Dreaming in the Pages

Books ... where dreams are better than reality

Broken Pieces

Jack Canon's American Destiny

Saturday, April 25, 2015

LUCIFER & THE INDIGO KIDS #Excerpt (In My Cell) by @Lord_Ra_Krishna #NonFiction #Poetry

In My Cell

Sitting in my cell / meditating, half dreaming...
See a picture on the wall / black girl in bikini

And we’re both looking happy / we embrace and we smile

As I got my eyes closed smoking on a black and mild...

Better yet / a cigarette
I wish I had one now

Meditate a little harder...
Then I crack another smile...

Cause I'm back on the beach
Sun shining on my face…

Ask me what did I learn?
Most of all / appreciate

Every moment... every second...
Every thought... every breath...

While they’re killing all the prophets / I'm the last one left...

With a wrist full of beads
And a neck full of crystals...

And the city that I'm from busting Shots with their pistols…

But I'm sitting in my cell / and my soul's in outer space

As I astral project / sun kissing on my face…

Now I'm back on the beach
With my son and my daughter

And my son thinks’ he's God
So he’s walking on the water…

And my daughter thinks’ she God
Cause that's what daddy told her...

And they both think that they could save the world when they get older....

As I'm sitting in my cell,
My body's there but I'm not in it

Tell my babies "Not to worry"
I'll be home in a minute


"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."

Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre - Poetry, Philosophy
Rating – PG-13
More details about the author
Connect with Lord Ra Krishna EL on Facebook & Twitter

Thursday, March 12, 2015

GLIMPSES OF HEAVEN ON EARTH #Excerpt by Charlotte Piotrowski #AmReading #SelfHelp

From the chapter on freedom by co-author Charlotte Piotrowski:

“Until such time as we achieve heaven on earth, we must enjoy our freedoms responsibly. Our speech should not be harmful. Our religious practice should welcome those of all faiths (and those without religious faith). Our media should present unbiased truth and facts, rather than one-sided opinion. We must not abuse our freedoms, but rather enjoy them from a perspective of gratitude and wisdom. In doing so, we allow others to enjoy their right to freedom.

While Americans and those of many other nations, especially other democracies, already enjoy basic freedoms, many people around the globe are not equally blessed. Through peaceful means, we must support our worldwide brothers and sisters, as they work to achieve freedom from oppressive governments. We can do this by encouraging the education of all citizens. With knowledge comes power. And with power comes the strength and ability to change. In a heaven on earth, every person will enjoy freedom; and each person’s enjoyment of freedom will only serve for the betterment of the whole, and never to the detraction of anyone else.”

Glimpses of Heaven on Earth

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.

Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre - Inspirational
Rating – G
More details about the author
Connect with John E. Wade II on Facebook

Friday, January 2, 2015

#Excerpt from "The Girl Who Came Back to Life" by @YouMakeArtDumb #AmReading #MiddleGrade

THE YOUNG ORPHAN

Sophie was twelve years old when her parents died. Three days later, she sat on a hill overlooking her town’s cemetery and watched the gravediggers chip away at the hard winter ground for the better part of the day.

Sophie watched as the sun began to set and two holes appeared in the ground, large enough to fit her parents’ bodies. When she saw the small procession of mourners carry two cheap wooden caskets out of the funeral hall and down the crooked path to the cemetery, she stood up on that hill and walked the other way.

Though they had taught Sophie about the pilgrimage north to the City of the Dead, and though they told their daughter she would have to Send them one day, her parents had died suddenly and never fully prepared her for the realities of life, death, and the journey that lay ahead of her.

In her innocence, she didn’t understand the full weight of her parents’ death. It was just another problem to solve, and as she walked away from the cemetery, back into town and towards her grandmother’s house, she settled on the single obvious solution to her parents’ passing. She would take the pilgrimage north, yet, while the other mourners would travel to say “Goodbye” to their loved ones, Sophie would implement a different plan. She would find her parents’ spirits in the City of the Dead, remind them where they belonged, and return them back home to be with her once more.

