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Welcome to Morcan Books & Films, the blog devoted to providing a unique perspective and intelligent commentary on books and films. It includes commentary on our own books and films – i.e. novels and screenplays co-written by the Morcans, and feature films produced by, or in development with, Morcan Motion Pictures.
Lance & James
The poverty in South Sudan is too awful to behold as its people try to cope with escalating violence and a deepening humanitarian crisis. This despite the fact that the world’s youngest nation possesses an enviable variety of natural resources, including gold, diamonds, silver, various ores, water resources, luxury timber, fertile land, and diverse wildlife. Not to mention oil, its major export.
South Sudan’s story is essentially the story of Africa, which John Perkins highlights in his bestselling (must-read) book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and which we highlight in our book Bankrupting the Third World: How the Global Elite Drown Poor Nations in a Sea of Debt.
John Perkins…coined economic hitmen.
In our lesser-known book, we regrettably inform readers that the economic hit men popularized in Perkins’ 2004 bestseller are still alive and well – in Africa in particular but elsewhere as well.
Just look at the humanitarian crisis in the DRC (Congo), which possesses a vast array of natural resources, including significant mineral deposits of copper, cobalt, coltan, and diamonds, as well as substantial hydroelectric potential, fertile land, and diverse wildlife within the world’s second-largest rainforest.
We identify the cause of Africa’s woes: corrupt politicians, greedy corporates (a la the economic hitmen) and questionable aid packages provided by the likes of the World Bank, the IMF and USAID. Packages some suggest are scams designed to subjugate Third World countries.
Bankrupting the Third World is dedicated to the impoverished in forgotten places of the world. When we wrote it 21,000 people were dying from starvation every day. That’s one person every four seconds! We suspect the toll is even higher today.
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Bankrupting the Third World: How the Global Elite Drown Poor Nations in a Sea of Debt is available via Waterstones UK & Europe bookstores and public libraries and via Amazon…
As world stock markets reel from huge losses in Trump era 2.0, it seems much has changed and little has changed since our book INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$ was published.
The man of the moment.
Trump’s tariffs war might have turned the markets upside down like never before, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the contents of our book’s very first chapter titled ‘Banksters on the rampage’. In it we remind readers we live in a really perverse world where we have almost unlimited military expenditure to finance wars, where our governments readily bail out privately-owned banks with multi-trillion-dollar relief packages, and yet politicians tell us there is not enough money to cover the measly costs of citizens’ basic healthcare, food, education and shelter.
The above-mentioned chapter, incidentally, includes my favorite quote of Warren Buffett’s:
“If a graduating MBA student were to ask me, ‘How do I get rich in a hurry?’ I would not respond with quotations from Ben Franklin or Horatio Alger but would instead hold my nose with one hand and point with the other toward Wall Street.”
There’s a growing awareness in the general population of large-scale financial corruption by the so-called global elite, or the 1%, if you will. Regardless of whether or not Trump’s tariffs work, I hope the 99% demand greater transparency in the way their money is being managed, and I pray the grotesque gap between the haves and the have-nots closes sooner rather than later.
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INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$: The Global Banking Elite Exposed and the Case for Restructuring Capitalism is book 5 in our contentious Underground Knowledge Series. It’s available via Waterstones UK & Europe bookstores, public libraries and Amazon.
This Fijian’s 5-star review of Fiji: A Novel remains one of my favourite critiques of this the first of several historical adventure novels co-authored by James Morcan and I…
“As a Fijian, I find the old traditions of our people fascinating and just as great as they are crude and gruesome. The novel touches on most of these now extinct practices, in mad detail and it’s AWESOME! … Racial prejudice, religion, culture and family were the underlying messages … The adventure, fast-paced and nail biting … The romance, sizzling, exciting, forbidden … I give it 5 stars because that’s the maximum amount of stars we’re allowed to give.”-Random Writings Book Reviews (Suva, Fiji)
Another reviewer describes this book as “a spellbinding novel of adventure, cultural misunderstandings, religious conflict and sexual tension set in one of the most exotic and isolated places on earth.”
