Blog Archives
Mariners Miners and Misfits
Mariners, Miners and Misfits is an ambitious work of genealogy and family history that traces Dan Martin’s paternal line from prehistoric Atlantic Europe through centuries of life in Cornwall and, eventually, into Canada. Using Y-chromosome research, parish registers, census records, wills, tax assessments, newspaper reports, and family memories, Martin builds a narrative that reaches far beyond a conventional family tree. The result is both a personal ancestry study and a broad account of how geography, labor, migration, and historical upheaval shaped one family over roughly nineteen thousand years.
The book is strongest when it places individual ancestors inside the working culture of Cornwall. Its chapters on Celtic identity, tin mining, the Stannary Courts, smuggling, maritime trade, and Cornwall’s reputation as Britain’s “Wild West” give the genealogy a vivid social setting. Rather than presenting names and dates in isolation, Martin considers what it meant to be a tinner, parish clerk, yeoman, craftsman, coach proprietor, or miner in a community where kinship and practical skill could determine survival. These sections make the book especially appealing as Cornish history, British social history, and mining history, while the recurring tension between Cornish custom and English authority gives the family’s story a distinctive regional character.
As the narrative moves closer to the present, it becomes increasingly intimate and emotionally involving. The account of William “Billy” Martin is a particular centerpiece, following him from Cornwall and Wales to Manitoba, where he worked as an artist and decorator, became an accomplished cattle breeder, suffered devastating personal losses, and spent his final years in a mental hospital. The later chapter about the author’s father, James, continues this approach through family recollection, rural Canadian life, hardship, marriage, and community. Here the book works as a multigenerational biography and personal memoir, showing how archival discoveries can recover the complexity of people remembered only through photographs, brief stories, or unanswered questions.
Martin writes with open affection for his ancestors, and that sense of connection gives the book its conversational warmth. He clearly labels uncertain early generations and speculative prehistoric scenes, while using documented evidence more firmly as the record becomes clearer. The combination of research, historical reconstruction, photographs, maps, and personal reflection makes Mariners, Miners and Misfits a substantial example of genealogical nonfiction. It’s a story about continuity, but also about adaptability: mariners become miners, miners become clerks and craftsmen, and Cornish descendants cross an ocean to begin again. By the final personal note, the family tree has become something more human, a long chain of labor, loss, humor, resilience, and belonging.
Pages: 200 | ASIN : B0H4D33D4R
Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star – 2nd Edition
Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star is a candid memoir about identity, ambition, secrecy, and survival. Its provocative title captures only the most visible contradiction in Merritt’s life. The book begins in a deeply religious South Carolina family, follows him through the fundamentalist culture of Bob Jones University, and traces his path into the Marine Corps, gay pornography, law school, corporate legal practice, addiction, and recovery. These experiences aren’t presented as separate reinventions. Merritt shows how each identity grows from the same desire for belonging, approval, masculine legitimacy, and personal freedom. “We all go to bed with our secrets,” he writes, establishing concealment as both the memoir’s organizing theme and the condition under which much of his adult life unfolds.
The memoir is particularly effective when it examines the psychological demands of living under institutional judgment. Merritt’s fundamentalist education teaches him to distrust his sexuality, while the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy requires him to divide his private life from his public service. His decision to perform in adult films becomes an act of rebellion, risk-taking, and self-assertion, though the book gradually reveals the emotional costs beneath that defiance. Merritt writes knowledgeably about military culture and conveys genuine affection for the Marine Corps even as he condemns policies that forced gay service members to live contrary to the values of honor, courage, and commitment. That tension gives the narrative depth because his conflict isn’t simply with hostile institutions. It’s also with institutions that shaped him, rewarded him, and supplied the discipline through which he understood himself.
Merritt’s prose is direct, energetic, and often darkly funny. He has a lawyer’s instinct for context and a storyteller’s eye for absurdity, particularly when describing military bureaucracy, religious hypocrisy, media respectability, and the elaborate performances required to appear successful. The later chapters adopt a heavier emotional register as professional pressure, circuit-party culture, substance use, depression, and a suicide attempt narrow his world. Yet the memoir doesn’t treat recovery as a clean narrative correction. Sobriety develops unevenly, through meetings, therapy, accountability, grief, and repeated failures. The accounts of his father’s ALS diagnosis and the death of his close friend Gary broaden the book beyond personal disclosure, turning it into a sustained consideration of mortality, friendship, and the limits of self-reliance.
