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Stepping Stones picks up the story of Lek, her family and friends in the village of Baan Suay four years on from where The Lady in The Tree finished. Lek and Ayr are still looking to expand, but especially Lek's career in the political arena, where she finds evidence of disturbing activity. Craig is still trying to write a best seller and Soom has graduated from university. In Stepping Stones, we are introduced to the Champunot family from Bangkok, the members of which have a profound effect on Lek, Craig and Soom - one which none of them will ever be able to forget. Stepping Stones reveals more in-depth details of life in a Thai family that has been affected by the inclusion of a falang like how they deal with the strange mixture of traditional and modern Thai life that that situation often creates.
The Behind The Smile Series is the story of Lek, a bar girl in Pattaya, Thailand. Lek was born the eldest child of four in a typical rice farming family in the northern rice belt of Thailand. A catastrophe occurred out of the blue one day – her father died young with huge debts that the family knew nothing about. Lek was just twenty years of age, and the only one who could prevent the foreclosure of the family farm, and allow her younger sister and two brothers to continue their education. However, the only way she knew how was to go to work in her cousin's bar in Pattaya.Can a Pattaya bar girl ever go back to being a regular girlfriend or wife?Behind The Smile is a look into one part of Thailand, a country known around the world as 'The Land of Smiles'.Stepping Stones picks up the story of Lek, her family and friends in the village of Baan Suay four years on from where The Lady in The Tree finished. Lek and Ayr are still looking to expand, but especially Lek's career in the political arena, where she finds evidence of disturbing activity. Craig is still trying to write a best seller and Soom has graduated from university. In Stepping Stones, we are introduced to the Champunot family from Bangkok, the members of which have a profound effect on Lek, Craig and Soom - one which none of them will ever be able to forget. Stepping Stones reveals more in-depth details of life in a Thai family that has been affected by the inclusion of a falang like how they deal with the strange mixture of traditional and modern Thai life that that situation often creates.
Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis. After university, in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup, when he was accused of being a mercenary. Later, while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail, from Barry to Gibraltar on a home-made concrete yacht during Desert Storm. En voyage, the yacht was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker, and an American aircraft carrier - The Atlantic Challenger.
In 2004, he started his first novel, Daddy's Hobby (from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya'), but he didn't finish it until 2012. However, his largest collection is 'The Psychic Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. However, since 2012, he has written fifty-odd novels and novelettes, including the military drama Dead Centre; the spy novel Andropov's Cuckoo; a fantasy Fate Twister; a philosophical vampire comedy The Disallowed; a whodunnit Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and Spiritualist drama, A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Not only that, but many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audiobooks.
Since 2004, he has lived mainly in the UK, Spain and Thailand. He now leads a somewhat quieter life in his wife's remote, northern farming village writing, editing and increasing the number of translations, and narrations of his novels.
As he says: "Born in the Land of Song, living in the Land of Smiles".
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