Blog Tour Author Spotlight & Giveaway for Amanda Blackwood

 

The Miller Miles

Micro-Biographies Book 1

by Amanda Blackwood

Genre: Nonfiction, Biography, Human Trafficking, Abuse Survival 

A saint was once asked "What is anger?" He replied that anger is a punishment that we give ourselves for someone else's mistake. Believe me, revenge is far worse.

We all do things we aren't proud of. Some of us have done far worse than others. I was a rather troubled teen and grew into a troubled young adult. One of the chapters from my life that I didn't know I'd ever have the courage to tell is the one about the Miller Miles.

From sex to drugs to love and lies, this adventure holds all that touches the lives of our nation's youth no matter what decade it might be. I was a teenage runaway, and as bad as that might be, I dragged others down that road with me. Eventually my friends betrayed me and I was left stranded in a strange city. It wouldn't be the last time that would happen in my life, but it was the last time in my life I actively sought (and achieved) revenge.

Miller was completely caught off guard. To some extent, so was I. It was an adventure to a degree, a nightmare to live and a story that I'll never forget as long as I breathe.

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The Shack In the Woods

Micro-Biographies Book 2

How much trouble can two young kids get into when nobody is looking? A lot.

Don and I were unlikely friends, both damaged souls from secrets nobody knew. One of our many adventures took us to a shack in the woods where nobody had ventured in too many years to count. We knew we needed to explore the place and were driven by an unexplained force, but we never imagined what we might find.

While we both found lost history, and Don found adventure, what I found was much more precious. I found a piece of me, a passion for history, and a rediscovery of my soul. I learned through one adventure as a kid that no matter how bad things were, I still didn't want to die. Discovery of self can be one of life's greatest adventures.

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Detailed Pieces of A Shattered Dream

Micro-Biographies Book 3

"My name is Amanda Blackwood and I'm a survivor of human trafficking."

Even now the words sound like fiction, especially as the horrors fade from recent memory. It's been 20 years since I escaped that fate, beating the odds. Most don't survive. I know that now, I didn't know that then. I didn't see any other option.

At the age of 19, my life took a drastic turn down a very dark path. I married a much older man in an attempt to escape my already dramatic life and was looking for a way out of trouble when the word "trouble" was completely redefined for me. Taken in you a young couple who then sold me like property to the highest bidder, my life changed completely. Suddenly I found myself locked away in a small room with no food, no water, no bathroom, and no company other that the screams of other trapped girls down the dark, deadly hallway. I had ample time to rethink my life. When I escaped, I didn't go back for the other girls whose screams haunt my dreams even now.

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Custom Justice

by Amanda Blackwood

Genre: Nonfiction, Biography

It's hard enough to escape human trafficking, but how does someone survive the aftermath of continually being hunted for years to come? I was young when the abuse started. It came from every angle. Struggling for many years, I wasn't sure I'd ever have a chance at a normal life with real love and true happiness. At the age of 31 I figured I was too old for that sort of thing. I'd been abused in the past, but this time I was finally going to have a happy ending.

I was moving to a foreign country to get married to a police officer I'd known for seven years. I would finally be happy. I had no idea that my entire life would change once more, and I'd be forced to either subject myself to abuse beyond anything I could ever imagine, or end my life unceremoniously, death by train. The man I thought I loved exploited me beyond comprehension. The damage he left behind will haunt me for the rest of my life. There is no way to seek court justice across international borders against a police officer in a corrupt system. Instead, I seek my custom justice simply by sharing the truth with the world. It's been 10 years since I escaped, beating all odds. Most don't survive. I know that now, I didn't know that then.

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Lost April

by Amanda Blackwood

Genre: Nonfiction, Biography

When the media first started talking about the pandemic of 2020 it seemed as though most of the world was operating out of fear. Having already survived so much in my life, I was hesitant to buy into it all. Instead, I found myself facing new challenges with friends who were dying around me of cancer, and losing those who had taught me that I still had a heart worth loving. Challenges mounted as I found myself the soul supporter for the household after my roommate lost his job, and then totalled my car. The pandemic was 'raging on' according to the news, but the real fight was within.

**Releasing April 1st!!**

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Amanda grew up moving all over the country and befriending people from all different cultural backgrounds. She came from a middle class family, and from the outside everything appeared to be quite normal. Nobody knew about the struggles behind closed doors - from an abusive family to school bullying, one struggle after another gave her a fighting spirit to never give up and to root for the underdog. While Amanda has mainly published memoirs and autobiographies, she has a heart for romance and an imagination for sci-fi. She has recently branched out into several different genre.

