Blog Archives
Poetic Healing: That Unforgettable Tuesday Morning
Al Hall’s Poetic Healing is a sustained poetic response to the September 11, 2001, attacks and the emotional, social, spiritual, and national consequences that followed. Hall explains in the preface that he passed the burning Pentagon on his way home from work and decided to respond to the day’s horror through poetry. He writes not only about what occurred, but also about what he heard people saying and what he imagined they were feeling. That purpose shapes the entire collection. Its eleven sections move through images of destruction, the experiences of children and families, changes in daily American life, collective mourning, anger, faith, military response, the anthrax attacks, public service, and eventual expressions of hope and unity.
The book’s most affecting quality is its attention to individual experience within an event remembered on a massive scale. Hall repeatedly brings the reader from familiar public images into private scenes of uncertainty and grief. In “Mommy, Is the Fire Still Burning?” a child wonders whether firefighters can save her father, while “Where is Grandma Sleeping Tonight?” presents a child preparing a pillow for a grandmother who hasn’t returned home. Elsewhere, Hall writes from the perspectives of bereaved spouses, displaced workers, surviving employees, military families, firefighters, postal workers, and people confronting fear or prejudice. The simplicity of the language gives these poems a direct, testimonial quality. Hall repeatedly returns to recognizable acts such as waiting, calling, praying, working, comforting children, and searching for loved ones.
As the collection progresses, grief becomes connected to the broader question of how people respond after catastrophe. Hall considers anger, retaliation, racial and religious suspicion, emotional distress, faith, and the responsibility to remain humane. Several poems directly challenge the impulse to direct collective anger toward innocent people, particularly Muslims and Americans perceived to look like terrorists. In “Lord, Help us Avoid Becoming What We Hate,” the plea, “Lord, help us avoid becoming / the things we hate,” captures one of the book’s central ethical concerns. Healing, in Hall’s treatment, therefore involves more than endurance. It requires emotional expression, compassion, restraint, community, and an active refusal to let violence determine how people treat one another. That idea is stated with particular clarity in “Elation Competes with Devastation,” where a grieving new mother must learn to inhabit sorrow and joy at once: “She will find a place to be herself. / That’s what healing is all about.”
Poetic Healing functions as both a literary memorial and a record of the emotional atmosphere surrounding September 11 and its immediate aftermath. Its chronological and thematic breadth allows Hall to document not only the attacks themselves, but also the days of rescue and recovery, economic anxiety, communal prayer, military deployment, anthrax fears, public service, patriotism, and the continuing search for peace. The final section expands the book’s concern beyond national grief, asking that compassion extend to people experiencing war throughout the world, before “The Flag” closes on an image of freedom, remembrance, hope, and unity. Hall’s collection succeeds most clearly as an act of witness and consolation, preserving a wide range of human reactions to a defining national tragedy while insisting that healing depends on memory, faith, empathy, and continued care for others.
Pages: 128 | ISBN: 0595664903
The Lord of Records Speaks: Channeled Dialogues on the Universe
The Lord of Records Speaks is an ambitious metaphysical journey built around Adria Sanders’s conversations with the spiritual presence she calls the Lord of Records. Beginning with her transformation from pragmatic skeptic to spiritual seeker, Sanders gives readers the personal context behind the dialogues before opening the discussion to larger questions about consciousness, parallel realities, the soul, emotion, matter, manifestation, time, energy, and the Source. The book’s scope is expansive, but its purpose remains personal: to explore how human life might look when viewed as one part of a much larger, interconnected universe.
The question-and-answer format gives the book its conversational energy. Sanders doesn’t simply record a series of declarations. She challenges what she receives, asks for examples, admits when an idea is difficult to accept, and works through contradictions in real time. That openness makes her an approachable guide through material that can become highly abstract. Her background in psychology and business also adds an interesting tension to the narrative, since she frequently tries to translate extraordinary experiences into language a practical, analytical mind can understand.
