Posts Tagged ‘memoir’

New Release – MUST READ: A Life Worth Living; The Journey of an Authentic Soul By Carla Feagan

Posted: April 11, 2018 in Announcements, guest post, Recommended Reading
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“A strong, self-accomplished woman who has traveled the world and now lives in paradise dives down the rabbit hole of her abusive past to set her demons free.”

We all have baggage that we carry around. This baggage may come from ingrained beliefs about oneself or past traumatic experiences. No matter where our baggage comes from or why it’s there, our past experiences tend to show their presence when least expected or wanted. The good thing is that we can all let that baggage go so it does not affect us in our everyday lives.

Carla talks about how her belief system was ingrained at an early age and how traumatic experiences solidified those beliefs. Throughout her story you’ll see how her decisions were affected by those demons rising when she least expected and the resulting impacts. It is also a realization of the inner strength that kept her going, the process of setting those beliefs free, and the will to live a life she deserved.

Follow her path from abuse and trauma to a life living in paradise. This is a story of freedom, of laughter, of loving, of shame, of healing, and of becoming brave enough to be vulnerable. This story will resonate with many people, allowing them to see there is a light at the end of the tunnel and true happiness waiting just around the corner.

About the Author:

Carla Feagan was born in Changi, Singapore on a British RAF Base. After Singapore, her family moved to England and then to Canada when she was 7. Carla has lived all over Western and Central Canada including the North West Territories.

She holds an honors degree in Computer Systems Technology and has worked as a salesperson, an accountant, a computer programmer, a manager, and a business owner.

In 2015, she left her job to experience her own EAT, PRAY, LOVE journey to 21 countries for a year. Carla currently lives and works remotely from Playa del Carmen, MX, understanding the true value in creating the life you want.

A Life Worth Living; The Journey of an Authentic Soul can be purchased on Amazon or at your favorite retailer by clicking here: https://books2read.com/ALifeWorthLiving.

For more information, visit Carla on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, Youtube, Amazon, and www.carlafeagan.com

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Polio and Me by Ken Dalton: A Fascinating Memoir About a Dark Time During the Polio Epidemic in America and Emerging from it.

Posted: November 16, 2017 in Blog Tour Hosting, Recommended Reading
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Non-Fiction – Memoir
Date Published: November, 2016
Publisher: Different Drummer Press
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Polio and Me provides a view of the past, present, and future—the saga of one boy’s pain, fear, and loneliness—the long struggle to develop a vaccine and effective treatments—the world-wide goal to eradicate the polio virus, and in some twenty-first century cancer research trials, the polio virus eliminated cancerous tumors.

 

Excerpt

Today, seventy-two years later, as a father of three, a grandfather, and great-grandfather, the idea that an ambulance team could walk into my doctor’s office and rip my son or daughter from my arms is an appalling notion. But this was 1943, decades ago, when polio epidemics killed and paralyzed an average of 12,000 children and adults each year.

I understand that having your child taken from your arms sounds draconian, but in Los Angeles, during the summer months of the annual polio epidemics, as many as one hundred patients a day were admitted to Los Angeles County Hospital. Once the patient’s illness was confirmed as polio, those patients were moved to the Communicable Disease Building where they would remain isolated until all possibility of passing on the polio virus to a non-infected person had ended.

And Los Angeles was not alone. Public health professionals throughout the country had learned to act swiftly because when it came to a polio pandemic, the end justified the means. So the abrupt actions of the Los Angeles ambulance crew may have seemed cruel, but the fear of polio, both real and exaggerated, caused even rational professionals to overreact. The moment any patient’s illness was thought to be polio, that patient would be rushed to an isolation facility where he or she would remain for weeks if not months.

One of the major reasons a diagnosis of polio was so frightening for my parents and the medical professionals alike, was that no one could predict the eventual outcome of a polio infection for an agonizingly long period of time. While I was in the Communicable Disease Building at the Los Angeles County Hospital, my parents struggled with a list of frightening questions without a way to learn the answers.

Would their son lose his ability to breathe and die in isolation?

Would their son spend the rest of his days living in an iron lung?

Would their son remain paralyzed?

Would their son recover some use of his limbs?

Looking back, those weeks apart were among the most traumatic days of my life. But during that summer of 1943, as the summers before, and the summers that followed, children with polio, and their parents, learned to endure.