The storyline:
In the mid-1800’s, Fiji is a melting pot of cannibals, warring native tribes, sailors, traders, prostitutes, escaped convicts and all manner of foreign undesirables. It’s in this hostile environment an innocent young Englishwoman and a worldly American adventurer find themselves.
Susannah Drake, a missionary, questions her calling to spread God’s Word as she’s torn between her spiritual and sexual selves. As her forbidden desires intensify, she turns to the scriptures and prayer to quash the sinful thoughts – without success. Nathan Johnson arrives to trade muskets to the Fijians and immediately finds himself at odds with Susannah. She despises him for introducing the white man’s weapons to the very people she is trying to convert and he pities her for her naivety. Despite their differences, there’s an undeniable chemistry between them. When their lives are suddenly endangered by marauding cannibals, Susannah and Nathan are forced to rely on each other for their very survival.
Other historical adventure novels of ours include World Odyssey, Into the Americas and White Spiritas well as my solo-authored recent release New Zealand: A Novel.
The revelation that a phrasing technique used in our novel The Ninth Orphan is based on declassified CIA documents is revealed to readers in our book The Catcher in the Rye Enigma, co-authored by James Morcan and I.
The actual phrase we use is the names of the planets “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.” When subjects hear or read those words in precisely that order, they immediately fall into a hypnotized state, having been programmed under a CIA mind control initiative codenamed MK-Ultra.
Far-fetched? We thought so until we learned that MK-Ultra is, or was, real. The declassified documents show that it gives handlers total control over their charges, forcing them to do anything – even kill.
In ‘The Catcher in the Rye Enigma’, book four in our contentious ‘Underground Knowledge Series’, we inform readers that the aforementioned phrasing technique is only one of many techniques used, but it’s one that crops up again and again in the documented evidence of successful mind control experiments.
As alluded to by our book’s subtitle J.D. Salinger’s Mind Control Triggering Device or a Coincidental Literary Obsession of Criminals?, it’s suggested by some that Salinger and/or his publisher craftily implanted into his bestseller The Catcher in the Rye neurolinguistic passages or coded messages that act as post-hypnotic suggestions or mind control triggers. In turn, these triggers enabled CIA handlers to activate Manchurian Candidates for assassinations.
Some conspiracy theorists believe the novel was part of the CIA’s now mostly declassified mind control program MK-Ultra, and that while assassins were being brainwashed they were forced to read the book over and over until it was embedded in their minds.
Accepting for a moment that Salinger’s ‘Catcher’ is such a triggering device, it would likely set off MK-Ultra subjects by having carefully phrased words in strategic parts of the book. Nobody outside of the sleeper assassins and their intelligence agency handlers would be able to recognize such phrases as being abnormal, especially if crafted by such a skillful writer as Salinger.
Our detective thriller Silent Fear is one of the few mainstream novels to address the unique challenges faced by members of the Deaf community in any great detail. That’s according to Brent Macpherson, a prominent member of New Zealand’s Deaf community.
Brent Macpherson…valuable and insightful.
Given ‘Silent Fear’ is set almost entirely inside a London university for the Deaf, my co-author James Morcan and I could not have written it without Brent’s valued and insightful input. So impressed and grateful were we, we invited Brent to pen a commentary on the novel and on his experience as a member of the Deaf community.
Brent’s commentary, which appears at the end of the novel, follows (unabridged):
As a member of the Deaf community, and as someone who has been Deaf since birth, I believe this book is an important addition to the dearth of literature that exists about Deaf people and Deaf culture.
In the interests of full disclosure, let me state from the outset I have a vested interest in this book: I liaised with the authors in a consultancy capacity to ensure their treatment of the novel’s (fictitious) Deaf characters and the often unique issues they and their family members face were handled accurately and with sensitivity.
The novel provides a valuable insight into the dynamics of the international Deaf community all in one setting. It highlights a wide range of Deaf cultural elements and behavioural characteristics that are unique to members of the Deaf community.
As you’ll have noticed, sign language features prominently throughout. Members of the wider society may have seen Deaf people signing which is often perceived as a different form of communication. This perception is only a small part of the proverbial iceberg: below water, it’s much deeper and more meaningful to be Deaf.
