To all my Loyal Blog Readers:

So I have written a book. You may ask, Big Deal? My answer would be, perhaps not because there are almost 2 million titles available on the e-book store shelves; that is a lot of Hemingway wannabees. However, to those who have actually written a book, it is a very Big Deal!  In my case it represents over 5 years of writing and rewriting over and over.

The title of my book, Polynesian Dreams, does not tell you much. How did I come up with the title? Like so much in my book, it came to me when I wake in the middle of the night and like a neon sign it appeared in my head. Large section of my book occurred like that. It is called inspiration, but what does that mean? Inspiration translated is, In Spirit.  Polynesian dreams is written in spirit. I credit my coauthor, who you could call a spirit, with a lot of the writing. Those who have read my blogs know the book tells the story beginning with the time that I as a young boy in my native Holland grew up during the terrible war years. Nightly air raids, a close call when a stray bomb fell in front of our flat, a wild shoot party when Germans opened fire with automatic weapons when we were prying wooden blocks from between the tram rails because we needed fuel to cook our meager rations. Then the awful hunger winter, when the big cities on the coast were completely cut off from all food and fuel supplies and eighteen thousand civilians perished from hunger, mostly babies and old folks. Then I survived another shooting, this time on the last day of the war when we were gathered at a square in Amsterdam and a troop of eager resistance fighters demanded the German garrison to surrender. One teenage boy who together with many other had hand in hand formed a row to aid in crowd control suddenly let go of my hand and fell down with a bullet hole in his forehead.

Then the book follows my life from one adventure after another, one romance after another, one wrong turn after another. This is where my spirit coauthor more or less took over. Writing in longhand I often reread my writings and could not understand how I could have written the words that appeared on the yellow legal notepad. This is the spiritual part of Polynesian Dreams. The book was published in print format but sold out. With the explosion of e-book readers, a decision was made to publish the book electronically. Most of the electronic publishers carry Polynesian Dreams. I priced it low because the book has the possibility to help many others, who like the author once are battling addictions, drugs, alcohol, eating, smoking, sex and a myriad of others might be helped with my experience and my triumph over my particular bad addictions. In ending, Polynesian Dreams is available on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, WaveCloud, Google books, e-book and more. Price: $3.79, 351 pages with a few pages of photos. My proceeds, meager as they may be, are all donated to Animal Rescue and Shelter organizations and The Wounded Warrior project.

Is Polynesian Dreams a best seller, no but it has the potential because readers have almost all declared it a page turner. Please read a sample chapter for free on any of the seller websites. Thanks in advance, Johan Van Oldenbarneveld, born May 8, 1930, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Immigrated to the US, November 1950. Saw service in the Dutch Royal Navy, the Dutch Merchant Navy and the American Army as MP in Bremerhaven, Germany.  Residing in Southern California.