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Spirituality

How I Found My Inner Spiritual Compass

 

 

I’m not sure why other people read and/or write books, but I wrote mine to save my life. I was struggling with what was going on around me and inside me. I was unhappy, and I knew there had to be more; more joy, more happiness, more fulfillment.
Historical fiction, stories of the spiritual heart and spiritual exercises gave me keys where I developed my inner compass that would help me produce more of the experience of life that I was looking for but hadn’t managed to secure.Throughout my adult life, I became a serious student of the spiritual. I found that, often, psychological principles and practices were incomplete, but could be filled out by adding the missing spiritual component. My approach was always to see practical applications for what I uncovered in the mystical. It was through immersing myself in this field of study and experience that I came up with the idea for, Einstein’s Compass. In EC I gave young Albert a few of my transcendant spiritual experiences. #followyour heart

https://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Compass-Time-Traveler-Adventure-ebook/dp/B07KRMNPZK

Einstein’s Compass a YA Time Traveler Adventure

Garden of Remembrance

There was light. Johann wondered about that. Whatever its origin, a bright vortex of light seemed to be pulling him up. He felt oddly at peace. In fact, he felt terrific. As Johann transcended his body, a veil lifted, and it seemed to him as if he floated in space. He closed his eyes and drifted in his consciousness.

After an indeterminate amount of time, he awoke and found himself laying in a garden. Lush, green lawns with paths of iridescent stone that formed gentle rambling arcs through the greenery surrounded a glistening white building. A river with calm, blue waters flowed past where Johann lay. Sitting up, Johann saw that lush beds of giant purple roses and red-and-white tulips dotted a nearby hillside. On the far side of the building lay a valley where he could see people dressed in white walking. As he stared at the scene, Johann realized their legs were not moving; they were gliding just above the ground toward the building.

Johann’s mind rebelled as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. In confusion, he wondered what had happened and how had he gotten here—and where “here” was. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. Receiving no inspiration, he opened his eyes to see a radiant young woman dressed in white approaching him.

The Light Initiate, Kendra, smiled, inwardly hearing Johann’s questions. “You are safe now, Johann,” she said, reassuring him.

Johann shook his head in disbelief. “Safe? I’ve been run over by a train!” To prove it, he looked down, and his eyes grew wide as he saw his body was whole and well. “What…? How…? Who are you?” Johann tried to stand but stumbled.

With a quick step, Kendra caught Johann’s arm and eased him back to the soft ground. “It’s all right. I know you have a million questions.” Placing her hand on her chest, she said, “My name is Kendra, and I am an agent of God sent to help you.” As Johann’s jaw dropped, Kendra squeezed his arm and sat. “Here, let me see if I can explain this to you.” Johann nodded blankly.

With warmth and caring, Kendra asked, “What is the last thing you remember?”

Johann gazed down and blinked several times, trying to capture his last moments. “I… I was on my bicycle, and the streetcar came along… and, I… fell.” As he said that, awareness hit Johann. “Oh my God! Am I, ah, am I… dead?”

With a compassionate smile, Kendra leaned in and took Johann’s hand. “Well, Johann, you are no longer living as you once did. Your body has been damaged beyond repair. It is, indeed, dead.” Johann gulped as Kendra continued. “But you, my dear friend, are far from dead as people on Earth imagine that state.”

Johann pinched himself. It felt like a pinch always had. “Um, I guess I see what you mean.” He looked around. “Yeah, no one with wings and harps that I can see, heh-heh,” he said, reaching for a joke.

Kendra kissed Johann’s hand. “Excellent, Johann. Some people take a lot longer to accept what has happened to them.”

Relaxing in the love that was the essence of this plane of existence, he asked, “But where am I. What am I?”

“Those are exactly the right questions,” Kendra said encouragingly. “You are in God’s Garden of Remembrance. Some call it Summerland and consider it Heaven. You will see people here whom you know, those who have passed on. You are what some people might call an angel—but not what people traditionally think angels are.”

“But what does that mean, Kendra?”

With another bright smile, she said, “It means that soon you will have a new role in which to serve the people on Earth. And some people very specifically,” she said with a wink.

Johann’s mind was reeling; he shook his head in disbelief. “But if I am dead, why do I have a body?”

Kendra laughed, her eyes sparkling with delight. “You have a body here because you are on the astral plane, which makes you appear as if you have a body. Many realms of beingness exist.

