Books
You Want Me to Do WHAT? : B. Lynn Goodwin
You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers
Are you a caregiver experiencing stress? You are not alone. Over 50 million caregivers spend every spare minute driving to medical appointments, stopping at the pharmacy, cooking, answering questions, paying bills, and helping with matters that used to be private. They feel trapped in an endless loop and need to release the stress of caregiving.
B. Lynn Goodwin’s new book, You Want Me To Do What? – Journaling For Caregivers allows users to process their stress and celebrate what is right. It gives readers open-ended instructions on spilling their guts in the safety of a private journal and offers two hundred sentence starts to help them begin writing.
Caring for oneself is as essential as breathing, but caregivers lose site of that fact. Think of the flight attendant who says, “Put on your own oxygen mask before helping those around you.” Journaling is a caregiver’s oxygen mask.
“As someone steeped in the therapeutic value of writing during pain and loss, I think B. Lynn Goodwin’s book meets a need that has yet to be addressed.” ~~Sharon Bray, Ed.D, founder and director of Wellspring Writers offering therapeutic writing groups for men and women with cancer, San Diego, CA
“Trying to find words that really matched how I was feeling was a very powerful experience for me. I feel I can see myself a bit more clearly.”
~~ JoAnn McGowan, full time mom and caregiver, Santa Clara, CA
“
Even the most harrowed caregiver owes herself that much. ”
~~A. Sigmon, travel writer and blogger
Author B. Lynn Goodwin is a freelance writer, former caregiver, and retired drama and English teacher who owns Writer Advice, writes numerous guest articles and stories, and is working on a YA novel.
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The Second Daughter : J. Jeffrey
The Second Daughter
YOU try turning out all right after you overhear your mother wishing you hadn’t been born.
It had started out well. Umbrellas tangled. A storybook romance followed. A wonderful wedding. A beautiful, sweet first daughter. They were complete, a family, happy.
And then they went and had another daughter.
Her charming and witty fraud of a father Theodore starts disappearing, then worse, coming back. Her once allegedly sweet older sister Regina angrily resents her, and the sisters are at constant war. Her poor harried mother Helen is so busy what-iffing about the life she might have had that she overlooks the life she is actually having. Everyone blames younger daughter Debra for pretty much everything as the family slowly, then quickly, then one day explosively disintegrates. Along the way there are secrets and lies, heartbreaks and betrayals, plus the dramatic unexpected death of a central character at a pivotal moment. Debra, now a young woman, finds herself living awkwardly alone with her embittered mother when the phone rings—and her mother’s secret past suddenly crashes back into the present. Their life may be about to change forever; or rather, perhaps, revert back to what it should have been all along.
But not exactly because of that phone call, as it turns out.
Because of the remarkable second daughter. For what Debra Gale has is unyielding determination. What she has is an irrepressible capacity to love.
And now at last what she has is a chance.
The complex dynamics of a changing family. Mother, daughters, sisters, and the father who both divides and unifies them. That dramatic unexpected death, plus a fair amount of banana cream pie. Welcome to The Second Daughter: a funny but poignant, unusual but beautiful love story.
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John Dante’s Inferno – A Playboy’s Life : Anthony Valerio
John Dante’s Inferno – A Playboy’s Life
The life of one of the Great Lovers of all time, John Dante lived the life of a bachelor’s fantasy, going from his humble beginnings in a small Italian village to the Playboy Mansion, where he lived for 26 years with Hugh Hefner and 40 of the most beautiful women in the world.
John Dante was a key figure in the first years of the Playboy empire, hiring Bunnies, training Bunny Mothers, and managing the Playboy jet. He befriended some of the most popular and important figures of our time, including Hugh Hefner, whom John paints as a “fascinating, complex man,” as well as Shel Silverstein, Lenny Bruce, Linda Lovelace, Don Adams, James Caan and myriad other personalities and stars.
A first hand, inside look. An important book from the life of the second-in-command.
“This is a highly original way of telling the story of John Dante, self-made namesake of the more famous Dante. Using the medieval poet’s vision of Hell as a kind of running parallel narrative, Anthony Valerio weaves a fascinating tale of ambition, excess, friendship, and rocking good times back in the day of the Playboy Clubs, replete with Bunnies, orgies, and hedonistic fun.
Valerio writes with verve and compassion about men and women who ran after their dreams and their pleasures with abandon, living as if youth, potency, and beauty would never end. They did, of course, and this gives a poignant quality to the book.”
Prof. Rebecca West, Chicago
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Celestria : Julie Darley
Celestria
The destruction of mankind is imminent!
A powerful evil looms on the horizon plotting their revenge. They’ve grown tired of waiting in the shadows and are ready to unleash a new Armageddon.
The only thing standing in their way is 17 year old Esta Hope, and she doesn’t even know it yet!
The fallen gods of ancient Greece want her, the devil wants her dead!
Esta’s world is about to be turned upside down, as the battle between good and evil comes to a head. Can she embrace her true destiny before it’s too late?
While her life disintegrates, who can she trust? Will the arrival of mysterious Luc and Sam in town be her salvation, or will they send her straight to hell?
If she can accept what she was born to become and win the impending battle, is she simply opening the door to a much bigger, more violent war?
Celestria is a story about love, hope and trust. The power of faith, and how evil can destroy us all when our belief in goodness has left.
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Life, Love & Terrorism : Paco Pineiro
Life, Love & Terrorism
This is a story of and for our present time, straight out of our evening newscasts. Its the story of an otherwise successful American man in his thirties, struggling to recover from a painful breakup with the woman of his dreams, suddenly finding himself at the center of a controversial scheme that could make him not only world famous but as historically significant and heroic as the first man who set foot on the moon.
