"Hannah" from LUCIFER & THE INDIGO KIDS by @Lord_Ra_Krishna #AmReading #Religion

Hannah

Butterflies and Blunts
Surfboarding in outer space

Amber and crystals
on my fingers
Beautiful tattoos on my face...

Inspiration...
Interracial...
Cocaine nights
And track shoe days...

Inspired me to live my music...
I won't forget the way we slept

Like two snakes on Hermes Scepter
Entangled in a warm embrace...

The name... the same...
Backwards or forwards...
H-A-N-N-A and H

Yellow diamonds on a butterfly ring
Her name is tattooed on my neck

Now we're married / then divorced
In strawberry fields is where we met...

Krishna... Buddha... Jesus... Loki...
Achilles.... Alexander and me
Interracial... and taboo...
I won't forget the way we slept

Was it love? Or just a fling?
Do you still have that butterfly ring

I think I took it back from you...
You hurt my feelings in the club...

Like somebody else I know?
And we are kinda married still

A god no monster can defeat...
But love is my Achilles heel

1000 leagues beneath the ocean
Further than the deepest depths...

Like 2 snakes on Hermes Scepter
I won't forget the way we slept

"This “new age” book of poetry reflects the diverse views and philosophies of it’s author Ra Krishna EL. It’s an intimate, humorous and thought provoking group of poems intended to evoke strong emotion. To quote the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, this style of poetry can be called “Zukunfts poesie“ which translates into “Poetry of the future”, where truly original ideas are presented thru poetry. Also known as post Nietzschean poetry.

It’s subjects include society, pop culture, love, religious dogma, God and the new age of Aquarius. This book was written and published during the false incarceration of its author in Chicago’s notorious Cook County Jail, the largest jail in the country."

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Genre - Poetry, Philosophy

Rating – PG-13

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Pendelton Wallace's Thoughts on #Blogging & How It Affects Book Sales #AmReading #AmWriting

Why Blogging is Important

I don’t know if blogging works or not. I have been told it takes five years to build a viable book selling business. I’m in year one. I’m taking on faith that some of these things are going to pay off someday.

For me, blogging is important because it builds your reader base. I started out with blogs about my adventures sailing down the coast to Mexico. I got about two hundred hits per post and was pretty happy. Then I hit the jack pot.

I live with my girlfriend and her Great Dane on my 56-foot sailboat. People always ask “How do you live on a boat with such a big dog?” I decided to write a blog post about living with a Great Dane.

One post became three. Then Odin, the Great Dane in question, took exception to what I was writing about him and wanted to set the record straight. He wrote about three blogs, to which I had to respond.

During this blog debate, readers started flocking to my blog. Dawn, my significant other, posted the blogs to her Great Dane Facebook groups, I posted to my sailing/cruising groups and people just appeared from nowhere. Suddenly, thousands of people were reading my blogs.

Has it done any good? Not a lot. My book sales are still pretty low, but I get email from readers saying things like “I really liked your blog, so I decided to buy your book.” Now I just need to get more people to follow suit.

If Clive Cussler had written Ugly Betty, it would be Hacker for Hire. 

Hacker for Hire, a suspense novel about corporate greed and industrial espionage, is the second book in a series about Latino computer security analyst Ted Higuera and his best friend, para-legal Chris Hardwick. 

The goofy, off-beat Ted Higuera, son of Mexican immigrants, grew up in East LA. An unlikely football scholarship brought him to Seattle. 

Chris, Ted’s college roommate, grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father is the head of one of Seattle’s most prestigious law firms. 

Ted’s first job out of college leads him into the world of organized crime where he faces a brutal beating. After being rescued by beautiful private investigator Catrina Flaherty, Ted decides to go to work for her. 

Catrina is hired by a large computer corporation to find a leak in their corporate boardroom when the previous consultant is found floating in Elliot Bay. 

Ted discovers that Chris’s firm has been retained by their prime suspect. Now he and Chris are working opposite sides of the same case. 

Ted and Catrina are led deep into Seattle’s Hi-Tech world as they stalk the killer. But the killer is also hunting them. Can Ted find the killer before the killer finds him? 

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Genre – Mystery, Thriller

Rating – R

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Website www.pennwallace.com

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James Rada Jr. Shares an #Excerpt from LOCK READY @JimRada #Historical #Fiction #Mustread

This excerpt introduces a romantic rival for David to Lock Ready. However, Ruth has her own secrets just as David does.

Ruth bent down to pick up her baskets. She was still having trouble holding both of them as overbalanced as they were. David picked up the baskets and held them.

“Well, thank you for your kindness, but that man is right. If you want to stay around Cumberland, you probably don’t want to be seen with me,” she said.

