The Brogue Hog

Vacationing at beach is like heaven or earth for all the aqua lovers and fans. The beach vacation is different from the rest where you the pleasure to get soaked in the sun and sand, experience the ups and downs with the tides and get carried away with the huge waves. To enjoy the water and water activities there are several beach destinations around the world.

• The Capri Islands is an amazingly beautiful coastline. It has no beach yet it is deemed to be one of the best amongst the international beaches. The island has “bathing establishments” in place of beaches. It has a treasure of beach towels, beach balls and beach bunnies. The island is famous to host the rich and facilitate them with perfect luxuries and the exotic Roman art and architecture.

• Barcelona can never be overlooked in the count of beach holidays. Barcelona beaches like the Bora Bora, the nude beach Platia de la Mar Bella, Platja de Sant Sebastia and Platia Barcelona one of the most popular beaches of the world, invite visitors all round the year and from everywhere in the world. Besides the seaside fun and adventure this city of Spain is also perfect for sightseeing. There are marvelous museums, traditional buildings and at display the magnum opus of some of the great architects likes Antonio Gaudi.

• Bermuda has always excited the spirits of all the water devotees. The island is known for some of the ravishing beaches with pink sand and greenish water, fishing activity and uniquely painted homes and cottages. Amongst the well known beaches of the place is the Horseshoe Bay close to the southern end of the island. This Bay is further divided into smaller coves and bays on both the sides and is also a home to many good hotels, restaurants, tennis courts and golf courses. The Astwood Cove is another beach region which is bordered by tall cliffs and beaches with numerous water sports and bewitching flora and fauna. Apart from the beach amusement the island offers delectable sea food and a peculiar lifestyle that makes your vacation a memorable experience.

• Cancun a spontaneously budding tourist destination, also known as Mayan Riviera rests on the ground of state of Mexico. Cancun is a host to some of the best beaches in the world. These beaches encourage a numerous water sports like snorkeling, swimming with dolphins etc. The Xcaret Nature Park, the Xel Ha and the Isla Mujeres are the specific places to thrill you with these activities. The temperature of the place revolves around 80 to 85 degree Fahrenheit. Cancun has also many bizarre and eye catching archaeological sites that keep the tourists busy throughout their visit.

• The Aruba is a Dutch island located in the southern Caribbean Sea and is known for being the best family beach resort across the globe. The Palm Beach in Aruba with its white sands welcomes young as well as the old from all over the world. Apart from water sports the place is also a call to the golf lovers to enjoy while exploring their talent. The weather of this hurricane free place is wonderful with annual average temperature that figures around 82 degree Fahrenheit.

This is just the tip of an iceberg for there are many more lovable beach spots like Jamaica, Negril and Montego Bay, Saint Tropez, Italian Riviera etc. to throng and enjoy…

Mansi aggarwal writes about. international beaches . Learn more at http://www.intlbeachvacation.com

A Caribbean travel vacation cruise has much to offer to sophisticated travelers who recognize the great value in traveling to the islands. If you want a vacation that is rich with culture galore, quaint architecture, seas to explore, fantastic swimming and snorkeling, then the Caribbean has it and more.

Here, you will find some great Caribbean vacation travel cruise offers that are guaranteed to give you the best value in cruise traveling.

A Seven-Night Dream

Dreams become reality when you find yourself floating through warm, welcoming waters of the Caribbean on one of several Caribbean vacation travel cruise ships. Enjoy the sun, sand, and surf of a picture-perfect island during brief land excursions in any one of your ports of call and spend the day indulging in duty-free shopping, diving in clear blue waters, or exploring Mayan ruins.

With the coming of the cold months, the Royal Caribbean, one of the leading cruise lines on the islands, is offering many fantastic Caribbean vacation travel cruise offers to its visitors who opt to book early. One of these is the seven-night dream Caribbean vacation travel beginning at $478 per person, the cruise and featuring fabulous inside cabins where you can get excellent views of the dazzling ocean.

The Mariner of the Seas, which departs from Port Canaveral, Florida and takes you to four different ports of call where you can go on brief land excursions - Labadee, Hispaniola; Ocho Rios, Jamaica; George Town, Grand Cayman; Cozumel, Mexico - before you cruise back to Port Canaveral in Florida.