This second edition benefits from the reflective perspective Merritt brings to his younger self. He acknowledges earlier omissions, including his decision to erase an HIV-positive Marine named Jay from the original account, and evaluates his choices without reducing his past to either confession or self-defense. The result is a memoir that preserves the urgency of youthful rebellion while adding the moral clarity of age and sobriety. Its final insight, “We are all connected,” is earned through a narrative filled with estrangement, secrecy, loyalty, and loss. Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star is ultimately a record of one man’s effort to integrate the identities he once believed could never coexist, and of the difficult recognition that personal freedom requires not only courage, but honesty, responsibility, and sustained connection to others.
Pages: 468 | ISBN : 978-0758209689
Authentic and Vulnerable
Marketing Fastrack is part memoir and part workshop detailing your successful transition from grief-coach training to marketing consultancy. Why was this an important book for you to write?
So often, it is hard for a new business owner to see clearly how to get started. They compare themselves to established businesses with established marketing systems. But that was not how those businesses began! So I wanted to reveal a quick way to launch a new business, product, or service, using a short book. My intention is to help entrepreneurs and experts launch their business quickly and affordably within 90 days.
Why did you decide to write a concise, highly focused book instead of a comprehensive marketing manual?
I have written a comprehensive marketing and branding manual, Turn Words Into Wealth: 7 Ways to Make 7 Figures as a Thought Leader. So if people would like to take a deeper dive, they can read that comprehensive book. The gift hardcover book is available here: https://turnwordsintowealth.com/
Readers discover that Fastrack was the name of your late husband’s racing yacht. Why was it important to share that story?
I wanted readers to know that the title of the book, Marketing Fastrack, was personally meaningful to me. My late husband loved racing our sailboat, Fastrack. It also modeled one of the core ideas in my book: that being authentic and vulnerable is a way to build connection and trust with ideal clients.
If someone could implement only one idea from Marketing Fastrack, which would you hope they choose?
If they only implement one idea, I would love readers to embrace the idea of a 90-day test to see if they have product-market fit. So many people make the costly mistake of spending a lot of time and money hoping that people will buy what they plan on selling. Hope is not a wise business plan. Instead of hoping, launch quickly with a minimal version and see if people are willing to buy what you’re selling. If they do, optimize. If they don’t, go back to the drawing board.
Author Links: GoodReads | YouTube | Same Page Publishing | Turn Words Into Wealth | Website | Amazon
Someone half as good as you just charged twice as much, and got the client. If you’re a successful expert or entrepreneur, that’s not bad luck. It’s bad marketing.
Marketing Fastrack reveals a simple, fast way for your marketing to become remarkable. This short book generated $250,000 of new business in 90 days, and inside you get everything you need to model it: the real emails, the real follow-up sequence, and the real application forms.
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In this book, you’ll discover how to:
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Follow the exact sequence that turned a short book into $250,000
I learned this the hard way, so you don’t have to. Now I help clients craft full-length, high-authority books. I still use this short-book method whenever a client needs fast results. In this book, I’ll show you exactly how to model it, step by step, so you skip the years of trial and error I went through.
If you want more income, more influence, and more invitations to speak, this is your shortcut. Bonus gift inside, so look for it. I’ve helped clients land their own TV shows, add six figures in six months, and raise millions for their startups.
Bad marketing isn’t free. It’s paid for in lost clients, lost income, and lost opportunities.
Winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement Gold Award.
I’m Aurora Winter, MBA, founder of Same Page Publishing, creator of the Spoken Author method, and host of Strategic Basics. Formerly a TV writer-producer, I’m the author of ten books, including Turn Words Into Wealth: 7 Ways to Make 7 Figures as a Thought Leader, updated for the Age of AI. My work has been featured in Success, Elle, ABC-TV, CBS-TV, and hundreds of podcasts. I’ve reached millions with my marketing messages, and now I help my clients do the same.
Let your reputation walk into the room before you do.