Like myself, most Deaf people acquire sign language at a school for Deaf. In my case, I attended Kelston School for the Deaf in Auckland, New Zealand, at the age of five and subsequently learnt NZ Sign Language (NZSL) from older students. I became disruptive at a ‘normal’ kindergarten and teachers didn’t have a clue how to cope with me. It was decided that I would attend a Deaf school. To do so, I had to catch a taxi and a bus (the famous white bus) to Kelston for the next four years. These trips would be an hour-and-a-half each way so around three hours a day was spent exclusively in the company of many deaf children of all ages.
Reflecting upon how I personally learnt NZSL, those bus trips have renewed meaning for me. It was a unique time for Deaf students to be able to freely use sign language to communicate away from the gaze of disapproving teachers. We didn’t need to hide from them or from our parents. The bus became a relaxing comfort zone where a hidden education flourished. It was a cultural hub on wheels! Signing in the bus was regarded as an ‘underground language’ away from glaring eyes of the public so we could pass on our language to the younger generation.
Sign language was forbidden during my days at the school for the Deaf. If teachers caught us signing in the classroom, they would use a large wooden ruler to strike our hands and then force us to sit on them for the rest the day. Nevertheless, we cleverly found ways of using sign language. Ways that came naturally to us. We hid from teachers during playtime to sign to our peers. I recall hiding in the toilet to be able to sign one of my friends without being caught.
My proud identity as a Deaf person stems from attending a Deaf school and undertaking those long, enjoyable daily bus trips. Today, many of those students are still close friends of mine.
I was mainstreamed to a hearing school at age nine and will never forget my first day at my new school: I was completely cut off from my Deaf friends and was swiftly assimilated into the hearing world. It was totally alien to me.
My soul, identity and pride as a Deaf young person were stripped away in a flick of a switch.
I had to act and speak like a hearing person to fit society’s norm. I struggled with enormous internal conflicts, and these contributed to a sense of identity confusion. People would often comment, “Oh, Brent, you speak very well.” Yes, thank you, but what about my Deaf friends and sign language? I miss them.
Back then, society viewed deafness as a deficiency or an inadequacy – and, to a large extent, it still does. Of course, my parents thought putting me in a hearing school was best for my education. This was based on advice they received from ‘experts’ in deaf education.
A few years after leaving school, I reconnected with the Deaf community at the Auckland Deaf Society. Ah, this was, and is, where I belong. I met many of my long lost friends from primary school there; I immediately felt re-engaged with my identity as a Deaf person.
I am Deaf – period!
The room was full of diverse Deaf people of all ages signing, telling stories and jokes, laughing, having a few drinks, playing pool, enjoying each other’s company – like one happy family. After more than a decade not being allowed to use NZSL, I was amazed I could still remember the signs, and I was able to quickly relearn my natural language. After all those years of identity confusion, I felt re-energised and enthused, having rediscovered my suppressed Deaf identity and I embarked on a journey into the Deaf world where I belong.
The Auckland Deaf Society is at the heart of the NZ Deaf community just as many other organisations around the world are performing similar roles. Each Deaf community is a cultural group which shares a sign language and a common heritage. Members of Deaf communities the world over identify themselves as belonging to a cultural and linguistic group. Identification within the Deaf community is a personal choice and is usually made independent of the individual’s hearing status.
The Deaf community is not automatically composed of all people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. It is not limited to those who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. It may also include family members of Deaf people, sign language interpreters and people who work or socialise with Deaf people and who may display characteristics of Deaf culture. A non-deaf person may become a member of the Deaf community by accepting and recognising Deaf culture, and this is usually strongly associated with competence in using sign language.
Deaf people as a linguistic minority have a common experience of life, and this manifests itself in Deaf culture. This includes beliefs, attitudes, history, norms, values, literary traditions and art shared by Deaf people. My language and culture includes body language, facial expression and hand shapes, which all constitute sign language. Behavioural characteristics associated with sign language and Deaf cultural norms are the heart of having Deaf identity. All these elements are critical components for this novel to ensure the Deaf characters portrayed are authentic.
In writing Silent Fear, the Morcans should be commended for the tremendous amount of effort they have invested in researching and ultimately understanding and appreciating the dynamics of Deaf culture and sign language.
