My song today is ‘Killing Time’. This song was written by H. Jayden Nicholas and American country music artist, Clint Black. It was initially recorded by Clint Black and was released in July 1989 as the second single and title track from his debut album. The song was his second number-one hit on the U.S. Billboard magazine ‘Hot Country Singles’ chart and the Canadian RPM’ Country Tracks’ chart. When Billboard published its year-end ‘Hot Country Singles’ chart for 1989, ‘Killin' Time’ was the Number 2 song of the year, one spot behind Clint Black’s ‘A Better Man’". The successes of ‘A Better Man’ and “Killin' Time” were instrumental in Clint Black winning the ‘Country Music Association’s Horizon Award’ in 1989.
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I was 47 years old when this song was first recorded, and I had just finished writing my first book, ‘Everyone and Everything’. Little did I realise at the time, but the following ten years would be the busiest decade of my life, and ‘’killing time’ would not be on the cards for me. In fact, my days between 8:00 am and 10:00 pm daily, Monday-Sunday was constantly occupied, and my adrenalin level, along with my satisfaction level was high enough to sustain me for a full decade, before two heart attacks forced me to call a halt.
My first children’s book was written for primary school children and it dealt with ten different types of discrimination. That book was a tremendous success and Kirklees Schools and the Kirklees churches bought three thousand copies in the month of November alone, and the ‘Children in Need’ charity benefited by over £10.000. My employers paid for the publication of the book (which had as one of its aims, the promotion of the Probation Service’s image in the local schools: much as the local police used to do via school visits).
Little was I aware at the time, that this first book I wrote would be the start of sixty-four (64) book publications I would have over the following twenty-five years.
My first dozen book publications were funded by different charitable organizations who were impressed by the success of my writing, along with my ability to attract numerous famous people to read from them in Yorkshire schools. Having the then ‘Chief Inspector of Schools for Ofsted’ (Chris Woodhead) describe one of the books I wrote (and from which he read from in a Yorkshire school), as being ‘high-quality literature’ in a press interview he gave afterward went a long way towards enhancing my credibility within Yorkshire Schools, their teachers and with the school children’s parents. Then, when the late Princess Diana personally requested that I send her copies of my books ‘Douglas the Dragon’ and ‘Sleezy the Fox’ for her to read to her sons, princes William and Harry at their bedtimes, my reputation as an up-and-coming author was further established. Then, when I received a personal telephone call from the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, at my home in December 2000 (six months after he had left office), and Mr. Mandela kindly praised the writing of three of my books that contained stories about South Africa, Jamaica, and India, my reputation as a children’s author was firmly established within and outside Yorkshire and even reached the shores of Jamaica.
The praise of Nelson Mandela was reported globally by the ‘News 24 Television’ channel and was seen by the Jamaicans. The Jamaicans idolised Nelson Mandela, and within the coming months, I was invited to write some books which could be sold in Jamaica to raise money for school resources in Falmouth (the old slave capital of the world during an earlier century). To facilitate raising much-needed cash for the thirty-two Falmouth schools, I established and managed a ‘Trans-Atlantic Pen Pal Project’ between all the thirty-two schools in Falmouth, Jamaica, and thirty-two Yorkshire schools. The aim of that project was to increase awareness of each other’s culture with a view of reducing racism between black and white pupils. Many tens of thousands of pounds were raised from the sale of my Jamaican and South African books and I was even privileged to have my books placed on the educational curriculum in Falmouth. For over two years, I liaised with the Jamaican Minister for Education and Youth Culture’, the Mayor of Trelawney (known as the Custos), and other high-powered educational officials in Jamaica.
The decade 1990-2000 witnessed me raising over £200,000 from the profits of all my book sales. Every penny profit went to charitable causes and all profit from the future sale of any of my books will continue to raise money for charitable causes in perpetuity. Today, we use every penny profit from book sales by giving away free books to children, churches, and schools. Early on after writing my first book, I decided to allow all book profits to go to charity. That decision effectively prevented me from having my books published by an independent source as they all wanted me to travel the country widely to promote my book and that conflicted with what I really wanted to do. My way around this obstruction was to arrange and fund my own publications by raising funding cash through other ventures, as well as persuading private printing works to produce my work at cost, and by persuading local artists (who wanted their work publicised through the sales of thousands of books) to illustrate my book covers and inside pages for free (working materials cost provided to them only). The more media publicity I got, the easier it became to get a stable of a dozen excellent book illustration artists to work freely for a charitable cause.
I then needed to persuade the Yorkshire schools in their hundreds to place orders for school libraries one year ‘in advance’ of my next book publication. I did this by making the sale of my books wholly ‘exclusive’ to Yorkshire schools and by making them unobtainable to anyone who was not prepared to order in advance of publication. By my sixteenth book publication, advanced orders on every book I wrote and published exceeded five thousand copies. I could have sold more copies, but I deliberately wanted to keep the supply less than the number of books wanted. This ploy itself had the desired effect of increasing the demand. Tell anyone that you have a published book that cannot be purchased outside an exclusive number of people and their ‘would like to buy the book’ automatically becomes ‘I must have the book!’ It is in the nature of all humans to want that more which they are told that they cannot have!
I then persuaded 840 national and international stars, celebrities, and famous names to visit Yorkshire schools and read from my books to assemblies of school children. I wanted the school children to ‘feel special’ on the days of my assemblies by bringing them a famous person to read to them; someone they could see in the newspapers, or on the television, or on professional fields of sport, or even in films! Without going into too much detail, celebrity readers came from royalty, government ministers, space travel, Antarctic explorers, authors, filmstars, stage actors, television presenters, sport, bishops and a few Archbishops, Chief Constables, and celebrities from all manner of public life. Having such big names read for me five days every week for ten years of school terms guaranteed and provided me with more publicity in the press and on the radio and local tv than millions of pounds could have purchased. From 840 + national and international famous names who I invited to read over a twelve-year period, only two declined.
The longer and more celebrated my list of my readers became, the more willing new famous readers were to visit Yorkshire schools to read to school assemblies from my books at their own expense! The great Norman Wisdom even travelled specially from The Isle of Mann to read for me and spent eight hours in my company. The first man ever to travel to both the North and the South Poles (Antarctic explorer Robert Swan) flew from Switzerland and back to read to children in a Huddersfield school. Anita Roddick, the late Body Shop owner, and environmentalist came from the South of England and marched over 1000 disabled children through the streets of Huddersfield from the Railway Station to the Town Hall, to promote the ‘Our World’ book of mine. We needed the consent of the local police constabulary to hold up the traffic through the centre of town for half an hour.
By 20O2, my full workload as an author: charity worker: Probation Officer: Trans-Atlantic worker with Jamaican schools: plus all group Relaxation Programmes run by me in the Community, hospitals, prisons, mental health institutions, and upon training courses for police, probation officers, fire officers, nurses, teachers, and psychologists: daily school visits made to tell stories to assembled children: talks given in the evenings to many groups in the community: and the additional research I did to enhance my behaviour modification work gave me two serious heart attacks within the space of one week. My second heart attack left me unconscious for three days and my family was told by the medics that I was not expected to regain consciousness and would die.
While I did not ever have to ‘kill time’ at any stage during the most stressed decade I ever knew, my extensive workload almost managed to ‘kill me’! And in all truth, there is not one thing I managed to do that I ever regretted, and were I to relive my life to press, I would happily do it all over again!
Love and peace Bill xxx