Some of the book’s most engaging sections explore emotions, especially love, hope, self-doubt, happiness, and the instinct to survive. Here, the larger cosmology becomes closely connected to everyday experience. Sanders presents emotion as more than a human reaction. It becomes a creative force, a source of information, and a means through which consciousness develops. The later discussions of holographic worlds, timelines, energetic strings, artificial intelligence, and humanity’s future broaden that foundation into a complete spiritual framework. Chapter summaries help readers pause, gather the central ideas, and carry them into the next conversation.
Sanders writes with genuine curiosity, vulnerability, and a clear desire to share an experience that changed the way she understands existence. Readers drawn to channeling, the Akashic Records, multidimensional consciousness, and spiritual cosmology will find a rich collection of ideas to consider, while reflective readers may be especially moved by the book’s emphasis on personal responsibility, curiosity, and the creative power of choice. The Lord of Records Speaks turns the mysteries of the universe into an intimate conversation about who we are, why our choices matter, and how much more we may be capable of becoming.
ASIN : B0GX72WZPV
Powerful People – Outrageous Lies
Powerful People – Outrageous Lies is a wide-ranging investigative account that challenges the official explanation of President John F. Kennedy’s murder. The author argues that the assassination involved more than one shooter and that a larger group of officials and institutions later helped conceal what happened. The book begins with a focused question about Jacqueline Kennedy’s actions in the presidential limousine, then expands into the Zapruder film, the transportation of Kennedy’s body, the Bethesda autopsy, Lee Harvey Oswald’s background, Jack Ruby, and the official investigations that followed. Its central purpose is stated plainly: “The main reason for writing this book was the complete lack of a credible explanation from authorities, experts and authors for the actions of Mrs. Kennedy.”
The treatment of Mrs. Kennedy’s actions is one of the book’s two most convincing sections. After the fatal head shot, she climbed onto the limousine trunk and reached toward material that had landed behind and to the left of the president. The author argues that this instinctive movement matters because it provides physical evidence about the direction of the shot. Her reported words, “They have killed my husband. I have his brains in my hand,” give the scene a terrible immediacy while also supporting the author’s reconstruction of where the material landed. By connecting her actions with the blood spray, skull fragments, and witness descriptions of the rear head wound, the book builds a clear forensic argument for a shot from the right front.
The evidence of Dino Brugioni forms the other especially persuasive part of the book’s case. Brugioni was the CIA’s Chief Information Officer at the National Photographic Interpretation Center and one of its leading photographic interpreters. He supervised the preparation of briefing boards from the Zapruder film on the Saturday night after the assassination, while a different team prepared another set the following night. The two teams didn’t know about each other’s work at the time. The book argues that the film passed through the CIA-linked Hawkeye Works facility between those two sessions and returned in an altered form. Brugioni later maintained that the version he studied differed from the surviving film, especially in its depiction of the head explosion, which he remembered as appearing across more than one frame. Because of his expertise, position, and direct contact with the film, his testimony gives the book’s cover-up argument unusual weight.
From those two central pieces of evidence, the book develops a much longer reconstruction of the assassination and its aftermath. Separate chapters examine Oswald’s military service and time in the Soviet Union, his associations in Dallas and New Orleans, his trip to Mexico City, the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit, Ruby’s killing of Oswald, and the work of the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and the Assassination Records Review Board. Later chapters discuss intelligence figures, alleged participants, mortuary evidence, Dallas officials, and suspicious deaths connected with the case. The structure feels like a case file assembled gradually, with photographs, witness statements, timelines, and recurring details used to reinforce the author’s larger theory.
The book’s greatest strength is its insistence that physical details and witness actions deserve careful attention. Its discussion of Mrs. Kennedy and its presentation of Brugioni’s evidence give the overall argument a strong foundation, since both relate directly to the direction of the fatal shot and the possible alteration of the most important visual record. At times, though, the author moves quickly from possibility to certainty, and the lack of a full reference list makes some claims harder to assess independently. The author acknowledges that the information comes from internet sources and that some material may have been falsified or misinterpreted. Even with those limitations, Powerful People – Outrageous Lies offers a detailed, forceful, and often absorbing account of why the assassination and the conduct of the authorities afterward remain so deeply contested.