The writers strongly recommended I reveal to you that, as Deaf readers will no doubt have noticed, they (the Morcans) have used lower case “deaf” throughout the novel when referring to Deaf characters and to the Deaf community in general – their rationale being that mainstream novelists and newspapers do not (generally) apply the upper case ‘rule’ when referring to this community and its members. This was the one issue we disagreed on…
Enough said.
I am proud to have been a part of this journey and have put my heart and soul into this novel, working closely with the Morcans. The process has been methodical and well considered to ensure the novel captures the essence of being Deaf. I sincerely believe Deaf and Hard of Hearing on a global scale will easily relate to Silent Fear, and I am sure will be enjoyed by all.
The end result is a story, which, in my humble opinion, does justice to the Deaf community.
–Brent Macpherson
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Silent Fear (A novel inspired by true crimes) is available via public libraries and via Amazon.
Scotland Yard detective Valerie Crowther is assigned to investigate the murder of a student at a university for the Deaf in London, England. The murder investigation coincides with a deadly flu virus outbreak, resulting in the university being quarantined from the outside world.
When more Deaf students are murdered, it becomes clear there is a serial killer operating within the sealed-off university. A chilling cat-and-mouse game evolves as the unknown killer targets Valerie and the virus claims more lives.
When did your doctor last talk to you about your diet? In MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures my co-author James Morcan and I ask this question.
Most will be aware of the old adage, You are what you eat. It seems to us, though, that many members of the medical profession aren’t aware – or, if they are, they consider it an old wives’ tale.
We suspect that more often than not doctors only deign to discuss diet when a patient dares to raise the subject. And then, if your experience is like ours, you’ll be greeted with a frosty stare or, at best, a few mumbled banalities about not over-eating or the importance of a balanced diet or cut down on fats.
Which leads to more (related) questions such as: How long do doctors-in-training spend studying nutrition at medical school, and why isn’t nutrition on the curriculum alongside biochemistry, pathology, physiology and the like?
These questions and more are raised in a very appropriate discussion thread on the ResearchGate.net site. A random selection of comments from that thread follows:
•“We need clinicians to remember to consider nutrition when seeing/treating a patient rather than being a full nutritional expert. However, they should know basics such as basic nutritional needs and guidelines, calculating and interpreting BMI, when to give nutritional support and be aware of the importance of using nutritional screening tools to see if referral to a dietitian is required.”
•“I would be a staunch supporter of making nutrition a major field of study in a medical doctors pursuit of their degree.”
•“Before health care providers can get into…details about individual response to nutrients and talk about personal nutrition, they need to establish their nutrition knowledge and clinical skills foundation. For physicians this needs to happen in medical school and requires a serious effort.”
•“Considering the importance of nutrition for a patient’s recovery from disease and maintenance of health it is surprising that nutrition isn’t a bigger part of conventional medical school education.”
•“It should be within the core responsibilities of doctors to address nutrition in patient care and it is essential that all doctors know the appropriate time to make a dietitian referral.”
•“Why is it so hard to understand that robust familiarity with nutrition is equally or even more important (than surgery training)?”
To add some balance to the discussion, one contributor (from the University of Jordan) to the above thread observes that nutrition is “a specialized field and huge in its content.” He adds, “Medical students (are) overwhelmed by texts, labs, and courses. It requires an evolutionary plan to incorporate nutrition with medicine curricula”.
Medical educators at least pay lip service to the importance of nutrition, and they appear to be in general agreement that there’s not enough instruction on this topic in today’s medical schools.
For example, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) addresses this via its official online site AAFP News. In one article, the writer reports that although most medical schools (in the US) offer some form of nutrition education, only one-quarter require a dedicated nutrition course.
The article continues, “In fact, the amount of nutrition education that medical students receive is so ‘inadequate’ that ‘medical school graduates feel unprepared to intervene in their patients’ care with regard to nutrition,’ according to the UNC preliminary survey results”.
A report published by the US National Library of Medicine in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health concludes that “The amount of nutrition education that medical students receive continues to be inadequate”.