Amanda Blackwood is a survivor of human trafficking. A portion of every book sale goes to help fight human trafficking and to help other victims still trapped. Amanda lives in Denver, CO with her supportive husband and rescue cats who keep her sane.

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Blog Tour & Giveaway for A Contrary Journey by Jill Culiner

 

A Contrary Journey

with Velvel Zbarzher, Bard

by Jill Culiner

Genre: Nonfiction Biography, History, Travel

Culiner's intrepid pursuit of the elusive troubadour and the lost world from which he emerged enriches us with a double depiction of the turbulent times and places of the bard's era and the galloping commercialization of our own. Like a chef who manages to document great recipes before they disappear, Culiner serves us an utterly delicious feast of flavours we do not want to lose.

Robin Roger, writer, reviewer, Associate Publisher, New Jewish Press 2016-18

Invited by Culiner to join her travels to find Velvel was a gift in isolated pandemic times. Part history, part biography and part literature, the writing poetically transfixed. Train rides, villages, and Velvel's life move between magical realism and extraordinary insights into Jewish history generally missing in heritage tourism.

Daniel J Walkowitz, Professor of History Emeritus, Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis Emeritus New York University, author of The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World

A captivating romance, a thrilling mystery, a fascinating tour back and forward in time, and so much more. Culiner takes us out of the contemporary fast-paced, digital society and superbly redraws the varied contours of the shtetls of Eastern European countries of yore via one remarkable itinerant Jewish existence. The book brilliantly brings back to life the unjustly forgotten Hebrew poet and Yiddish melodrama author, Velvel Zbarzher, a significant precursor of Yiddish theatre that moved from Galicia to Romania, the Russian Pale of Settlement, Austria, and finally Turkey. A breathtaking read! 

Dana Mihailescu, Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Bucharest

What a beautiful book! The writing is clear and direct, the subject matter is interesting and important, and the characters are lively and realistically portrayed. In short, it's a good piece of reporting, and was entirely successful in wafting me to another time and place.

Barrington James, former foreign correspondent for the Herald Tribune and UPI, author of The Musical World of Marie Antoinette

The Old Country, how did it smell? Sound? Was village life as cosy as popular myth would have us believe? Was there really a strong sense of community? Perhaps it was another place altogether.

In 19thc Eastern Europe, Jewish life was ruled by Hasidic rebbes or the traditional Misnagedim, and religious law dictated every aspect of daily life. Secular books were forbidden; independent thinkers were threatened with moral rebuke, magical retribution and expulsion. But the Maskilim, proponents of the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment, were determined to create a modern Jew, to found schools where children could learn science, geography, languages and history.

Velvel Zbarzher, rebel and glittering star of fusty inns, spent his life singing his poems to loyal audiences of poor workers and craftsmen, and his attacks condemning the religious stronghold resulted in banishment and itinerancy. By the time Velvel died in Constantinople in 1883, the Haskalah had triumphed and the modern Jew had been created. But modernisation and assimilation hadn't brought an end to anti-Semitism.

Armed with a useless nineteenth-century map, a lumpy second-hand coat, and an unhealthy dose of curiosity Jill Culiner trudged through the snow in former Galicia, the Russian Pale, and Romania searching for Velvel. But she was also on the lookout for a vanished way of life in Austria, Turkey and Canada.

This book, chronicling a forgotten part of Jewish history, follows the life of one extraordinary Jewish bard, and it is told with wry humour by award-winning Canadian writer Jill Culiner.

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Born in New York, raised in Toronto, Jill Culiner has lived in England, Holland, Greece, Turkey, Germany and Hungary, keeping body and soul together by delivering newspapers, belly dancing, translating, tour guiding and a great many other tedious jobs. She presently resides in a small French village, similar to the not very pleasant one presented in her mystery, Slanderous Tongue.

For her non-fiction work, Finding Home in the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers, she crossed Romania on foot tracing the path of immigrants bound for North America at the end of the 19th century. The book won the Tannenbaum Prize for Canadian Jewish History in 2005 and was short-listed for the ForeWord magazine prize.

As a photographer, her exhibition concerning the First and Second World Wars, La Mémoire Effacée, has toured France, Canada and Hungary under the auspices of UNESCO and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As an artist/creator of social critical objects, her work has been exhibited throughout France and Germany, in Spain, England, Switzerland and Poland. It now fills La Boule d’Or, a former café/hotel transformed into a peculiar mini museum open to the public. Its wild garden (much to the distress of close neighbours) is a reserve for birds, butterflies, insects and reptiles.