People are aware of the physical realm and can identify it. It is evident: You have a physical body, so you exist on that physical realm. The astral body is a replica of the physical body, but subtler. It is a sheath of energy that most people inhabit immediately after death. When we are alive, the astral body remains attached to the physical body via a stream or ribbon of energy. You can leave the physical body during sleep, coma, meditation, or when you’re in a kind of trance. Sometimes people extend out of the body under the influence of drugs, or as you experienced, in an accident.”

Then Kendra furrowed her brow and asked, “Can you recall what you felt when you left the Earth plane?”

Johann sighed and thought about it. “I was falling. Then I felt lifted in bright, white light.”

He held his hand to his heart and closed his eyes. “Loving filled and surrounded me. It was so beautiful. I was floating. I think I might have fallen asleep. When I opened my eyes, I was here.”

With a gentle smile still radiating from her eyes, Kendra nodded and reached out toward Johann. “Excellent. Sometimes when people are in an accident or experience a violent death, they don’t recognize what happened and stay tied to their physical body. They wander around on Earth, not knowing they need to move on until someone of an elevated consciousness can guide them to their next level.”

“Really?” Johann asked, fascinated.

Kendra nodded solemnly. “Uh-huh. But you didn’t resist, and allowed yourself to follow the love and the Light here,” she said approvingly. “So, are you ready to discover what is in store for you? There is much for me to show you.”

For some reason, Johann was not feeling scared or sad or worried. In fact, he was amazingly calm and relaxed. This Summerland garden seemed somehow almost familiar, and all Johann really felt was… loved.

He reached out, took Kendra’s hand, and rose to his feet. He sensed the rightness of it all. “I’m ready.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said a man’s voice from behind them.

As they turned, Kendra broke into a great smile. Two men stood there, both radiating peace. A sense of joy filled Johann as Kendra said, “Johann, I would like you to meet—”

Johann gulped, then tears filled his eyes. He fell to his knees, and the taller of the two men reached down and gently lifted him to his feet. “Now, now, Johann. No need for that.”

Johann wiped his eyes and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, uh…” Johann blinked and shook his head, trying to gather his thoughts. “You’re, um, Jesus, right?”

The man’s smile radiated from his eyes as he nodded and pointed to his companion. “Mm-hmm. And this is my friend, Moses.”

Moses nodded. “We have some special training for you in addition to what Kendra will be teaching you.”

“Training? For me? But why?”

Jesus put his arm around Johann’s shoulder. “Well, it has to do with a friend of yours. A boy named Albert Einstein.”

 

Is Ophelia Hamlet’s ‘Holy Grail’?

By: Paul Hunting, Author Shakespeare’s Revelation

The drowning of Ophelia: its mystical symbolism revealed

“Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered.” – Hamlet

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hidden in the symbolism and word-play of Shakespeare’s plays is the most important (forbidden) truth about who we really are and why we’re here on earth. In order to marvel at this subtext story, you may need to make the fundamental paradigm shift.

The key paradigm shift is to see the characters not as people in the real, historical, or fictional external world, but as characterizations of three pairs of archetypes of our primary internal states of consciousness. Having been a spiritual psychologist, theologian, and executive coach for over 30 years, I thought I was dreaming when I first realized that Shakespeare, to drive the plots of his plays, was using the exact same model of consciousness I have found invaluable to navigate my clients through the labyrinth of the ego into a more soul aware state.

The most confusing element of the subtext – and thus most intriguing – is the plethora of different symbols that refer to what Shakespeare ultimately calls ‘The Tempest’. The Tempest shows up like Alfred Hitchcock, in some guise, in all the plays. Often it’s so subtle it’s almost invisible (as in Measure for Measure).

At the anagogical level, the symbolic story Shakespeare always tells us is ‘How Adam and Eve lost the ‘Holy Grail’ and how Jesus Christ got it back’! ‘The Tempest’ turns out to be Shakespeare’s term for what has become mythologized as none other than ‘The Holy Grail’.

Hamlet is one of the most masterful disguises-and-thus-revelations of this never-before-realized analogy. As I said, if you suspend all disbelief and open your mind you may see this for yourself as I simply point out what the symbols say to me.

As you can see from the pictures, all these biblical and Shakespearean symbols seem to represent the one same thing, for convenience let’s just call it: ‘The Holy Grail’.