About the Author
Ken Dalton was born in Los Angeles in 1938. In 1943 he contracted polio and spent the next eleven years of his childhood in and out of hospitals. Fifty-nine years ago he married his childhood sweetheart and is a father of three, a grandfather of four, and the great-grandfather of nine.
After a thirty-eight year management career with Pacific Telephone Company, Ken retired to write golf and travel articles for Golf Digest, Golf Illustrated, Fairways and Greens, and Golf.com.
During two NBC-TV Celebrity Golf Tournaments at Lake Tahoe, he interviewed Olympic Decathlon Champion, Bruce Jenner when he was Bruce, not Caitlyn, the mischievous Chicago Bears quarterback, Jim McMahon, the iconic Vice-President Dan Quail, and NBC Today show anchor, Matt Lauer.
Ken has published six mystery novels. Polio and Me marks his initial foray into the world of non-fiction. Presently, Ken is working on his seventh mystery, The Heretics Hymnal, and a comedy of manners novel, Casper Potts and the Ladies Casserole club.
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The Hooligans of Kandahar: War Memoir by Joseph Kassabian

Posted: June 22, 2017 in Blog Tour Hosting, excerpt
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About the Book

Title: The Hooligans of Kandahar

Author: Joseph Kassabian

Genre: Nonfiction / War Memoir

During the peak years of the Afghanistan War, a group of soldiers is dropped by helicopter into the remote mountains outside of Kandahar City. Mismanaged and overlooked by command, how they survive is largely up to them. In the birthplace of the Taliban, some men lose their sanity, others their humanity. They are The Hooligans.

Written in the months and years following his deployment, Joseph Kassabian recounts his time in the isolated and dangerous country of Afghanistan. Pulling no punches, The Hooligans of Kandahar is a sobering, saddening, and often sarcastic first-hand account of America’s War on Terror.

 

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Book Excerpts

Excerpt #1.

Generally, when our squad went on patrol for hours at a time, we would set up Observation Points, or OPs. OPs were areas that were slightly defensible and allowed us to watch a large area while remaining concealed from sight. That’s what the manual says about OPs, anyway.

    What we really used them for was to duck away in the night for a few hours and take turns napping. A few soldiers stood watch while the others removed their overbearing gear and lay down in the dirt to catch a few minutes of much-needed sleep.

    The official mission was to watch over a Taliban “rat line,” or trail used for smuggling weapons into the area. We had watched the ratline and raided various houses in the last few months and found nothing. We were all pretty sure that the ratline didn’t actually exist anywhere outside of Scream’s head.

Since Scream was adamant that something was going to happen in that village, he kept ordering us to sit in the darkness and stare at nothing.

    We established a primary OP on an elevated ridge that overlooked the trail that Scream was certain was a pathway for whatever nefarious deeds the Taliban did at night. During our first ten-hour watch of the area, Walrus—who was one of the laziest people I’ve ever met—found a couch in one of the cornfields. He dragged the furniture up the ridge and into the OP, giving the position its name.

   It was at that OP that some of us older soldiers had to teach the other guys the art of soldiering in the pitch darkness. Smoking without being seen became a skill. You could easily see a cigarette’s lit cherry over a mile away. If you weren’t careful, you could give away your position while feeding your terrible vice.

  You could stick your cigarette and lighter into your ration bag to light it. Then cup your hand around your mouth and cigarette when you need a hit to conceal yourself from whoever wants to blow your face off in the middle of the night. A few of us switched from smoking to chewing tobacco for night patrols. The first few times I tried it I puked on myself.

There was only one guy in our squad who didn’t smoke or dip—Slim, but he made up for it in the states with a drinking habit that would make Hemmingway suggest rehab.

 

Excerpt #2.

We had to teach our soldiers real skills to survive at night as well. You would be surprised how much noise a soldier can make shambling through the darkness with all the gear we carry. We had to duct tape down anything that would rattle or clang off another piece of equipment and spray paint any little piece of metal that would catch the moonlight.

I knew a few guys who went above and beyond by not cleaning themselves for weeks in order to smell like the natives. Like the Taliban were out in the mountains trying to sniff us out of our hiding spots or something.

 

Excerpt #3.

At some point during the night, all hell broke loose. Guns started cracking to life. Machine guns and rockets started ripping through the air all over. Tracer rounds started tearing through the night from all sides about one hundred yards in front of them. They had no idea what was going on and no one was actually shooting at them. No one seemed to know that they were there. It was like they stumbled upon some random turf war in the middle of nowhere. The various militant groups that operated in our area—a strange mix of Islamic insurgents, smugglers, and gangs—routinely tried to kill each other. The Afghan security forces would shoot at anything that went bump in the night. It could have easily been two different Afghan Police patrols shooting at each other.