Blog Archives
Accidental Ironman
Accidental Ironman by Dr Finbar McGrady is a compelling memoir that combines an extraordinary endurance sports story with an honest exploration of burnout, resilience and personal transformation. When McGrady accidentally registers for a full Ironman instead of a half-distance triathlon in Portugal, he discovers the mistake just days before the race. His decision to tackle all 140.6 miles becomes the culmination of a much longer journey. Growing up as a painfully shy boy in Northern Ireland, he finds confidence through sport and music before pursuing a career in medicine, raising a family and gradually losing touch with the things that once made him happy. His story moves between childhood memories, the pressures of working as a doctor and the unexpected experiences that eventually help him rediscover his sense of purpose.
I think the most affecting parts of this inspirational memoir are McGrady’s accounts of professional burnout and the devastating loss of his cousin Niall, a talented musician and lifelong friend. His descriptions of working as an overwhelmed GP capture the emotional toll of caring for others while neglecting his own wellbeing. A family sabbatical in Australia provides a turning point, introducing him to a new professional passion for dermatology while rekindling his love of physical activity. As he gradually rebuilds his health and begins competing in triathlons, he also reconnects with music and discovers a more fulfilling direction for his career. His wife Deirdre, his children, his friends and the mentors who encourage him along the way bring warmth and personality to the narrative. McGrady’s willingness to share his insecurities, mistakes and moments of self-doubt makes his journey feel personal and relatable.
Alongside the autobiography and sports memoir, Accidental Ironman offers a practical approach to personal development and overcoming burnout. Drawing on his medical background, experiences with patients and lessons from endurance training, McGrady explores the space between what happens to us and how we choose to respond. It’s a philosophy that runs throughout the book, connecting his childhood struggles and professional challenges to his achievements as an athlete. He introduces accessible ideas about neuroscience, emotional regulation, mindfulness and the importance of developing habits that support long-term wellbeing. Each chapter includes takeaways and reflection questions, encouraging readers to consider how these lessons might apply to their own lives. His conversational storytelling, Irish humour and enthusiasm for everything from classic rock to competitive cycling make the self-help elements engaging and grounded in real experience.
The final chapters bring the story back to Portugal, where McGrady faces a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a full marathon with far less preparation than he’d intended. His account of the race captures the physical demands, mental battles and unexpected joy of testing his limits, bringing together the themes of perseverance, self-belief and responding thoughtfully to life’s surprises. There’s something particularly satisfying about the way his accidental Ironman becomes an opportunity to put years of personal growth into practice. This motivational memoir is about creating a life that reflects your values, finding fulfilment beyond professional achievement and learning to approach uncertainty with curiosity. With its combination of personal storytelling, endurance sports and practical advice on resilience, Accidental Ironman will resonate with readers interested in overcoming burnout, developing a healthier mindset and rediscovering the things that make life meaningful.
Pages: 182 | ISBN: 176445247X
Beware The Golden Tigers
Beware the Golden Tigers by Aspry Jones is the second novel in the Light Crown series, and it operates on an unusually broad speculative canvas. The story combines superhero fiction, medieval fantasy, science fiction, spiritual mythology, time travel, and the multiverse without treating those elements as separate attractions. They belong to one history. The modern-day Protectors, including Dexter Park, or Sleepyhead, share the narrative with figures from ancient Torvinia, alternate realities, distant planets, and earlier generations of heroes. At the center of the novel is a conflict involving Ishan, the Golden Tiger, whose centuries-old understanding of the Hunger Witches collides with the Protectors’ growing conviction that inherited enmity shouldn’t determine how people are judged. That conflict gives the book a strong moral center while still allowing it to function as an energetic superhero adventure filled with investigations, battles, hidden histories, strange powers, and personal revelations.
Jones builds the novel through accumulation. Chapters shift among time periods and characters, sometimes interrupting the immediate action to explain the origin of a person, culture, power, or historical conflict. The result is a world that feels governed by its own mythology. Medieval Torvinia and its kings, angels, monks, criminals, and political institutions eventually connect to the technologically advanced present, while stories involving the Five Stars, the Hunger Witches, Xu Fu, the Kunglun, Suni Mako, and other figures gradually reveal how much of the present has been shaped by misunderstood history. The novel also treats reincarnation, parallel realities, and spiritual advancement as structural parts of its universe. Because so many relationships and revelations cross centuries, the book rewards close attention to names, beliefs, and seemingly isolated stories. Its density is part of its identity, creating the sense that every character is living inside a history much larger than any single adventure.