The Voyager of the Seas lets you start your Caribbean vacation travel cruise fun in Miami, Florida, and making brief stops in Hispaniola, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Mexico. The ship offers you four kinds of room accommodations, ranging from $549 to $2,049.00.

Other midsize ships mean a more spacious and comfortable Caribbean vacation travel cruise, with all the service and amenities you’d expect, but no waiting in long lines for meals or port of calls.

Three-Night Enchantment or Four-Night Excitement

Few places on earth are more conducive to relaxation than the islands of the Caribbean. Perhaps, it’s the light, tropical breezes that gently soothe the soul. Or the warm waters and warm receptions tat await you on every shore. One thing is certain: aboard a Celebrity Caribbean vacation travel cruise, a Caribbean vacation offers something for everyone.

But if you want your Caribbean vacation travel cruise to be brief but enchanting, the Caribbean vacation travel cruise offers several short cruises for your pleasure. You’ll find short Caribbean vacation travel cruises, just three nights long, out of San Juan, Puerto Rico, for as little as $289 per person.

Or consider a bit longer, western Caribbean vacation travel cruise, four nights starting at $349, on the Enchantment of the Seas. Take a four-night Western Caribbean vacation travel cruise aboard the Century for only $330, starting from Miami, Florida. The cruise provides you with all the amenities you could ever wish from, from shipboard accommodations to ocean transportation, meals, beverages, and entertainment aboard the vessel.

About the author:

Magne Bjorklund, http://www.america-cruise-line-norwegian-pride.info/

Please also visit: http://www.celebrity-galaxy-cruise.info/
http://www.gatlinburg-cabin-rentals-info.org/

A LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) Projector is the modern version of the slide projector and overhead projector. Unlike CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) projectors, the LCD projector does not function according to the traditional projection-tube system.

The LCD Projector usually contains three separate LCD glass panels - one each for the red, green, and blue components of the video signal. The LCD chip is transparent, and when a powerful light source is passed through it, each individual pixel transforms the light and projects the image or data through a lens onto the screen.

The LCD Projector technological revolution started around the mid-1990s, when manufacturers began to use microdisplays and merge illumination and imaging in one device. Following this development, Compaq introduced one of the first ultra-lightweight data projectors in 2000 - the MP1400 - using the DLP (Digital Light Processing) technology from Texas Instruments. Most LCD Projectors today support VGA output at resolutions ranging up to 800×600 and 1024×768. They are also usually capable of projecting standard video from a VCRs, DVDs, and cable boxes; and many of them are specialized for use at home, known as Front-Projection TVs.

The main advantage of the LCD projector is that since the LCD chip is miniature in size, the whole unit is quite compact, which is very practical, especially for mobile professionals. Most LCD projectors are also typically capable of producing 2,000 to 2,500 ANSI lumens brightness with 1024 x 768 VGA resolution, resulting in better image quality. Power consumption is also relatively low. And, in comparison to CRT Projectors (which are still manufactured), LCD versions are quite inexpensive. For example, the Sony VPL-CX1 Superlite LCD Video Projector only costs around $2,000, but is still capable of producing super image quality.

Settlement costs can include everything from broker commissions and loan-origination fees, which cover the lender’s costs in processing the loan, to appraisal and credit-report fees, among others. In other words, the mortgage is a security for the loan that the lender makes to the borrower. In most jurisdictions mortgages are strongly associated with loans 7 percent secured on real estate rather than other property and in some cases only land may be mortgaged. And of course, each loan and each borrower are different. Although most mortgage experts say that rates 7 percent are pretty much the same wherever you go, give or take this tiny 10 percentage. Many of these fees are fixed but some can be negotiated.

Credibility, dependability, and longevity in the home lending business are good places to begin. It is a transfer of an interest in land, from the owner to the mortgage lender, on the condition that this interest will be returned to the owner of the real estate when the terms of the mortgage have been satisfied or performed.

See mortgage loan for residential mortgage lending, and commercial mortgage for lending against commercial property. See which lenders are charging fees 7 percent and for how much. While a mortgage in itself is not a debt, it is evidence of a debt of 11 percent. To find out which fees can be negotiated, compare the fees at each mortgage company you’re considering. Start with credibility. It’s not easy to know if the prices quoted by lenders are reliable.