 

Ophelia’s role in Hamlet seems in part to represent the journey of Hamlet’s soul – independent of Hamlet as a mortal being.  The key symbol used for Ophelia’s mystical travels is a variation of the term ‘the waters’.

The waters are first seen in Genesis 1: 2 (And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.) In multiple forms of water (seas, rivers, brooks, streams, rain, etc) the waters is a ubiquitous symbolic reference throughout the Bible and Shakespeare. (For a fuller explanation please read my book, Shakespeare’s Revelation.)

Using a ‘brook’ to represent ‘the waters’ goes back to the biblical story of David and Goliath. Symbolizing the power of ‘the Name of God’ to vanquish ‘evil’, it’s interesting that the boy-king David, holding a staff (another symbol for the name of God), took five smooth stones (again, more symbolic names of God) from a brook before defeating Goliath.

No coincidence that Ophelia appeared to drown falling from a willow growing ‘aslant a brook’. (Bear with me!)

Combining these symbols with the images conjured by the poetry is all-important here. We have the image of a wronged-innocent being borne aloft and transported by a stream of water, adorned by (in particular) ‘coronet weeds’…and ‘long purples’.  While she is ‘chanting old lauds’ (praises).

 This, to me, evokes the images of the crown of thorns and the purple robe worn by Jesus at his trial and execution. Before you call the men in white coats, if you look, you’ll see elements of this motif also evident in many of the other plays, too. (Macbeth, for example, laments that: ‘upon my head they placed a fruitless crown and a barren scepter in my gripe’.)

In some of the ancient spiritual mystery schools, initiates chant ‘sacred tones’ to attune them to what’s sometimes called the Sound Current, the lifestream, that, it is said, draws the soul home to the Godhead – in the same way, it is the haunting music that draws Ferdinand to Miranda in The Tempest.

 After all, in Twelfth Night (Epiphany), music is ‘the food of love’ and the principal character, Viola, is named after a musical instrument, and disguised as a boy called Cesario (King).

Before she meets her watery death Ophelia is heard raving ‘madly’ chanting:

How should I, your true love know

From another one?

By his cockle hat and staff

And his sandal shoon.

A cockle hat is worn by a pilgrim (one on the journey to God) and sandals are often associated with Jesus

 

Then up he rose, and donned his clothes,

Again, alluding to the resurrection of Jesus.

And here’s the wonder of Shakespeare’s layer upon layer of symbolism: while Ophelia is ‘drowning’ in the glassy stream Hamlet is simultaneously traveling upon the waters to England.

It is on this watery voyage that Hamlet foils the plan of Claudius (Satan archetype?) to have the two ‘Jews’, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern murder him. And what is a ‘rosen Crantz’?

A crown of roses/crown of thorns! 

And there’s yet another layer of symbolism inherent here – if you can bear it:

One of the most persistent mythological motifs in the deepest drama is ‘symbolic resurrection’.  Shakespeare uses is his through, say, Desdemona, Juliet, and Cordelia who momentarily revive (or seem to) before their final death. Banquo ‘resurrects’ as a ghost. And here it is again with Hamlet. In surviving his attempted murder, he effectively ‘resurrects’ and when we see his new, upbeat mood in the final act this is corroborated.

 

Staying with this theme, things get even more delicious. When Hamlet arrives home in Denmark, just before he gets to Elsinore, he comes upon a cemetery outside the city walls. A grave is being prepared for none other than his beloved Ophelia. She is being buried outside the city walls because it is presumed she committed suicide. Why? (Gertrude’s description of her reported death says she fell from an overhanging bough.)

 

Why indeed? Surely, this is Shakespeare’s device for introducing his clincher symbol. Ophelia has to be buried outside the city walls. What does Hamlet find in the grave being dug for her?                                                         

             

                                                                                                       A  skull

The most iconic scene in all of Shakespeare is no less than an allusion to where Jesus was crucified and buried, outside the city walls at Golgotha, ‘The Place of a Skull’!

And when they came unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull…they crucified him.. Matthew 27:33

 

 

For a free eBook Contact: [email protected]

http://www.shakespearesrevelation.com

Paperback from Amazon: http://a.co/d/jgXcBWT

 

 

 

What is a Mystic?

