Greetings from Green Island.
I am Dave (David Leslie, to give me a couple degrees separation
from the long list of 'Dave Patterson's google fetches up)
Patterson, Canadian musician, songwriter (60s folk-rock roots),
book writer, and constant fighter to make things better for all
of us. Herein I will tell you a bit more about all that. Briefly. It's all way too long for a
soundbite, but long story short, as they say, I am Canadian,
born in 1950 in Toronto, did a lot of things with my life which
you can read about more
here - and am currently retired in Thailand where there's
no snow to shovel and I can ride my little Honda motorcycle
around the beautiful countryside most days (some days the rain
is a bit too heavy, but the 'rainy season' is not that serious
where I live in northern-central Thailand).
Continuing chronologically,
which seems most logical and easiest, my next forays into
writing were during the 1980s after I moved to Prince Edward
Island in Canada to go to university, where I eventually
graduated with a biology degree, which fleshed out a lot of my
lifelong interest in the natural world, and following graduation
I got a Canada Council grant and wrote a book on the Natural
History and Ecosystems of PEI, which was a very enjoyable year
but the book never got published. But also during my early 1980s
years on PEI I had gotten a good basic education in social
issues (poverty, government corruption, the 'legal' system, the
'national debt'), and was working up a good interest in such
issues, leading to my first, I guess, (self-)published chapbook
or pamphlet,
Prince Edward Island Revival Plan a few years later, and
ideas started germinating for later books we shall hear more of
anon.
And after Kelly/Ernie the same publishing company accepted a second book which I called Changel, Orion and Sirius but they changed to Adventure in the Night Sky, which I fixed up again to the original ideas with a bunch more nice illustrations from Chat. And 3rd was Aquila, which I mostly wrote while still in Canada, and then published on my own in 2007 a few years after moving to Thailand, and which is here reissued with, again, some very nice pictures via Chat. I have two more Pine Valley PEI books planned. You can find these Young
Readers books, and other books I have done in epub form at: my
Smashwords page. - and for a
book on the real Green Island, what I consider to be my real
magnum opus, the story is here -
Green Island - a story about how a true 'social democracy'
might be managed by a citizenry comprised of democracy-enabled
citizens. I hardly behooves me to brag, but since nobody else
will, UI have to say this is probably the best book written so
far at least in the 2000s. A book that is widely needed, a book
that no Canadian publisher or agent was interested in, or dozens
of others in the western world. With that kind of 'we are NOT
going there!!!!' attitude - well, read it and see. The .epub on
Smashwords above is free to download, only send some money if
you think it worth the read. Inside the boxers waiting for
approval from their (inside the box) 'influencers' won't be
recommending it - but if you are one of we 'outside the boxers'
who likes a good read - I think you'll agree with my assessment.
Beautiful inside artwork too - I am a serious creator. And
just for the sake of being complete (the above bio stops around
Green Island) - for the 2010s I was an English Editor and
teacher at Prince of Songkla University in Hat Yai in southern
Thailand - pretty good job for me (no office hours!!), which
left me quite a bit of free time to work on researching what was
going on in the world, doing various websites, and writing a lot
of essays, which can be found on the side panel of the last stop
here, the Democracy Study Guide - good years that went by very
quickly - I wrote a teaching book and many associated books, but
none that would merit the time to put on Amazon, esp now with
the advent of high-quality AI, which can do both generally
better than humans (in Thailand, I find my ChatGPT very useful
with studying the Thai language - I don't use it for editing
myself, very particular about anyone messing with my words, but
I think as an editor of English language medical papers it would
probably be very useful).
AND
- one more I guess - I did not really start doing web pages, or
books for that matter, lo those many years ago, to begin a career
as an author - I started the web pages because I thought -
actually had been for many years before the idea and do-ability of
web pages were even thought of - that our society was heading in
some very bad directions, and I thought I had some ideas it would
be useful to get into the public discussion - I wanted to be part
of that discussion actually. My first foray into 'protest writing'
was, I guess, back around 1969, when I was still in high school
(good ol Norwood District Highschool, near where I grew
up in Hastings on the Trent, near Rice Lake, beautiful town and
countryside), and I have no idea what the essay was about now, but
there was something going on in the school I thought needed
fixing, and wrote this essay called 'Situation Requiring
Propitiation' (I was a big reader since I was 4-5 years old, and
by high school had a big vocabulary). I suppose I was somewhat
influenced by Dylan and Lennon, and the war protests of the later
60s and all like that as well. Anyway - not the place for a long
history of that - but my most recent update of my general 'this is
how things work now and how to improve them' books is here, Democracy
Study Guide, for those so interested. And then that is about all, at least for now, June 2026, as I get a bunch of books put on to Amazon to try to make a bit of supplementary income for my retirement - I've always believed that both my music and my books, esp Green Island, could be good sellers if they were just given a chance - and now I am spending some more time doing that. If you want to get in touch - my email is corals@rudemacedon.ca . And if you read this far - thanks for doing that. |