I'm Terry Morgan and TJM Books is my self-publishing platform.
I started writing stories and poetry while traveling with my own exporting business.
Having visited well over seventy countries - some so many times I lost count - I now try, whenever possible, to give hotels and airports a miss and live with my Thai wife, Yung, in the quietness of rural Petchabun, Thailand.
We still return home to Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds valleys in the UK occasionally, but all that lonely business travel - to Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, across Europe and America - did give me something quite special. Many of my memories and personal experiences find themselves - together with a lot of imagination - in what I now write about. So, it's mostly international and covers business, politics, terrorism, crime and espionage plus a bit of science thrown in because I'm still a biologist in my heart. Mostly it's serious but sometimes satirical and I especially try to write enjoyable reading for that largely under-catered for part of the population - mature men.
And you'll get your money's worth because most of my books are well above average in length and the e-versions are free. Why free? For an explanation, read an abstract from my Smashwords interview below.
I started writing stories and poetry while traveling with my own exporting business.
Having visited well over seventy countries - some so many times I lost count - I now try, whenever possible, to give hotels and airports a miss and live with my Thai wife, Yung, in the quietness of rural Petchabun, Thailand.
We still return home to Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds valleys in the UK occasionally, but all that lonely business travel - to Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, across Europe and America - did give me something quite special. Many of my memories and personal experiences find themselves - together with a lot of imagination - in what I now write about. So, it's mostly international and covers business, politics, terrorism, crime and espionage plus a bit of science thrown in because I'm still a biologist in my heart. Mostly it's serious but sometimes satirical and I especially try to write enjoyable reading for that largely under-catered for part of the population - mature men.
And you'll get your money's worth because most of my books are well above average in length and the e-versions are free. Why free? For an explanation, read an abstract from my Smashwords interview below.
CURRENT WRITING PROJECTS:
I've always run two, three or even four writing projects together - putting aside one to focus on another for a while, then reverting. Here are two of my current ones.
I've always run two, three or even four writing projects together - putting aside one to focus on another for a while, then reverting. Here are two of my current ones.
"Mosquito"
The fifth in the "Asher & Asher" series
An ex United Nations Biological Weapons Inspector comes out of forced retirement to pursue a suspicion of a secret project that would enable genetically modified flies to carry deadly viruses. But can he prove his suspicions before becoming a target for state or private security forces? And is there more to it than flying insects?
That was the original idea of this story and it's still the main theme - politicians and government-led security forces are not unknown to have dealt with UN weapons inspectors if they step out of line against their wishes!
In March (2020) I put this story aside for a while to watch emerging technology as it was moving rapidly in the direction of where this story was heading, I'll be back on it again soon with a few changes including some of the main characters. In comes a quiet young American engineer called Carlos Garcia with a hidden flair for criminal investigation. Not quite knowing where stories will go when I start out has been the hallmark of eerything I've so far written!
Meanwhile, I'm back on the following one:
The fifth in the "Asher & Asher" series
An ex United Nations Biological Weapons Inspector comes out of forced retirement to pursue a suspicion of a secret project that would enable genetically modified flies to carry deadly viruses. But can he prove his suspicions before becoming a target for state or private security forces? And is there more to it than flying insects?
That was the original idea of this story and it's still the main theme - politicians and government-led security forces are not unknown to have dealt with UN weapons inspectors if they step out of line against their wishes!
In March (2020) I put this story aside for a while to watch emerging technology as it was moving rapidly in the direction of where this story was heading, I'll be back on it again soon with a few changes including some of the main characters. In comes a quiet young American engineer called Carlos Garcia with a hidden flair for criminal investigation. Not quite knowing where stories will go when I start out has been the hallmark of eerything I've so far written!
Meanwhile, I'm back on the following one:
"Bad Boys"
Park Road lies at the heart of a poor, run-down inner-city area with long standing social, ethnic and religious issues that have, for years, been studiously ignored by law enforcement and social services in order to avoid creating ethnic and religious tension.
Bad Boys is a sensitive, thought-provoking and possibly controversial story that started out as a study of two, fatherless young men: Qasim from Pakistani parents and Kevin, mixed race Pakistani-English. But two boys became four and then five and so we now have Walid, a parentless refugee from Syria and ninteen year olds, Kurt and Winston from Nigeria.
The backstreets have always been a good recruiting ground for terrorist groups like ISIL and the story moves from Turkey to northern Syria and, with ISIL planning to move from the Middle East to focus on South East Asia, they are looking for more. It’s Qassim (Cass) who is their target.
I've made Kurt the narrator because:
“You’re the genius. Kurt. You’re the only one who got an A in English at school.” Cass suggested.
“And you got style,” Kevin said.
“And wit,” Walid added.
“And a nice turn of phrase," Winston said.
And Kurt agreed: “Yeh, OK, then. I’ll admit to my superior intellect. It’s my ethnicity. Intelligence flows through my veins because it’s in my African genes.”
UPDATE: A free e-version was published on Smashwords on 12th October 2020
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1047983
Why are the e-versions of my self-published books free?
Because:
Writing was always a hobby. Years of scribbling when I was travelling and when I was quiet, alone and able to escape into my own thoughts for just a few hours. I could make myself laugh or cry or put into words serious thoughts that I knew would never get spoken aloud - deep thoughts, controversial, political, sensitive, very private ones. My first full length novel, fitted around months of travelling, took me ten years to get it to a state where I was sufficiently confident to self publish.
Now: If I had charged my time at even a minimum wage for ten years at only one hour a day I reckon a return of 40,000 dollars might just be enough to break even. The arithmetic is open to challenge but it's either a bit less than 40,000 dollars or, more likely, ten times more - it depends how you value your time. My subsequent novels have vastly increased the time I've spent writing and what I'd expect as a return if I was doing it for a living. But I expected nothing and got nothing because it was just a hobby.
There's an awful lot of published trash out there - a lot of it 'written' by established names, celebrities, politicians and sportsmen who actually get others to write for them. If you want to read it, feel free - buy it.
Likewise, if anyone likes my stuff enough to invest their time and money then good, go ahead, offer me a deal. That's when I'll start to negotiate a price that might offset some of my expense. On the other hand if mine is also trash then tell me. I still won't mind because I've enjoyed the writing.
The modern writing/publishing business is increasingly complicated, made more so because literary agents have failed to move with the times. They have missed, and are still missing, so much good literature written by total unknowns.
The other reason is that books, like so many other commodities, are grossly undervalued because of the economics and the need for mass appeal. In UK I can buy a paperback in a Tesco supermarket at a price that barely covers printing costs. What is the point of writing good stuff if, just at the end point where you might expect to earn a reasonable return for years of time and effort, you are treated like the bags of Tesco's mixed vegetables on the next shelf?
I, for one, do not want to be treated like that.
