Book Reviews, Ratings and Amazon

These days I barely ever read reviews of my books. I used to.

Around 2015 or so, I met someone who I called my 1 star reviewer. She, or whomever it actually is, routinely posted 1-star reviews on Amazon with the cut and paste comment that ‘pages were missing from the stories’. I was convinced this was a competing author in my space or someone who just didn’t like me. You can still see those reviews if you look. It’s strange that they remain in place though as I have notified Amazon multiple times that this is a cut and paste review and untrue. Apparently, they don’t care. There are no pages missing from the stories yet Amazon is quite content to let the reviews stand.

Then, a reviewer – could it be the same person? – popped up on my best selling Black-Eyed kids book offering 1 star and suggesting all the stories were copied from Reddit where they could be read for free. Back in those days, you could respond to reviews on Amazon and so I duly did pointing out that NONE of the stories in the book came from Reddit and questioning if the reviewer had read the book as it is an investigative work that uses stories and encounter experiences to illustrate the research. I wrote to amazon several times pointing out that the review was false and provably so. It’s still there. Minus my response as Amazon no longer affords authors the opportunity to respond and has deleted all responses…..

Things though got worse in some ways when it allowed readers to ‘rate’ a book. No review – just a score between 1 and 5. You can buy a kindle book, scroll to the end and vote it a 1. No questions asked. I suspect that there are a small number of folk who do just that. A case in point in one of my poetry books that has a written 5-star review but now has an average of 3 because a kindle user that voted it a 1 and that 1 is more recent than the written review.

Then there was the review by a certain Professor in California with an exe to grind. He doesn’t think people like me should be publishing our work as it isn’t up to the standards of classical english literature. So he buys 99 cent kindles and then spends his idle hours writing scathingly and witheringly sarcastic reviews. He reviewed my novella. At the time you could still respond so I did. In return for my audacity he had several of his students write 1 star scathing reviews as well – some I got removed but not all. What a nice man. You can still read his review in amongst the genuine 5 and 4 star reviews….

So, I don’t read reviews anymore on Amazon. Amazon seems to have a strange policy when it comes to reviews and ratings that is easy to manipulate and utilise for nefarious ends.

My books aren’t meant to be classic English literature. They are meant to be entertainment. Some people like them, others don’t. That isn’t gong to change.

A Dream

I’m 62 and a half. I have a day job and it supports me very nicely yet I sometimes wonder how will I retire? After a very expensive divorce back in the early 2000’s, my ex took almost all my pensions and honestly since that time, I haven’t really bothered cos I figured I’d work until I dropped. But I do dream of being able to focus on my hobbies – dowsing, ghost stories, hiking, vlogging, blogging, music and photography. It would be nice to make a living from that…

This is why at some point I will start offering some dowsing classes off this site and why there will be many more books. However, a modern trend seems to be to ask people to support your effort with a small monthly donation to the cause. So, I’m going to try that as well and if interested, you can support me here.

It’s nice to dream about doing your hobbies for a living but for most, it remains just a dream. I’m going to try to make my dream a bit of a reality…

Experimental and Untested

These two words were enough for me. Especially when I did the research. Moderna even proclaimed its ability to reprogram your body on its website – you are the operating system it proudly proclaimed. No. I am not your operating system! I think most just assumed if the vaccine was being pushed it must be tested and safe…. No. It was experimental and untested. Only some tests were performed out of the usual rigorous testing that takes years. You can blame Trump for that actually. The new booster is so rushed it was only tested on four mice. Yes – you read that right. Four mice. This is their science!

Mrna is a gene therapy not a vaccine anyway. Oh they will try to tell you it is but they changed the definition of vaccine in order to make this gene therapy usually only used with terminally ill patients acceptable to you all. Early on, doctors warned that the spike protein was probably a mistake to use as well. As it was the spike protein that seemingly caused most of the issues experienced by people who got COVID bad.

So it was experimental and untested as a vaccine and untested as an approach to vaccination and…. it used the spike protein – a highly dangerous substance. Really, this is all I needed to tell me I wasn’t going to take this particular ‘vaccine’.

Anti-vaxx? Nope. I had the flu vaccine the last 6 years.

Anti misinformation, loss of medical privacy, anti-identification and mistreatment of people who used their common sense or had a religious or health reason to say no? Yes indeed I am.