Sophie had never heard of the dead coming back from the north, but that didn’t stop her from dreaming of returning to life what death had claimed from her.

When you die, your spirit wakes in the north, in the City of the Dead. There, you wander the cold until one of your living loved ones finds you, says “Goodbye,” and Sends you to the next world. 

After her parents die, 12-year-old Sophie refuses to release their spirits. Instead, she resolves to travel to the City of the Dead to bring her mother and father’s spirits back home with her. 

Taking the long pilgrimage north with her gruff & distant grandmother—by train, by foot, by boat; over ruined mountains and plains and oceans—Sophie struggles to return what death stole from her. Yet the journey offers her many hard, unexpected lessons—what to hold on to, when to let go, and who she must truly bring back to life.
Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre – Middle Grade
Rating – PG-13
More details about the author
Connect with Craig Staufenberg through Facebook and Twitter

#Excerpt from DARK CHEMISTRY by Kirsten Mortensen @KirstenWriter #AmReading #Suspense

In this excerpt, the novel’s fifth chapter, we catch our first hint of the powers of the story’s villain, Gerad Picket.

One of the plot elements in Dark Chemistry is that a brilliant but odd research chemist has learned how to create powerful, synthetic pheromones—odorless, undetectable chemicals that can exert strong subjective effects on people exposed to them. These chemicals can influence peoples’ moods, for example, or cause them to feel aroused.

The two characters we visit in this scene are Donavon Todde, the man who will soon fall in love with the protagonist. He’s known the other character in the scene, Jessica Thomas, since they were kids. Here, they learn that Gerad seduced an RMB intern. What they don’t know—yet—is that he used synthetic phermones to do it. Hopefully they’ll figure it out in time!

As soon as they were wheels down, he turned his phone back on.

It began to vibrate almost immediately: three texts, all from Jessica, all time-stamped from about an hour ago.

Donnyboy, you back in town?

Something’s happened.

Ellyn. shitshitshitshit

Oh, boy. Donavon considered whether or not to text back. He liked Jessica okay—he’d known her for years, first as the older sister of one of his high school buddies, now because they worked for the same company—but ugh. The way women can turn the most inane crap into giant freaking soap operas ... And this Ellyn. Some intern working in R&D. Cute, but she’d turned out to be a bit of a flake. Crying jags at work—that sort of thing. Trouble at home or something, must be.

And of course, Jess had adopted her.

He peered out of his window. They were nearly at the gate. And all his stuff was in his carry-on, so once he deplaned he just needed to get his car. It wouldn’t take long. He’d be home in an hour ...

His phone buzzed again.

she screwed Gerad!!!!!!! dying here

Whoa!

Gerad?

He tapped a message back: just landed. what happened?

The airplane turned, slowed, eased into position near the jetway.

meet me at screechers. hour?

Eh, fine. Another beer or two wouldn’t hurt. And it beat going home and ... thinking too much.

k. cu there

The passengers in the row ahead of Donavon stood up, and he did too—rather, he stood partway, his head bent at an angle to avoid the low ceiling over his seat.

An older guy with a paunch wrested his bag from the overhead bin.

Finally there was room in the aisle for Donavon to step out and reach his duffel, and a few minutes later he was striding through the near-empty airport terminal.

He remembered the blond, then, but he gave an inner shrug. SU student, most likely. Just like a million others.

He’d never see her again.

Screechers looked its age. Built originally as an Inn, it had never been anything fancy: a big, no-nonsense block of a structure set perpendicular to the road. A hundred-plus years of wear and tear had left the building shabby and humbled, and the quarter acre or so of land around it—long since paved over—was broken only by an enormous sign in the front of the building, mounted on two 4x4s of unpainted, treated lumber that were set in a crumbling concrete footer.

“Screechers,” the sign read in fading paint, and then below that, in smaller lettering: “Lunch Served Daily.”

No outsider would be tempted to stop.

But to the locals from Amesbury, New York, Screechers was as good a gathering spot as any.

Donavon left his car next to Jessica’s—he didn’t bother locking it—and climbed the steps to Screechers’ main entrance, which faced the parking lot and was framed by a wide porch.