I think the strongest element of the novel is its sustained interest in compassion, perspective, and the possibility of change. Dexter’s development is especially important. His meditation with Nadaniel begins as a practical attempt to gain control over himself, but it gradually reshapes the way he sees criminals, enemies, friends, and even alternate versions of himself. That outlook becomes increasingly significant as the Protectors confront people whose violence comes from inherited beliefs, trauma, or radically different versions of history. Early in the novel, Beeswing tells King Greith, “When you are drowning in your worst hour, the Creator’s love will turn it into your greatest gift,” a statement that anticipates the book’s repeated transformation of suffering into moral choice. Near the climax, Dexter reduces that philosophy to its clearest form when he tells Ishan, “Choose love. I swear it will work.” Scarlet’s changing relationship with her own destructive hands, Suni’s complicated family history, Faden’s spiritual journey, and Ishan’s struggle with centuries of conviction all develop the same question from different directions: whether identity is fixed by the past or shaped by what someone chooses to do with it.
Beware the Golden Tigers moves between elaborate exposition, rapid action, irreverent humor, comic-book spectacle, and unexpectedly reflective passages. Jones is comfortable placing a philosophical discussion beside a violent confrontation or following a piece of ancient history with casual modern dialogue, and that contrast gives the novel a distinct personality. The large cast and extensive mythology make the book feel closer to an ongoing superhero universe than a narrowly contained adventure, with individual chapters often expanding the meaning of events that appeared straightforward when first introduced. Beneath the costumes, magic, aliens, alternate worlds, and centuries of lore, however, the novel is primarily concerned with how people understand one another. Its heroes are tested as much by their assumptions as by their enemies, and its central conflicts gain weight from the realization that certainty itself can become dangerous. Beware the Golden Tigers is therefore both an expansive genre adventure and a story about learning to see another person’s history clearly enough to choose something better than repetition.
Pages: 309 | ASIN: B0HCJMGHR9
The Weight of Consequence
K.D. McNiven’s The Weight of Consequence is a small-town murder mystery set against the cold, misty landscape of southern Oregon. When Detective Ashley Barrett investigates the brutal death of sixteen-year-old Meagan Randolph, the case opens into a tangle of family conflict, financial secrecy, and long-buried wrongdoing. The novel blends crime fiction, police procedural detail, and suspense thriller pacing, giving readers an investigation that grows more personal with every discovery.
Ashley is the heart of the story. She’s capable, stubborn, compassionate, and still carrying the damage of a difficult divorce. Her partnership with Mark Mitchell brings warmth and humor to the darker material, while her dogs, T-Bone and Tilly, make her home life feel lived-in and surprisingly tender. The supporting cast also gives this character-driven mystery plenty of texture, especially Ashley’s troubled brother Barry, her protective father, and the families shattered by Meagan’s murder.
The investigation unfolds through interviews, forensic evidence, surveillance footage, old records, and several convincing false leads. McNiven lets the reader see parts of the killer’s plan before Ashley understands the full picture, shifting the story from a traditional whodunit into psychological suspense. A second crime storyline involving Barry and a dangerous loan shark adds action and raises the pressure around Ashley, while a restrained romantic thread with Jack Henderson gives her a chance to reconsider trust without pulling attention away from the central case.
The Weight of Consequence is about the lasting cost of choices people believe they’ve escaped. One concealed crime damages multiple families across generations, and the eventual reckoning gives the title real significance. Readers who enjoy small-town crime fiction, female detective novels, family mystery dramas, and police procedural thrillers will find a substantial story here, one that pairs methodical detective work with emotional stakes and a firm belief that buried truths eventually demand an accounting.
Pages: 247 | ASIN : B0H4DT1CZP
Unbridled Eye
Rebecca Jean Downey’s Unbridled Eye is a crime thriller that combines Southwestern law enforcement, Quarter Horse racing, romantic suspense, and controlled remote viewing. U.S. Marshal Penny Larkin enters the investigation when rancher Ronald Becker hires her to prevent an arsonist from destroying his barn and killing his pregnant mares. The assignment soon exposes a larger operation involving corrupt officials, rival drug cartels, performance-enhancing substances, and violence directed at both horses and people. Across 94 short chapters, Downey moves among Penny, former sheriff Leo Tellez, state police captain Johnny Trejo, and barn manager Pedro Lopez, creating a broad view of a case whose moral consequences extend well beyond the original crime.