“Why are you so certain about that? You don’t seem like a desperado to me. Maybe it’s you who shouldn’t be seen with me.”

David could guarantee that if the truth about him ever came out. If she knew he was a former Confederate soldier, she would probably run away screaming for help from a Union soldier. Then Ruth said something that surprised him.

“I support the South.”

She stared at David waiting for a reaction from him.

David paused, probably for too long, but her comment had surprised him. Finally, he said, “Is that all?”

Her eyebrows lifted. “It’s enough in a town occupied by the Union Army. I’m watched all of the time because people know where my sympathies lie. The only reason the army or townspeople haven’t run me off is because I’m a woman and my family has lived in Cumberland since soon after it was founded.”

“Is your entire family in support of the South?”

Ruth shook her head and her blond curls bounced around. “Just me. They’re ashamed of me, but not enough to turn me out.”

David knew that feeling and worse because his father had been willing to turn his back on David when he decided he could no longer fight in this war.  David had been proud to serve Virginia at first. He had seen it as a way to prove himself to his father and perhaps find his place in the world.

But battle hadn’t been like David had imagined it would be. Even winning at Manassas hadn’t been without its costs. Men had died on both sides of the battle and they always would. David’s best friend, Ben Kyle, had been ripped apart by an artillery shell that nearly landed on top of him. All David had found of his friend afterwards had been Ben’s right arm, shoulder, and head. The rest of him had been unidentifiable.

Then David had been asked to spy on the North along with two other miserable representatives of Southern life. One had been killed trying to sabotage the canal and David had killed the other when he had tried to rape Elizabeth Fitzgerald. That was the final straw that had led to him abandoning the army.

His father hadn’t understood that. How could he? His father had never fought a battle. He had only grown up on the exploits of his father and grandfather, two men who had served with honor unlike David.

“I married a soldier who was killed at Gettysburg last summer. I had a brother who was killed there, too. Sometimes, I feel like my parents think I killed my brother. They don’t seem to remember that the same battle that cost them a son cost me my husband,” she said with a bit too much anger in her voice.

David was struck by a sense of guilt. He had given up everything to stay with the Fitzgeralds. His country and his family. True, he didn’t have much of a choice at first because he had been wounded at the time, but that had been two years ago. Since then, he had had plenty of opportunities to return. He hadn’t, though; because he had believed that the Fitzgeralds needed his help and that he might have a future with Alice.

He wasn’t with the Fitzgeralds now, though. He could return to Virginia if he wanted to, but the truth was he didn’t want to. He had abandoned his duty while men with Ruth Abercrombie’s husband and brother had fought and died to do theirs.

“I’m sorry,” David replied.

Ruth took a deep breath and gave David a small smile. “I am, too. We had only been married a few years. My family doesn’t like my decision to support the South, but they already lost one child and they don’t want to lose another one. So they tolerate their Southern daughter,” Ruth explained.

“You can’t be too horrible then if they still love you,” David suggested.

“Well, they’re the only ones who do love me.”

David didn’t know how to respond to that so he said, “Can I carry these baskets for you to wherever you’re going?”

Ruth stared at him for a few moments. “You don’t have to prove that you’re a gentleman to me.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m just trying to be of assistance.”

“Well then, thank you, as you can see I need the help.”

The Civil War split the United States and now it has split the Fitzgerald Family. Although George Fitzgerald has returned from the war, his sister Elizabeth Fitzgerald has chosen to remain in Washington to volunteer as a nurse. The ex-Confederate spy, David Windover, has given up on his dream of being with Alice Fitzgerald and is trying to move on with his life in Cumberland, Md. Alice and her sons continue to haul coal along the 184.5-mile-long C&O Canal. 

It is dangerous work, though, during war time because the canal runs along the Potomac River and between the North and South. Having had to endured death and loss already, Alice wonders whether remaining on the canal is worth the cost. She wants her family reunited and safe, but she can’t reconcile her feelings between David and her dead husband. 

Her adopted son, Tony, has his own questions that he is trying to answer. He wants to know who he is and if his birth mother ever loved him. As he tries to find out more about his birth mother and father, he stumbles onto a plan by Confederate sympathizers to sabotage the canal and burn dozens of canal boats. He enlists David’s help to try and disrupt the plot before it endangers his new family, but first they will have find out who is behind the plot.

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Genre – Historical Fiction

Rating – PG-13

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Website jamesrada.com

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#Excerpt from THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ICE by @TheobaldSprague #Memoir #Marriage #Family

On August 16, at 2 a.m. Bagan officially stopped making forward progress. We were hopelessly trapped, unable to make even an inch forward, backwards, or sideways. We were locked in with a haunting and deathly en- compassing fog and had completely and decisively run out of options. Ironically, despite our array of modern day electronics and safety devices we were no better off than those who went and died before us and could do nothing about it. The ice had caught us and we had lost.

