Sunday, June 28, 2009

The Activation, Aaron Anderson

December 21, 2012, what does this date mean to you? The end of the world?

You know “The Secret” now it is time for “The Activation.”

According to author, Arran Anderson’s character, God, Dec. 21, 2012 is the date that the great shift will start to occur and the fabric of the world will begin splitting apart. On one side of the frequency will be those who have already managed to raise their personal vibration to a level of higher consciousness, while on the other side, will be those who are still in the old frequency, who may not survive.
Scary? You bet! What if God were one of us? is the story of a man with amnesia. Joe, or God, wakes up on a bus with no memory of who he is or why he is here. He soon comes to realize that he has been sent with a great message; a message that will awaken the true spiritual nature of all humans. Will society accept Joe as God or will they simply brush him off as another homeless lunatic? The issue is a complicated one that becomes more complicated as Joe takes on the church, the ancient teachings of most religions and the human ego. This is a big job for a man that no one has ever seen before. Can people accept the fact that God is one of us?
Although this book is classified as fiction, the message is real. The teachings of the ancients are finally beginning to make sense, but we must open our eyes to the new reality.
The world as we know it IS changing. The economy is plummeting, climate change is rampant, wars are being fought that cannot be won, and the old beliefs and systems do not work anymore. The end of world? I believe the world as we know it, is already coming to an end and this book will help people to make the transition, hopefully to a new, and better, world.
Aaron Anderson has been an active member of the spiritual community for more than forty years. His life experiences and studies contribute to the book’s authenticity. The writer has an easy, smooth flowing style. Readers are educated subtly while reading the dialogue between God and the other characters. Unlike other New Age books, the reader does not get bogged down with an overabundance of ‘scripture like’ vocabulary. The book is entertaining and well written by an informed author. He is a man with a message, the message that the time has come for YOU to create a New World, a New Energy, for a New Age.
Highly recommended by reviewer: Shirley Roe, Allbooks Review.
Publisher: Transformational Novels
ISBN-13: 978-1-588988652
Pages: 368
Price: $ n/a
June 2009

Title: HARRISVILLE Author:MARK GORDON SMITH

Genre: FICTION

According to the book jacket, this debut novel promises to be “simply one of the best novels to come along in years . . . poignant and compelling.” My opinion? The author definitely delivers on that promise; in fact, the author captivated me right away with his lyrical, almost poetic writing style. Smith proved himself to be quite a wordsmith, e.g., “At high noon on the day Adam Davis was born, it was so hot that birds fell from the trees, stunned into comas from air so thick that they could hardly breathe.” In addition, the author proved to be a master storyteller and his sensually rich scenes reminded me of James Lee Burke. In the final analysis, I suppose some might be tempted to classify Harrisville as women’s literature because of the passion and ongoing romantic tension but I happen to believe anyone who enjoys good writing will like this book
Primarily set in the WWI era (one of my favorites), Harrisville has a sort of a Steinbeck’s East of Eden flavor to it. However, instead of ultimate sibling rivalry, a love triangle provides all the tension, suspense, and ultimately—tragedy and redemption. Passionate confrontations and manipulations between two young men for the heart of a woman result in a chain of tragic events, which forever change their lives and the small town they call home. Deeply steeped in rich metaphors, and haunted with a touch of the supernatural, Harrisville will keep you up late, turning pages.
Although Harrisville is Mark Gordon Smith’s debut novel, he’s previously penned two non-fiction books: Tuscan Echoes and Tuscan Light. He currently lives in North Carolina and is working on the third volume of his Italian Trilogy. I’ve not read his non-fiction but as for Harrisville, I was thoroughly impressed. The only criticisms I can muster are minor. In a few places, I got a little confused and distracted with commingled points of view and unexplained writing shifts from past tense to present. However, Smith promises editorial corrections in future editions so I expect these minor difficulties will be attended to. Of course, the acid test of a good book is whether or not it’s difficult to put down, right? Well, I definitely had trouble putting Harrisville down.
Highly Recommended by reviewer: Jan Evan Whitford, Allbooks Reviews www.allbookreviews.com
Published by: Almar Books ©2009
ISBN: 978-0-9740983-8-8
Hardback edition, 309 pages
Cover Price: US $23.35
June 2009