It is suggested that Macron isn’t vaccinated either. I suspect many ‘elite’ are not vaccinated. Perhaps poor Joe is, he probably did just what they told him. But, if it turns out that these politicians who singled out the unvaccinated as vermin to be destroyed are not vaccinated themselves. Well, I hope they rot in hell.

How Do You Become a Deranged Climate Person?

I know the media is infected with climate none sense but seriously, if you were really concerned wouldn’t you first do just a little bit of analysis of the issue before gluing yourself to a train dressed in your plastic clothing? If you did start to do a little analysis, you would soon realise that the idea of a climate crisis is political and belief not science.

The idea that science is proven would soon be discovered to be as anti a science statement as you can make as science is NEVER proven and is always an active debate over differing theories. Dissent in science isn’t suppressed but sought out via a peer review process.

The idea that CO2 – without which there would not be life on this planet – is pollution is like saying up is down. The Earth has always had more CO2 in its atmosphere than today and frankly, there is a good argument that more is needed not less.

But what motivates someone to go out and glue themselves to a train? Fear? again, if you are scared, why wouldn’t you investigate the issue and get an education? Or is it that there are just some people who like to be the center of attention, go along with the latest world ending concept of the time and are so politically indoctrinated, they wouldn’t know truth f if hit them on the head?

I don’t know the answer. I just know that much of the time, I feel surrounded by some kind of politically motivated zombies foaming and frothing at the mouth while trying to eat my heart out.

I felt the same way about COVID gene therapies also misnamed vaccines. But now, I see that the truth is finally emerging from whatever crevasse it was trapped in. Suddenly, experts are coming out all over the place saying exactly what I have been saying this last 3 years and calling for these awful poisons to be withdrawn.

Not only that, they are identifying how a tragedy of this proportion of misinformation from official sources could ever occur… and guess what – we see exactly the same abuse going on with the climate BS too.

Facebook – The Woke Truth Distorting Narrative Pushing Platform

I think it’s time that those of us who retain our sanity in a world of stupidity and make believe fight back. I’m not yet sure how we achieve this but we need to find ways to stop Facebook and other such blatantly truth distorting misinformation spreaders from censoring points of view.

I posted my views on this published paper about COVID ‘vaccines’ and the Indian employees of Facebook took it down telling me I’m spreading misinformation.

No dear Facebook morons – I’m commenting on a scientific paper – and not the only one – that finds that the Mrna ‘vaccines’ have negative effectiveness after a short period of time.

By suppressing and censoring truth and labelling it as misinformation, Facebook is guilty of possibly damaging the health of its users and possibly even their death.

The lemmings who think Facebook is somehow helping are welcome to vaccinate themselves to death if they wish but I think they ought to know that the experts are turning against these useless gene therapies daily.

Colds, Sniffles and So On

Last weekend, I started to get a bit of a scratchy throat and by Monday, I was setting world records for sneezing. The next few days were no better and even today – Friday – I still feel like sh1t. I don’t think I have ever sneezed quite so much in my life – so much that its hard to get breath at times. Now, its gone into a cough and yet I am still sneezing as my nostril is sore from blowing my nose and that is sufficient to make me sneeze.

Of course, I have been asked several times isn’t it COVID? No – its a common head cold. Sneezing you will find isn’t a common COVID symptom and I don’t have any fever at all.

Let me tell you something too. This head cold is far worse than the COVID I had earlier in the year. Far worse. With COVID, I could at least continue working in my home office. This thing has left me unable to function for several days.

My father was the same. A common cold wiped him out. I think it’s genetic and something to do with our sinuses. My entire head blows up and I am unable to think or function. I feel like someone removed whatever brains I have and replaced them with cotton wool.

It serves as a timely reminder that our societies’ obsession with COVID is increasingly ridiculous. In fact, our collective obsession with health and safety is ridiculous.

Last week, I was trying to reverse out of a narrow driveway. This is something best done without a seatbelt. Of course, the inbuilt safety systems in my car don’t understand and after 30 seconds they are screaming at me, ringing alarm bells at 100 decibels and generally ensuring that I have an accident or heart attack. No way to switch off these ridiculous ‘safety’ solutions either. No room for that now far right wing thing – common sense. Nope, you will obey!

Makes me wonder how I ever managed to survive back in the 70’s with no rear seat belts or any real safety equipment at all and how we all managed to navigate through life….

The obsession with health and safety as a collective responsibility is just an excuse to enforce more controls. It has gone too far and honestly, is helping to produce a generation of idiots.

