Miami Book Fair Shocked Mine
Travel broadens the mind goes an old saying and it truly did in my case.
Although this article includes my trip to Miami, Florida it is also about the political polarization between left and right these days.
Having spent many years working on various projects overseas, visiting on behalf of clients in an independent technical sales role, I’d earned some good commissions and decided to set up my own office in Thailand. My previous article on “The Best Place I’ve Ever Been That I Felt I Could Finally Settle https://medium.com/p/c50d638e66ca was in answer to a monthly challenge on Globetrotters Medium publication. That was where my office was situated, and I covered many Oceanian countries from there.
My time in Thailand had given me an accepting outlook of so many cultural differences. Their acceptance of the gay scene and the many transgender of ladyboys, or kathoeys, ladies of the third gender as they are known, plus those of the Tomboys who swung the opposite way, had rubbed off on me in a positive way. I had met many around town and seen how inoffensive most were, and we had friends of both persuasion. There were some who hung around the Beach Road at night who were known thieves, but that even applied to the prostitutes working that area. You knew where to stay away from and who to hang with. That could happen in certain parts of any big city in any country.
I was working in Tianjin, China for two years when I split with my long term ‘Mia Noi’ the Thai term for what they called a ‘minor wife’ or in my case ‘mistress.’ Like many marriages and relationships, we had grown apart, but despite our parting we remained adult about it and stayed friends. She had nothing when we met and a house when we split, and despite issues on both sides are still occasionally in touch via social media.
At the end of my time in China my first serious crime adventure novel had come out and I was invited to attend a book signing at the Miami Book Fair. It was the end of 2016 when I attended the book fair at Miami Dade College campus. I was booked to sign and give away many copies of “The Dream Team” my first in a crime adventure trilogy which has since been republished as “Face and Justice” the first in the “Face” series of Dream Team adventures.
