On Writing

This article aims at people having an interest in reading, writing and getting published about Thai themes.

All I ever wanted to be was a published author. Other little boys ran around the neighborhood waving toy pistols and dreamed of being cowboys; I sat in my room with a book. I was an only child of a single parent, my mother was an English teacher. I was ten years old before I learned that in other houses kids got things other than books for birthday presents.

A buzz of excitement spread through our congregation with the arrival of our Chinese maths teacher who had decided to go for an early morning swim. The fact that he was wearing a pair of speedos meant that he had lost his usual image of sternness. The kids all cheered as he dove into the sea and began swimming parallel to the beach.

I am including many links I have saved over the years that I found helpful when researching and writing on Thailand. I want to add these to our links pages and ask you all to send your own useful links to me at: mike@thailandstories.com so I can add more that you have found helpful for us all to check out for ourselves.

This article examines the similarities between the writers and artists of the Decadent movement of the 19th century and writers on the Thailandstories website.

These are "fan" letters I received between 1994 and 1997. I keep them for the same reason Buddhist monks meditate staring at photographs of dead and decomposing corpses. "Ego deniers" my meditation teacher called them.

‘Cute’ is a word I can’t stop using when writing about Thai girls so I decided to find out exactly what it means…

My mind sometimes is a boiling cauldron of unbidden thoughts. I write because I have to. If I don't pen my thoughts I will never have peace of mind. The words haunt me, and scream to be put in ink on paper. It matters not if they are read by anyone. Take this as an example. I wrote this over four years ago and it has sat in my computer since.