Translated in Dutch: Woon je in Heusden of Ermelo en hebt u BKR’ Lenen met een BKR notering is nergens zo eenvoudig. Koop een nieuw huis met geldleningen met bkr notering, 327875 euro is geen probleem om te lenen. Van Leudal tot Harderwijk, financieren met zonder BKR registratie kan hier altijd.

Different lenders charge different fees. Arranging a mortgage is seen as the standard method by which individuals and businesses can purchase residential and commercial real estate without the need to pay the full value immediately. Both banks and brokers have their strengths and weaknesses. But others will claim low rates to bring in customers or tell you that the rates 5 percent offered by competitors will change.

Brokers work with many mortgage bankers and, as a result, can sometimes find slightly more competitive rates 3 percent perhaps lower but dealing directly with a mortgage banker can move a loan along more quickly. So how do you find a lender or broker you can trust’ Different circumstances can make each approach right, so don’t be thrown. Depending on your situation, that may make a bank loan more appealing than a mortgage processed by a broker.

Some will quote you precise, competitive rates 6 percent. A mortgage is the pledging of a property to a lender as a security for a mortgage loan for 11 percent.

DVD disks are quite fragile. Any scratch will affect the output it provides. Although it is endowed with a special protection coating, it easily gets damaged. Unlike beta or VHS tapes, DVD discs when dropped or wrongly inserted will scratch and result in reading errors. Considering that some DVDs are collector’s items and some are limited copies costing thousands of dollars, it is to your advantage to produce a backup copy.

DVD ripping takes a short time compared to the feeling you would get if your favorite DVD was damaged or suffered data loss. The super DVD ripper software is the ultimate tool to backup a DVD movie of your choice. This software makes it possible to backup DVD movies without the use of a DVD or CD burner. Moreover, a direct DVD burning to another DVD or CD disk will be displayed right on your computer screen.

Super DVD features support copying DVD to CD, SVCD, and MPEG files and allow the DVD to AVI copy software to convert DVD to DIVX. It also supports the backup of DVD to another DVD or CD discs, produces satisfactory video and audio outputs and allows VCD and SVCD disc burning.

There is only one basic reason why you need DVD ripping, and that is to generate a backup copy of your most treasured movies or concert series. DVD ripping is a standout in the CD or DVD burning market. You can either have your DVDs ripped by a professional or you can do it yourself by downloading super DVD software.

Spy surveillance equipment is one of the chief surveillance tools used in organizations such as the CIA and the FBI. It is also available to the general public. People install state-of-the-art surveillance equipment to keep an eye on their valuables or to alert them to any intruders on their property.

Spy surveillance equipment is sometimes so small that it is virtually invisible to the human eyes. Commonly available spy surveillance equipment includes nanny, hidden, regular, digital, pinhole, and wearable spy cameras.

Spy cameras are small cameras that can be used for many purposes, especially for security measures. Spy cameras are installed in many business organizations to monitor employees. This helps the company owners to catch thieves in the act, save money, and, in some cases, prevent abuse of other employees on the job.

Spy surveillance equipment boom is extending fast to the home front as well. Parents use the spy surveillance equipment to keep a watchful eye on the nannies, and thus ensure protection of their children. To monitor telephone conversations, there are quite a few spy surveillance options available, such as spy phone recorders, digital phone recorders, cell eavesdropping equipment and wiretapping devices.

A number of companies now manufacture sophisticated spy surveillance instruments that are now increasingly used by the general public. Sometimes, this spy equipment is used for illegal activities such as extortion and blackmail. These incidents are few and far between, and surveillance tools are usually used to keep people safe. An important thing to remember is that though the use of spy equipment and devices is mostly legitimate, the user has to necessarily confirm whether his/her country’s or state’s laws allow using it.

Introduction

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in the North West of
England. Liverpool is one of England’s core cities, situated along the
eastern side of the Mersey Estuary, with the city centre located about
5 miles inland from the Irish Sea. Liverpool has a varied topography
being built across a ridge of hills rising up to a height of around 70
metres above sea-level at Everton Hill.

History

In 1190 the place was known as ‘Liuerpul’, meaning a pool or creek with
muddy water. Other origins of the name have been suggested, including
‘elverpool’, a reference to the large number of eels in the Mersey. The
origins of the city date back from August 1207 when patent letters were
issued by King John advertising the establishment of a the new borough
of Liverpool, and inviting settlers to come and take up holdings. In
the 18th century, as trade from the West Indies grew on top of that
from Ireland and Europe, Liverpool began to grow.