During the 15th Century, the Spanish Inquisition punished people who had otherworldly experiences with God. Anyone who was a healer or had intuitive knowledge of God was burned at the stake. According to the church, the only way a person could hear the word of God was through a priest or minister. Today the term “mystic” is associated with the occult, magic, astrology and tarot readings. I want to educate people to know that the mystical is not dark magic nor should you be ostracized.

According to the dictionary, a mystic is a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.

Being a mystic is a spiritual, religious, and transcendental experience. St. Theresa of Avila, a former Jewess was a Catholic nun and a mystic in the 16th century. The Catholic Church venerates more than 10,000 saints with many being mystics. Patron saints are often chosen today because an interest, talent, or event in their lives overlaps with the special area. For example, St. Francis of Assisi was a mystic who loved nature and so he is the patron of ecologists. St. Francis de Sales was a mystical writer and so he is the patron of journalists and writers. St. Clare of Assisi, a mystic and the patron of television because one Christmas when she was too ill to leave her bed she saw and heard Christmas Mass — even though it was taking place miles away. Angels are also named as patron saints.

I do not claim to be a saint. However, there are saints among us who do the work of loving service. In 1973, I discovered a spiritual phenomenon called the Mystical Traveler Consciousness. The Mystical Traveler is in everyone and is the living love of the spiritual heart of Jesus Christ. Imagine having an intuitive flashlight to look into the darkness of your soul. With the Light of God and the Mystical Traveler exercising the living spirit within, you can step into an awareness that will lift and assist you in your life’s lessons.

In the “AHA” book, “Do You Have a Dream?” 140 Insights into Building Confidence, Overcoming Stress & Loving Yourself”, you will have 140 of my best insights to assist you in focusing on and discovering more of the wisdom, truth, and beauty within you.

Let go of the world around you, go inside, find your dream and follow the adventure of making it come true.

In your day-to-day learning, if you find a unique way of dreaming, pass it on. We on planet earth are students of life. Maybe you can share and become a thought leader too.

Grace Allison, http://www.gracethemystic.com Modern Mystic: I am a creative, enthusiastic, visionary who enjoys making a difference through service.

GracetheMystic, Modern Mystic Media
806-790-4845 | [email protected] | www.gracethemystic.com |
4408 14 Street Lubbock, Texas 79416

Americans are more anxious than before

File 20180509 34018 5fzs8z.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
39 percent of Americans report feeling more anxious than this time last year.
by Pathdoc/Shutterstock.com

Jacek Debiec, University of Michigan

Americans are becoming more anxious about their safety, health, finances, politics and relationships, a new online poll from the American Psychiatric Association finds. Compared to the results of a similar poll a year earlier, 39 percent of adults in the U.S. are more anxious today than they were a year ago.

As a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, I believe studies and polls like these help to identify individual and group vulnerabilities. They may provide clues for providing better clinical practice, implementing more effective public policies, and designing research projects that yield a better understanding of the causes of anxiety and better treatments.

Although anxiety is rising across all age groups and demographic categories, there are notable distinctions between certain groups.

For example, millennials are more anxious (especially about finances) than Gen-Xers or baby boomers – though boomers’ overall anxiety increased more than the other age groups. Women reported a greater increase in overall anxiety in all dimensions than men, and non-Caucasians’ overall anxiety rose faster in the preceding year than did Caucasians. Sometimes, anxiety occurs without clearly defined worries or awareness, suggesting the poll may have only captured part of a rise in adult Americans’ anxiety levels – and those adults’ anxiety may be affecting children and teenagers too.

While this poll was not designed to detect or diagnose anxiety disorders or pathological anxiety, it does indicate that people are perceiving greater potential danger to many elements of their well-being.

Anxiety is a lower-grade version of a fear response. Severe instances of fear – such as actual direct threats of pain, injury or death – can cause very real physical reactions, including a release of stress hormones into the bloodstream and changes in heart rate and blood pressure, as the body prepares to react rapidly.

Anxiety-triggered physiological responses are slower to develop, but can last longer. Rather than being caused by an immediate threat, it can happen as people adapt to changing situations, such as visiting new countries, starting a different job or experiencing major life transitions such as marriage, parenthood and aging. Often, anxiety dissipates as a person becomes more familiar with the new situation. Short-term and mild-to-moderate anxiety states are adaptive as they increase our alertness and prepare us for new challenges.