A couple pairs of splintery Adirondack chairs served as an outdoor smoking section in the winter, and an outdoor smoking and drinking section in the summer. They were empty, tonight.

He pushed the old wooden door open and stepped into the bar, a big, dingy room that smelled of pine-scented cleaner and rancid fryer grease and stale beer.

He spotted Jessica, sitting alone, still dressed in her work duds: blue jean coveralls and wool knit cap.

She didn’t speak when he walked up to her. But her face told him everything he needed to know: that she was mightily indignant.

“Table?” he said as he paid Thomas, the bartender, for his beer, and she nodded.

They sat down at one of the cheap Formica-topped tables along the wall of the main barroom.

Donavon took a sip of beer. “Okay. What happened?”

“I shoulda let you have at her,” said Jessica. She looked at him glumly.

“Hah,” said Donavon. “I told you. So she really screwed the guy?”

“Yup.” The expression of Jessica’s face morphed from gloom to disgust. “An’ now she’s quit, I guess. She came in this morning, went straight to HR, and gave her notice.” Jessica was drinking a Bud from the bottle. She set it down now and shrugged out of her jacket. “Damnit, Don, what was she thinking?”

“You’re asking me?” Donavon’s smile was bitter. “I’m a guy, remember? You can’t expect me to understand what the fuck you women are thinking.” He took another drink. “So what happened, exactly?”

Jessica sighed. “Well, you know I kinda took her under my wing—”

“Yeah, I know.” Although the metaphor Donavon would have chosen was more along the lines of Jessica-as-mama-bear. Right after Ellyn was hired, he’d mounted a charm offensive—and could you blame him? She had quite the body and he was a single man. But Jessica was having none of it. She jumped all over him. Told him to back off. Ellyn was fragile, is how she’d put it. Leave her alone.

Jessica guessed what he was thinking. “Hey, you can’t blame me.” She gestured at him, palms up in a show of innocence. “She was an intern. And she was fragile. And you weren’t into her for the right reasons.”

“There’s nothing wrong with having a good time.” He smiled, teasing her.

Jessica’s eyes narrowed in an expression of pretend accusation. “Don’t give me shit, Donnyboy.”

“Hey,” Donavon said. “There’s not a lot else to do in Amesbury.”

“Right. Anyway, we were out last night after work—me, an’ Kim, an’ Ellyn—and Ellyn’s been acting really weird lately, so we were asking her what’s the matter—and then she finally came out with it, man—”

“That she’d screwed Gerad?”

Jessica nodded. “I lost it,” she said. “I totally lost my shit, Donnyboy.”

“Well, I can see why,” said Donavon, although he wasn’t being entirely truthful.

“I mean, of all people—shit. Anybody else but Ger-fucking-AD.”

“Maybe she’s a gold-digger.”

Jessica checked his face quickly to see if he was joking. “Nah,” she said. “Seriously. I can’t figure it out. I mean—Donny. The guy’s gross. Gross.”

Donavon considered her words a moment, trying to figure out how women might filter Gerad Picket. As the CEO of RMB—at least temporarily, since Richard Molnare had ejected from the earthly coil—Gerad was more or less king of Amesbury. Top dog of the county’s biggest employer, the biggest suit in a pond too small to hold more than a handful of suits. And gals like that kind of thing, right? Power’s the big aphrodisiac ... plus his salary was probably three times the county average. So what if he was a bit ... dumpy-looking. And that strip of a moustache over his upper lip, didn’t that look go out of style with Clark Gable?

And yet, apparently, gals don’t mind that kind of stuff. Donavon had seen enough to know.

“Well,” he said. “Maybe the guy’s got a way with the ladies.”

Jessica scrunched her nose and shook her head in violent disgust. “No,” she said. “Trust me on this, Donny. The man is gross. And he’s a sucky boss.” She looked at Donavon again. “She might have been just an intern, but she knew he was a sucky boss. She knew. I think that’s one reason it pissed me off so much. She let me down. She let us all down.”

