I’ve gone and done another interview. Fellow Crooked Cat author, Vanessa Couchman, kindly hosted it here.
And the other day, I wrote about the mezuzah on the Crooked Cat blog.
Happy reading and have a great weekend!
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Author: Miriam Drori
Author, editor, attempter of this thing called life. Social anxiety warrior. Re-Connections, a collection of short stories, published with Ocelot Press, 15/10/2025.
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Taking a Camel to Rome
I’m delighted to be joined by Seumas Gallacher today. Seumas is a prolific writer of crime thrillers. He has had phenomenal success as a self-published author and has now partnered with Crooked Cat, who are republishing his novels, starting with Savage Payback. (If you want to know why he decided to do this, the answer is here in the post from 2nd February.) Seumas has also written a very helpful guide to self-publishing called Self-Publishing Steps To Successful Sales. Unsurprisingly, Seumas comes from Scotland. If you thought Ireland, as I did at first, look at the spellings again. And if you need any further proof, one look at his blog is all you need! A more surprising fact is that he lives in Abu Dhabi.
Hello Seumas and welcome to my blog. I thought about conducting the interview face to face. I looked up Google’s driving instructions from Jerusalem to Abu Dhabi and got the message: “Sorry, your search appears to be outside our current coverage area for transit.” Still from the map it looks to be quite a straight road. I’m just wondering whether to go that way, taking in the wildlife sanctuary and Riyadh on the way, or to travel to Eilat and take a leisurely cruise round the coast. In the meantime, I’ll make do with this long distance chat.
Hi, Miriam, pity, that. I could have got you some nice discounted camel passes from a guy I know… and anyway, I’m told that all roads lead to Rome, so p’raps we’ll end up in Italy ……
That’s an idea! I read that you went to Abu Dhabi for a short job and ended up staying. What drew you to that place?
My profession is that of (whisper it) a banker, but by vocation that has segued over the years into being a corporate troubleshooter… on one of those engagements I went to Abu Dhabi ten years ago, for one month… I’m still here …
I was offered terms to stay longer and did so because I like the pace of Abu Dhabi …it’s less frenetic than its partner down the road, Dubai, which is more of a marketing man’s dream… currently I shuttle between Abu Dhabi and Bahrain on business… I like the style of the locals whom I’ve been privileged to do business with…
Do you speak Arabic?
I took six months of Arabic lessons, but hardly made as much of an indent as I would like …it’s a very difficult language, as I’ve discovered there are very few algorithms to follow in terms of tenses and so on.
I empathise with you. I’ve never tried to learn Arabic. I got put off by the script, which looks hard to decipher, and the fact that the spoken and written languages are different. But can you manage there without Arabic? Do most people speak English?
Most people do speak English very well in the Middle East, but I’ve always tried to learn the lingua franca wherever I’ve been… it’s respected locally as an effort to ‘come across the bridge’… I speak varying proficiencies of English, Gaelic, French, Tagalog, Cantonese and Arabic… some may say I’m best at talking rubbish…
That sounds impressive! I had to look up Tagalog and it turns out 57 million people speak it.
Ah, sorry, Tagalog is the mainstream language of the Philippines, which actually has more than 75 various dialects.
Do you miss Scotland?
In all honesty, as regards Scotland, I’ve been away for more than 40 years, so I’ve become very much an ’international’ citizen… fond memories I have in spades, of course, but there’s very little attraction to return…
I’m not tempted to return to England, but I miss little things like wide open spaces, country pubs, salt ’n’ vinegar crisps and shortbread. Is there anything you dream of that’s in another country?
I dream very little of other countries’ attractions, having been blessed with travelling so much already in a life and career around the planet… however, there are places I certainly enjoyed being in: Vienna as a tourist, Hong Kong as a businessman, and San Francisco as a mixture of both.
Of those three, I’ve only been to Hong Kong so far, and enjoyed it immensely.
So where are your novels set?
