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Showing posts from January, 2023

“Witness to the Afterlife”: A Review of Absent Witness by Karl Petry, with Karen McLean

   (Visionary Living Publishing, 2016). ISBN: 978-1-942157-04-5 A quick disclaimer to start. As many of you know, I am married to a talented psychic medium, and we have been an investigative team in the field of the paranormal for nearly a decade. My daughter is also a gifted psychic medium, and I have worked with and met several others over the years. The publisher of this book is also the publisher of a book that my wife and I wrote, Watch Out for the Hallway: Our Two-Year Investigation of the Most Haunted Library in North Carolina . That said, I believe that my experience with psychic mediums and with this publisher, whom I know to be highly respected and honest, makes me more—rather than less—qualified to give an equally honest review of this book. The first item of note about Absent Witness is that it goes into more detail about the author’s childhood/family life than many books by psychics. Having spent a good bit of time in Newark and Kearny, New Jersey, in my youth, I fo

“Peace, Love and Rock n Roll!”: A Review of My Runaway Summer by Larry Schardt

  (Year of the Book, 2022). ISBN: 978-1-646491-56-8 Larry Schardt, known and loved across the highways and byways of America for his mantra, “Peace, Love, and Rock ‘n’ Roll!” is an educator, motivational speaker, and champion of “Success that Rocks!” who has been motivating audiences for thirty-five years, thirty of which he has spent at the venerable home of the Nittany Lions, Pennsylvania State University. A prototypical Hippie—albeit in pressed shirt and neatly knotted tie instead of tie-dye—Larry runs writers’ retreats and is the author of the bestselling book James Conner: The Triumphs of a Football Hero , which BookAuthority voted amongst the top 25 all-time-best sports books ever written. My Runaway Summer , however, is not a sports biography. It is Larry’s poignantly personal, open, and passionate account of a memorable summer he spent in his early teens. I first met Larry “Rock ‘n’ Roll” Schardt at the WV Writers Conference in the summer of 2013. I was immediately take