Hi, everyone!
I am thrilled to be able to tell you that my new book “VEGA -The Vampire King” is now available to own as both an ebook for Kindle and in paperback from Amazon! I hope everybody enjoys reading and discovering who the enigmatic Vega “The Vampire King” really is, where he came from, and what happened to him after and as a result of meeting Olivia Hunter.
Happy reading! ππ₯³πππππ§π§ββοΈπ§ββοΈ
-Mark
All around the world,
today is the holy day of Easter Sunday…
today is the day which is remembered,
revered, and is considered remarkable by many,
because it is said that on the same day
two thousand years ago
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was resurrected
and is said to have ascended;
and Easter Sunday is also the day
when those in the Northern Hemisphere
celebrate the beginning of spring,
and for centuries people have
gathered together and feasted
in honour of the Germanic
goddess of the dawn Δostre –
and it is the symbols associated
with her worship where we get
our modern customs of owning rabbits
as well as the buying and the giving
of chocolate eggs to one another.
Today is an Easter and a Sunday
that many of us will remember
for many years, for many reasons –
just as people will always remember the Easter
that we all had to endure
at this same time last year,
when the vast majority of the population
of humanity had to start living
seemingly in bubbles of isolation
away from family, friends, and co-workers;
and a year on, the world is still trying
to find a way through to the other side
of this pandemonious world wide disaster –
but everywhere that I look
around the world there are
reasons to be hopeful and optimistic
that by this time next year
we will have found a way to adapt to,
get past, and resist the worst of
what is left of what we may
always have to live with.
Today is Easter Sunday
and to be honest I can think of
no better day to be truly grateful
for what each of us have
and who each of us have in our lives β
because each of us over the past year
have had to witness people
from all walks of life having to make
sacrifices
and changes to their life from which
there will never be a way back;
but what we never change for some people
is their ability to never stop believing
that with patience and time
the restrictions on livelihoods will end
and all people who are able
will once again be free β
and if there is anything that daily
impresses me about humanity it would have to be
how some people can keep going,
how some people can keep believing,
how some people can keep
keeping the faith, no matter what β
which, to me, is a supernatural power
that is both miraculous and extraordinary.
Itβs been seven years since we first metβ¦
itβs been seven years since we first found one anotherβ¦
itβs been 2555 days since we fell in love with each other,
and over the last 84 months that we have
been together I have learned everything about you,
just as you have learned a lot about me β
and though times over the last
364 weeks have been filled with both
moments of happiness as well as tears,
today is our anniversary and you and I
have now been in each others
lives for seven memorable years.
Itβs been seven years,
and I wanted to tell you once again that
I love you more than I could ever expressβ¦
itβs been seven years,
and once again I want to tell you
that being with you all this time β
my soulmate, my best friend,
my muse of inspiration,
and the most beautiful angel
that I have ever seen β
has been better than I could ever have wished for,
prayed for, thought about, or dreamed about β
and I never want what we have to ever come to an end.
Itβs been seven years β
however to me I felt like I already knew you
even before I knew who you wereβ¦
itβs been seven years since
I first saw you and I finally realised
who I was and why on Earth I am here.
Over the last seven years,
we have had our ups and downs β
and we have shared experiences
that I will always remember
that I will always cherish
and keep near and dear.
Over the last seven years
we have had both days of sunshine
as well as clouds β
but one thing that you can always be sure of
is that there is no one else in the world like you:
you are both beautiful on the inside
as well as on the outside,
and I have been in love with you
since the moment that I saw you,
and every day I thank God
for the gift to this world that is youβ¦
and, because today is
our seven year anniversary,
I just wanted to say that
here is to me and you,
to the last seven years
and to all the years to come!
I love that books are still being writtenβ¦
I love that books are still being readβ¦
I love that books are still being listen to
while people are driving,
while people are walking,
while people are sitting in a chair,
or while people are lying down in bedβ¦
I love that books are still physical objects
that people from all ages can hold,
feel, and marvel at the art of
as they flick through their pagesβ¦
I love that books are still filled with stories
of characters that do not always have
an accurate description of how they
talk or how they look,
so undividual readers have the gift
of being able to imagine what characters
sound like when talk as well as
paint their own picture in their mind
of how certain characters appearβ¦
one of the things that I love
about the act of reading, as well as
the art of coming up with a brand new story,
is the power that people have
to be able to generate figments
of their own imagination that are
reconstitutions of the familiar,
the recognisable, the known,
the big, the small, the significant,
and the things from our memories
that mesmerise us,
as well as so much more –
but, to me, it is the magic of words
that lies at the heart of why
I will always love books.
Just like the ingredients
that all combine to make
a meal look, smell, and taste
the way that it is supposed to,
a piece of music or a song
is also a multi-layered mixture
of individual components
that all harmonize to become
something greater that the sum of their parts –
as they are played by those players
capable of synchronising the gift within them
with the instruments that they have at their disposalβ¦
the art of making a melody of music
that has a distinctive voice of its own,
that is immediately recognisable,
even after the first morsel
of ear candy has been heard,
is exactly like the signature of a dish
prepared by someone for
breakfast, lunch, or dinner –
because food, like music,
leaves an indelible imprint on all of us
that is always profoundly memorable.
Both food and music are both a key
as well as a gateway to memories
and experiences that may have become
compartmentalised by us over time –
but there is no denying how both
a song, and perhaps something
that you may not have tasted for years,
can have the instant power
to turn the gears of our minds
back to a particular place and a timeβ¦
food is sustenance for the body,
music is sustenance for the mind –
and when combined together,
while dining within a restaurant
or in a cafe, there is no estimating
the flood of endorphins that can rise
within our thoughts which can drive our emotions
in ways akin to a tsunami of waves
that have the ability to resurface
moments of merriment so meaningful to us
that they can make lost artifacts
of our consciousness once again easy to find.
