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Famous German heroin addict hooked again
Thirty years ago, a bestselling book about Christiane F's experiences as a 15-year-old heroin addict shocked Germany and the world. Now, after years spent trying to overcome addiction, she is taking hard drugs again, according to Berlin media reports.
German social services have taken the 12-year-old son of Christiane F. into care amid media reports that she is back on hard drugs. Now 46, she came to prominence in the late 1970s when two journalists wrote an international best-selling book about her life in the West Berlin drugs and prostitution scene.
"She can no longer cope with bringing up her child and with her duty to look after him," a spokeswoman for the social services department in Potsdam-Mittelmark near Berlin said.
Her boyfriend Joachim S., 37, told Bild newspaper that she was regularly snorting heroin and drinking alcohol.
Horst Rieck, one of the two authors who wrote the book "We Children from Bahnhof Zoo" about Christiane's slide into addiction and prostitution in and around the West Berlin train station called Bahnhof Zoo, told SPIEGEL ONLINE she had seemed "very tense" when he last saw her 14 days ago.
The book was translated into 15 languages and was made into a film in 1981. It tells how Christiane became dependent on heroin aged 14 and prostituted herself to pay for drugs.
(continued at link) Thirty years ago, a bestselling book about Christiane F's experiences as a 15-year-old heroin addict shocked Germany and the worl... more -
Soul Wisdom is profound wisdom!
For those seeking spiritual remedies to health related issues, and/or those looking to advance in their soul's journey, may I recommend a new book released this month? It is the updated and revised edition of Soul Wisdom: Practical Soul Treasures to Transform Your Life by New York Times best-selling author, Dr. and spiritual Master Zhi Gang Sha. This very unique book contains powerful healing blessings and a beautiful CD to support your brain function and spinal column. It has helped me tremendously and I am gifting a copy to each of my special loved ones!
Three other recommended books by Dr. Sha are Power Healing, Soul Mind Body Medicine and Soul Communication. Do enjoy! For those seeking spiritual remedies to health related issues, and/or those looking to advance in their soul's journey, may I rec... more -
Aim at 'Spiritually Interested' Sparks 'The Shack' Sales
A little novel written by an Oregon salesman and self-published by two former pastors with a $300 marketing budget is lighting up USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list with a wrenching parable about God's grace.
First-time author William P. Young's book The Shack, in which the father of a murdered child encounters God the Father as a sarcastic black woman, Jesus as a Middle Eastern laborer and the Holy Spirit as an Asian girl, is No. 8 on the list.
Published a year ago and promoted by snowballing attention on Christian radio, websites and blogs, The Shack ($14.99) is now in mainstream bookstores and Wal-Marts nationwide, and the trio behind it are talking to Hollywood about a possible film deal.
Aimed at the "spiritually interested," the novel had an inauspicious start, says co-publisher Brad Cummings, who is still shipping books from the garage of his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and nearby mini-warehouses.
Young says that when he wrote the book in 2005, "my only goal was to get copied and bound at Kinko's in time for Christmas as a gift to my kids."
Until The Shack sales soared, he was a manufacturer's representative for a technology company by day and did website design work on the side. But he had always been a writer, he says, who gave poems and stories as gifts.
He wrote the book to explain his own harrowing journey through pain and misery to "light, love and transformation" in God to his six children, ages 14 to 27.
Eleven years ago, Young says, he was hanging on by a thread, haunted by his history as a victim of sexual abuse, by his own adulterous affair, by a life of shame and pain, all stuffed deep in his psyche.
"The shack" was what he called the ugly place inside where everything awful was hidden away. The book is about confronting evil and stripping the darkness away to reveal a loving God within, he says.
Shortly after he finished the manuscript, Young read a parable book by Wayne Jacobsen, a former pastor who had turned to publishing his own spiritual titles.
When he discovered Jacobsen was doing a reading at a bookstore near Young's home in Gresham, Ore., Young brought him the manuscript. "I was taken immediately," Jacobsen says.
Even so, "Christian publishers told us it was too edgy, and secular ones said it was too Jesus-y," Cummings says.
So Cummings and Jacobsen published it themselves, as Windblown Media, and all three embarked on a word-of-mouth, church-to-church, blog-to-blog campaign to get copies out.
Now, "there are 880,000 copies in print, 750,000 in distribution, and we're talking to New York publishers," Young says.
Lynn Garrett, senior religion editor for Publishers Weekly, calls the book's success "most unusual. It's every self-published author's dream to start out this way and sell at this level."
Why are so many heading for The Shack?
"People are not necessarily concerned with how orthodox the theology is. People are into the story and how the book strikes them emotionally," Garrett says. A little novel written by an Oregon salesman and self-published by two former pastors with a $300 marketing budget is lighting up USA ... more -
Chetan Bhagat - Best Indian Novelist of 21st Century.
FOR all our billion-strong population, 620 million of whom can officially read, India is hardly commercially viable territory for the workaday novelist. The typical Indian "bestseller" sells between 3,000 and 5,000 copies; a true success is one that remains in print for years, with successive reprints of 2000 copies or so every nine or twelve months. In this modest market, One Night @ the Call Center has reportedly sold over 1,00,000 copies in the two months since its publication, and the demand shows no sign of letting up. Its author,
Chetan Bhagat, a 31-year-old whizkid with degrees from two of our country's most prestigious educational institutions — a bachelor's in engineering from IIT and a MBA from IIM — works for Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong and dabbles in didactic fiction in his spare time. The success of his previous novel, Five Point Someone, a tale of three college friends, shows he has a talent for tapping into the zeitgeist; that he is not much older than the people he writes about makes him a particularly credible portrayer of their world.