That report summarizes a survey of 109 medical schools, which revealed that “most (103) required some form of nutrition education” of their students. The most disturbing revelation, however, is that “Overall, medical students received 19.6 contact hours of nutrition instruction during their medical school careers”.
The link between diet and health is well proven and, more importantly, widely acknowledged by doctors for ailments such as diabetes and heart disease but are roundly ignored by them in treating other human conditions – cancer being one of those. Indeed, mainstream (Western) medicine seems to go out of its way to discourage cancer patients from making too much of the cancer-diet connection.
The good health site HoneyColony.com neatly addresses this in an article quoting Dr. Carolyn Dean, a medical advisory board member of the nonprofit Nutritional Magnesium Association. She says, “There are many reasons why diet is not stressed in cancer treatment” and “Most of them stem from the fact that medicine does not put any emphasis on nutrition in medical school…In about 3,500 hours of typical medical school training, maybe one, two or three hours’ worth of classes are devoted to basic nutrition”.
There’s a serious disconnect between (most) doctors and the role of nutrition in their patients’ health. Whether you blame those who set the already crowded curricula at medical schools or whether you blame the tunnel vision mainstream medicine has regarding diet, the fact remains there’s a problem…
… If doctors are aware their patients are diet-conscious and if they’re constantly reminded nutrition is important to them, perhaps they’ll fall into line and give it (nutrition) the importance it deserves when it comes to treating people.
Hopefully, this chapter has provided you with some ammunition to fire their way.
Footnote: We acknowledge that the inference that doctors are not nutrition-minded or, for that matter, not supportive of alternative health measures is very much a generalization; we are aware there’s a growing number of physicians (and other health providers) in mainstream medicine who are very knowledgeable about nutrition and alternative health, and who incorporate this knowledge into their everyday practice.
Unfortunately, they are very much in the minority.
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On a lighter note… “First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.” -Steve Martin
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MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures is available via Harvard Bookstore, Waterstones UK & Europe bookstores, public libraries and via Amazon.
The first sensation John was aware of when he woke was the warmth of the sun on his face. There was another sensation, too, but in his sleepy state he couldn’t make sense of it. Then he felt it again. Something was moving beneath his outstretched leg. With some difficulty, he opened one eye. To his horror, he saw a black-coloured snake crawling through a small gap between the underside of his left knee and the ground. He tensed involuntarily and the reptile bit him. It bit him twice in fact, but it happened so fast he thought it had only struck once.
You are reading an excerpt from our critically-acclaimed historical adventure WHITE SPIRIT (A novel based on a true story).
The subject of this drama is one John Graham, an Irish convict who escaped from Australia’s notorious Moreton Bay penal settlement in the early 1800’s. Convicts considered Moreton Bay a hellhole, so bad they committed suicide rather than serve out their sentences there. John earned infamy for being the only convict to escape Moreton Bay and evade his pursuers to remain free.
Novel excerpt continues:
John leapt to his feet and scurried away in case the snake came for him again. To his relief, it slithered off into the surrounding bush.
Only after it had disappeared did he give any thought to what variety of snake it was. He had no idea whether it was venomous or not. It had happened so quickly, he hadn’t identified the snake. If he had to guess, it was a harmless tree snake, but it could just as easily have been a red-bellied black snake, which he knew was highly venomous. He had observed the Quandamooka treating them with the utmost respect whenever they came across one.
Lordy, what else can go wrong?
He discovered what else could go wrong when he rolled the left leg of his breeches up and saw two distinctive sets of fang marks just above the side of his knee. “Jesus!” he cursed. “The bastard bit me twice.”
John’s first thought was to retrieve one of the rocks from his makeshift shoulder bag – the rock with the cutting edge – to cut the wounds and then suck the poison out. Then he remembered the Aborigines at Parramatta had recommended not using that technique. “Shit, shit, shit!” he cursed again. He fought to suppress the panic that was welling up inside him. If it was a red-bellied black snake, he knew he’d be dead within the hour.
Somewhere, in the furthest recess of his mind, he recalled an account he’d heard of an early European explorer, in Van Diemen’s Land, who had survived a venomous snake bite by lying down and remaining totally still for half a day or so. John never did know whether that was an old wives’ tale or a true story, but he had no better ideas, so he decided to try it.