Although our genetic makeup controls much of our fear and anxiety responses, recent studies also implicate our social environment. Children are especially sensitive to their caretakers’ emotional states, which means that if more adults are more anxious, the same is true for kids.

But if it lasts, anxiety, like fear, can bring long-lasting physiological changes such as prolonged muscle tension, chronic high blood pressure and sleep disorders. Some groups may be particularly vulnerable to long-term anxiety, such as people with physical or cognitive limitations that make it hard to adapt to new situations.

For others, worrying can become so overwhelming that a person does not focus on other important areas of life issues such as work, school or relationships. An especially anxious person may become excessively sensitive to minor concerns, which may be manifested by overreacting or avoiding people or situations that are not dangerous.

The ConversationAlthough regular exercise, relaxation, healthy eating and time with friends and family are all known to reduce anxiety, these fixes may not be sufficient. To quote Martin Luther King Jr., given the social nature of anxiety, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This suggests that addressing actual threats and communicating carefully about perceived ones can have a beneficial impact on anxious Americans.

Jacek Debiec, Assistant Professor / Department of Psychiatry; Assistant Research Professor / Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

What is the biggest misconception about being a successful author?

The biggest misconception about being a successful published author is that when you finish your precious manuscript an agent will magically appear, sign you to a large publishing house and the money will roll in. All you have to do is write something.

The truth is writing is hard work. I spent more than forty years in various business industries in marketing and business development creating public images. I won the Dallas Business Journal Award in 2000 Retail for a shopping center in Dallas, Texas The Centre at Preston Ridge.

Writing a book can’t be that hard or so I thought.

I began my author journey after 9/11. I had just won the Dallas Business Journal Award when I was laid off. It took me two years to write eighty-eight pages, “A Dream is a Wish the Heart Makes”. I wrote and tore up many times before I felt ready to publish.

Excited with my new baby no agent came forward, no big publishing house came knocking on my door. I was told you have to have an established audience of thousands before an agent or publishing house will even talk to you.

Instead, I self-published. In 2004, the concept of being an indie author was unthinkable. When an agent heard you were an indie author they said you were a heretic and should be banned from the publishing world. Self-publishing was a new concept on Amazon. The self-publishing company I spent my hard earned dollars with did not follow through on their promises. Over the time of my contract, I lost a great deal of money and would years later assist a list of indie authors like me to sue them. Under several different publishing names, the company still exists making promises they cannot deliver.

The writing was still calling me to express myself. I wrote a series of self-help books that are based on forty years of my life where I explained how to use spiritual practices to change a life from fear to fun. In 2014, I rewrote my Dream book now called, “Do You Have a Dream 5 Keys to Realize Your Dream” which is available as an audiobook in my voice, an eBook and a workbook all available in bookstores and online. I won the 2016 bronze Spiritual and Inspirational Global Ebook Award, 2017 Texas Non-Fiction in Spiritual and Inspirational Award, 2017 Best Books Finalist Award. Still, no publishing house or agent has come calling.

While writing my non-fiction books I began the journey of writing fiction. If I thought writing a self-help book was hard, making up stories to entertain was three times as hard. Storytelling has a lot of rules that I am continually learning.

In 2014 after a trip to Jerusalem, Israel I chose to write an alternate history of Albert Einstein, “Einstein’s Compass a YA Time Traveler Novel”. Again, using my many years of exploring mystical teachings I wondered what if Einstein met spiritual beings who assisted him with his miracle theory? After four years of research and empty white pages on my computer, my novel has a completed first draft. God willing the book will be out by the end of 2018.

Now that my novel is in the hands of an editor, I spend my days on social media marketing my books. It is a full-time job. I spend as much time on my books as I would have to work for a company. Now the company is me, Modern Mystic Media.

There are millions of books on Amazon. Finding the right audience in the sea of good books and famous authors so people will find me and my baby is a hard work. Yet I am determined to have my work read. I love writing and connecting people with ideas that entertain, that make them think and maybe learn something.

When I write a press release of my new books or awards and send it to local and national media, most ignore me because I am self-published. You have to be with a well-known publisher for newspapers and media to pay attention.

The hallowed halls into a publishing contract are so slim there are many so-called experts that want to sell you software, textbooks, THE shortcut to publishing success. I have taken many seminars over the years in writing and publishing to where I think I can spot a scheme. Still, I have to monitor the impulse to buy that one thing that promises to sell more books.