Read More about books and review at
http://www.worldamazingrecords.com FOR all our billion-strong population, 620 million of whom can officially read, India is hardly commercially viable territory for the ... more -
COMPLETED: Ask Christian Serratos about "Twilight" or anything else...
Christian Serratos will be here later today to talk about being in the movie "Twilight," based on one of the most popular and best-selling vampire books around. Ask her anything you want below and it could get picked to have her answer it on TV.
Make sure you put your name, age and location in your profile, plus a picture of yourself. Also, if you have a webcam do your question via video.
Message me with any questions.
Thanks!
NOTE: Thanks for all of your great questions! Christian's already been in and we'll post her answers to some of your questions shortly. Thanks everyone for participating! Christian Serratos will be here later today to talk about being in the movie "Twilight," based on one of the most popular an... more -
Hemingway: the most inspirational toilet reading
Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Last year, SMITH Magazine re-ignited the recountre by asking readers for their own six-word memoirs. They sent in short life stories in droves, from the bittersweet (“Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends”) and poignant (“I still make coffee for two”) to the inspirational (“Business school? Bah! Pop music? Hurrah”) and hilarious (“I like big butts, can’t lie”).
Not Quite What I was Planning: Six Word Memoirs from Writers Famous and Obscure [the book] collects almost 1,000 six-word memoirs, including additions from many celebrities including Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Dave Eggers, Richard Ford, Deepak Chopra, Moby, and more. A New York Times bestseller and subject of hundreds of stories from The New Yorker to NPR and hailed as "American haiku," SMITH's book of six-word memoirs is both a moving peek at the minutia of humanity and the most inspirational toilet reading you'll ever find.
Everyone has a story. Can you tell yours in six words? Submit yours to be considered for SMITH's next six-word memoir book.
http://www.sixwordmemoirs.com
Post below for fun.. Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”... more -
Flying Book Trailer
It's not a straight up side show. I put as much immagination into my trailers as I do my books.
www.patcromwell.com
Vincent Rutland is complex. Eliot Marie Lays is a woman haunted by tragedies. Their one and only meeting is emotionally and sexually explosive. It starts a chain of events neither anticipated nor can control. The meeting is literally devastating for Eliot and life altering for Vincent. It's also the catalyst that leads him to Antoinette, Eliot's beloved friend. While he has a special bond with Eliot, it is Antoinette who captures his heart, his soul, and ultimately his trust. But she is hiding a secret from Vincent -- a secret that is directly related to that night. Once revealed, will he find it in his heart to forgive her or will he choose the path of no return that Eliot has embraced?
www.amirapress.com It's not a straight up side show. I put as much immagination into my trailers as I do my books. www.patcromwell.com ... more -
Behind Blue Eyes: Meet the man
Okay so it's a slideshow but take a look at this guys ..... Besides, it was my first trailer and put together before I was clued into the art of mixing video (smile)
Available at Amira Press (www.amirapress.com) this interracial romance is packed with a spicy hot storyline and so many twist and turns you'll think you're watching an HBO movie!
Behind Blue Eyes
Debut novel by
Pat Cromwell
Michael's goal is to have it all - falling for the bosses' daughter wasn't part of the plan. But some things are worth the risk, and she was it! Soon Michael is pitted against a man he once considered his mentor and Seine becomes an unwitting pawn in the game of cat and mouse between the two men. She quickly realizes she's in the position to end it. She just has to decide which team to play on.
Will it be family loyalty or the man who owns her body and soul; will she trust the love Behind Blue Eyes? Okay so it's a slideshow but take a look at this guys ..... Besides, it was my first trailer and put together before I was clued... more -
When Dreams Come True Book Trailer
It's not a straight up slide slow. Another PAC spicy romance to tease the soul published by Red Rose Publishing (www.redrosepublishing.com)
When Dreams Come True.
Synopsis
Chris is jaded. Finally free from an abusive relationship, she has adopted a love-them-and-leave-attitude when it comes to men. The last thing she wants is to get involved emotionally with Kenneth, however she has no qualms pursuing a no strings attached relationship. After all, he's drop dead gorgeous, with sexy deep blue eyes, and a personality that is off the charts charming.
Kenneth, however, has other plans.
The minute he saw Chris, he made his intentions clear that he wanted more than a casual affair. A straight shooter, Kenneth pursues Chris with a sometimes comical edge, but always with a determination to overcome their biggest obstacle -- Chris's steadfast refusal to believe that love at first sight is real and that he is serious when he says he loves her and is the man of her dreams.
But how do you convince someone, who has been hurt in the past, that the flame he's carrying for you now is meant to give warmth and not to burn? Will he succeed at convincing her that when dreams come true nothing will be left of yesterday's pai It's not a straight up slide slow. Another PAC spicy romance to tease the soul published by Red Rose Publishing (www.redrosepub... more -
The Pelé of literature
We are talking about the most prolific writer all over the world. He`s inside International Guinness Book of Records with more than 1.075 books published. The literary production of the untiring Ryoki Inoue is also to be compared to Georges Simenon by some intenational critics. Some other compare his style and his production velocity to Sidney Sheldon. Other say he could be put right beside Harold Robbins, mainly because the way he writes his trams and thrillers.
More about this author at his official site http://www.ryoki.com.br We are talking about the most prolific writer all over the world. He`s inside International Guinness Book of Records with more than 1.... more
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