However, this life-changing opportunity comes with great risk, not only because it is highly controversial but also because it is dangerous and could just as easily end his life. To make matters even more challenging, part of the price for this amazing opportunity involves becoming an agent for a mysterious and shadowy organization called Citizens for the Defense of America, that purportedly exists to defend the United States against its enemies. So, at a time in his life when he is most vulnerable and emotionally unstable, he must make a life-altering decision, without knowing how it all might affect his diminishing chances of a reconciliation with the love of his life.
Additionally, Life, Love & Terrorism is a ground-breaking novel that can, at over 75 points in the narrative, and through the use of Google Earth©, transport the reader to the exact place he or she is reading about, whether it’s a romantic sidewalk cafe in Monaco, a chilling crime scene in Gibraltar or a relaxing flight over California’s wine country.
By making use of our latest technology, this exciting fiction novel is taken to the next level, placing it somewhere between where novels have been for over a century and the film version of this novel, which may come at some point in the future.
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The Unforeseen Alliance : Jay Cannon
The Euclidian: The Unforeseen Alliance
The Euclidians finally reached Earth and started stripping it of its vital resources, including its people. The captain of the ship Andrea is angered when he is betrayed by his XO, who took over his ship and labeled him a thief. Now the captain must rely on the Earthlings he invaded to help him get his ship back.
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Divine Play : Thomas A. Ukinski
Divine Play: An Epic with Commercials
Divine Play begins with Aiden Fesyo discovering he has a four-year-old child…somewhere. In his quest to find his child, he encounters people personally linked to the seven members of the latest “HorrorShow” team, who must pass through nine “circuses” on California Island, and defeat the megacorporation, SPORT, to win the trillion-dollar prize.
The team, “Valwadi VII,” is a spangled banner of races, skills and troubled pasts: a gay Hispanic gymnast, a native-American stunt coordinator, an Aborigine swimmer, a genetically engineered “fiteball quarrelback,” a Bosnian movie star and entrepreneur, a Japanese-American courtesan and assassin, an African-American “bizzyball” player and terrorist’s daughter. Three are killers; three blame themselves for deaths. One aborted her child. Another watched his lover waste away with retroviruses.
They must contend with: radioactive dumps, deserts, boiling lakes, high velocity winds, hot-headed centaurs out of David Mamet, equine aliens with British accents, homunculi bikers, mutant hairdressers, clumsy Ninjas, talk show hosts in tanks, and distortion fields that carry them through space and time.
Ultimately, Aiden joins the “HorrorShow” team to confront a gigantic triple-bodied Satan who reveals that the universe is a “divine play” of good-in-evil and evil-in good.
The novel is a particle accelerator full of tropes, pastiches, parodies, songs, commercials, miniplays, sound bites, neologisms, wordplay, movie promos, maps, charts and sacrilege. Even if you don’t read science-fiction, take a gander at this. It’ll cheer you up.
Immune – Book Two of The Rho Agenda : Richard Phillips
In the final pages of the spellbinding novel The Second Ship, NSA director Jonathan Riles failed to halt the Rho Project’s infiltration of the US government. Now the Project’s alien nano-serum is loosed upon the world, disguised as a miracle cure and leaving too many people—good people—dead. And anyone still alive to challenge the Project won’t be for long: an assassin known only as El Chupacabra is systematically eliminating any and all opposition.
At the top of the hit list is NSA fixer Jack Gregory, along with Heather McFarland and Mark and Jennifer Smythe, the three teenagers who first exposed the Rho Project’s evil agenda. In just a few short months, the trio has seen life as they know it stripped away, trapping them in a confusing new reality where human DNA is modified at an alarming rate. Struggling to understand what they are becoming and on the run for their lives, the teens and their remaining allies must stop the Rho Project before it alters the very fabric of humanity.
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The Raven Affair : Steven Nedelton
The Raven Affair
Taut, engaging, and supremely well written, The Raven Affair is a superb instant classic. With more than its fair share of break-neck action and mind-numbing suspense, author Steven Nedelton’s compelling thriller is a fast-paced page turner, the literary equivalent of such silver screen jewels as the Bourne series.
Further bolstering the high-stakes mystery tale is a highly believable central storyline of murder and mayhem in the name of global domination – quite the tantalizing fodder for fans of complex narratives involving intricate conspiracy theories brought to vivid life on the page.
With nonstop action and intriguing, well defined characters, The Raven Affair is a bona fide literary thrill ride guaranteed not to disappoint. Highly recommended.
The Gift of Light : Jen Gentry
The Gift of Light
Emily and her Aunt Gemma are two very special women. They see into the spiritual realm and commune with angels. With this exciting tale, reminiscent of the great Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, debut author Gentry portrays in realistic terms the angelic and demonic creatures who inhabit our world, and why. A centuries-old battle, waged in the heavenly realm between the forces of good and evil, is fast reaching a flashpoint in Hook Pond.
Demon Prince Azelius has a centuries-old stronghold over the family of Senator Brad Steel, whose goal is to become President of the United States, a goal Azelius wants him to achieve. Azelius wants the senator’s son as well, but someone is praying and interfering with his plans. That someone must be silenced, permanently. When young Bradley Steel finds the Lord, he goes through a profoundly life-changing experience. He is overwhelmed with the need to ask forgiveness for an adolescent transgression that has haunted his life.
Marta forgives him and promises forgetfulness as well. They become friends and eventually fall in love and marry. Bradley goes to Afghanistan as chaplain and is critically wounded in an explosion, but a pregnant Marta is told of his death. With the presidential election drawing near, Senator Steel makes his bid, and threatened with exposure of past misdeeds including adultery and kidnapping ending with murder, he utilizes his demonic connections to summon the Ba’al and a shaman priest. A spine tingling ending that will have you cheering.
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