Returning to his sleeping position inside the cliff-face, he lay down and willed himself to go to sleep.
What if I never wake up?
The thought of dying in his sleep frightened him so much it kept him awake. So he just lay there, determined not to move a muscle.
Damn it, I need to piss.
He considered standing up, or at least kneeling, to urinate, but decided against it. If the story about the European explorer was true, he’d survived the snakebite only by remaining perfectly still. Makes sense staying still, he thought. Slows the blood flow to the heart.
When he could hold it in no longer, he peed where he lay.
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WHITE SPIRIT (A novel based on a true story) is available via Waterstones UK & Europe bookstores, public libraries and via Amazon.
There was a rumor going around at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study that Albert Einstein did indeed complete a version of his Unified Field Theory for Gravitation and Electricity – even though officially it remains a never-completed theory.
In a chapter titled “Einstein’s unified field theory”, we examine this in book two in our Underground Knowledge Series, ‘ANTIGRAVITY PROPULSION: Human or Alien Technologies?’
Albert Einstein…Famous theory completed?
Einstein’s theory was published in German and appeared in a few scientific journals. In his papers, the scientist called his purported mathematical proof of the connection between the forces of electromagnetism and gravity as being “highly convincing”. However, this work was withdrawn as incomplete, although no published reason is given save that Einstein suddenly grew dissatisfied with it.
British mathematician Lord Bertrand Russell considered Einstein’s Unified Field Theory complete but felt that “Man is not ready for it and shan’t be until after World War III.”
Thus the Unified Field Theory on the connection between gravity and the electromagnetic field remains unproven.
Leading scientist and former high-ranking employee of Japan’s Ministry of Defense, Dr. Takaaki Musha, published an article in the 2004, Issue 53 edition of the Infinite Energy Magazine relating to this very question. The article, which covers a unique formula Dr. Musha developed for the link between electromagnetism and gravitation, was titled The possibility of strong coupling between electricity and gravitation.
After publication of the article, Dr. Musha claims he was contacted by a scientist (name redacted) from the Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy, in Bulgaria. The scientistwas already working on a similar formula to Dr. Musha’s.
According to Dr. Musha, the Bulgarian’s “formulation proves it is possible to create an unbalanced acceleration by creating intense electric and magnetic fields in a dielectric or ferromagnetic medium. These predicted coupling effects for electromagnetic and gravitational fields would be static and thus they should be able to produce a net force to propel a spaceship.”
The Bulgarian scientist wrote two papers on his formula in 1994.
“However,” Dr. Musha claims, these “papers were rejected by two well-known science journals.”
The strong implication is there was a cover-up. Either that or mainstream science was just not prepared to consider such theories on antigravity.
T. T. Brown, who discovered this electrogravitic effect first, conducted several experiments during the 1950’s and succeeded to generate thrust without the reliance on a surrounding medium, such as air, by applying high voltages to materials with high dielectric constants. Around this time, US aerospace companies also become involved in such research, but their results are mostly classified.
In the late 1990’s, Dr. Musha says he worked with the Honda Corporation Research Institute in Japan and conducted an experiment to confirm the electrogravitic effect. Astonishingly, Dr. Musha claims he and the Honda Corporation obtained a positive result.
Dr. Musha also says, “In Dr. Thomas Valone’s 1993 book Electrogravitics Systems: Reports on a New Propulsion Methodology, Dr. Paul LaViolette claimed that electrogravitic technology was developed under US Air Force black projects since late 1954, and it may now have been put to practical use in the B-2 Advanced Technology Bomber to provide an exotic auxiliary mode of propulsion.”
Dr. Musha continues, “An electrogravitic drive of B-2 could allow it to fly at a sufficiently high speed at high altitude, or even (in) space, and it could fly around the world without refueling in an antigravity mode.”
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Antigravity Propulsion is available via Amazon and public libraries.
Readers are asking whereabouts besides Amazon they can obtain my new release, historical adventure New Zealand: A Novel. To date, it’s available via Waterstones UK & Europe bookstores, Mighty Ape NZ, and via public libraries.