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I’ve Made Plans
Mia J. Hanks’s I’ve Made Plans chronicles the author’s life after leaving a twenty-nine-year marriage marked by coercive control, emotional abuse, and covert narcissism. Beginning with the finalization of her divorce, Hanks shifts the focus from the dissolution of the marriage to the demanding work of creating a life beyond it. Her account follows a series of practical and emotional turning points, including confronting intimidation, rebuilding self-worth, establishing boundaries, managing isolation, and rediscovering personal freedom. When she leaves the courtroom with the realization that “My future now belonged to me,” the statement becomes the foundation for everything that follows.
The memoir’s greatest strength is its use of specific, everyday experiences to illustrate the lasting effects of abuse. A compromised storage unit, a bag of circus peanuts, a solo road trip, a broken thermometer, and an airplane journey all become meaningful markers of recovery. These episodes show how control can shape seemingly ordinary decisions and how reclaiming those decisions can restore confidence. Hanks writes in a candid, accessible voice that gives the book the intimacy of a personal conversation while maintaining a clear sense of purpose. Her willingness to examine her own people-pleasing, fear, guilt, and complicity in maintaining appearances adds depth to the narrative.
Each chapter is organized around a lesson, such as “Self-care is not selfish,” “Boundaries are necessary,” or “Freedom is priceless,” and many conclude with a journal prompt. This structure makes the book both a memoir and a reflective guide for readers navigating divorce, trauma, or major personal change. The later glossary, diagnostic criteria, list of covert narcissistic traits, and support resources extend its practical value. Some ideas recur across chapters, but the repetition reflects the gradual nature of recovery and reinforces the central themes of self-trust, autonomy, and deliberate healing.
I’ve Made Plans is ultimately a grounded account of reconstruction. Hanks presents healing as a collection of choices rather than a single transformative moment, and the construction of her new home provides an effective final metaphor for rebuilding her identity. Her concluding reflection, “I already love this life not because it is perfect, but because it is mine,” captures the memoir’s emotional center. Honest, encouraging, and thoughtfully structured, the book offers survivors a recognizable portrait of life after abuse while showing how freedom can be strengthened through boundaries, faith, self-care, and purposeful action.
Pages: 92 | ASIN : B0GX31KVYT
Two Hearts, One Man: God’s Story Within
Andrew J. Trueblood’s Two Hearts, One Man: God’s Story Within is a deeply personal Christian testimony centered on the life of James, a man whose catastrophic motorcycle accident becomes the dividing line between two radically different versions of himself. Before the crash, James is described as angry, materialistic, demanding, and openly hostile toward religion. After surviving injuries that should have killed him, he awakens with an intense awareness of God and a capacity for love that surprises everyone around him. The title captures this transformation well. James still has the same physical heart, but spiritually, he’s living with an entirely new one.
The account of the accident and recovery gives the book its emotional foundation. Trueblood doesn’t gloss over the severity of James’s injuries, his loss of independence, or the depression that follows. Some of the most affecting scenes are also the simplest, such as James begging his wife, Shannon, not to leave for work or practicing alone until he can take a few steps. Shannon’s loyalty adds another kind of love to the story. Her care for James is steady, practical, and often painful, which gives the spiritual elements of the book a strong human anchor.
As the book continues, it expands beyond memoir into a wide-ranging meditation on faith, Scripture, salvation, suffering, money, church culture, marriage, politics, the environment, and personal responsibility. Its structure follows James’s post-injury thought patterns, moving between memories, biblical interpretation, present-day reflections, and stories he understands as evidence of God’s involvement in his life. The book openly describes his mind as a bridge that carries him from one subject to another, and that wandering quality becomes part of its personality. Reading it can feel like sitting across from someone who has spent years thinking about God and now feels an urgent need to share everything he has learned.
James’s voice is strongest when he examines his own weaknesses rather than speaking only in general terms. He admits that cars, money, comfort, and personal ambition continued to compete for his attention even after his spiritual awakening. His observation that “God’s timing is perfect, and it was obvious mine is as flawed as my thoughts” captures the book’s mixture of humility, conviction, and dry humor. Another memorable line, “Your relationship with God will only be as good as you are willing to make it,” summarizes the challenge James places before the reader. For him, faith isn’t a label or occasional habit. It’s a demanding relationship that requires surrender, service, discipline, and daily attention.
