Green Island Books page banner - Dave Patterson author info

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).

Dave picture, mid-70s, long haired musicianSo first in order of time regarding my writing and thus presence on Amazon would be the music book - I won't get into the history of my music, as I have done a web cover of Dave;s Songs bookpage with all the history and a bunch of pictures and recordings of the best of my songs going back to the mid-60s, which you can find here Dave's Songs if interested in that bit of my writing (I still play and sing pretty much daily, very good for the soul and some help clearing crap out of my lungs and vocal cords as a (well-controlled but still) asthmatic. And the book of my songs I put together finally a few months ago is now on Amazon here -

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.

Dave picture, early 90s, nimbus pictureBut also in the early 1990s, after a 'hey look at this ad/idea' from my brother Michael,  I tried my hand at writing a 'young readers' book, sent it to the publishing company in Halifax looking for new writers, and it got accepted, and eventually published as Kelly Mows the Lawn. However, I had written a book called Ernie Mows the Lawn, which they wanted to change to Kelly and I said ok rather than having the book sit in a drawer somewhere, but it was always on my mind to resurrect Ernie, and now I have finally done that for this new Amazon-Kindle venture, along with a bunch of new (and better, IMO) illustrations from ChatGPT, which renders my 'written pictures' into actual illustrations (not as easy as it sounds, the Chat illustrator can be very obtuse and stubborn and come up with a lot of well done but stupid stuff (bolted iron windows in a whale), but does now and then come up with some real nice gems, as the books show).

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.

Ernie mows the Lawn, cover Changel, Orion and Sirius, cover Aquila, cover


You can find these Young Readers books, and other books I have done in epub form at: my Smashwords page.



Green Island, cover - 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.

Dave picture, 2016, academic at PSUAnd 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). 

Dave picture, 2016, snorkelingAnd - one of the great things about living and working in southern Thailand, as I did for almost 30 years, is the closeness of the Andaman Sea and the many beautiful Snorkeling the Beautiful Southern Thailand Andaman Islands' Coral Reefs and Gardens, coverislands there - almost all of which have beautiful coral reefs either directly offshore or easily accessible by longtail boat. And after looking for years for a guide to these islands, with no luck, I decided to do one myself - and published it last year after my retirement gave me time to finish it - which you can read about here, and there should be a picture of the cover somewhere nearby here. It gives details about all of the main southern Thailand Andaman islands, and the reefs around them - and you can have a look on Amazon for more details if this kind of thing interests you. (but a small warning - the last couple of years has seen some serious longterm ocean warming, and my most recent visits to many of these places has seen between some dead coral and almost total devastation of the coral and thus the associated ecosystems - I very much fear I am going to have to redo this book as a retrospective on what it used to be like - but not just now when there is still some hope for recovery)




Dave picture, revolutionatorAND - 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, Democracy Study Guide, web page bannernear 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.