Pages: 172 | ASIN : B0FK2CB7B9
A Desire To Test Myself
Lady Vagabond is a thoughtful and adventurous memoir of solo travel, professional discovery, and personal transformation. Was the trip initially driven more by personal reinvention, professional curiosity, or the desire to test yourself?
My trip was more driven by a desire to test myself. Initially, I sought the adventure of pursuing my travel dreams. I also understood I was unprepared for many of the roles in a man’s world. Solo travel seemed to be a way to test myself and become more worldly in the process. At age 31, with a doctorate degree, I thought I was already grown up. Before long, however, I discovered I had much more to learn.
What did traveling alone allow you to experience that you might have missed with a companion?
With a companion, we are more likely to talk to each other instead of engaging with other travelers or local people. I’m not a particularly gregarious person, but I enjoy a one-on-one conversation with a willing seatmate on a bus or train. As a solo traveler, I could also be more flexible about taking opportunities that came my way and others may have been more likely to invite me on those, including to come into their homes.
Then I found something more interesting came from my encounters. They often challenged my thinking—on my politics, my professional goals, my world view. This wasn’t a bad thing. As a result, I learned to clarify my beliefs and values. I learned to respect others’ world views and recognize my own. My personal identity became clearer.
Which community or host family most changed your understanding of everyday life in another part of the world?
The South Pacific cultural world view of collectivism, where the value of family supersedes the individual, became an immediate contrast with the American individualism I had taken for granted. This discovery came with my first contacts in American Samoa and again in (Western) Samoa and Figi. The same values are common in most of Asia. In fact, I found American individualism to be more the exception. These cultures also emphasized living in the present and this value carried into New Zealand and Australia, with their “she’ll be right” philosophy. The culture conflicts I witnessed made the contrasting world views even clearer to see. These discoveries turned my driven achievement mindset on its head. And eventually, I developed more flexibility about being the master of my fate versus living in the moment and trusting myself in chance.
Your memoir ultimately replaces a rigid ideal of self-reliance with a more flexible understanding of human capability. Why was that realization important enough to become the heart of the book?
That’s right. First, I came to appreciate that when I confronted problems, and if I asked for help, that help came to me. Not only did I not have to figure things out alone, my new friends led me to better opportunities than I could have imagined. For example, my quest to get into Australia’s interior on my tight budget was taken up by a string of friends and friends of friends. Everyone putting their collective heads together produced a creative solution, with my ride on the truck and learning about the Outback world view. I also found a helpful community among the network of fellow travelers. Not everyone was helpful, but persistence often pays off, help comes. That process became reinforced with my professional queries, as it got me into places I never would have seen as a tourist, like the health center in the Aboriginal community and in Papua New Guinea. I found collaboration and multi-disciplinary teamwork in some community health settings and that gave me inspiration for my future roles.
It may seem contradictory that I advocate for the advantages of solo travel while I also challenge the ideal of self-reliance. Sometimes we have to draw on self-reliance skills and it’s good to feel comfortable in our own company when we’re alone. But here’s where the connections come in, as I mentioned earlier. On several occasions I sought a companion to feel safe—in Papua New Guinea, in most cities after dark, and trekking in Nepal–until I got left behind. I got off the mountain pass by myself, with one careful step after another, but I would have been safer with a companion in case I might trip and fall. Asking for help isn’t a weakness. We need to think more critically about our one-size-fits-all dictums. Neither approach fits every situation.
Author Links: Website | Amazon
In 1978, newly minted psychologist Judy DePue leaves a prestigious research job and sets out alone on a round-the-world journey, determined to prove she can do “big things” on her own. Raised on a rural dairy farm yet shaped by the promises of the women’s movement, she feels caught between tradition and possibility, independence and connection. From grass huts in the South Pacific to Himalayan Mountain passes, from Aboriginal communities in Australia to crowded cities in Southeast Asia, Judy navigates risks, kindnesses, cultural change, and her own self-doubts. Along the way, she pursues an independent study with the World Health Organization, exploring how behavioral health is woven-or ignored-within global healthcare systems.