Two Hearts, One Man is ultimately a testimony about spiritual rebirth and the long, uneven process of learning to live according to that rebirth. James’s transformation doesn’t end when he wakes from the coma. It continues through pain, doubt, temptation, volunteer work, biblical study, medical setbacks, and repeated moments when he believes God is redirecting him. Trueblood presents these experiences with complete sincerity, creating a book that feels less like a polished theological argument and more like an earnest conversation about what faith has required from one particular man. Readers drawn to Christian testimonies, stories of survival, and reflections on total commitment will find plenty here to consider.
Pages: 172 | ASIN : B0G54CXTP8
Beyond the Lies
In Beyond the Lies, author Kimberli Edmonds blends memoir, reflective self-help, and guided practice to explore how inherited shame, damaging relationships, financial fear, and self-imposed limits can become mistaken for identity. Her central argument is that lasting transformation doesn’t come from motivational language alone, but from gathering concrete evidence that an old belief is no longer true. She traces that process through deeply personal experiences: discovering the documentation that helped her recognize the manipulation within her marriage, announcing her decision to divorce while physically trembling, returning to school after repeatedly dropping out, learning to speak with authority in executive meetings, and entering a women’s prison to lead worship despite her fear. Each chapter moves from story to interpretation to practical reflection, gradually widening the book’s focus from individual survival to professional growth, financial possibility, community, and service.
What affected me most was Edmonds’s refusal to make courage look clean. Her strongest scenes preserve the body’s resistance to change: the hand gripping a doorway, the long nights spent turning a dining table into a financial “war room,” the woman sitting in a college parking lot while every old failure argues that she should leave. These moments give emotional credibility to her insistence that action often precedes confidence. I was especially moved by her image of washing a plate without shrinking after deciding to leave her marriage. It’s such a modest gesture, yet it captures the book’s deepest insight: freedom often enters quietly, first as a nervous system discovering that it no longer has to obey. Edmonds writes with directness and considerable tenderness toward the selves she once judged. Her language can be emphatic, but that usually feels purposeful, as though she’s trying to speak over years of internal accusation with something steadier and more humane.
I also admired the book’s distinction between guilt and shame, and between accountability and lifelong self-punishment. Edmonds doesn’t excuse harm. Her account of publicly wounding someone she loved, then delaying an apology because shame made repair harder, is candid and morally serious. At the same time, she argues persuasively that a damaging act cannot be allowed to become a permanent name. That idea gains force when she describes the incarcerated women she initially viewed through fear, particularly Keesha, whose guarded presence dissolves into vulnerability during worship. The encounter exposes Edmonds’s own reflexive judgment and gives the book a welcome ethical turn: healing isn’t complete when it merely improves one person’s circumstances; it becomes meaningful when it enlarges that person’s capacity to see and lift others. The recurring chapter structure and repeated phrases about evidence, doorways, and “the old story” reflect the author’s method. Beliefs formed over decades rarely yield to a single elegant sentence.
I finished Beyond the Lies feeling that Edmonds has written less a conventional book of inspiration than a compassionate manual for testing the stories that govern a life. Its practical exercises are grounded enough to be useful, while its autobiographical passages keep the advice from becoming bloodless or abstract. I appreciated that the book doesn’t promise a sudden reinvention; it asks for a smaller, harder commitment to take the next honest action, record what happened, and let reality slowly revise identity. This will resonate most with readers recovering from abuse, shame, financial limitation, interrupted ambitions, or the persistent conviction that they’ve missed their chance. It will also be valuable to leaders, mentors, and caregivers who want to challenge people without reducing them to their performance. I’d recommend it to anyone ready to stop treating the past as a verdict and begin regarding change as something patiently, bravely built.
Pages: 116 | ASIN : B0H6VCW78S
The Chemist Whisperer
The Chemist Whisperer is George Kesic’s memoir of becoming an unlikely activist after the COVID years shook his trust in government, medicine, media, and public obedience. The book moves from the grief of losing his mother, Anka, into his work with Forest of the Fallen, then into the repeated pharmacy visits that give the book its title, where he delivers cease and desist notices, questions pharmacists about informed consent, and records thirty encounters that range from hostile to strangely tender. At its heart, this is a book about conscience under pressure, about one man deciding he’d rather risk being mocked, dismissed, or “banned for life” than live with the ache of having done nothing.