Both eating food and listening to music,
to some people, can be like having
a spiritual experience that feeds
and rejuvenates something within them
that goes beyond the physical and the biologicalβ¦
consuming certain legal stimulants,
such as chocolate or caffeine,
that have the ability to influence
the speed that our heart beats
and the way that we feel,
can affect us in the same way that music
can make us all involuntarily
raise our arms, close our eyes,
move our feet and dance around a room –
especially if the song that we hear
is one of our favourite tunes
that always has the effect of making us move
as if we are being compelled by a spirit
that we never want to be free of
that always takes us all to a place that feels
out of this world and utterly phenomenonal.
There is no place in this world
more tranquil than a garden filled
with calmness and colour
that symbolises nature at it’s most wild
as well as at its most beautifulβ¦
there is no place of serenity
and rejuvenation for both the mind
and the soul, that is home to birds,
to insects and to animals big and small,
than the place that people sit in,
look at, breath in, and marvel at
all of the infinite wonders that all have
their own uniquely individual details.
There is no other place that people
get to inherit, but also get the opportunity
to make their own, than the place
that changes over the course of its life
along with the seasons that has this power
to be able to remind us all of times gone byβ¦
there is no place of sunlight
and shadow that shows visitors
of our humble abodes who we are
and what means the most to us
than the place that we see almost
every day that if we are lucky
is an oasis of perfection as well as
protection in our minds eye.
There is no place for people with
“green fingers” who enjoy planting,
watering, watching, and tending to
the plants that they sow and see
start out as a seed and then over time
grow just as substantially above the surface
of the Earth that they are planted into
as they do below the ground
whilst creating a vast network of complex rootsβ¦
there is no other place that people
can spend hours within and never stop
feeling as if they are truly at home
than that patch of land that they feel belongs to them,
where they can do whatever we want to do,
wherever and whenever we want to do it,
than that special place to us
that may be as big as a park
or a small as a window box,
but nevertheless is a garden
that we can all call our own.
It’s been four years since my first novel “The Wolf In Me” was published! Wow! I can’t believe how time moves so fast! “The Wolf In Me” was my first book to feature my character Olivia Hunter, which I subsequently wrote a sequel to and got published via my great publisher Zeloo Media, in 2019 called “The Wolf In You”.
I consider both “The Wolf In Me” and “The Wolf In You” as Volume One and Volume Two in the extraordinary and supernatural story of Olivia Hunter and I still love and look back fondly on the journey of discovery that I took with the character of Olivia Hunter in both of those books.
Happy Birthday to “The Wolf In Me”! ππΊππβπ
To the woman who from the day that
I was born has given me the gift
of unconditional love…
to the woman who carried me,
who has held me, who has thought about me,
and who has been there for me my entire life –
no matter what you have have been going through:
I have always felt blessed that
you are my kind and caring Mum
and I am your adoring son.
To the woman whose smile
has made me smile more times
throughout my life than I can count:
you have been the best example
of who and what a mother should be,
and those of us who are your children
every day consider ourselves lucky
to have a part of you in us
and to have a part of us in you-
because you are a role-model
for being a mother like nobody else…
to the woman who has sent her children
off to sleep every night with
a blessing of sweet dreams:
you do not know how much
what you do matters, nor what your
effortless love has always meant
and what your love will always mean.
To the woman who gave birth to me…
to the woman who has always
accepted me for who I am and who has
always praised me for what I do…
to the woman who has always given me what I needed more than anything in the world…
to the woman who I could not thank enough
for being amazing in every way –
this poem is dedicated to you:
Bernadette Marie Christine Hastings,
my one and only, my one of a kind,
the best in the world, Mum.
Happy Mother’s Day! π
When people are surrounded
by artificial light, by heat, and by order
it can be hard to imagine what it was like
for the first generation of human explorers,
who originally began as one diverse group,
who then went their separate ways
to discover and to understand more
about what and who makes the world
the way that it is, as well as populate
the vastly different regions that
our planet is known for the have to be
adapted to living in in many different ways.
The first people didnβt have clothesβ¦
the first people didnβt have mapsβ¦
the first people didnβt even have
wooden built houses to call homesβ¦
the first people didnβt even have maths β
but what the first people had,
and what sustained them,
were dreams, inspiration, ideas,
and from the moment that they harnessed
to ability to willingly create fire
they gave themselves the gift to be able
to see and to travel during the night,
to cook their own meals, and to be entranced
by the dancing flames of glowing light.
The first men and women who
embarked upon their journey of fate
to go to places they knew not where
saw things that they could only
conceptualise by capturing their depictions
of them in cave paintings and in legends
that have endured for thousands of years.
The first of us were the first to feel the spark of loveβ¦
they were the first of us to feel the passion of lifeβ¦
they were the first of us to look up at the sky
and wonder about our place in the cosmos,
surrounded by an infinite number of stars,
and question why any of us are hereβ¦
they were the first of us to be brave enough
to bring people together to create
entire civilizations who thrived for a time
and who had to go through
more than anybody alive today could ever imagine.
We who are alive today are
who we are, with what we have,
because our ancestors were more
than even they knew that they were at the time –
but one thing that our ancestors knew well
was that in life what everybody
and what everything sometimes needs
more than anything is each other,
and also the knowledge that by
working together anybody can
get through anything, even the tough stuff.
markthepoet.me 