International range..on purpose… based from their London offices, the proponents travel through the books to many parts of Europe, Hong Kong, Turkey, North Africa, the Balkans and South America.
What else do you want to tell us about them?
Basic story line is of 3 former SAS commando officers who create their own specialist security firm protecting high value clients and their merchandise. They encounter several bad guys in the form of international crime lords, drug kingpins, people trafficked, money launderers. They use their black operations skills to bring justice where needed, away from the eyes of the normal law enforcement methods.
I read that you left home at the age of 15. How does a 15-year-old boy manage in the big wide world?
As the Beatles put it so well ‘I’ll get by with a little help from my friends’… I’ve had some terrific people come in and out of my life at pivotal moments …each a hero in their own way… also being able to use my own fists where necessary has been useful… I loathe bullies, and have always had a kinda reckless attitude toward not backing off from bullying when I meet it…got me into trouble some times, but trouble that I welcomed, strangely enough.
I wish I’d known how to do that! I suppose it all comes down to self-confidence, which is also what you assumed when you wrote, “I go along with the adage that if you believe you can achieve something, or if you believe you cannot achieve something, you’re probably right.”
What if someone doesn’t have the self-confidence to believe they can achieve something?
Tough one… revert to the saying if they don’t believe it, they’re probably right..sadly.. so many people never try , never step out of the comfort zone… it’s okay to be scared sometimes when you do things…
Hmm, I’ll think about that.
I loved this quote from the interview with you at Smorgasbord: “Thus began my growing tolerance for all people who once seemed on the surface to be different to me… we are all the same.” Would the world be a better place if everyone realised that?
For sure.
We’d better get the word out then!
Seumas, thank you so much for coming onto my blog. I don’t suppose you’ll be surprised to learn that I don’t get many visitors from your part of the world. I wish you even more success with your novels now that you’ve partnered with Crooked Cat.
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SEUMAS GALLACHER escaped from the world of finance five years ago, after a career spanning three continents and five decades.
As the self-professed ‘oldest computer Jurassic on the planet’ his headlong immersion into the dizzy world of eBook publishing opened his eyes, mind, and pleasure to the joys of self-publishing. As a former businessman, he rapidly understood the concept of a writer’s need to ‘build the platform’, and from a standing start began to develop a social networking outreach, which now tops 18,000 direct contacts.
His ‘Jack Calder’ crime-thrillers series, THE VIOLIN MAN’S LEGACY, VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK and SAVAGE PAYBACK blew his mind with more than 80,000 e-link downloads to date.
He started a humorous, informative, self-publishers blog three years ago, never having heard of a ‘blog’ prior to that, was voted ‘Blogger of the Year 2013’ and now has a loyal blog following on his networks. He says the novels contain his ‘Author’s Voice’, while the blog carries his ‘Author’s Brand’. And he’s LUVVIN IT!
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You can find Seumas on his blog as well as on Twitter, Facebook and email (seumasgallacher@yahoo.com).
Savage Payback is available on Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia and Smashwords.
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Passion is Out
That’s it. Finished. I am no longer passionate about raising awareness of social anxiety.
Why? I just read this article. It says, “Passion is something that takes place in a bedroom not a boardroom.” Except that in my case it should say, “Passion is something that takes place in a bedroom, not a personal computer.” Outside the bedroom, passion is a cliché.
The only trouble is, I don’t know what to replace it with. My goal is to raise awareness of social anxiety? Shouldn’t “goal” be reseverved for the football pitch? My ambition is to raise awareness of social anxiety? Isn’t “ambition” a word for job fairs?
The jury’s still out on this. No, I don’t mean that – I’m not in a courtroom.
PS I’m not poking fun at the article, which was written by a cousin of mine. I agree that marketing needs to be stripped of meaningless words. But I’m not a company; I’m just me. Please may I still be passionate?