Kesic writes with a bruised sincerity that often feels less like political commentary and more like someone trying to make sense of a wound that never quite closed. The scenes with his mother give the whole book its pulse. Her “Keep going, son” becomes more than a family phrase; it becomes the engine of the memoir. I found the Forest of the Fallen chapter especially affecting, with those laminated pages on bamboo stakes fluttering on the beach like private grief made public. That image carries more force than some of the louder passages because it lets silence do the work. The book is at its strongest when Kesic slows down and lets people become human: the pharmacy worker who quietly admits she was injured after taking the shots to keep her job, the security guard who privately tells him he didn’t get them either, the rare pharmacist who actually listens and says they’ll stop giving COVID vaccines to children.
The writing has a raw, insistent rhythm, sometimes almost sermon-like, with short lines, repetition, and a steady drumbeat of moral urgency. The cadence gives the book momentum, and Kesic has a gift for turning a small exchange into a larger reflection on obedience, denial, or fear. The strongest ideas here are not necessarily the most sweeping claims, but the more intimate ones: that informed consent matters, that professionals shouldn’t hide behind “just following orders,” that grief dismissed becomes another injury, and that ordinary people can be changed by the act of standing up. Even when I wanted more restraint, I could feel the moral seriousness behind the anger.
By the end, I felt I’d read a memoir of resistance as much as a record of pharmacy encounters, one shaped by mourning, stubbornness, faith in personal courage, and a deep suspicion of institutions that failed to speak plainly. I found it personal, forceful, and often unexpectedly moving. The shift toward joy, gratitude, stillness, and living freely softens the book in a way I appreciated, as though Kesic knows outrage alone can’t sustain a life. I’d recommend The Chemist Whisperer to readers interested in pandemic-era dissent, personal conscience, medical freedom debates, and memoirs where private grief becomes public action.
Pages: 217 | ASIN : B0GG4M5BG4
The Master Chief’s Sea Stories: Volume I USS Manitowoc (LST 1180)
The Master Chief’s Sea Stories: USS Manitowoc is a Navy memoir with the feel of a long conversation across a galley table. Master Chief Johnny J. Moye begins as a young man from Madison, Indiana, eager to leave home and become the sailor he’d imagined himself to be since childhood. What follows is a detailed, often funny, sometimes emotional account of boot camp, shipboard life, overseas liberty, long watches, hard lessons, and the daily grind aboard the USS Manitowoc. Early on, Moye writes, “Our lives are told in stories,” and that simple idea guides the whole book.
What makes the memoir engaging is how closely it stays tied to everyday Navy life. Moye isn’t just writing about big moments at sea; he’s writing about inspections, radio work, drinking cheap beer in foreign ports, friendships, homesickness, journal entries, strange jobs, and the kind of memories that only become important with time. The book has a lived-in quality because it comes from daily journals, and that gives the storytelling a steady rhythm. Readers get the sense that each entry matters because it’s part of a larger education.
The USS Manitowoc becomes more than a setting. It’s a workplace, a classroom, a family, and sometimes a pressure cooker. Moye’s growth from an unsure young sailor into a confident radioman is one of the book’s strongest threads. He learns from good leaders, difficult leaders, loyal friends, and hard experiences. One of the most memorable lessons comes near the end, when he reflects, “We can learn from a bad leader as well as from the good.” That line captures the book’s practical, honest spirit.
The tone is plainspoken and personal, which suits the material. Moye writes like someone who’s telling the truth as he remembers it, including the rough language, the youthful mistakes, and the pride that comes with earning a place among shipmates. There’s plenty of humor here, but the book also makes room for sadness, regret, faith, and gratitude. The result is a memoir that feels both specific to one sailor’s Navy career and familiar to anyone who’s looked back on the years that shaped them.
The Master Chief’s Sea Stories: USS Manitowoc is a record of becoming. It’s about a small-town kid learning discipline, responsibility, confidence, and respect through service at sea. It’s also a tribute to the shipmates who helped shape him and to the ship that gave him his foundation. Moye’s stories are casual, direct, and full of personality, making this a warm and memorable read for veterans, Navy families, and readers who enjoy memoirs built from real experience rather than polished distance.
Pages: 522 | ASIN : B09CZ8WXM8