The first wet dock in Britain was built in Liverpool in 1715. Liverpool
expanded significantly in the 19th century and a number of major
buildings were constructed. In the 1960s Liverpool became a centre of
youth culture. The city produced the distinctive Merseybeat sound, and,
most famously, The Beatles. In recent years, the city has emphasised
its cultural attractions, winning the accolade of European City of
Culture for 2008.

Place of interest

The infrastructure of Liverpool contains over 2,500 listed buildings.
It is the inheritance of high-minded public spirit since the later 18th
century, largely with Dissenter impetus, that has resulted in more
public sculptures created than in any UK city besides Westminster in
London.

The Anglican Cathedral has the longest nave, largest organ and heaviest
and highest peal of bells in the world.

Architects well represented in Liverpool:

• Giles Gilbert Scott,
• Peter Ellis,
• Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, and
• John Foster

Sir Edwin Lutyens is represented by the completed crypt of his
projected Metropolitan Cathedral, which was built to a simpler design
by Frederick Gibberd.

Some of the famous places to visit are:

• Albert Dock
• Bluecoat Arts Centre
• Cast Iron Shore
• Cunard Building
• Lime Street Station
• Royal Liver Building
• Oriel Chambers design by Peter Ellis.
• The Philharmonic Dining Rooms
• Pier Head
• Quiggins
• St George’s Hall
• The Beatles Story
• Town-Hall
• Williamson’s tunnels

Museums & Art Galleries

Liverpool has some greatest museum and art galleries. Bluecoat
Arts Centre, Merseyside Maritime Museum, Museum of Liverpool Life, the
Beatles Story, and Walker Art Gallery are some of them. Besides museum
and art galleries Liverpool possesses some famous theatres. They
represent Liverpool and its culture, and also a good tourist attraction
in Liverpool. Among all the theaters Empire, Everyman, Neptune,
Philharmonic Hall, The Playhouse, Royal Court, Unity are big names to
mention about.

Shopping

Pedestrian shopping areas with boutiques, specialty shops, and
department stores include Church Street, Lord Street, Bold Street,
Whitechapel, and Paradise Street. On the river, Albert Dock also houses
a collection of small shops. For shopping centers Cavern Walks on
Mathew Street, the heart of Beatleland, or Quiggins Centre.

To buy that special piece of Beatles memorabilia, wander through the
Beatles Shop, or the Heritage Shop.
For a huge selection of British crafts, famous places are Bluecoat
Display Centre, with its gallery of metal, ceramics, glass, jewelry,
and wood pieces by some 350 British craftspeople.

Frank Green’s is where one can find prints by this famous local artist
who has been capturing the Liverpool scene on canvas since the 1960s.
These art works includes city secular buildings, churches, and street
life.

Food & Drink

For such a world-famous city, Liverpool has yet to host a world-class
restaurant. Listed are the best non-hotel restaurants it has to offer:
60 Hope St., Bar Italia, Far East, Shangri-La, Simply Heathcote’s, Tate
Café.

Education

Primary education is available in various forms supported by the state
including Secular, Church of England, Islamic, Jewish and Roman
Catholic. Currently no specific Islamic secondary education is provided.

Liverpool has three universities:

• The University of Liverpool
• Liverpool John Moores University
• Liverpool Hope University

It also has a university college, Edge Hill College of Higher
Education. Liverpool John Moores University is one of the polytechnics
given university status in 1992 and is named after the owner of the
Littlewoods retail group. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine was
founded to address some of the problems created by trade; today it
continues as a post graduate school and is one of only two institutions
on world that house the de facto standard anti-venom repository.

The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, which was set up by Sir
Paul McCartney in 1996, is famous for training the artistes and
technicians.

Sports

In sporting terms, it boasts two internationally known football clubs,
Everton F.C. and Liverpool FC. Liverpool Football Club (often known
simply as Liverpool), an English football club based in the North-West
of England, are the current champions of Europe (2004-2005) and the
most successful English football team.
Liverpool has won five European Cups, and 18 Football League titles on
top of being the English club to have won the most number of UEFA Cups,
European Supercups and English League Cups.