“Have I brought my family together only to lead them to their deaths?” I wondered.

While the past eighteen hours were filled with physical and navigational challenges, the mental toll was also brutal. Although fairly recent cruisers had done The Passage over several seasons with seemingly no concern or fears, I found my experience to be the complete opposite. The myriad pre-trip pressures—losing funding, the personality conflicts, my health issues, the documentary, and now the responsibility of my kids’ lives—it was almost more than I could handle. Reading other reports of previous transits, I found my experience was entirely different because few of these books or articles mentioned the deep and raging fear that could start and grow inside of you.

When we had entered the ice, I was still being plagued by the black thoughts of how the trip could potentially end. Fears and fatigue showed nolimits to their depths and, as each futile hour ticked by, the sounds and experiences became more frightening. At first I thought that the great creaks, moans, and explosions I could hear from deep inside Bagan were her hull, her structure being overcome by the icy and deadly pressures. With each deep and rumbling snap I heard, I could “see” damage being done below the water line. At one point, I called Sefton into the pilothouse and quietly asked him to go below and pull some floorboards because I feared we had compromised the hull. After a few minutes below, Sefton found that the bilges were as dry as the day we left Newport, then headed back outside into the sharp Arctic air to continue fending ice off the bow. I’d be relieved momentarily, until the next groan and explosion told me that what I’d been listening to was the massive amounts of thick ice giving way with great protestations as Bagan gained another two or three feet.

At various times during that first day, we lost power in the bow thruster, lost two push poles, several sets of gloves, and a two-way radio over the side only to watch them get swallowed up in a matter of seconds by the ice. Baganand crew became a floating, small island of survival that at any moment could be broached, and if past history had anything to do with it, could be snuffed out and ground into the bottom in a heartbeat. These were my most fearful of thoughts, not based entirely in reality but by the same token entirely possible. They didn’t rule my thinking for the next few days but did manage to lower the bar of my experience; “Who the hell were we, was I, to think we could take on a transit in a part of the Arctic which had claimed so many hundreds of lives before?”

The audacity and seeming hubris of undertaking such a project gained a loud and unrelenting voice inside of me, one that I had to constantly struggle with and try to keep in check for had the others gotten a whiff of these fears and insecurities, I felt it would be detrimental to keeping their own fears at bay. It was a constant balance of letting them know that I felt our situation to be extremely difficult but not deadly. That first night of being held captive in the Arctic ice was brutal. That night potential headlines ran through myhead: “Father Leads Family To Icy Death,” “Half-assed Explorer Loses Not Only Funding But Boat As Well.”

A sailor and his family’s harrowing and inspiring story of their attempt to sail the treacherous Northwest Passage.

Sprague Theobald, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and expert sailor with over 40,000 offshore miles under his belt, always considered the Northwest Passage–the sea route connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific–the ultimate uncharted territory. Since Roald Amundsen completed the first successful crossing of the fabled Northwest Passage in 1906, only twenty-four pleasure craft have followed in his wake. Many more people have gone into space than have traversed the Passage, and a staggering number have died trying. From his home port of Newport, Rhode Island, through the Passage and around Alaska to Seattle, it would be an 8,500-mile trek filled with constant danger from ice, polar bears, and severe weather.

What Theobald couldn’t have known was just how life-changing his journey through the Passage would be. Reuniting his children and stepchildren after a bad divorce more than fifteen years earlier, the family embarks with unanswered questions, untold hurts, and unspoken mistrusts hanging over their heads. Unrelenting cold, hungry polar bears, and a haunting landscape littered with sobering artifacts from the tragic Franklin Expedition of 1845, as well as personality clashes that threaten to tear the crew apart, make The Other Side of the Ice a harrowing story of survival, adventure, and, ultimately, redemption.

( TO WATCH THE OFFICIAL HD TEASER FOR “The Other Side of The Ice” [book and documentary] PLEASE GO TO: VIMEO.COM/45526226) 

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Genre – Memoir, adventure, family, climate

Rating – PG

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Website www.spraguetheobald.com

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10 Elements of Heaven on Earth and More by John E. Wade #Goodreads #AmReading #Inspiration

While I know this size of this small book indicates that it will be a quick and easy read—and does not take long to read—its impact on the reader will be much deeper than they might anticipate. As billed, the book indeed contains “inspiring quotations and insightful essays.” The chapters are organized by topics, which are the ten elements of heaven on earth which I have identified: peace and security, freedom, democracies, prosperity, gender harmony, racial harmony, spiritual harmony, ecological harmony, health, and moral purpose and meaning. There is also a chapter entitled, “Individual Paths to Heaven on Earth,” which includes some well-known quotations, as well as quotes from “regular people” who state what heaven on earth would feel like for them.