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The Value of Life
To individual people, lives are not equal. Some are much more important to us than others. The lives of those closest to us are the most important. Then perhaps the lives of those less close to us. Then public figures. Of the people we don’t know, we tend to worry more about those who have some connection to us. When some major disaster happens in the world, my local news tells me how many Israelis were involved. If I turn on BBC news, I hear the number of British people involved.
Does each country value the lives of all its citizens equally? Israel does. Britain does. India, as I discovered recently, doesn’t. I’m going to describe the incident that brought this home to me.
During our recent tour of the states of Odisha and Chhattisgarh, our group was driven in six cars. All six drivers were excellent at their job, but that didn’t stop us being scared. The drivers drove fast on bad roads full of obstacles. We passed buses, tuk-tuks and motorbikes carrying a lot more people than they should have done. We skirted round cows wandering around freely. In fact one time, our driver hooted at a cow in the road. (They all hooted a lot.) The cow appeared to be moving to the side but then changed its mind and the driver, still going quite fast, had to swerve to avoid it. We thought we were going to turn over but somehow the car remained upright.
Driving at night was particularly scary. They overtook on bends where they couldn’t have seen what was coming, especially as not all motorbikes there have lights, and bicycles, pedestrians and cows certainly don’t.
Another time, I was sitting in the back with one other, while a third member of our group sat at the front beside the driver. For a change, we were on a dual carriageway with two lanes on each side. Our driver was just overtaking a bus when a motorbike shot out from behind the bus, crossing our path. The driver braked sharply, but couldn’t avoid hitting the motorbike, on which were four people. A crowd gathered and we saw one of the motorbike passengers, who looked to be a teenager, being carried to the side of the road. If he was alive, he was certainly unconscious.
What happened next shocked us. We knew what would happen in our country and in other western countries. At the very least, we would have to wait for the police to come to take statements and note down particulars. In our naiveté, we imagined the same would happen here.
As soon as all the passengers and the motorbike had been moved to the side of the road, the people waved us on and the driver moved off, driving even faster than usual. He said something to us about the car being from a different state and he spoke in Hindi on the phone. There had been contact between the drivers throughout the trip.
Afterwards, our guide, who had been in a car in front of us, tried to hush everything up. He sounded surprised to hear that anything had happened, although I’m sure he must have been told by phone. Then, after supposedly finding out, he told us that the injured boy was drunk and not hurt at all. No one asked if we were all right. As it happened, two of us hit our heads on the seats in front, but we were OK.
The way the accident was handled shocked us. It is known that the accident rate in India is bad, but this was an accident that probably didn’t enter into the statistics. Probably someone died in it. But what’s one life amongst so many?
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Wake Up Me: Working Hard
I come to the second of Wake Up World‘s
I discussed the first one here. What about the second?
No, that’s not going to be one of mine. True, I’ve worked hard. But I don’t think I’ve worked excessively. It’s good to work hard. Hard work brings satisfaction – especially when you enjoy your work. As long as you find time to relax, which I do.
How about you?
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Cumulative Songs
This subject came up recently because of Sue Barnard’s poem based on the cumulative song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, about which Wikipedia says:
“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is a cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses.
I had heard this song before, but I think I need to know more about it in order to understand Sue’s poem.
Nevertheless, it got me thinking about all the cumulative songs I know.
These are the ones I remember:
- Green Leaves Grew All Around
- Green Grow the Rushes, O
- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
And two songs we sing at the Passover seder:
- Chad Gadya, a song in Aramaic that tells the story of one little goat.
- Echad Mi Yodea, which, like Green Grow the Rushes, O, allocates an object to each number.
Apparently cumulative songs are popular with choirs because the words are easy to remember. I certainly remember the words of those Passover songs.
Do you have any favourite cumulative songs?
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Fighting the Stigma
Times have changed. If I ever thought about mental illness in my youth, it was in connection with “mental asylums” as they were called then.
Today, attitudes are very different, but there is still a stigma attached to mental health issues. That’s why I decided to add my story to a website called, “Stigma Fighters.” It’s an American site and they’re looking for donations that will help it become a non-profit organisation.