She has spoken to genealogical and historical groups throughout the United States and Canada, has worked as a broadcaster for Radio France. An amateur musician (flute, piccolo, oboe, oboe d’amore, English horn) she plays in several orchestras and chamber groups. 

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Blog Tour & Giveaway for Into Africa by Egon Falk

 

Into Africa

by Egon Falk

Genre: A Biographical Story

This is a gripping and inspiring story of the greatest evangelist in Africa, Dr. Egon Falk, also known as Africa’s Billy Graham.

The book is testimony to his great love for the African people, his passion for serving God, and helping African people out of poverty, darkness, suffering, and pain.

This easy-to-read biography tells his story, including the humble beginnings as the son of a fisherman, his calling to Africa, the start of gospel crusades, amazing stories of signs, wonders, and miracles, and giving quality education to the poor and needy children by establishing schools in African communities.

Dr. Egon Falk has experienced hate from the witch doctors, who, through curses and spells, sent people to kill him.

Recently, a lady was sent to kill him, but through the love of God, she ended up delivered from demons and saved by the power of the Gospel.

His faith has been put to the test many times by people asking for physical healings.

A dying woman with a visible tumor as big as a soccer ball asked him to heal her in front of thousands of people.

With love and compassion, Dr. Egon Falk put his hand on her stomach and cried out to God.

Several thousand people at the crusade meeting experienced firsthand how God healed her, and the tumor disappeared.

Through anecdotes, his wife and children reveal the ups and downs of living with a man who has dedicated his life to the African people and God’s cause.

As you read this story of a person who had dedicated his life to helping people, you will be inspired and encouraged.

Hopefully, this story will motivate you to seek God and give you a passion for helping other people.

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Dr. Egon Falk was born and raised in a fisherman’s family on Bornholm, a small island in Denmark located in the Baltic Sea.

As a young teenager during his education to become engineer he formed a Christian band and ministered all over the island.

In the year of 1969 Dr. Egon Falk went into fulltime ministry as a traveling evangelist. In 1970 he expanded his ministry and moved to Norway. 1974 Dr. Egon Falk and his wife Hannah responded to Gods call upon their lives to move to Tanzania, East Africa and began their mission work. They arrived with two small kids and a few belongings and one year later their third child was born in a small African village.

From a very small and humble beginning the ministry New Life Outreach founded by Dr. Egon and his wife with more than 100 local co-workers is now a well-known ministry all over Tanzania and even outside its borders.

The name of Dr. Egon has become a household name and even this name is not African many children are named Egon. 

Dr. Egon and Hannah Falk has dedicated their lives to this great nation of Africa – TANZANIA.

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Blog Tour & Giveaway for Living Among the Dead by Adena Bernstein Astrowsky

Living Among the Dead:

My Grandmother's Holocaust Survival Story of Love and Strength

Holocaust Survivor True Stories WWII Book 3

by Adena Bernstein Astrowsky

Genre: Biography, Memoir 

This is the story of one remarkable young woman's unimaginable journey through the rise of the Nazi regime, the Second World War, and the aftermath. Mania Lichtenstein’s dramatic story of survival is narrated by her granddaughter and her memories are interwoven with beautiful passages of poetry and personal reflection. Holocaust survivor Mania Lichtenstein used writing as a medium to deal with the traumatic effects of the war.

Many Jews did not die in concentration camps, but were murdered in their lifelong communities, slaughtered by mass killing units, and then buried in pits. As a young girl, Mania witnessed the horrors while doing everything within her power to subsist. She lived in Włodzimierz, north of Lvov (Ukraine), was interned for three years in the labor camp nearby, managed to escape and hid in the forests until the end of the war.

Although she was the sole survivor of her family, Mania went on to rebuild a new life in the United States, with a new language and new customs, always carrying with her the losses of her family and her memories.

Seventy-five years after liberation, we are still witnessing acts of cruelty born out of hatred and discrimination. Living among the Dead reminds us of the beautiful communities that existed before WWII, the lives lost and those that lived on, and the importance to never forget these stories so that history does not repeat itself.

*2020 Reader's Favorite Gold Medal Winner in the Non-Fiction – Biography Genre!!