What emerges is not a solitary hero’s tale, but a heroine’s journey-one that reveals strength in collaboration, courage in asking for help, and belonging in unexpected places. For women and seekers navigating a changing world, Lady Vagabond is a resonant story of identity, resilience, and finding your place in the world.
Lifestyle: Trust Fall
Lifestyle: Trust Fall by Kasey Fallon is a dark, psychologically charged romance centered on Lexi, a fiercely independent gym owner and skilled fighter, and Grayson, a dominant co-owner of Philadelphia’s exclusive Lifestyle Club. Lexi is drawn into Grayson’s plan for a Reverse Gladiator arena, where submissive women fight on behalf of their dominants, but their business arrangement quickly becomes far more personal. The novel’s BDSM setting provides plenty of heat and spectacle, while the emotional core comes from two stubborn people trying to decide what trust, surrender, and control actually mean to them.
Lexi is the book’s strongest element. She’s funny, combative, observant, and deeply guarded, with a traumatic childhood that still shapes her reactions to confinement, dependence, and physical vulnerability. Her strength doesn’t disappear when she explores submission, and the story treats that apparent contradiction as something worth examining. Grayson is compelling because his confidence frequently runs into the limits of his own understanding. He can be protective and thoughtful, but he’s also possessive, presumptuous, and accustomed to getting his way. Their chemistry comes from watching them challenge each other, misread each other, and gradually learn that trust can’t be demanded.
Fallon writes with an energetic, blunt voice that suits both the club atmosphere and Lexi’s personality. The banter is lively, the attraction feels physical, and the supporting cast gives the story a welcome sense of community. Eddie, Randy, Rio, Mama Troisi, and the rest don’t feel like decorative friends waiting to deliver advice. They have loyalties, concerns, and relationships of their own. The middle of the book spends considerable time on Lexi’s exhausting workload and Grayson’s attempts to care for her, which slows the larger plot but makes their growing intimacy more believable. The final pages deliberately leave a threatening thread unresolved, so the novel feels like the first stage of a continuing story.
I’d recommend this most to readers who enjoy high-heat dark romance, dominant and submissive dynamics, complicated heroines, protective heroes with controlling streaks, and relationships built through friction. It’ll especially appeal to someone who likes emotional caretaking alongside explicit sexual content and doesn’t mind ending with a clear hook for the next book. Readers sensitive to panic attacks, childhood trauma, coercive behavior, stalking, violence, breath play, or intense power dynamics should approach it with those elements in mind. For its ideal audience, though, Trust Fall offers a tense and involving introduction to Lexi and Grayson’s relationship, with enough unresolved danger to make continuing the series tempting.
Pages: 313 | ASIN : B0DM9P8ZFD
A Rewarding Experience
Jigsaw: Temporal Apocalypse follows The Temporal Guardians as they face their most dangerous challenge yet and try to stop history from being rewritten. What inspired you to conclude the Jigsaw series with a threat as enormous as the Temporal Apocalypse?
Thank you for the question. I wanted the last book in the ten book Jigsaw Series to be epic and end (???) the adventures of Francesca and Noah with a bang so to speak so the readers would really have a rewarding experience at the end (???) of their story. I also wanted to call attention to the fact that the dangers we face to Democracy and the freedoms we all enjoy today have happened in earlier historical periods and that the people then overcame them then and we will do so again.
Your novels consistently explore lesser-known historical events and locations. How do you discover the stories that capture your imagination?
My background, as readers know, includes being a history teacher. Most introductory history courses do not probe in depth many of the historical topics I introduce in my books. In Temporal Apocalypse, we set the epic in Fiume whose leader D’Annunzio helped inspire Mussolini. We set it in Jerome and Tempe to remind readers that there was labor strife and some opposition to Wilson’s war efforts. We also set part of the story on the Russo-Polish War following World War One to show how close the treaties ending the war came close to being upended literally months after they were signed.