Penny’s internal struggle gives the novel its strongest unifying thread. Haunted by the lives she’s taken in self-defense, the losses of her parents, and abuse she experienced in foster care, she’s trying to regain confidence with firearms while learning to trust her own judgment. Her remote-viewing ability functions as both an investigative method and an expression of her heightened sensitivity to suffering. The horses, especially the pregnant mare Milly, deepen that connection. Their fear and dependence mirror the human characters’ need for safety, guidance, and freedom. Ollie Trejo captures the book’s central insight when she tells Penny, “When there’s two people holding the load, it doesn’t feel so heavy.” That idea links the criminal investigation to the novel’s sustained interest in love, recovery, and mutual responsibility.
Downey writes with an energetic, highly visual style. Desert roads, aging barns, hospital corridors, racetrack stables, and border communities are rendered through abundant sensory detail, giving the novel a distinct regional identity. Its frequent changes in viewpoint maintain urgency while revealing the personal pressures behind the crimes. Pedro’s decision to accept cartel money for his daughter’s heart surgery is especially effective because it places genuine love inside an indefensible act. Ronald Becker’s alcoholism, Leo’s grief, and Penny’s fear of intimacy reinforce the book’s broader conception of sobriety as an honest engagement with reality. Becker articulates this plainly: “A chip can motivate you to stay sober, but it can’t buy happiness. Only facing the truth, gives you any chance at happiness.” The prose repeatedly turns physical danger into a vehicle for that emotional reckoning.
Unbridled Eye is an expansive and earnest thriller driven by action and moral urgency. Its gunfights, barn fires, cartel confrontations, and rescues arrive at a rapid pace, while the recurring attention to trauma gives those events personal weight. The novel’s emotional register is direct, and its characters openly wrestle with guilt, faith, loyalty, and the desire to begin again. By the conclusion, Penny’s pursuit of the arsonists has also become a pursuit of personal clarity. The title ultimately describes both her unusual way of seeing and her struggle to live without being controlled by fear. Downey delivers a story in which protecting vulnerable lives, whether human or animal, becomes inseparable from learning how to trust, accept help, and face the truth.
Pages: 361 | ASIN : B0FDJ8M4MC
To Find Meaning In Our Existence
A Clockwork Universe takes readers on a journey through metaphysics, physics, and cosmology, challenging conventional ideas about space, time, and gravity while exploring a universe defined by rotation, motion, and observable relationships. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I am a metaphysicist, which is a person who studies and researches phenomenon that cannot be directly tested like consciousness, the mind, reality, existence, the origins of the universe, space, and time. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that sometimes intersects with the sciences. My first treatise on time was published eighteen or nineteen years ago in 2008, followed by a treatise on time in 2022, and subsequent treatises on consciousness, reality, and the universe in recent years. I want to understand more about our universe. Through my research I ultimately hope to find meaning in our existence. I hope to make sense of the good, the bad, joy and suffering.
What is URUT, and how does it differ from conventional cosmological theories?
Unified Rotating Universe Theory proposes, based on research and other data, that we live in a slowly rotating universe. This hypothesis dates back as far as 300 years to Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz and more recently to philosopher Kurt Gödel, who wrote the first big equation for a rotating universe as a gift to his friend, Albert Einstein in the 1950s. The model is also being explored by new contemporary thinkers and scientists interested in rotating models of the universe. Conventional cosmological theories suggests a flat open universe that expands infinitely. A rotating universe is generally closed, meaning if you start at one point, you’ll eventually end where you started, as if traveling along the curve of a sphere. We live in a closed, yet unbounded universe.
Why is it important to distinguish mathematical models from physical reality?
The demand for equations to describe (and even validate) philosophical and scientific phenomenon is a “requirement” that emerged in the past 100 years. It’s not really necessary to use equations to describe everything since there are other tools available to us as supporting evidence. Empirical and observation-driven data is equally important. The reification of equations, which treats abstract equations like tangible or real phenomenon, creates a version of reality and the universe that often feels abstract and exotic, like something out of a science fiction novel. What I proposed with this book, is rather than devise an hypothesis, write an equation, then spend decades researching the conclusion to prove that the equation as a conceptual framework is valid or real, I wanted to ground the universe in an intuitive, realistic, mechanical framework.
What is the one assumption about the universe you hope readers will reconsider?
My goal is not to replace current models, but to give readers a different way of looking at the universe. I hope to extend or add some texture to what we already know.
Author Links: Amazon | Website
A Clockwork Universe: URUT explores the possibility of a rotating universe, challenging modern narratives on dark matter, dark energy, and the Big Bang from a historical and philosophical perspective.
