament. But you also have a party vote, which is counted nationally, and the number of seats a party has in parliament is topped up so that it matches the proportion of votes that party got overall.

It's not quite that simple; if the party wins more electorate seats than they would get in proportion to their party vote, they don't get them taken away, and you have to get at least 5% of the total party vote or an electorate seat or else your party doesn't make it into Parliament. You pre-announce a list of candidates, and anyone who doesn't win an electorate seat but is high enough up the list to be included goes into Parliament as a list MP.

So I have two votes. One for MP for New Lynn, my electorate. Currently this is David Cunliffe, who I have to say for someone so apparently obsessed with his own smiling face has done a good job in his portfolios - especially health, which needed a proactive shakeup. I don't expect that he'll go out, it's a pretty solid Labour electorate (he's number 8 on the party list so he'll be in regardless, but he'll likely win the electorate), so a vote against him is just a throwaway anyhow. I probably will vote for someone else because it goes against the grain to vote for a Labour candidate even if it makes no difference. Don't know who, though.

Then there's the party vote. The trouble is, this time round I want to vote strategically, because I'm expecting a major swing to National and I don't think being able to govern alone would be good for them (or us). So I want to try to vote in someone who has some possibility of reigning them in and making them listen to other points of view, which is what MMP is really good for.

So, not Labour or National, obviously. I'm keeping up a proud family tradition, inherited from my parents, of never voting for the two major parties, even though both my grandfathers were very involved in the early years of the Labour Party (when it was working-class and proud of it, and so were they). Even in the First Past the Post years when a vote that wasn't for National or Labour was always wasted, my parents voted Social Credit, despite the fact that it was kind of a joke party with an economic policy nobody could understand. (Not a deliberate joke, like the McGillicuddy Serious Party, which one of my old friends from school stood for once. One of the other sort.)

I agree with the Greens on the importance of the environment, and I'd vote for them - if they didn't have such bizarre radical policies on everything else. Seriously, they're trying to save a planet they don't even live on.

New Zealand First is a spent force with the inquiry into Winston Peters, their leader, and whether he did or didn't accept dodgy donations. Wouldn't have voted for them anyway, I've never liked his bluster. Expect to see the back of them this time.

Progressives, it'll probably go the same way as last time, Jim Anderton will win his electorate and they won't get enough party vote to get a second MP. Since they probably wouldn't go into government with National they would otherwise be a good choice, especially as I agree with most of their policies. Pity.

United Future live up to their name - "We're so centrist!" "How centrist are you?" "We'll support whoever gets into Government!" So not much counterbalance there. To be fair, they have got Labour to give some concessions to them on some issues, but I don't think they would push National too hard on not screwing the electorate over, since they haven't done so with Labour to any detectable degree.

Act, no help there, they're natural allies of National if they even get back in.

Which, apart from some parties which aren't in Parliament yet and are unlikely to be at this election, leaves the Maori Party. I'm seriously considering voting for them this time. I respect Pita Sharples, their co-leader, I hear good things about him - he's an elder at the local marae - and I think they're genuinely working for the betterment of their people and doing so in a sensible way. I also like the way that they consult with their constituency before adopting policy, a marked contrast to the main parties. Problem is, last time they won most of the Maori electorates (which, since I'm not Maori, I can't enrol in) but got a low proportion of the party vote, since a lot of people split their vote - electorate vote for them, party vote for Labour. If that happens again, a party vote for them is probably a throwaway.

Maybe it needs to be Progressives after all.