How have the Guardians changed since the beginning of the series? Were there characters who unexpectedly became more important as the series evolved?
The Guardians themselves have matured throughout the course of the books and have become more of a team ensemble. Originally, Francesca and Noah were the central protagonists but Tori and Mueller, mostly because of the development of the Case File Series, became just as intriguing and maybe more three dimensional than the original heroes. On the flip side, while Mariah and Bonomi are important figures who contribute to the storylines and give us Angelo, they are more peripheral than Francesca, Tori, Noah, and Mueller as the series progresses.
Were there scenes that proved especially difficult to write because they marked the end of long-running story lines?
I would not say difficult. I would say evolving. Some of the secondary antagonists introduced in this book, the take over and shutdown of the Foundation, and the Liberty Town storyline were inspired by people and organizations that have made an impact on current events since 2025. That said, the Jigsaw series has always been a commentary against rising white nationalist authoritarianism in this country and around the world and we used episodes from history to demonstrate that this is not the first time these fringe reactionary movements have tried to circumvent the American Ideal of an inclusive Republic where all people have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website | Instagram
THE TEMPORAL APOCALYPSE IS IMMINENT — TIME IS RUNNING OUT.
The Temporal Guardians must prevent Lilith, Ahriman, and their evil allies from unleashing Akoman’s Amulet — an ancient weapon with the power to destroy reality.
In the shattered aftermath of the Great War, across battlegrounds torn between nations and ideologies, the fate of history itself hangs by a thread. The world teeters on the brink of a totalitarian nightmare — a ruthless order imposed by the powers of darkness where eugenics decides who rules and who serves.
If the Guardians fail, the very fabric of society—and their own identities—will be erased forever. Every second lost brings them closer to a future none can escape.
The clock is ticking.
The Guardians must stop the coming of the Temporal Apocalypse before it’s too late
Thank God I Failed: A Lawyer’s Suicide Attempt and the Case Against Trying
Thank God I Failed by Orlando Da Silva is a deeply personal memoir that traces the making of a life from childhood abuse to professional prominence and a psychiatric ward. Da Silva writes about growing up in an unstable, violent home, learning to disappear emotionally, and carrying that instinct into school, relationships, politics, and a demanding legal career. His outward accomplishments conceal treatment-resistant depression and a conviction that the people he loves would be better off without him. The book’s central event is his 2008 suicide attempt, but its fuller subject is the slow accumulation of experiences that made death seem reasonable to an intelligent, persuasive man.
As a suicide survival memoir, the book is especially strong at showing how professional competence can coexist with severe mental illness. Da Silva builds a successful career as a lawyer, becomes a political candidate, and eventually serves as president of the Ontario Bar Association, yet the habits that help him succeed also let him hide. His lawyerly mind gives the narrative a distinctive tension. He can analyze systems, construct arguments, and perform under pressure, but he can also make a polished case against his own continued existence. The writing is candid, controlled, and frequently darkly funny, with recurring images of weather, buildings, courtrooms, and damaged structures connecting his childhood to his adult life. The chronological structure gives the book room to show how shame becomes a private language and how speaking publicly begins to break its hold.
The psychiatric ward chapters form the emotional and intellectual center of this depression recovery memoir. Recovery arrives through medication, electroconvulsive therapy, professional care, time, and ordinary moments of human presence. There’s no tidy transformation. Da Silva leaves the hospital with the same history and a continuing capacity for depression, but he has begun to question the authority of his darkest thoughts. That distinction matters throughout the book. A nurse asking a sincere question, another patient saving him a chair, or a family member refusing to accept his wish to die becomes evidence that care can interrupt certainty. The practical coda strengthens this theme through journaling, a ten-point safety scale, treatment tracking, and specific ways loved ones can help without pretending they can cure another person.