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Adena Astrowsky has dedicated her career to helping the most vulnerable of our society. She did this by prosecuting child sexual abuse cases and domestic violence cases within the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. She became the local expert concerning the prosecution of domestic violence related strangulation cases and taught extensively on that subject. Currently, she handles post-conviction cases on appeal and foreign extradition cases. Adena taught Sunday School at her temple for eight years, and in her last two years she co-taught "Character Development Through the Studies of the Holocaust." Adena contributes articles to MASK (Mothers Awareness on School-age Kids) Magazine, often writing about children's safety, drugs, law and order, etc. Once a month Adena volunteers at a local Scottsdale library with her therapy dog, Charlie, as part of the Tail Waggin' Tales Program. Adena has also chaired events to raise money for the Emily Center of Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Adena’s greatest role, however, is as the mother of three very active children. She, and her husband, Brad, are kept very busy with their respective dance, theater, music, and athletic activities.

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$25 Amazon giftcard – 1 winner, 

ebook of Living Among the Dead – 3 winners!

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Blog Tour & Giveaway for Slumberland by Derra Nicole Sabo

Slumberland 

By Derra Nicole Sabo 

Genre: Biography

How do you dream? Are your dreams in color or black n' white? Do they feel surreal or all too real? 

Well, I'd like to introduce you to my little slice of bittersweet. These subconscious woods hold every fear and my anxieties masked are as wolves. Nightmares that play on a loop for weeks, even months at a time. Symptoms of waking in cold sweats and shaking. The only moments of peace are found in the sporadically studded dreams that happen every now and again. These woods house every past demon as well as certain past versions of who I once was. This place is worse than death, yet it inspires. So... 

...Before my alarm clock goes off, before I take the last train out of here, I take one last glance back, one last glance at all of the Polaroids pinned to every tree branch, polaroids of every dream and nightmare that have stolen my nights since '95... 

These dreams...these woods...this place...it's my upside down... 

This is my Slumberland… 

Reviews: 

"I enjoyed ‘Slumberland.’ It is a poetic, dark, abstract look into Derra Nicole Sabo’s dreams. I was reminded of many odd and repetitious dreams.

I really liked Sabo detailing how the unfamiliar and the familiar can offer both comfort and terror to the dreamer. I’ve always known the fact, but had never thought about it in those terms before..." 

"I enjoyed weaving through every retelling of the author's remembrance of her dreams and nightmares. How she explains their importance through reflection of them is an eye-opener too..."ﾟﾟ

"there was something about Slumberland that resonated with me. It is, in essence, a collection of short dream stories that are weaved together in an inexplicable way. The author goes kind of dark, but her phrasing is beautiful. It is abstract and poetic..." 

(the little widgets after the reviews are supposed to be butterflies...if you can get them to be them? lol) 

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My name is Derra Sabo...I am California born and raised. I spend my days writing, sipping on coffee and listening to music. When I'm not busy typing away, I love spending time with my family and friends. Days spent at the beach ended by burgers at In-N-Out. Growing up I wanted to become a fashion designer/ drummer, but somewhere along the way writing grabbed ahold of me and I've never looked back. Over the years writing has aided in healing from my past. Being born and living with a rare disorder led to being bullied throughout life as well as surgeries growing up. Writing and music are my sanity. 

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Blog Tour & Giveaway for Slumberland by Derra Nicole Sabo

Slumberland 

By Derra Nicole Sabo 

Genre: Biography

How do you dream? Are your dreams in color or black n' white? Do they feel surreal or all too real? 

Well, I'd like to introduce you to my little slice of bittersweet. These subconscious woods hold every fear and my anxieties masked are as wolves. Nightmares that play on a loop for weeks, even months at a time. Symptoms of waking in cold sweats and shaking. The only moments of peace are found in the sporadically studded dreams that happen every now and again. These woods house every past demon as well as certain past versions of who I once was. This place is worse than death, yet it inspires. So... 

...Before my alarm clock goes off, before I take the last train out of here, I take one last glance back, one last glance at all of the Polaroids pinned to every tree branch, polaroids of every dream and nightmare that have stolen my nights since '95... 

These dreams...these woods...this place...it's my upside down... 

This is my Slumberland… 

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As someone with anxiety, writing is my way of speaking. When my verbal skills fail, my pen excels. I have always had something to say to the world and to the humans residing in it, I just could never get my mind and mouth to be on the same level. So, I picked up a pen and haven't looked back. I have a message for you. A message for my family, my friends and to all the beating hearts. Dear You is a letter personally written, from me to you. 

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