Fifty Confessions Author: Paul Kiritsis

Genre: poetry

Fifty Confessions is the new collection of poems by award winning poet Paul Kiritsis. The poems reveal, in a raw and very personal fashion, his descent into the darker regions of his own psyche, due to the influence of an undiagnosed illness. The complexity of this descent is influenced by his interests in mythology, occult philosophy, Western alchemy, history, psychology and English literature.
The beginning of the book explains in prose what happened to him during the summer of 1992. Kiritsis was revelling in the excitement of returning from a farm holiday, and was looking forward to his first year of high school when, over the course of a week, he realised that something had changed, and things didn’t feel right within him anymore. He became convinced that he was dying, but although he regularly attended church, he couldn’t bring himself to confess his mortal fears to his local priest.
At the age of twenty-one, he was forced to have a blood test because of his worsening physical symptoms. He was then confronted with what he calls the “unknown enemy”: an undiagnosed illness that all but one of his medical practitioners dismissed as a psychological or illusionary illness.
The poetry of Fifty Confessions is, therefore, an intensely personal revelation of what it is like to live with such an illness. These confessions are grouped chronologically, written in the form of a poetical diary, as he addresses and battles with himself, the illness, the medical profession and the drug companies.
Kiritsis’ modern free verse is sometimes immediate, and at other times he expresses himself through the characters and philosophies of myth, legend and religion. The relationships within this world are frequently dark and troubled. The poems graphically allow the reader to perceive the world through the eyes of a man who is suffering from an indeterminate yet real "unwellness." By openly admitting his fears, frustrations and anger, the poet enables the audience to identify with how someone can live for years with an illness that modern medicine does not understand.
However, there are moments of light and hope. Even though in A Stroke of Wrongness he writes that, "The light seems so much farther, The earth much less nurturing. The water has lost potency In quenching my thirst," his Neo-Platonic or Gnostic belief in a god can appear hopeful. In Have Faith In The Silent Footfalls Of Love, the Divine Physician is described, “As real as the oxygen We breathe into our lungs; Ready to blow fresh Air into their lives If only they just believed.”
Kiritsis offers no simple solutions; this is not a book of happy endings and easy answers, but there is a sense of acceptance and potential hope at the conclusion. In the epilogue, the character of Aphrodite declares, "And when the Golden Age does dawn I’ll scry the old world's stillness, To prove to you that The seed and the sword Cannot be crushed by illness."
Wheldon Curzon-Hobson Allbooks Reviewer. www.allbookreviews.com

Publisher: iUniverse.com
Format: Paperback
Price: $12.95
Number of pages: 164 pages
June 2009

Memoirs, Norma Jean's Sun

Your candle burned-out long before
Your legend ever did.

Those simple words from Elton John’s famous song, “Candle in the Wind”, could easily apply to the lives of many people. To Kris Courtney, these words touched his own heart at a time when he mourned the death of his mother, Norma Jean. A beautiful woman in her youth, Norma Jean met the challenges of life with grace and dignity and perseverance. She did not give up when her first and only child was born severely crippled. She wept when the doctors put her newborn baby into a body cast in an attempt to straighten his spine and his limbs. Through the countless surgeries during his grow-up years to correct his hands, arms, legs, feet, Norma Jean would declare with great insistence: “Fight, Kris, fight.” One defeat after another did not set her back until, in the end, the fight was her own, a battle against cancer that she could not beat.

Norma Jean’s Sun is Kris Courtney’s tribute to a mother that sacrificed everything for her severely crippled son. Courtney is an artist in both paint and words. In his touching memoir, he captures the essence of a tragic life and the beauty that lies beneath the surface. His words paint a picture of a hardship and a suffering that only few could imagine. Using a painter’s brush, Courtney scratches out his emotional story in an abstraction of language that parallels a life that just will not give up. As his mother told him many times, this remarkably talented man continues to “Fight”.

Norma Jean’s Sun is a story about differences and the tragedies that life presents a person who is visibly different from the rest. Norma Jean’s Sun is recommended by: Emily-Jane Hills Orford, Allbooks Reviews.

Available at: Amazon and ebay
Title: Norma Jean’s Sun
Author: Kris Courtney
Kris Courtney Books
ISBN: 978-0-578-02059-4
Pages: 287
Price: not listed
May 2009