I previously published How to Achieve a Heaven on Earth, and the four other co-authors of Glimpses of Heaven on Earth each contributed an essay to this first book. I think readers will be interested in reading about the different backgrounds of each of the co-authors, as I am a retired CPA who now devotes my time to investing and writing. I have several active blogs which can be found on www.JohnEWadeII.com, www.HeavenOnEarth.org, and www.HonestJohnWade.com (which focuses on politics). 

Charlotte L. Piotrowski spent ten years litigating complex cases before she turned her attention to writing, editing, and content creation for websites and blogs on a freelance basis. Charlotte and I both live in New Orleans, and work closely together on my many creative projects. Daniel Agatino practices law and teaches in New Jersey, while Michael Nagler founded the Metta Center for Nonviolence (www.mettacenter.org) and Martin Rutte is the founder of Project Heaven on Earth (www.projectheavenonearth.com) and is a popular inspirational speaker. I think this diversity is what really brings this book alive and makes it so relatable to any reader.

Not to brag too much, but I think we did an excellent job locating and including wonderfully inspiring quotations that truly relate to each of the ten elements. Here are some examples:

“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.” - Calvin Coolidge

“Prejudice is the child of ignorance.” - William Hazlitt

“I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.” - William Penn

There are many lesser-known quotations included as well, and as should be evident, the more you really contemplate the quotes, the more impactful they become. I expect each reader will have her or his own favorite portions of the book, to which they will want to return time and time again. For this reason, I believe this book is destined to become a classic. It can truly help to start some much-needed and interesting dialog. So I cannot help but to highly recommend this book, and hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Editor and author John E. Wade II has compiled a spiritual guide of invaluable insight for finding peace and meaning in life while making the world a better place for all. Along with co-authors Charlotte Livingston Piotrowski, Daniel Agatino, Michael Nagler, and Martin Rutte, this collection of enlightening essays and inspirational quotes from renowned thinkers and leaders throughout history provides the intellectual tools needed to live a more harmonious life.

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Genre - Inspirational

Rating – G

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10 Things You Didn’t Know About @MarcADiGiacomo #Thriller #AmReading #MustRead

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Marc A. DiGiacomo

1)      I am a real New York Police Detective (retired) who worked for a small town.

2)      In A Small Town was my first published work but it isn’t my first story.

3)      I am a huge fan of the band Pearl Jam, In A Small Town, is a shortened title of one of their songs.

4)      I have saved someone’s life.

5)      I have a dog named Lola, she’s really sweet, sometimes.

6)      My favorite time of year is the fall.

7)      My favorite NFL team is the Miami Dolphins.

8)      Unlike Matt Longo, I can never remember any of my dreams.

9)      I married my high school sweetheart.

10)   I can eat an entire watermelon, as long as it’s perfectly sweet.

The small town of Hutchville, New York is turned upside down. No longer is it the quaint, sleepy, suburb of New York City. Detective Matt Longo is back on the job and embroiled in his latest nightmare. Further complicating matters is the revelation of his partner’s corruption and organized crime ties; Donny Mello has left a bitter trail of lies and deceit. With his kid brother and newly promoted Detective Franny Longo by his side, will Matt be able to put his past behind him?

Special Agent Cynthia Shyler, (F.B.I.) has been reassigned due to her meeting with Matt Longo. Will this move complicate their relationship? Or will a new stranger in town spin a web that entangles the entire Hutchville Police Department, especially our most seasoned detective, Matt Longo?

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Genre – Thriller

Rating – R

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Mike Hartner on Nobody's Life is Perfect & Inspiration @MHartnerAuthor #Historical #Romance

What Inspired Me to Write This Book

This book is the second in a series of books called The Eternity Series.

The Eternity Series has several inspirations.

The first inspiration is to show that each life, each person, is different. We all have our crosses to bear, and how we overcome them determines who we are as a person. Whether we blame everyone else and fester in the crap that we are given by fate, or overcome the challenges and have a good life is up to us.

The second inspiration is to show that nobody’s life is perfect. Everyone has challenges. And appearances are not always what they seem.

More than that though, The Eternity Series is an epic saga of good vs evil, of man’s desire to survive and thrive, and of what we can be if we come together.

James Crofter was ripped from his family at age 11. 
Within a year the prince was a pauper in a foreign land. 
Is nature stronger than nurture? And even if it is, can James find the happiness he so richly desires? 

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Genre - Historical Fiction, Romance

Rating – PG

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