A Life Through Books

Christian Personal Growth, Christian Spiritual Growth

Date Published: September 28, 2021

Publisher: Clay Bridges Press

 Redemptive Grace uses personal accounts from the author's life to identify with people on topics that everyone faces. These transparent stories touch on anger, depression, self-harm, loss of a baby, death of a parent, separation, and divorce as well as triumph, joy, and hope. The reader will have the opportunity to journal their own experiences and thoughts in each section.

The heart behind Redemptive Grace is for the reader to:

●       Identify struggles and construct a plan for battling those issues.

●       Be reminded that God is in the details of each life.

●       Be encouraged in the truth of God's incredible love for every person.

●       Reflect on their own stories and find God's presence.

●       Understand that God's grace is so great that there is nothing that He can't or won't redeem.

About the Author

Amber was born and raised in western North Carolina. After high school, she spent some time living in other parts of the country. While she enjoyed the adventure of being in different places and meeting new people, she was happy to move back to the mountains. Amber says she took the scenic path to her college education, but she loves utilizing her bachelor’s degree in Sociology and her master’s degree in Education: Family and Community Services. Her education helped shape her thoughts, but her life experiences helped shape her heart. Amber has worked in the educational world for twenty years in every role from volunteer to substitute teacher to assistant to small group teacher. She has worked in church world for several years as a small group leader, Bible study teacher, children’s director, and women’s ministry coordinator.

Amber is married to Brian and together they have four children. Together, Amber, Brian and the kiddos still at home enjoy traveling, playing games, watching movies, trying new foods, and attempting to tame their dog.

Amber makes it a personal goal to remind every person she works with that they were created on purpose, with a purpose and for a purpose. She loves helping children and women connect the experiences of their lives with the presence of the God who created them and loves them.

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Business / Leadership / Biography

Date Published: September 28, 2021

What do a single rose in a crystal vase, a box of tomatoes, a knitting needle, a basketball, and a tingling earlobe have in common? They are all signals to Dr. Laura Murillo to live life to the fullest every day. A high-energy, results-focused change agent in the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) space, her undeniable passion for life stands as the foundation for her personal and professional brand.

As President and CEO of the award-winning Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, she has the uncanny ability to see a situation, not for what it is, but for what it can be. In Lead in Life, People. Passion. Persistence: Succeed in the New Era of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Murillo guides readers through the incredible, sometimes devastating, and victorious experiences that comprise her success—from earning a doctorate while pregnant, parenting a toddler, managing a parent’s illness, and working full time, to hosting multiple TV and radio shows in English and Spanish concurrently, and being appointed to the Washington, DC Federal Reserve Board’s Community Advisory Council, and more.

She uses her lived experiences as the daughter of immigrants, a woman, an executive, a media producer and host to inform her perspectives and insights as an authority on DEI, guiding corporations, organizations, and institutions to adopt a genuine culture of DEI. In this new era of DEI, corporations must make a solid, lasting commitment to full representation, fairness, and inclusion of all voices in every decision, at every level of a corporation, all the time.

Lead in Life illustrates why everyone in a corporation has value and a voice that must be heard.

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Memoir

Date Published: November 12, 2021

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

Seven-year-old Leslie has a serious problem: someone is trying to kill her.

She must fight to save herself and her little brother from the stark realities of living with their mother’s raging psychosis. To evade the evil Russian spies her mother believes are after them, they forgo sleep, speak in whispers, and live on the run. Her mother searches for hidden listening devices, writes rambling manifestos about the impending Communist takeover, and attempts to kill herself and her children to protect them from rape, torture, and murder at the hands of the government. Controlling the chaos seems impossible—Leslie rebels, which only angers her mother, but when she obeys, terrible consequences follow.

Eventually, the police place Leslie and her brother in foster care. Freedom from her mother’s paranoia and violent tendencies offers the young girl a glimmer of hope, but she plummets into despair under the oppressive weight of abusive, alienating homes. All seems lost until a teacher intervenes, risking everything to bring Leslie to safety, to show her the redemptive power of trust and patience, and to prove unconditional love is possible, even without the bond of blood.

