New book - Legless in Thailand, Asia - autobiography of a legless fool

Legless in Thailand

(The autobiography of a legless fool)

A true story of love, deceit and pain, both physical and emotional. Not a happy story, just things that have happened to me in the past few years. Many of the bad things that happened could have been avoided if I had looked at my life and my partner's motives objectively, but how many people look objectively at what they do when there are very strong emotional feelings driving you? I am 100% guilty of letting my heart rule my head.

This book is my autobiography, for most of my life I have been an engineering professional and also being an ex-military RAF Commissioned Officer, I have been used to having a reasonably straight forward and practical outlook on life. The first main hiccup came in my life about 20 years ago, when, having recently left the British military, I was employed by a large multi-national organisation who sent me to Thailand to take care of a major government project here. Whilst I was in Thailand I met a girl whom I was very attracted to and eventually married, so I moved to Thailand to live and be with her 22 years ago. The book only covers the last 8 years of my life in the Far East because many unusual and unfortunate events happened to me during this particular period, that would change my life and my outlook on life forever. My book opens with a motoring accident that happened in 2001 and how this event affected my life not only physically, but after this almost fatal accident and loss of one leg, to suddenly discover that the one person in the world that I loved and had pledged my heart and soul to, already had another true love in her life 'MONEY'. The story tells you how I had to deal with this new revelation, now being an amputee, disabled and emotionally distraught in a country where I had limited friends and no family to help me with any of my difficulties.

Many of the things that occur in this book are probably just what many people would loosely refer to as bad luck, but really many of the things that happened where due to me being 'blind' to my partner's true feelings and motives in our relationship, a relationship that I thought was 'perfect' and put my heart and soul into. I hope that the people who read my book can learn from the many mistakes that I made. Because it is an autobiography and the person living through it is still alive, unfortunately, the story continues with new situations still developing on a daily basis, so I cannot say that this story will ever have a happy ending, even though that is what is still being sought after, the book just covers events in my life up to the date of publication. This book is on sale now and the one regret I have about it, is the title. Yes, as an amputee now, I am literally 'Legless in Thailand' but a more apt title for the story I now feel should have been 'Love at First Parasite' or 'Disabled in Body and Mind', but to me it will always be 'the autobiography of a fool'.

The main character in this book (Me) has a new outlook on life, he now tries to live up to:

“Always expect the worst thing that can happen in any given situation, because it surely will happen to me”

I am now writing my Asian Diaries on the internet and these will cover in depth everything that has happened to me in Asia over the years. At the moment I am writing about the first time that I came to Thailand and how that business trip eventually led up to the events in this book. They are much more detailed than the book itself and may provide readers of my book with the necessary background to understand the events in the book better. For anyone that is interested, my Asian diaries can be seen at: http://www.leglesshq.com/reedasia/index.htm

This book is now dedicated to the memory of 'Pet' one of the characters in this story, who unfortunately, died just one month before this book was published and she was only 29 years old. She is still a main character in my new novel, because it is based in the past and she is still in my heart and mind. When Pet died, I lost the only true friend in the world who really knew me, understood me and was my confident. I also lost the only person that I could ever have true feelings for again and who gave me hope again in life, that hope and my spirit for life died along with her.

I am now actively working on my next book 'Ex Post Facto', which follows on to 'Legless in Thailand' naturally to my way of thinking. Although my next book is fiction, it is still based around many of the same characters as the first book, but this time there is a Sci Fi twist to the story and a lot of imagination, still hoping for a good ending to my life story.

I have written some true short stories which are now available on my website Stories here