Liverpool Football Club is not to be confused with Liverpool (Rugby)
Football Club, which was formed in 1858 and is now known as Liverpool
St. Helens.

Hotels & Accommodation

The dedicated team at SleepUK can assist and advise on all your
Liverpool hotel requirements. Online and offline access to Liverpool’s
accommodation network ensures travelers will be offered the best
possible deal at the time of your visit whether you require luxury
hotels in Liverpool or budget hotels in Liverpool.

Hotels in all categories are opening in Liverpool all the time,
reflecting the city’s renewed prosperity and popularity as a
short-break destination.

Or travelers may choose one of the fine hotels in Wirral, the
attractive peninsula between the River Mersey and the River Dee. As
well as some fine hotels, Wirral also boast large areas of National
Trust land, country parks and spectacular coastal scenery. To the north
of Liverpool, in the graceful resort of Southport, famed for the
splendour of its Victorian shopping arcades and promenade, there’s a
great choice of hotels to suit every visitor.

Accommodation in the area frequently sells out so be sure to guarantee
your stay by booking online today. Some other hotels, listed here, vary
from affordable to luxury hotels -Hanover Hotel, Park Lodge, The Suites
Hotel, Regent Maritime Hotel,
The Dolby Hotel,
Radisson SAS
Liverpool, Hope
Street Hotel,Aachen
Hotel, Campanile
Hotel Liverpool, The
Feathers Hotel, Thistle
Liverpool, Days
Serviced Apartments Liverpool, Liverpool City Centre
Premier Travel Inn, The Sir Thomas Hotel,
Throstles Nest Hotel.

Tours and Sightseeing

Organised tours in Liverpool have variety in their theme and according
to the theme the contents also changes. The most widely chosen tours
are based on Sports or on The Beatles. These tours contains place of
interests, famous buildings, museums etc. Cavern City Tours is
the most comprehensive tour operator in the city.

Transport

There are three tunnels under the River Mersey: one railway tunnel, the
Mersey Railway Tunnel, and two road tunnels, Queensway Tunnel and
Kingsway Tunnel. There is also the Mersey Ferry, made famous by the
song Ferry Cross the Mersey by Gerry and the Pacemakers. In fact the
song is now played on the ferryboats themselves every time they prepare
to dock at Liverpool.

Speke Airport was renamed Liverpool
John Lennon Airport, in honour of the late Beatle John Lennon.

Liverpool has a train system called Merseyrail, the sections in the
city centre are mostly underground. The lines terminate at Southport,
Ormskirk, Kirkby, Hunts Cross, Ellesmere Port, West Kirby, New Brighton
and Chester.

Biography

Name: Maria Williams
Occupation: Traveller
Website: http://www.sleepuk.com
Biography: Maria writes for Sleep UK - providers of discounted hotels to make your stay in the UK as comfortable as possible.

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How to Gaurantee 20% More Sales for Your Product or Service in 5 Minutes.

=======================================================

By following the steps below, see for yourself how many people are quickly and easily increasing their sales by up to 20%!

Enjoy!

Dean McRae
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It is a well known fact that the more personalized your offering is, the more you increase the chances of the desired outcome, whether it be a sale of a product or a signup to your opportunity.

If you have your own website hosted on a server that can run PHP scripts (most hosts have PHP installed as standard), this easy little trick will increase whatever the desired action of your website is by up to 20%!

If your scratching your head, don’t worry PHP isn’t as nasty as it sounds. Its just another language servers use to make your web pages more interactive and dynamic.

You wont have to install any scripts or anything like that for this trick to work. All you need is Notepad and your FTP Client. Just follow these instructions to the letter and you will be fine.

1. Bring up your home page in your browser

2. Click on the “View” menu at the top left hand corner of your browser window.

3. Click on “View Source”. At this point, Notepad should have opened up with the HTML File of your homepage already inserted.

4. Modify the source code in your opened up Notepad with the following tag wherever you want your prospects name to appear:

For example:
Dear Friend, now becomes Dear ,

5. Save that file to a PHP extension. Example: index.html would be saved as index.php.

6. Log into your hosting account via FTP with your FTP client.

I use Cute FTP for all of my uploading and find it’s one of the most user friendly FTP Clients available. However you should have no problem following these instructions as most FTP Clients allow you to rename files.

