Collectanea Cygna

Collectanea Cygna is a collection of 25 short stories, ranging from humour to pathos, from fantasy to science fiction and time travel, and from love stories to tragedy. Each story is complete in itself. 

Travel back to the Second World War or forward to a virtual reality environment. Empathise with the loss of loved ones or rejoice in the finding of one’s true love. See inside the mind of a murderer or laugh at the antics of the newly retired. This book will take you on many journeys.

Collected Poems

Having lived in New Zealand, Britain and Germany, the author is amply experienced to comment on various aspects of British, New Zealand and German culture. Currently living in Germany, he visits Britain frequently. His interests include indigenous cultures and music sponsorship in Britain and abroad.

Here is a book of poems that will amuse and educate adults as well as older children. The poems cover a range of topics from young children to threatened species, and poems from classical Greek and Roman mythology. There are different cultures portrayed in a positive light while the best ideas taken from the worlds of psychology, stress management, and values reflecting religious principles are incorporated in an often amusing way.

If you want an easy read on the train or to relax with at home, this is a book that will entertain and give a feeling of hope and happiness in a world that often presents us with difficulties or perplexing problems.

Colour Coded: The Black Bullet

Having a dark past, she left it all behind… At least she tried to. When Bullet moved from Prismatic to Colour Coded, her previous boss, Neon, did everything in his power to win her back. But, knowing the kind of man he was, she did not accept any of his pleas. After his begging turns into threats, Bullet and the rest of Colour Coded are forced into a dangerous chess game as a means of not only protecting their own, but protecting their pasts. In the end, a choice must be made. What means more to her, her Colour Coded family… or her horrific history she has shielded for so many years?

Colour Coded: The Silver Sparrow

Sparrow’s stress and anxiety is close to boiling point after Neon’s latest move, and it is beginning to take its toll on the rest of Colour-Coded.

Somehow, they must get one step ahead of Neon.

While Sparrow not only deals with troubles of the mind but of the heart as well, tempers are flaring, relationships are faltering, and Neon continuing to elude them all sets their teeth on edge.

Will Sparrow’s aggravating behaviour drive them to fight harder? Or will it merely make him the weaker link and the easier target with Colour-Coded?

Cometh the Witch

Little Green is a witch. Not your ordinary, wearing black, pointy hat, cat-owning witch. She is more of a feisty hippy, green dress, bare feet, blonde-hair with-flower-in-it and no-cat witch, and you mess with her at your peril.

Armed with only a garden gnome, she fends off marauding goblins. When homeless hillbillies arrive in Brooklands, she’s there to help: racing against bullies in Lord Maxwell’s horseless chariot race, using extraordinary magic to help the circus Indian find his way home, dealing with cruel and wicked witch-finders. All this and it’s her birthday too. She really doesn’t want any fuss, so who’s the strange sailor knocking at the door?

Oh yes, Little Green is certainly a witch and, my word, what a witch!

This is going to be magic!

Communicating Internally for Maximum Impact: A Middle Eastern Perspective

In Middle East region, ineffective communication in the workplace is one of the reasons why many companies lose their clients, in addition to excellent employees. A lot of the employees resign due to the miscommunication inside the organisations in the gulf region. Good communication skills help to reduce the barriers erected because of language and cultural differences. Internal communication should be understood and practised by all levels, including managers, supervisors and beginners.

This book offers practical and adaptive tools and techniques for upward communication—as well as across and downward communication—to inform and influence others no matter where they fit in the organisational chart. The book will recognise the impact of stress on communications and in return it will tell how to adjust for it, develop and demonstrate better listening skills, allow yourself to understand the importance of perceptions, and explore the communication style differences and learn to flex your own style.

Community Nursing Stories

An evocative memoir that paints a rich historical picture of life as a district nurse in a close-nit rural community setting in the mid-1970s and 80s. The author presents a fascinating set of memoirs that capture the essence of a district nurse at this time.

Presenting the challenges of coping with a young family to live and work as an outsider within a community, winning trust, and respect, whilst adapting to the challenges of working in a rural community, before days of central heating, mobile or in some circumstances house phones. The memoirs present a series of heart-warming, encounters, portraying a picture of a committed nurse, becoming a community champion and visionary pioneer in the development of much needed community services.

The stories of engagement with all-age community members present a strong historical context of the nursing role. In some ways very different to current nursing practice, reflecting the evolution of nursing and development of nursing, medical and technological knowledge to underpin the principles of knowledgeable, empowered, and informed practice.