RyanAir Disgrace

I think most of us detest Ryanair but are often forced to use them due to reasons like no one else flies there….

Yesterday, flying back to Brno from the UK, we were treated to what I can only describe as a RyanAir thug of a woman who in her uniform smugly and bossily treated us all like cattle. She talked to me as if I were a speck on the ass of the Universe accusing me of taking carry on baggage when I hadn’t paid before and demanding my boarding pass. She then didn’t apologise or even stop talking when she realised it wasn’t my baggage but treated that person like a criminal as well. When I tried to respond, I was ignored and talked over and that resulted in a retort from me. I was then informed that I wouldn’t be allowed to board as I was an unruly passenger and security would talk with me. He did. He agreed with me and sympathised about the utter sickness masquerading as a Ryanair employee. I was then forced to go to the back of the line and board last by this ‘lady’. I did so with a smile and a bounce in my step as I had a reserved seat and frankly boarding last meant less waiting in a cramped seat listening to a constant barrage of orders and sales pitches.

RyanAir needs to be careful whom it hires. People like this lady don a uniform and become instantly empowered to treat people like cattle. She has a mental condition and should not be in any position of authority until her ego is put back in place and she learns that all humans deserve respect – even her.

My Mum

My Mum passed away on Friday. I hadn’t seen her in person for almost 3-years I’m afraid to say largely down to travel restrictions and the fact that the last several months she did not know me at all courtesy of dementia. I would call from time to time but even that became a disheartening few minutes knowing that she was clueless who I was and was simply finding ways to end an uncomfortable conversation. The last call lasted 15 seconds as she told me she had to go and put down the phone. In a sense, I lost my Mum a couple of years ago to whatever dementia is. None the less, the loss is still unbearable – at least until time gently heals. Next week, my daughter and I will go to Hull and to the funeral. There I will try to hold back the tears and stay strong as the eldest Vasey left.

Mum was a strong, brave and kind hearted lady who just loved to talk and enjoyed her fish and chips. She suffered health issues for decades like colitis (which went away with dementia sort of proving colitis is sometimes simply related to worry and stress!), she had eye issues and had injections in her eye monthly and a long list of other ailments. Nothing stopped her though. If she had a mind to do something she did it. She flew to Czechia once with a broken arm. Another time, she flew back with a broken leg after falling down some steps here.

There she was in her 80’s frail from colitis and with a broken arm yet she was quite able to board a plane to Vienna and figure it out as she went. I would meet her with my daughter at the airport and marvel at how she had managed with a heavy bag finding her way through the airport. Her answer was always the same – she just found some kind soul to help her! On the journey, I’m sure she sat and chatted the entire two hours. Most likely about me boasting as a Mother is apt to do.

She amazed us especially after my Dad passed. She lived alone and carried on doing her thing. When I visited though I wondered how well she was really doing when I realised she couldn’t see very well and was eating expired ham and the like. The dementia was slowly coming although we didnt know it. The give away was the day Deni and I returned to her house from my brothers and let ourselves in. For a full 30 seconds, she did not know who we were and then made light of it….

As a boy, my Mum was just Mum. Always there baking, cooking, cleaning, ironing….. and working a full time job to pay for our annual holidays. On holiday trips, she would sit in the front seat rapidly making sandwiches and feeding the four men in the car with her…Queen of sandwich makers she was. And her baking was simply amazing. Deni recalls the full breakfasts and a whole bunch of other small things about her Nana including her smell. She loved the smell of Nana.

In the end, Mum lasted longer than she imagined – she was convinced she would leave us at age 82 for some reason but managed many more years than that. In the end, she led a comfortable existence I think in the home and enjoyed the food and the views. The dementia shielded her a bit from having to understand COVID restrictions and where some of her home friends went (died of COVID) but it robbed us of a person we loved and admired.

I miss my Mum knowing I won’t ever talk to her or see her again. I hope she and Dad are together again exploring the beaches and museums of some idyllic location.

In the last few years I enjoyed some real; quality time with her – both here and in Yorkshire. I’d drive her around places she liked. We would stop for cakes and coffee or fish and chips and she would talk and talk about times gone by. A different world of naivety and work when people were somehow different and more distant maybe. I was always fascinated and had lots of questions. She was always happy to answer.

God bless you Mum.

I had pretty much the perfect Mum and Dad.