The memoir ultimately becomes a first-person argument against extending Canada’s medical assistance in dying system to people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness. Da Silva’s case rests on lived experience: depression distorted his judgment, memory, hope, and sense of being a burden while leaving him articulate enough to sound rational. He asks readers to consider what “irremediable” can mean when a recurring illness makes temporary despair feel permanent, and when support is distributed so unevenly. This blend of mental health memoir, law and ethics book, and suicide prevention memoir gives Thank God I Failed its unusual force. It’s the story of a man who survived, found a public voice, and turned that voice toward people still trapped inside silence. Its hope is practical: stay, speak, listen, and create enough time for a suffering mind to discover that it may be wrong.
Pages: 236 | ASIN : B0GX36X5PQ
Instinct Is Everything To Me
A Storyboard Life is an inspiring memoir about creativity, resilience, and discovering that life’s greatest opportunities often arrive disguised as setbacks. Why did you choose to tell your memoir through eighty-three “story frames” instead of a traditional chronological narrative?
The idea of storyboarding the book’s narrative appealed to me, especially given my background in film.
Each frame can stand on its own as a short story but they are still connected by the throughline one of my adventures in creativity and resilience.
The storyboard format also makes the book idea for travel, vacations, airplanes, waiting rooms––anywhere you might want to fill some time with something distracting, entertaining, and even at times, transporting.
Your career seems built on curiosity as much as planning. How important has following instinct been throughout your professional life?
Instinct is everything to me. Looking for opportunities that make sense, looking for the open door, looking for hints and suggestions, being open to whim, while trying not to take stupid or dumb risks. Instinct is honing that fine difference, then acting upon it.
Readers get wonderful glimpses behind the scenes of documentary production. What do you wish more people understood about the work that happens before audiences ever see the finished film?
It’s not glamorous and it doesn’t pay well.
It’s hard, and often tedious, frustrating, annoying, and sometimes even dangerous.
Each film usually represents years of fundraising, concept-vetting, storyline development, experts wrangling, location management, gear maintenance, traveling with a lot of sensitive baggage, talent availability, crew cooperation, and so many other tedious tasks. But viewers shouldn’t see any of that in the finished film.
What they should see (and what enables you to deal with and get through all the above) is the love of telling a good or an important story.
Personally, what I love most about documentary film production––apart from the finished film––is that it’s a team sport.
From writing and funding, to locations, to storyboarding, to shooting, to music to editing, and then marketing, it’s rare that every aspect of a film is created by just one individual. And to me, that’s a good thing. I’m still friends with people I worked on location with twenty-five years ago!
Many readers struggle when life doesn’t follow their original plans. What do you hope they take away from your story?
In my experience, life rarely follows your plans. And each time it doesn’t, that might just be a great time (to quote the Stoics) to pause and ponder how the obstacle might be helping you, might actually be offering you an opportunity to look for a better way forward.
For example, had I not been fired from my job––three times!–– I would not have had an amazing three-decade career working with hundreds of films.
I was dumped by my producer/financée just days after we bought a house together. It was a shock at the time to lose him, our house, and my job all at once.
Looking back, I am beyond relieved I am not still with him. Just as I can no longer imagine living with him, I also can’t imagine not having the life I’ve had instead.
Closed doors are just an opportunity to look around and see what other doors might be open, or at least not locked.
Call it God or the universe having plans for you if that helps, it doesn’t matter which. The important thing is training/disciplining yourself not to fall apart, but instead take a pause and see what other opportunities might be even better or more interesting for you.
They may not appear right away, but they’re there.
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | Website
A Storyboard Life begins on a freezing winter night when a young woman, broke and uncertain, chooses generosity over fear. The $20 she donates to a good cause soon blossoms unexpectedly into a 30-year adventure across more than 200 documentary films.
From rejection, divorce, and loss to unexpected triumphs and second chances, these behind-the-scenes stories reveal how the films she works with become both lifeline and compass. Frame by frame, each one offers a lesson, a plot twist, or a push to keep going.
Part memoir, part backstage pass, A Storyboard Life invites readers to discover how a most unlikely career was built on determination, creativity––and the power of story.