When I Was Her Daughter is a raw, honest account of one girl’s terrifying childhood journey through madness, loss, and a broken foster care system, where only the lucky and most resilient survive.

About the Author

Visit the author online at LeslieFergusonAuthor.com.

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Date Published:10-01-2020

He’s done it again!

Dru Richman, winner of the National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts writing contest, is releasing a new collection of short stories that stretch the mind and warm the heart.

About the Author

During the days of the past thirty years, Dru has been a mild-mannered Macintosh computer maven. His company, Mac Help Desk [www.machelpdesk.com], continues to provide on-site Support, Sales, Training, and Service in the Macintosh and iDevice environments.

For more than fifteen years, Dru has been part of an international writing group called Brainz. Each month the group is charged with writing something — prose, poetry, short story, a song, screenplay — anything really, based on a one-word topic. Previous topics have included: mourning, fear, scars, numbers, and flying. Many of the stories in this book are generated from that group.

Dru lives in Richardson, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), with wifey Ava, and their four-legged love child, a standard poodle named Jacob.

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Historical Fiction

Date to be Published: November 2, 2021

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

After surviving a childhood under the oppressive rule of Chairman Mao’s “Cultural Revolution," a young, courageous teenager abandons her life in China for the freedom of the unknown in America. Arriving at the New York City doorstep of family members she’s never met, Ying-Ying has been promised they’ll help her learn English and accomplish her dream of attaining a college degree. But weeks later, she’s kicked out without explanation. Now a homeless immigrant, Ying-Ying must learn who to trust, how to find work, and how to succeed in a bustling metropolis that looks the other way. Overcoming obstacles of abandonment, heartbreak, and injustice in a foreign land, she remains fiercely determined to become a woman who will impact the world. An incredible story of second chances, Wings of Silk reminds the reader that underneath the fragile form of an individual, a strong and resilient heart is always ready to take flight.

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Inspirational / Mystery

Date Published: 08-10-2021

Publisher: Elk Lake Publishing, Inc.

Time.

Solomon is running out of it.

A broken and forgotten man fighting the demons of dementia, he longs for the past when both he and his beloved military town of Ginger Ridge once thrived.

When his stooped body collides with the hardened realities of the present, Solomon lies in a coma as an unidentifiable victim of a hit-and-run accident in a faraway city.

With nothing to keep him going but flashbacks of relationships from his past, Solomon has no idea what a difference he will make on the future …

About the Author

A wife of one, mother of three, and Tootsie to four, she currently write from her quiet two-acre corner of the world near Louisville, KY.

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 Children’s Fiction / Picture Book

Date Published: November 1, 2021

Publisher: Cayena Press, Inc.

“We the Dreamers” describes the journey of immigrating to a new place through the eyes of a child. The narrative text is poetic and full of emotion. The illustrations, which seem to dance and sing, convey the story of crossing borders as a child.

This children’s picture book, told alternatively in English and in Spanish, highlights all the emotions immigrants experience throughout their journey: the characters end up feeling mystified, bemused, or even bewildered upon entering the United States.

Using colorful, imaginative illustrations and poetic narrative, “We the Dreamers” connects with its readers in an emotional and compassionate way, and it opens up the floor to holding conversations about immigration with children.

Interview

What is the hardest part of writing your books?
Making short for children and choosing words appropriate for the age level.

What songs are most played on your Ipod?

Shakira and Gloria Trevi, and old songs from when I was growing up (which I hated back then but now I love) ;-)

Do you have critique partners or beta readers?

Yes, my sister and my mother are my harsh critics.

What book are you reading now?

Violeta by Isabel Allende.

How did you start your writing career?

I would say that I have always enjoyed writing, But writing as a career… I think it goes back to 2010 when I published my first book, “¿Por qué estoy gorda?”

Tell us about your next release.

Another picture book! I just launched a Kickstarter campaign to help me fund the children’s book about the Mirabal sisters. The book, titled “The Mirabal Sisters, From Caterpillars to Butterflies” is about the lives of three sisters that were assassinated in the Dominican Republic by the dictator who ruled the country back in 1960.

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