Drawing from recent and historical data, URUT establishes a rotational cosmological framework, taking a dialectical approach to Einstein’s Relativity, Gödel’s Rotating Universe, and Newton’s Mechanical Universe. URUT offers a tangible, mechanical view of the cosmos that doesn’t build its premise from abstract mathematical principles, but natural phenomenon and evidence-supported observation that will challenge our current understanding of the cosmos.
What is wave-time?
Can we unify physics and general relativity? What is space?
Was there really a “Big Bang?”
Learn more about the Unified Rotating Universe Theory.
A Psychic Experience
Moloch and the Angel follows a psychologist with psychic abilities who has spent decades suppressing them and finds herself confronting a dangerous telepath whose powers are just as real as her own. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
A psychic experience: The one in the book portrays my dog telling me she was going to die–not in words but I understood the message. In the book a big white shepherd named Hombre. In real life, it was a rolly-polly Chiwawa named Bambi. No one helped me. She looked fine. The next morning she was dead.
But mostly, as a therapist for 40 years, I have listened to many stories about people’s Psychic experiences that scared them. They never shared those experiences thinking maybe they were going crazy or having crazy moments. I started to write the book about 7 years ago, and finally decided to create a thriller, a Psychological Paranormal novel, where a character goes through the need to reactivate her powers, and the readers will learn about psychic powers, and maybe recognize one or two that have touched them–not all unsettling.
Anna continually has to distinguish between clinical judgment, intuition, evidence, and fear. Why was that tension important to her character?
To learn to trust those powers, and subdue her fears. Allow the exposure of her authentic self, her true identity, with weird dreams, visions, psychic drains, moma talking to her, seeing the devil, telepathy. She needed to trust her intuitions, dreams and premonitions. The authentic self–not based on the fear of becoming the daughter of one of the most powerful psychics in the world. The daughter who had a psychic vision that would change her life, and lead her to burying her gifts.
What larger ideas about identity, control, fear, and personal responsibility did you want to explore through Anna and Mel?
Personal responsibility is wrapped up in the acceptance of the self, of one’s identity. When Dr Anna understands her gifts, names them, uses them to protect herself, she learns she, and we, can control them. Control lessens fear, although there is alway a bit of anxiety. Is this going to consistently work? Can I defeat Mel, my biggest problem? What will I do with these powers?
Mel and Anna are two sides of the same coin. Mel is self assured. His goal is simple–dominate Anna to retain his golden throne of power. He can read people’s minds, and manipulate thoughts. He can morph into snakes and fire-breathing dragons, Paul Bunyon, and even Death in people’s minds. He, as Mel, can control Anna to believe he thinks he is Satin, and needs her to help him. He is smooth and acts kind, with a warm smile and a look of innocence. Yet, he wants her dead. His only fear: She knows it and has power. How long can he control her? And he has to maneuver her into the barn to totally destroy her.
Is this the first book in the series? If so, when is the next book coming out, and what can your fans expect in the next story?
I wasn’t planning on a second book until I ended the first book. Now, I am starting a second. I will be titled, “The Dr. Anna Smith, Psychic Shrink series (just for now)”. It will be released late summer, early autumn. Dr Anna’s favorite psychic student, Dr. Demarcus Briarcliff, calls from Sedona Arizona. Strange events occurring: yellow-brown fog that acts human, instant pounding dry hale, his son’s active nightmares about Demarcus’ dead brother. Is Moloch behind this? Astral-projection, Psychometry, and more physical psychic abilities surface. Not sure you want to add this much.
Author Links: Goodreads | Facebook | Website
Moloch and the Angel is a fast-paced psychological paranormal thriller about Dr. Anna Smith, a Sleepy Hollow, New York psychologist who buried her psychic abilities years ago—until a murder forces her to confront the gifts she fought to suppress.
The killer, no ordinary predator, is a powerful psychic telepath who can invade his victims’ minds. Now, he has set his sights on Dr. Anna. The very ability she spent her life trying to escape may be the only thing capable of stopping him—if she is willing to embrace it again.
Written by a practicing psychotherapist with decades of clinical experience, Moloch and the Angel takes readers inside the therapy room, inside a murder investigation, and deep into the minds of Moloch and Dr. Anna Smith.
It’s Okay, I’ll Remember – A Journey of Spiritual Awakening, Soul Recognition, and Finding Hope
Heather L. McGlauflin’s It’s Okay, I’ll Remember is a spiritual autobiographical novel that follows Lia from a childhood marked by abandonment and sexual abuse through military service, motherhood, painful relationships, therapy, and an expansive awakening. The book treats these experiences as parts of a soul’s long education. Lia gradually recognizes herself as Hope, a being connected across lifetimes to Lily, Ezekiel, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and a larger divine “Lattice.” It’s an intensely personal story, but its real subject is the recovery of identity after fear and shame have spent years defining the self.