The bar door banged and they looked over and nodded in unison at the newcomer—Wayne Peters, a local who ran a little auto repair shop out of his house. A bit of a drunk.

They sat in silence another moment while Wayne took a seat at the bar, and Tom emerged from the kitchen, and Wayne ordered a draft Miller Lite.

“Anyway,” Jessica said, and sighed, and seemed to lose herself in her thoughts again.

Donavon sipped his beer.

The lights flickered. The wiring at Screechers acted a bit funky at times. But neither Donavon nor Jessica really noticed, they were used to it. All of the regulars were, except once in a while someone would joke that the place was a firetrap.

“Donny, I lost my shit,” Jessica started talking again. “I told her it was a violation of RMB policy for managers to have sex with employees and we’d get his ass fired, and she—my God, Donny. She was like crying and all ‘no, no, no, you promised you wouldn’t tell anybody.’ Goddamnit, I just lost my shit. I told her she was a fucking dumbass and would probably get herpes or something from that creep. An’ I left.”

“Harsh,” said Donavon.

Jessica nodded. “You know me. I was kind of looking after her, Donny! She’s so... ... young.”

Yeah. Young. And pretty too—at least a 7. Dark, with a pointed chin and small high breasts. Yeah. He’d checked her out. Not every day they hired someone that cute at RMB. But Jessica had told him “no” and he’d held off ... hah. So old Gerad had—

He realized that Jessica was watching his face. “Hey,” he said. “She’s cute.”

She sighed again, heavily this time. “I should call her up, apologize for yelling at her. But every time I think about it, I get pissed off again. An’ you know me.”

He did. Jessica was not the sort of gal who could be coaxed, easily, out of a temper.

“So what’s next?”

“I dunno.” Jessica shook her head. “Do you think I should report it?”

“Hmmmm.” Donavon looked at his beer. On the one hand, he was no big fan of Gerad. The guy was a douche—the sort of executive who thinks that if he exhorts staff with half-assed platitudes he’s being a visionary leader. On the other hand, he was a man, and he’d bedded a cute girl. Donavon couldn’t quite help feeling a bit of solidarity with him on that. Like he should be on Gerad’s side, kinda.

Fortunately, Jessica didn’t really seem interested in Donavon’s opinion. “Maybe I’ll just go to Ellyn’s and apologize in person for losing my shit like that. I mean, she says she’s into him—and once you got that situation, there’s not much anybody can do.”

“His days at RMB might be numbered anyways,” said Donavon. “Depending on what happens with Richard’s daughter.”

“Yeah. She’s supposed to be at the plant tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I thought it was next week sometime.”

“You think she might fire him?” Jessica finished the last of her beer and began picking at the label on the bottle.

“Depends. If she has more sense than her father, she will.”

“I never understood why he hired Gerad. Richard was a good guy.”

“Who knows? Gerad was supposed to be this hotshot business transformation guru. Maybe Richard thought he needed to burnish RMB’s management team a bit. Maybe he was planning to take us public or sell us or something.”

“Shame he passed like he did.”

Donavon didn’t answer. Richard Molnare’s death had been sudden, and RMB was a small company. They’d all felt the shock.

“Well.” Jessica stood up, pulling her jacket from the back of her seat. “Guess I’ll go see if Ellyn’s home.”

Donavon couldn’t resist. “If she’s not,” he said, “check Gerad’s.” He grinned and sure enough, he was rewarded for his teasing. Jessica’s mouth and nose crinkled immediately in horror.

“Oh GAWD,” she said. “Seriously. Gerad? GERad? Of all the people in this town ... I wouldn’t fuck that disgusting slug of a piece of human crap if he was the last hard dick on Earth.”

darkChemistry

A woman's worst nightmare

Drugged by something...that makes her think she's fallen in love.

All Haley Dubose has ever known is beaches and malls, clubs and cocktail dresses.

But now her father is dead.

And if she wants to inherit her father's fortune, she has to leave sunny Southern California
for a backwater little town near Syracuse, New York. She has to run RMB, the multimillion dollar
chemical company her father founded. And she has to run it well.