If you don’t have an FTP Client, click the URL below to download a free version of Cute FTP then come back
and finish the rest of this tutorial:

http://www.cuteftp.com/downloads/cuteftp.asp

7. Go to the directory where your homepage is stored.

This should be /public_html/.

8. Create another directory called php

9. Upload “index.php” to the php directory.

Now comes the good part.

10. Insert your details into the URL below into an open browser and press enter:

http://yoursite.com/php/index.php?f=yourname

You will notice that everywhere you personalized your website with the tag has been replaced by your name.

You can use this URL with advertising to your Autoresponder or Newsletter list. instead of typing in your name you can use the merge feature to merge each prospects name into your mailing!

For example my mail merge first name tag is !FIRST_NAME! so the URL I’d use would be:

http://internetmarketingarsenal.com/php/index.php?f=!FIRST_NAME!

This will then insert each recipients name into the URL and send them to the appropriate page of my site with their name already in place of the tags I used to modify my webpage!

Now can you understand how powerful this is?!?

Next time you send an email to your list/newsletter selling your product or service, try this little known trick. I know you will be pleasantly surprised by the results!

Wishing you all the best,
Dean McRae

================About The Author=======================

Dean McRae has been actively marketing online since 1998. As author of “The Internet Marketing Arsenal”, he has helped increase the profits of small business owners worldwide.

http://internetmarketingarsenal.com/report.html

Visit his site to discover a strategy to earning $60,000 per year minimum while working only 30 minutes per day withput resorting to MLM. Be one of the next 50 to respond to this article to receive this report and receive another secret 2nd bonus as his way of saying thank you.

Click Here Now: http://internetmarketingarsenal.com/report.html

=======================================================

Dean McRae has been actively marketing online since 1998. As author of “The Internet Marketing Arsenal”, he has helped increase the profits of small business owners worldwide. Visit his site to discover a strategy to earning $60,000 per year
minimum while working only 30 minutes per day.

Click Here Now: http://internetmarketingarsenal.com/report.html

A relatively new concept in the online world is “Virtual Real Estate Investing“. There are many variations on what this term means, encompassing everything from using the internet to aid in real estate investing efforts to participating in online games such as SecondLife.

To separate fact from fiction, I asked Bryan Ellis for comments. He’s the man many consider to be the father of this new form of investing.

When I began using the term virtual real estate investing in the late 1990s, I did so because I saw clear parallels between the strategies used for profiting from physical real estate and those that would create income in the online world, said Ellis.

An example of the similar nature of “virtual” and “physical” real estate Bryan Ellis likes to point out is the methods of making a profit from domain names compared to physical real estate. He points out that control of a domain name or even a specific web page is much like controlling a real estate property ” those assets can be monetized in similar ways: By selling them for a profit, by leasing them, by offering advertising, etc.

The parallels really are obvious. Consider: A valuable piece of real estate is valuable largely due to the interest that other people have in that specific location. Likewise, if you own a desirable domain name, others will find value in it because it serves their purposes. In either case, you could sell or lease the asset and turn it into cash.

In our next installment of this series on virtual real estate investing, Bryan Ellis will share the internet analogies to the physical concept of real estate development.

Summary from author’s autobiography about why he chose to become a psychologist plus a touching account of patient vignettes is offered.
An account of the auhor’s major influences on his writing career and his desire to create action adventure stories for his readers.

To understand me I have chosen to offer a few excerpts from my forthcoming autobiography, due out in October, 2002 by iUniverse.com. I hope you don’t think of me as presumptuous because my life is very ordinary in many respects. I chose to begin writing at the age of fifty, which seemed appropriate as I had completed the half-century mark. I began with the autobiography in 1997 and have followed this rather painful self-analysis with eight fiction novels.

I enjoy action thrillers and adventure stories and I try to offer the reader a sense of place via my thoughts as if looking through a camera lens. Many of you who enjoy David Baldacci, Greg Rucka, James Patterson, Stuart Woods, John Grisham, Tess Gerritsen, Michael Deaver, and Michael Connelly, should enjoy my books. I consider myself a storyteller and desire to create a short 60,000 to 80,000 word-manuscript that captures your imagination and sense of adventure. Many of my experiences are drawn from actual places I lived during my father’s naval career as an officer from 1943 to 1966. These were exciting times for a “navy brat” and I enjoyed exciting locales in Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Virginia Beach, New Orleans, Saint Simons, Austin, and Houston.