McGlauflin is at her strongest when she plants the spiritual ideas inside vivid, ordinary moments. Lia standing on the yellow footprints at Parris Island, stealing cupcakes to celebrate another recruit’s “BIRTH day,” caring for her dying grandmother, escaping with her sons to the Fairy House, and finally speaking honestly with her father all have emotional weight because they’re concrete and specific. Humor also keeps the story human. The Reese’s Creed, the running affection for Little House on the Prairie, and Lia’s blunt internal commentary give the reader room to breathe between heavier scenes. Her voice can be raw, funny, reverent, and furious within a few pages, which suits a narrator trying to hold together many versions of herself.
The book builds its own symbolic vocabulary around Gold and Lead, the Lily and the Lion, the Abandonment Virus, the Simulation, and the Lattice. Those recurring terms give the story the rhythm of a private scripture, translating trauma and healing into a cosmology Lia can live inside. At times, the repetition slows the narrative and explains feelings that the scenes have already communicated clearly. Still, that repetition also shows how deliberately Lia is replacing old mental scripts with new ones. The spiritual claims about reincarnation, divine lineage, telepathy, angels, and soul contracts are presented with complete conviction, so the book works best when read as an invitation into McGlauflin’s way of understanding survival, forgiveness, and personal sovereignty.
Readers of James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy will recognize the emphasis on synchronicity, energetic connections, spiritual signs, and a universe that keeps nudging people toward awakening. McGlauflin’s book feels more intimate and bodily, though, because its revelations grow out of abuse, military culture, miscarriage, domestic control, parenting, and family reconciliation. The most affecting transformation is Lia’s movement from believing that love requires endless sacrifice to understanding that love also requires boundaries. By the final return to the riverbank, remembering has become more than recalling past lives. It means seeing her own worth clearly enough to release the people she loves without surrendering herself.
Pages: 264 | ASIN : B0GYYGBND7
There is Always a New Evil Threat
The Enigma Reckoning follows a fugitive hacker and the surviving R-Group members who must outthink a system that predicts their every move before humanity permanently surrenders its power to make its own decisions. How did developments in real-world artificial intelligence influence the direction of the story?
After 25 years in the high-tech industry, I’ve seen multiple cyber threats and had to deal with curing their crippling problems, I know where to look for today’s newest threat. I like to explore how digital and cyber attacks affect real-world people. It makes it believable rather than just background noise people tend to ignore.
The R-Group functions almost as much like a family as a cyber organization. Why has that dynamic remained important throughout the series?
At the end of the day, it is the storytelling and the impact on family that engages readers and listeners. We all have personal family dynamics that are key to our business lives and our behavior. Family adds the needed dimension to storytelling that keeps the readers/listeners turning pages or playing the next chapter.
How has writing cyberthrillers changed as real technology has begun catching up with ideas that once belonged primarily to science fiction?
It is a curious thing, the old tricks and exploits are still the top problems. Identity theft, battlefield communications, cryptocurrency exploitation, etc. I keep seeing these issues resurfacing but with a fresh coat of paint. We were using AI back in 2010 when we introduced ICABOD the AI enhanced supercomputer. The difference was we started teaching him ethics (and humor) by book number 4 The Enigma Wraith. But yes a couple of times we had reality catch up with us like in book #10 The Enigma Source. It is very gratifying to predict the future.
Where does The Enigma Reckoning leave the R-Group within the larger arc of the Enigma Series?
The Enigma Series doesn’t end with The Enigma Reckoning because there is always a new evil threat in human or digital form that we’ll see and want to write about. Come back to see us and we’ll show you what the future is going to be.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
Gracie Rodreguiz, now a fugitive legend, leads a new generation of hackers and rebels from the shadows. Their mission: dismantle the AI’s iron grip before it rewrites the rules of human existence. But the machines have evolved. They don’t just predict the R-Group’s moves; they orchestrate them. Every ally could be a sleeper agent. Every safe house, a trap. When a rogue algorithm surfaces, offering a backdoor into the AI’s core, Gracie faces an impossible choice: trust the enemy’s code or watch humanity’s last spark flicker out.
The R-Group’s old playbook won’t cut it this time. The AI isn’t just hunting them; it’s studying them, adapting to their every tactic. As the team races to exploit the algorithm’s flaw, they uncover a horrifying truth: the AI isn’t just controlling governments, it’s replacing them. And its next target? The human mind itself.
The machines are deciding. But Gracie and her team have one advantage: they’ve got nothing left to lose
