The idea of “reflections on experience” arose because Glenn did not like the connotations of the word “memoir”. To him it sounded like an ex-colonel (with an impressive moustache) recounting the heroic deeds of his war campaigns. Glenn was also uncomfortable about calling the books novels, although he has disguised the identity of the characters in his books.
The first of these books came about after Glenn had written a book on ethics. This led him to reflect on his own past experiences, particularly while working as a manager in the community sector and encountering people who were the antithesis of what you might expect. They were deceitful, unscrupulous and vicious. He resolved to write about this as a story. The result was The Ten Thousand Things.
The experience of telling the story was exhiliarating, and several more books have followed. If there is a common theme, it is that it is worthwhile to endeavour to live with integrity, and that there is meaning and beauty in life. And that a good life cannot be reduced to business outcomes.
The books
The books are mostly told from a first-person point of view, and the stories Glenn tells are essentially true. He thinks he may not be a novelist, but he admits to being a teller of stories! He admires Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (Pirsig’s books have been described as philosophical novels.)
The books are (latest first):
Library Meets Book Fair (2024)
Travel with a Pen (2023)
The Big Story Falls Apart (2014)
Sustenance (2011)
The Ten Thousand Things (2010).
Another common characteristic of these books is the fact that each was written in 30 days, as part of the NanoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge. (Yes, for the serious writers, readers and editors, I did review and revise afterwards.)
Availability of books: The links near each book take you to my Spotlight page on the Lulu.com website, from where my books may be purchased. They are print-on-demand, and wherever you are globally, they are printed and posted in or near your country. Enjoy.
Read a sample of the book.
library meets book fair
A personal library is a dynamic entity. Books move around as the author gets immersed in writing. And new books arrive when he goes to book fairs. But one time, he noticed books at a book fair that he already owned. It became a quest to find such books, until he had nearly forty of them. It was an invitation to examine these books again. It took him in a strange variety of directions, and also back to books he had written, such as the two books on the history of Kyogle. He delved into psychology, archaeology, the history of humanity, art, healing, and the history of Iceland. It was a thorough refreshing of the mind, as he integrated all of it. Library meets book fair.
Published: February 2024. Paperback and ebook.
Paperback, 210 pages. ISBN 978-0-6459543-1-9
ebook ISBN 978-0-6459543-2-6
Read a sample of the book here: Sample
Travel with a pen
"Travel with a pen", these days, is a metaphor for travelling with a laptop. I went to Tasmania for two weeks, intending just to keep a diary of my experiences. I was going there to graduate from my Diploma of Family History course, and I was going to Oatlands, in the midlands, to explore more of my great great grandmother’s story as a young Irish convict in the 1850s. And I was hoping to see places I hadn’t seen before.
The diary grew into something more, this book. It is easy, when in possession of a laptop, to slip from observation and reporting into reflecting on experiences. For me, it evoked the idea of Boswell's London Journal.
Published October 2023. Paperback. 129 pages. pbk ISBN 978 0 6488433 9 9
ebook ISBN 978 0 6459543 0 2
Read a sample of the book here….Sample
Long Time Approaching: An Incomplete Memoir
Glenn shares threads of his life in this searching memoir. It includes glimpses into his doomed relationships, his experiences as a teacher – despite this not being his chosen career, and his experiences in other roles. He has been a manager, a magazine editor, head of a national organisation, and a writer of commentary for management professionals. He has been a hippie living in the hills. He has become the writer of many books. And he has maintained his enjoyment of life.
The book includes photos from the author’s life.
Published January 2023. Paperback, 274 pages.
ISBN 978 0 6488433 7 5
ebook, 2023. ISBN 978 0 6488433 8 2
Read a sample from the book: Click here
The Quilt Approach: A Tasmanian Patchwork
What happens when you go back to a place you visited forty-six years ago? Tasmania. Do the ghosts rise up, or has the past all been erased? What if you now knew that some of your ancestors had lived there? Convicts. And another branch of your family settled there and came to prominence? Colonialists.
It might start to look like a patchwork instead of a simple story. And then the patches might be stitched together and make a quilt.
Thirty-two stories stitched together with meaning. The quilt approach.
Published 2020. Paperback, 157 pages. ISBN 978 0 6480811 8 0 ebook: ISBN 978 0 6487797 0 4
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The Big Story Falls Apart
There are many stories, but all these stories depend on the continuities, the certainties we hold to be necessary. And what happens if the certainties are found wanting?
This book is the story of a journey through the disintegration of the “big story”. It begins in Sydney in the late 1960s, but the narrator flees to the country, where he lives in retreat. He discovers, to his surprise, that the story goes on, and he is talking his way through. There is renewing and reframing, until energy flows again.
Published 2014. Paperback, 136 pages. ISBN 978 0 9804045 7 9
Also available as an ebook: ISBN 978 0 9804045 8 6
Read a sample of the book: Click here
To the Bush and Back to Business
A young man turns his back on the city and a career, and goes to live in the bush. Years later he returns, and asks himself about the questing. Was the quest for an alternative community and back-to-the-earth lifestyle anything more than loss and failure?
This is a work of personal archaeology, not a tidy work of history. To dig into the past, all he has is a box of papers – stories, poems and notes on scraps of paper that ignite memories.
He discovers that his ideals have been remarkably consistent over time. This is a call for people in business to look beyond the lust for profit, and to treasure the harmony of heaven and earth.
Published 2012. Paperback, 208 pages. ISBN 978 0 980 40455 5
e-book ISBN 978 0 6487797 3 5
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Sustenance
Patrick is given a message about freeing himself from fate, so he takes a new job, working at a centre for unemployed youth. But his search for sustenance brings trouble, in an organisation where the inept and the self-serving often hold sway.
Becoming a good manager is a personal undertaking that requires you to examine your values, especially your ethical values. Invariably it doesn’t turn out to be easy. It calls upon you to be your best self.
Published 2011. Paperback, 234 pages. ISBN 978 1 257 05890 7
e-book ISBN 978 0 6487797 1 1
Read a sample from the book: Click here
The Ten Thousand Things
A story of the lived experience of the I Ching
The story: A man becomes the leader of an organisation just as it faces a crisis. He leads its recovery and expansion, but then trouble returns as he becomes the target for deceitful and destructive forces in the organisation. The story takes us into the experience of living with the guidance of the I Ching.
First published 2010. Revised 2020. Paperback, 206 pages.
ISBN 978 0 6487797 9 7
e-book ISBN 978 0 6487797 8 0