Keep RMB on track, and she'll be rich. Grow it, and she'll be even richer. But mess it up, and her inheritance will shrink away before she gets a chance to spend a dime.

Donavon Todde is her true love. But is it too late?

He's RMB's head of sales – and the more Donavon sees of Haley, the more he's smitten.
Sure, she comes across at first as naïve and superficial. But Donavon knew Haley's father. He can see the man's better qualities stirring to life in her eyes. And Donavon senses something else: Haley's father left her a legacy more important than money. He left her the chance to discover her true self.

Donavon has demons of his own.
 
He's reeling from a heartbreak that's taking far too long to heal. But he's captivated by this blond Californian, and not only because of her beauty. It's chemistry. They're right for each other. But has Donavon waited too long to woo this woman of his dreams? Because to his horror, his beautiful Haley falls under another spell. Gerad's spell.

A web of evil.

Gerad Picket was second-in-command at RMB when Haley's father was alive. And with Haley on the scene, he's in charge of her training. But there are things about RMB that Gerad doesn't want Haley to know.

And he must control her. Any way he can.

Romantic suspense for your Kindle

Will Haley realize that her feelings are not her TRUE feelings?
Does Donavon have the strength left to fight for the woman he loves?
Will the two of them uncover Gerad's plot to use RMB pheromones to enslave the world?
And even if they do – can they stop it?

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords
Genre – Romantic suspense
Rating – PG-13
More details about the author
Connect with Kirsten Mortensen through Facebook Twitter

Thursday, January 1, 2015

#Excerpt from NAKED TRUTH: Saving Liam by @DPDenman #AmReading #LGBT #Romance

Liam finished his sandwich, left the plate in the sink, and strode across the condo to the guestroom they’d converted to a home gym. He didn’t need a workout, but he definitely needed a shower, and this one guaranteed he wouldn’t wake Justin while he took it. He stripped out of his clothes and stared back at the night on the other side of the wall of windows. He no longer felt the wiggle of anxiety from being nude in a room so exposed to the city. The vulnerability was an illusion. There were no buildings near enough to see him without a telescope, and if watching him toss dirty clothes in a hamper was someone’s idea of a turn on he wouldn't fault the poor, lonely bastard his hang-ups as long as he did it from a distance.

After so many nights as a spectacle on the stage, it was easier to shrug off the fear of prying eyes than it used to be as long as he wasn’t in a room of horny men. He’d gotten past quite a few things, but he wasn’t brave enough to deal with that. He wasn’t sure he ever would be, even with the rumor that men at Spark tipped better than the women did. He already made plenty of money.

He turned on the bathroom light and smiled at the thought while he pushed the door closed. For the first time since his parents had thrown him out, he was making enough to support himself. In a city with the illustrious title of Most Expensive in Canada, that was something worthy of a little pride. His job guaranteed he wouldn’t have to suffer the horrors of street life ever again and he was building a savings account to make sure it stayed that way. If anything happened to break him and Justin up, it would hurt, but it wouldn’t put him back on the street. That was the most important thing, though his broken heart would argue the point.

He scrubbed the night from his hair and body and dried off before wrapping the towel around his waist. He tugged the door open, turned off the light, and crossed the moonlit condo to creep into the bedroom. Justin was a lump under the blankets of their four-poster bed. He moved on silent feet to the walk-in closet and traded the towel for a clean pair of boxers before climbing under the covers to snuggle close to his sleeping man.

“How was work?” Justin mumbled.

“Same old.”

Justin kissed his head, wrapped him in his arms, and drifted back to sleep. Liam shushed the regret over a single mumbled question that used to be an actual conversation about his night. He didn't want to contemplate what that could mean for their relationship if the distance between them continued to grow. It was too scary.

nakedTruth

Buried lies never die.

Liam has a new career, a new condo, a newfound sense of control and none of it is quite right. Shadows drift behind the bright sparkle of his life; things he's determined to ignore until a shocking revelation makes it impossible. With the help of Justin and a new friend, Liam must face the life he's buried.

Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre - Contemporary Gay Romance
Rating – R
More details about the author
Connect with DP Denman through Facebook & Twitter

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

#Excerpt from "What Freedom Smells Like: A #Memoir" by Amy Lewis @AmyLewisAuthor #Religion

Transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It takes decades to shed our childhood conditioning – the beliefs and thoughts that pieced together like not so colorful charms on a bracelet determine our destiny. But sometimes one moment pierces a hole so large in our consciousness, we can’t continue living as we once did. Seeing my husband’s dead body was that moment for me.

Religion meant very little to me growing up. I was raised Episcopalian. Like Catholic but without the confessional. I attended Sunday school for about a year as a young child. My parents felt obliged to send my sister and me off to church, not because they believed in any of it, but because it seemed proper. After about a year, I think they grew weary of pretending and announced church was no longer required. At fifteen when I could drive, I went back a few times on my own. I liked the church and its 1960s mid-century design. It felt peaceful to me. And, I liked the priest. He was cute, and at 15 older men did something for me. I would kneel in the pew enjoying the atmosphere and fantasize about the priest – romantic fantasies, not sexual ones.

Dad was an atheist although he would never use that word for it. My mother was more of an agnostic. We never talked about God in our family although we did say grace, always the same prayer. “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, let these gifts to us be blessed. Amen.” We must have said it a thousand times. We didn’t have a backup grace, and we never free styled it. That was the only time we ever mentioned Jesus, and I think we only said it to please my father’s mother. I got most of my views on religion, God and Jesus based on my fathers’ negative tirades about his sister. She was a born again Christian. My father thought the whole thing utterly ridiculous at best and highly dangerous at worst.

We never spoke of death. We never spoke of souls. We certainly never spoke of eternity. I had a clear picture of death: darkness. Death was pitch-black darkness. The coffin lid closes, the lights go out, and it’s over - forever. I remember staying awake for hours in my preteen years thinking about infinity. I would lay stiff like a corpse and imagine what death would be like. Pitch black darkness forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. The and evers would torture me. I couldn’t stop obsessing night after night. I decided I would stop thinking of death. From that moment onward, I became terrified of death. The thought, the image, the mere mention of the word made me go numb.

I stood by the door of his room. I had no concept of time so I can’t tell how long. Then my body decided to move, and I took one step and another and another and with my fourth step I found myself right next to Truth’s body, which was slightly slumped to the left.

What I witnessed when I looked into his eyes was the beginning of my own personal revolution. If seeing was believing, then I couldn’t believe what was before my eyes. My husband, whom I had never spent a day apart from in four and a half years, was no longer there. He was dead. Yes, I knew that. His body, which the nurse insisted I say goodbye to, was not him. I knew it instantly when I looked into his eyes. He was nowhere to be found. Who I knew him to be had disappeared. Gone. I couldn’t believe what I saw and what I felt in every pore of my being. He was not there, but his body was. So to whom was I saying goodbye?

I realize all this may sound elementary to those who were raised to believe in what I was just embarking on. I had no idea. My belief system told me it was him but dead. But it wasn’t him. Was I going crazy? I found my presence there pointless. He wasn’t there. I knew it just as much as I knew he had been there a few hours ago. So I left.

whatFreedomSmellsLike

Diagnosed with Borderline Personality disorder, Amy struggled with depression and an addiction to sharp objects. Even hospitalization didn't help to heal her destructive tendencies. It took a tumultuous relationship with a man named Truth to bring her back from the depths of her own self-made hell.Amy's marriage to dark, intriguing Truth was both passionate and stormy. She was a fair-skinned southern girl from New Orleans. He was a charming black man with tribal tattoos, piercings, and a mysterious past. They made an unlikely pair, but something clicked. During their early marriage, they pulled themselves out of abject poverty into wealth and financial security practically overnight. Then things began to fall apart.
 Passionate and protective, Truth also proved violent and abusive. Amy’s own self-destructive tendencies created a powerful symmetry. His sudden death left Amy with an intense and warring set of emotions: grief for the loss of the man she loved, relief she was no longer a target for his aggression.