My writing style is simple and consists of three plots running together with a main and two subplots. I typically center on two protagonists (male and female) to attract both genders to my books. The men have more character flaws in the beginning of my novels, but their strong female companions offer them confidence and a sense of purpose. The villains range from serial killers to corrupted medical and governmental officials in high places of public trust. Those of you who have enjoyed Baldacci’s books should appreciate an abbreviated story in the same genre. I first started to write as self-therapy, but soon found that I wanted a wider audience and my intent is take the reader into the character’s heads to understand their angst and imperfections in a complex world of inconsistencies and vulnerability. Much of our world today is now consumed with “terrorist threats” and it is becoming more difficult to create good action thrillers that offer a heightened sense of adventure juxtaposed with our current reality.

As I close on thirty years of clinical practice in psychology I wonder what the next twenty-five years holds in store for me. I imagine I will continue my practice but in a more limited way as I am growing weary of a thirty patient a week caseload. I would like to write but doubt that I can make a living at it. I have always thought of returning to my first love of teaching and may find a small, community college to teach and continue a smaller practice. I feel blessed already to have had the opportunity to become part of the intimacy shared by so many people who have turned to me for help. I don’t know if I was particularly insightful to them, but for brief moments there was a connection that kept me going. I would like to take some time off and travel with my wife and adult children.

Kim, now twenty-six, has graduated from Vanderbilt and is pursuing her dream of becoming a production assistant in Los Angeles. Jenny continues with her job for an oil and gas company in Houston, and is quite active in our church’s Christian education program. We look forward to spending more time with our son, Greg, and his girlfriend. Greg continues to build his career at Exxon and we look forward to becoming grandparents someday. Of course, we have three dogs to keep us busy: a Rhodesian Ridgeback, Weimar, and King Charles Spaniel who enjoy their walks with me each evening.

I suspect that we will stay in Houston as mom and dad are not getting any younger and I want to be close to them as they become more dependent on us. I may want to explore more formal writing courses through Rice or the University of Houston. I have always wanted to write fiction but do not feel that I have the creative flair to make a story interesting. Time will tell if my story is interesting or entertaining. I do expect to live another thirty years and have no preconceived notion as to what I want to do with my life. But this is okay. I have learned in the first fifty years to take from life, and now wish to give back during the next thirty years. I’m a slow learner.

As I pondered my first fifty years and tried to make sense of it, I began with an alternate title of “A Very Ordinary Autobiography,” as I had in many ways thought of myself as having lived a very ordinary life. But as my story began to unfold and take shape I carefully avoided the delusional trap of thinking that my life was in any way planned or orchestrated by me. My story, I hope, is your story as you approach your sixth decade of life. I hope your life resonates with my own. I have been blessed with excellent teachers throughout and have never wandered far from my role as student. I have not experienced the depths and pain shared by my patients, but I can communicate and live in their world if only for a brief hour at a time.

I respect my chosen profession of psychology and protect the sacredness of trust given to me. I hope it was earned by the many people who have touched me and kept me from taking myself too seriously. There is nothing magic about therapy. It answers two basic questions–who am I? And what do I want to do with my life? If we can begin to address these two questions, then I can retire from psychology and take up photography and writing fiction. But I doubt I will retire anytime soon, as long as we remain unconvinced about the outcome of these two questions. Thank God we are given the gray matter to address this old, existential quest.

The original title for my autobiography, Reflections From A Psychologist, was written five years ago, when I was going through some difficult times with my aging parents, children, changing jobs, and thinking about a writing career. Today, I am fortunate to have partnered with iUniverse.com, who has graciously printed eight novels over the last four years, which are available on Amazon.com, BN.com, Authorsden.com, as well as my personal URL: akeithbarton.com. I have no idea as to where my writing career will take me, but I definitely enjoy putting printed word to page. The creative process of writing fiction is a liberating and therapeutic experience for me, and I cannot imagine life without it. Whether I can make a living as an author is secondary to the tremendous satisfaction I receive in creating stories for others to read and enjoy.

About the Author

The Creative Process of Writing is a Creative and Therapeutic Experience!