Library members should note this book can be ordered via your community library if it’s not already in stock; and it may be listed simply as “New Zealand”.
New Zealand: A Novel spans almost 500 years and covers the respective discoveries of New Zealand by Pacific Islanders and Europeans. From the outset the two stories are interposed. It starts in the 1300’s with the departure of Islanders from Hawaiki in search of land far to the south.
“Riveting. I could not put the book down. Historical facts were woven with some well-crafted narratives into a story of how the nation of New Zealand came to be.” –American author Stephen Heartland
WARNING: Readers are advised this is a raw, no-holds-barred account of New Zealand’s early history, fictionalized in places and not suitable reading for children.
So, you want to write a book but don’t have the time? Here’s a tip from my book GENIUS INTELLIGENCE: Secret Techniques and Technologies to Increase IQ – one of about 35 books (fiction and nonfiction) James and I have co-authored to date. In it, speed writing is one of numerous techniques we include because we believe it may hold brain boosting potential for aspiring geniuses.
Disclaimer: to our knowledge no studies, other than our own, have been done on speed writing from the perspective of boosting the brain’s potential. This despite the fact that there are numerous books and websites devoted to writing manuscripts quickly.
Ours is simply an unusual little technique we discovered by accident and noticed it worked wonderfully on many occasions and always when we were severely time pressured. We consider this fortuitous discovery an important ingredient in our progress as published authors and feature film screenwriters.
Speed writing, like many other techniques listed in this book, relates to outrunning the conscious mind and going so fast that the superior subconscious is forced to completely take over. So, as the name suggests, you write so quickly that you don’t even know what you’re writing anymore. The goal is not to get instantly well-written text, but rather stream-of-consciousness stuff that you can revise and give clearer meaning to later.
According to our individual experiences, the resulting stream will usually have pearls within it, but a lot will need to be edited out as well.
Some of our best plot ideas or character decisions in our novels and film scripts have come using this technique. We just write super-fast and almost without thinking – maybe for five minutes or so – and more often than not what we wrote solved a major storyline issue or character problem.
It seems that certain insights can only come in this manner – or at least come more easily – as opposed to writing at regular speed. Sometimes you hit a brick wall when writing novels or screenplays. Something is missing and that something cannot be rectified with the conscious mind no matter how hard you try.
Speed writing is one way to solve the dreaded writer’s block.
Whether you use this method to add to an existing draft of a document, or whether you’re still attempting to complete a first draft, it works. We’ve proven it to our own satisfaction on numerous occasions.
Speed writing is not just for authors of course. It can be used to good effect by others – students who may be writing essays, for example, or business executives drafting reports or preparing finance proposals. It can even be used in your personal life when you’re facing a dilemma and cannot think of any solutions with your conscious mind – in this case you can speed write a list of possible options and see what your subconscious mind delivers to you.
If you want to test the method we use, try the following: put yourself under a time constraint by setting an alarm clock for 5 to 10 minutes then tell yourself you must write as much as you’d normally write in 45-60 minutes. Go! Until the alarm clock rings, don’t judge yourself or censor yourself or analyze anything – simply write as much as you can, as quickly as you can.
During the process it may feel like you’re writing utter garbage, but if our experiences are anything to go by, there will at least be some gems you can retain or use to vastly improve whatever it is you’re writing.
Our theory on why speed writing works is that you are not only forcing yourself to operate at speeds that only the subconscious mind can keep up with, but you are also not analysing, censoring or critiquing what you write as you go. (Over-analysing is another trait of the conscious mind).
The best ideas often seem ridiculous at first and this technique allows you to just get all ideas out of your head and onto paper so you can consider them later.
Exactly how does speed writing relate to genius intelligence? Well, the connection is totally unproven, but instinct and personal experience tells us that, if done correctly (trance-like and without hesitation), you’ll tap into that great reservoir of the subconscious mind where all genius abilities come from.
A final point: when speed writing, it’s immaterial whether you write with pen in hand or use a computer keyboard. That said, we find speed writing seems to flow better when handwriting text – almost as if the pen’s a natural extension of the hand, allowing thoughts and words to flow directly from the brain onto the writing pad.
Morcan Books & Films 