Many thanks to Ailsa Abraham for the link and endless thanks to Gill, who changed my life.
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About that Competition
The competition I ran for Indie Authors Appreciation Week was won by Cathy Bryant, who will shortly receive a signed copy of Neither Here Nor There. Congratulations, Cathy.
In chapter 1 of Neither Here Nor There, Esty, as a first step in the process of leaving the haredi (ultra-orthodox) community in which she was raised, has to phone Avi, who volunteers for an organisation that helps people like Esty.
There were two competition questions:
1. How does the person Esty calls on the phone react when Esty tells him that she wants to leave the haredi community?
Cathy answered: “The man on the phone reacts by carefully explaining the risks, and making sure that Esty understands that she can go back – that she still has a choice. He outlines what might go wrong.”
2. Why do you think he reacts in this way?
Cathy answered: “I got the impression that he was trying to make sure that she knew what she was doing and wasn’t acting on impulse – as a representative of his organisation he has to be responsible. After all, she’s taking a very serious step.”
Both answers are correct. But I wanted to point out something else. The members of the organisation must be aware that they could be accused of tempting young people away from their families and their way of life. They need to make absolutely clear to everyone that they become involved only after the person has made that crucial decision.
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Neither Here Nor There is available from Amazon, Smashwords and The Book Depository.
Before I deal with the topic of this post, here’s a reminder of a competition to win a signed copy of Neither Here Nor There. More information on my Facebook page. You have a bit more than a day to enter the competition.
Edit: Actually it was 2 days. Now it’s one. Until midnight GMT on Thursday night.
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A friend shared this picture from Wake Up World the other day.
I’m not thinking of dying anytime soon and neither is my friend, but this got me thinking. I could say four of those about myself. And two of them would go deeper than that.
So I thought I’d explore each one in more detail, starting with:
And when I thought about this some more, I decided I do live a life true to myself – now and in the big things. In my childhood, there were many things I’d have liked to have done – things I didn’t even ask my parents about because I knew they wouldn’t agree.
But as an adult, I generally do the things I want – the big things, anyway. With the little things, I try to do what’s expected of me, even without knowing what that is. It’s all part of wanting to be normal, whatever that is.
There’s an easy answer to that: Stop doing what’s expected of you and do what you want.
Absolutely. Good advice. Except that I do it automatically. Without thinking. Because that’s how I’m programmed. And it’s not something that’s easy to change.
Where do you stand on that?
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The View from Heaven – a flash story
As part of Indie Authors Appreciation Week, I’m reposting this story because of its connection to Jerusalem.
They stood, she and he, embracing in the centre of a perfect garden. Flowers all around. Pinks, reds, yellows, purples, whites. Water cascading down the rocks into the pool. Maturing plums and kumquats nested by sun-frolicked green leaves. Sweet, juicy fruit waiting to be gathered and consumed.
Over there, on the same level, stood a large bald prism. One triangular end thrust out through needle-sharp pine leaves. Acute angles pointed and menaced. Inside the prism, as clear as if its walls had been transparent and its position much closer, people wandered in a daze, struggling to grasp the horrifying enormity exhaled by tragic reminders.
“It looks quite near,” she said. “Could we walk there, down into the valley and up the other side?”
“Do you want to?” he replied in question.
“How long would it take?”
“Oh, about seventy years, going backwards.”
She glanced at him with a frowning half-smile. “We’d die before we got there.”
“Just as well,” he said, without smiling.
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Explanation: The beautiful view from our beautiful garden includes the prism-shaped building that is part of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum.
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My spot in Indie Authors Appreciation Week is at 5pm GMT today (Sunday). Do join me there if you can.
I will also be running a competition, which you can find on the event page during my spot and also on my Facebook author page. The prize is a signed copy of Neither Here Nor There, which I will send anywhere in the world.
Miriam Drori, Author 