Conflicted and grieving, Amy found herself at a spiritual and emotional crossroads, only to receive help from an unlikely source: Truth himself. Feeling his otherworldly presence in her dreams, Amy seeks help from a famous medium.

Her spiritual encounters change Amy forever. Through Truth, she learns her soul is eternal and indestructible, a knowledge that gives Amy the courage to pursue her own dreams and transform herself both physically and emotionally. Her supernatural encounters help Amy resolve the internal anger and self-destructive tendencies standing between her and happiness, culminating in a sense of spiritual fulfillment she never dreamed possible.

An amazing true story, What Freedom Smells Like is told with courage, honesty, and a devilishly dark sense of humor.
Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre – Memoir
Rating – PG-13
More details about the author
Connect with Amy Lewis through Twitter

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

#Excerpt from A LIFE LESS ORDINARY by Victoria Bernadine @VicBernadine #WomensFic #ChickLit

Manny walked in her door, looking tired and feeling worn out. She wondered ruefully why the only thing not on a schedule was the time she could leave the office. She dropped her purse on the table and hung up her coat and keys. With a tired sigh, she walked into the living room and plopped into the armchair. She closed her eyes as Harvey walked out of the kitchen with a glass of white wine and began to rub her shoulders. He again looked impossibly handsome, this time wearing a sweater and jeans. She sighed in imagined bliss, and looked at him with sad eyes.
You have no idea how much I wish you were real.
In a blink, he was gone–and the phone was ringing. For a split second, Manny considered not answering it.
There’s your chance to talk to a real person, Harvey murmured.
Probably a telemarketer.
Probably Rebecca. Or Daisy. They’ll worry if you don’t answer.
All right, all right.
Manny heaved herself to her feet and walked to the phone.
Maybe I’m glad you’re imaginary after all.
She caught a glimpse of his grin as she answered the phone.
It was Rebecca, asking her to go out the next night.
“I don’t know…” Manny sighed.
“Oh, come on–you’ll have fun! And seriously–you haven’t gone out with us in months!”
“I’ve been tired…”
“You’ve been tired your whole life I think. You need to break out of this rut you’re in! Come out for a few drinks and dancing with me and Daisy. Who knows, maybe you’ll meet a good-looking guy and be swept off your feet into a red-hot love affair.”
Sounds like a plan to me.
Yeah, ’cause that’ll happen.
“I’d love to go dancing,” Manny said to Rebecca, “but the guy is just a figment of your imagination.”
“Only because you don’t put any effort into it. Seriously, it’s not healthy to do nothing but work and go home. That’s how people go crazy you know.”
“Huh. You mean next thing you know I’ll be talking to my imaginary friend?”
Harvey grinned wickedly and Manny abruptly turned her back to him.
“Exactly!” Rebecca said. “Come on–what do you say?”
“Okay, okay,” Manny sighed. “Tomorrow night–the usual place?”
“Yep–and sound like you’re actually looking forward to it, okay?”
“I’m sorry. I am looking forward to it–it’ll be fun.”

For the last fifteen years, Rose “Manny” Mankowski has been a very good girl. She turned her back on her youthful fancies and focused on her career. But now, at the age of 45, she’s questioning her choices and feeling more and more disconnected from her own life. When she’s passed over for promotion and her much younger new boss implies Manny’s life will never change, something snaps. In the blink of an eye, she’s quit her job, sold her house and cashed in her pension, and she’s leaving town on a six month road trip.
After placing a personal ad for a travelling companion, she’s joined in her mid-life crisis by Zeke Powell, the cynical, satirical, most-read – and most controversial – blogger for the e-magazine, What Women Want. Zeke’s true goal is to expose Manny’s journey as a pitiful and desperate attempt to reclaim her lost youth – and increase his readership at the same time. Leaving it all behind for six months is just an added bonus.
Now, armed with a bagful of destinations, a fistful of maps, and an out-spoken imaginary friend named Harvey, Manny’s on a quest to rediscover herself – and taking Zeke along for the ride.
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Genre – ChickLit, Contemporary Fiction
Rating – PG-13
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