Complex Trauma Syndrome

Complex Trauma Syndrome covers over a decade of research and clinical experience of complex psychological trauma. This book provides a concept: a practical framework and therapy model in treating complex trauma syndrome. The heart of this book is made up of the practical steps of using the Dynamic Therapy Model of which the author is a founder. This is a patient-oriented, holotropic and phased-therapy model designed to integrate the shattered personality caused by diverse, long-lasting, and pervasive effects of the psychological trauma.

Dr Zepinic defines complex trauma syndrome as involving traumatic events that (1) are repetitive and prolonged; (2) have involved direct harm and/or direct threat to the trauma victim; (3) occur at a vulnerable time in the victim’s life; and (4) have a severe impact upon the victim’s entire life and personality, causing social and cognitive dysfunctions.

This book not only covers unique matters of clinical expertise in research and therapy of the complex trauma syndrome, but also provides a guideline in treating other complex mental health disorders. Multimodal and phase-oriented treatments of complex mental health disorders, as described in this book, are practical guidelines to those professionals who are dealing with mental health issues.

Compliance Rules for Barristers

Compliance Rules for Barristers provides a clear and detailed account of the core duties of a barrister, mandatory rules, and additional rules for certain Direct Public Access Work. It sets out the steps that a sole practitioner must adopt to comply with the new transparency rules of the Bar Standard Board. This book is primarily meant for sole practising barristers in England and Wales, but the information could be of help to other lawyers, as well as to Law students.

The book deals with:

i. Prohibition on handling clients’ money, regulatory returns and the information needed to be included in a regulatory return.
ii. Consequences of failing to comply with compliance rules.
iii. Guidance on dealing with necessary steps to comply with the current health crisis (the global pandemic), the new risks due to the pandemic as well as the new opportunities.
iv. Money laundering regulations, governance arrangements and risk management.

The book includes discussion of the relevant sections of the Data Protection Act 2018, and the Information Commissioner’s Guidance which may be of interest to lawyers as well as to other professionals such as pharmacists, dentists, and doctors.

It sets out guidance and deals with the necessary modifications to a barrister’s practice considering the novel problems, and the new working order to serve the clients and to assist the courts. The book includes draft models of documents which could be adopted to be used in the legal practice. There are also references to the relevant decided cases and penalties pursuant to the Data Protection Act 2018.

Compos Mentis - Of Sound Mind

Have you ever suffered with your mental health?

Did you notice that all the CBT and self-help books, work in the longer term and want you to change your thinking?

And have you ever found that hard to do when you are feeling distressed in that moment?

Then this book is your answer!

Based on Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) which is a skills-based therapy designed to help you in that moment of distress. I have compiled a variety of skills based on this and on techniques I have learned over the years to help you the way they helped me.

Condemned

What happens when the “Circle of Life” goes horrendously awry?

Murder- we see it splashed across the tabloids all of the time. We try and escape reading about the horrors of appalling crimes by clicking out of such articles or by physically closing our newspapers. It’s easier not to think about it; it’s best to scroll down to another article; it’s better to turn the page.

But what if you don’t have the option to “turn the page” and escape the atrocity of murder? What are you supposed to do if you’re Susanna, blissfully ignorant at home until you receive the phone call on that devastating night, telling you that your son has been murdered? What are you supposed to do if like Susanna, it’s your child’s smiling face splashed across the tabloids with corroding words like “Murdered”, entwined with his image? Who are you supposed to turn to, when like Susanna, you are the mother who has to face her son’s killer in Court?

Susanna is facing the unendurable; the extent of her agony is incomprehensible. As a result, people don’t really know what to say to her. People appear to tire of the strained small talk and silences; one by one, those around Susanna are retreating.

It is time for Susanna to reclaim her voice and finally be heard. 

The very least that we can do is listen.

Condolences to Gaea

As our planet burns, people starve and species suffer extinction at an alarming rate, should we relegate ourselves as watchers, powerless to stave ignorance and greed’s insistent clamouring for more? Condolences to Gaea is a poet’s expression protesting the mindless, violent, selfish, often religious rationale for self over the wellbeing of our planet’s countless, marvellous inhabitants. The thematic arc encompasses paeans to those wonderful people recognizing Mankind’s imperative to intelligently address life’s accelerating demise and includes introspective musings by an author vacillating between dire pessimism and joyful optimism.