In the future, you will see a lot of me everywhere. And, no agent or publishing company is helping with a big check or has opened doors. I show up every day and do what it takes to make my work visible.

Check out my books go to www.ModernMysticMedia.com. And, you can find me on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo in bookstores and online.

Sign-up to read a pre-launch copy of “Einstein’s Compass a YA Time Traveler Novel”, go to www.GraceBlairAuthor.com if you signup and read it, please review the book. The only way indie authors like me sell books is if readers will write reviews then Amazon and its algorithms will push my ratings to rise to the top of the charts. Finding one reader and one fan at a time may someday accumulate into thousands.

If you want to write books do it because you love it. However, you may spend more money than you make. Know its hard work and no one is going to chase you down to make you famous. You will be alone in your journey. You have to put the seat of the pants and the seat of the chair, staring at a blank page and find the story inside your creativity that will make the reader turn the page to find out what happens next. Then be responsible for publishing and marketing.

“The #writer must let his fingers run out the story of his #characters, who, being only human and full of strange dreams and obsessions, are only too glad to run.”

Ray Bradbury, The Zen of #Writing

Grace Allison’s “Do You Have a Dream Workbook 5 Keys to Realize Your Dream”, is a 2017 Best Book Awards Finalist in the category of Spirituality/Inspirational.

Grace Allison’s “Do You Have a Dream Workbook 5 Keys to Realize Your Dream”, is a Best Book Awards Finalist in the category of Spirituality/Inspirational.

Lubbock, Texas November 9, 2017—Allison’s book, which has been enjoying success since its publication in 2017 has been recognized for excellence. It presents a fresh approach to personal empowerment and energizing both inner and outer resources for achieving the things you want in your life and even exceeding your dreams. The Amazon Best Seller can be found in an E-Book, Audio Book in Grace’s voice and Workbook.

Allison says, “Our world is in the process of change, and change is one key element to most peoples’ discomfort and distraction from their happiness. Change does not have to be difficult.” Her book lays out in practical and doable steps how to align and strengthen the inner spirit with your outer life. It shows how to shift your inner experience from feeling out of control to expressing inner freedom, inner strength, peace, confidence, and love.

Author Grace Allison is a modern Christian Mystic and an award-winning self-help and motivational author who has assisted thousands to find their spiritual wisdom to solve everyday challenges.

Grace Allison describes herself as “a prime example of someone who pulled herself up by her bootstraps and took notes along the way.” When she turned to writing, she chose subjects that she was intimately familiar with—and their scope is surprising. She lives in Lubbock, Texas, where she leads workshops and maintains a private health and success coaching practice.

 

LOS ANGELES – American Book Fest has announced the winners and finalists of The 2017 Best Book Awards on November 9, 2017. Over 400 winners and finalists were announced in over 90 categories. Awards were presented for titles published in 2015-2017.

Jeffrey Keen, President, and CEO of American Book Fest said this year’s contest yielded over 2,000 entries from mainstream and independent publishers, which were then narrowed down to over 400 winners and finalists.

Keen says of the awards, now in their fifteenth year, “The 2017 results represent a phenomenal mix of books from a wide array of publishers throughout the United States. With a full publicity and marketing campaign promoting the results of the Best Book Awards, this year’s winners and finalists will gain additional media coverage for the upcoming holiday retail season.”

Winners and finalists traversed the publishing landscape: Wiley, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, St. Martin’s Press, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, Rowman & Littlefield, New American Library, Forge/Tor Books, John Hopkins University Press, MIT Press and hundreds of independent houses contributed to this year’s outstanding competition!

Keen adds, “Our success begins with the enthusiastic participation of authors and publishers and continues with our distinguished panel of industry judges who bring to the table their extensive editorial, PR, marketing, and design expertise.”

American Book Fest is an online publication providing coverage for books from mainstream and independent publishers to the world online community.

American Book Fest has an active social media presence with over 96,000 current Facebook fans.

A complete list of the winners and finalists of the 2017 Best Book Awards are available online at American Book Fest.

 

 

http://americanbookfest.com/2017bbapressrelease.html

 

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For more information or to arrange media appearances, contact:

 

Grace Allison, Author

[email protected]

www.ModernMysticMedia.com

806-543-