My Second Life by Simon Yeats

Simon Yeats has not had an easy life. He tells his story in his new book, My Second Life, published in July 2023. Thank you to Rachel's Random Resources for including me on this virtual blog tour. Please keep reading to learn about the book and read an excerpt.

About the Book:

(Right at this moment, my abducted son is being abused in another country and there is nothing I can do about it other than write this book to get publicity for his story.)

We all have two lives. We only get to experience living in the second after we realize we only have just one.

I have my first real scare in life when I get attacked by a kangaroo when I am seven. My first brush with the cliff-face edge of death comes when I am 12. My dad drives the family down the dangerous Skipper’s Canyon dirt road in New Zealand in a rented minivan.

Including the occasion I am almost involved in two different plane flight crashes, in the same night, there have been at least a half dozen more occasions when I have been within a moment’s inattention of being killed.

However, none of those frightening incidents compare to what I experience after my son is abducted.

This memoir is the story of how I used the traumatic experiences of my life to give me strength to forge on during a 13 year fight to be a father to my son.

What did it take for me to get to my second life?

It took me to truly understand what fear is.

Excerpt for My Second Life 

After suffering a car accident on the Pacific Coast Highway outside Los Angeles, I am transported to a hospital where I struggled to understand what was happening to me.

There is so much pain medication in my bloodstream that I feel nothing. So numb, that at one point I had gotten out of bed and stood up on my broken leg. With the psychotropic effects of that many narcotics in my system, the doctors may as well have sent me to an open-air music festival.

I am delirious.

It feels like I am the victim of a kidnapping. I am in a strange room and tied to a bed. Any lucidity will not come back for three weeks. Everything about the situation is agitating and depressing.

After spending eight years to overcome the heavy heart of sorrow that is homesickness, it returns to my head in a flood that sweeps away any sense of comfort. Even with the reassuring presence of my younger sister at my bedside, who flew over from Australia within a week of my family finding out I was in hospital.

My agitation piles on top of the subconscious cache of everything horrible that has happened to me in life. Every teasing comment, every hateful stare, every spurned friendship.

While the last memory I have is a disconcerting recollection of pleading with a blue shape to kill me.

And now I am being restrained.

I know what it is like to get held down on a playground. One boy at each of my arms and legs while the rest stand and watch the humiliation.

So of course, I panic.

I go balls to the wall with hysteria.

At least the doctors got the panic part right.

I thrash around on the bed. Pulling wildly against my restraints while screaming loudly for help. Can you imagine what it must have been like for the group of men in the lost submarine diving to see the Titanic? What those last hours of terror would have been like. Knowing there is no escape. Knowing there is no hope.

But still wanting to believe something can be done.

Something had to be done.

That is what I am feeling. I need to do everything and anything I can do to escape.

Here is what the nurses think I am doing. Being an arsehole.

Here is their response to thinking I am just being an arsehole.

A nurse comes into my room with a syringe holding a cocktail of drugs. Likely a B-52 combination. A mixture of 25 mg of Benadryl, 5mg of Haldol, and 2mg of Ativan. This is the go-to formula for psych ward nurses to pump into a psych patient to medically knock them out.

Here is what I think they are doing.

Trying to kill me via lethal injection.

I scream and panic more.

That situation escalates quickly.

Then the drugs enter my bloodstream, and I pass out.

I will wake up in three weeks to find I have a traumatic brain injury, broken arm, fractured leg, and an open incision from my chest to below my belly button. The doctors are keeping it this way so that they do not have to constantly cut me open to clean out infections from spilled bowel contents in my abdomen. My seatbelt ruptured my intestines.

Purchase links:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CB4LCCPN

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CB4LCCPN

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/my-second-life-yeats/1143761825

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/my-second-life-7

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1421250

 

About the Author:

Simon Yeats has lived nine lives, and by all estimations, is fast running out of the number he has left. His life of globetrotting the globe was not the one he expected to lead. He grew up a quiet, shy boy teased by other kids on the playgrounds for his red hair. But he developed a keen wit and sense of humor to always see the funnier side of life.

With an overwhelming love of travel, a propensity to find trouble where there was none, and being a passionate advocate of mental health, Simon’s stories will leave a reader either rolling on the floor in tears of laughter, or breathing deeply that the adventures he has led were survived.

No author has laughed longer or cried with less restraint at the travails of life.

Keep in touch on social media:

TIK TOK - https://www.tiktok.com/@authoryeats

INSTAGRAM - https://www.instagram.com/authoryeats/?hl=en