Autobiographies

When I first started this book I needed a reason to write it... What did my life have to offer? It’s not extraordinary or exceptional... But it is filled with insight and my personal wisdom which comes from experience. This story will take you down many roads... From good to bad, to very bad, to a new light, to success, to loss, to lonely happiness.

There is a message in the end... I gathered all the memories I could bring forward. It took months and I kept adding to the bigger picture. Then another year while I re-wrote it adding structure and insight. Gave it a meaning and reason. Then designed it to induce some of your own forgotten memories. Life’s a bitch but all the wrongs in the end created a huge right.

This story will exploit all the things that have made me who I am today. The things that have shaped my life and mind, even the most shameful things. Exposing my experiences will justify and give credit to my words in my other books which are blunt and to the point. Why am I such a hard ass... So opinionated... So truthful... Well read and find out why...

This is a novel about one woman’s journey of healing and self-discovery after the tragedy of losing her husband.

“Kladno Tales” (Kladenske Povidky) is a collection of short essays taken from the views and experiences of an American high school English teacher living in the town of Kladno, a former industrial town located 20km from Prague in the Czech Republic.

He writes about local people and places as well as about his teaching experience and his relationships with the students. Kladno Tales is very entertaining light reading which gives the reader an idea of what it’s like for a man to integrate into a foreign society, become accepted as a local and after some time feel more at home in the foreign society than in the one in which he grew up.

This has to stop, putting people in prison for sex crimes that never happened. It’s ruining too many lives. Someone has to do something. My life has been destroyed and the sad thing is I’m not the only one this has been done to.

I know how awful it is for an innocent man to be in prison. In my case I am the victim, yet I am a dot on the sex offenders map. I have spent time here in this prison, a place that tries to suck not only the life out of you but also the soul.

Every day I fight the desire to give up and just become a part of the prison, but I won’t let myself because I don’t belong here. I have not committed any crime. I believe I was put here not by mistake, but by intention. I have yet to find the answer to why. In many sleepless nights here in this locked cell, far from home, I have searched for the answer.

The Living Soul is the story of the life of Charles Collins; a man who overcame the challenges of growing up poor to join the US Army and serve his country in Viet Nam, marry, complete a Civil Service career, and ultimately found his way to a close relationship with God. This book also includes many of his original poems.

Born Dead to Live Again is about a young man being literally born dead. How a black woman in a levee camp in Saint Joseph, Louisiana in 1946 would lift up the white child before the Lord like the lion cub in Lion King was lifted up. Her prayers would give the child strength to go forward.

Impossibilities would follow him all his life, but the Word of God would deliver him from them all.

The young man would go on to be the manager of Engineering, Maintenance, and Product Development at one of International Paper’s top research centers in the United States.

Today he has a television ministry and a ministry to help women suffering from drug and alcohol addition, along with teenage pregnancies.

“ALONE” presents the thoughts and feelings the author experienced following the death of Betty, his beloved wife of over fifty-five years.

There was no choice for him but to endure this tragic event, but he found it extremely difficult to participate in life while being all alone. Ever so slowly, he devised a plan to try to accept that life-shattering day, cope with the pain and grief of all the days that followed, and learned to live alone.

Using the foundation of God’s Word, Forgiveness, Acceptance, Determination, Thankfulness, Courage, Bravery and Endurance he began to rebuild a new way of life.

The life of growing up in a small North Carolina community called Shillingtown in a home of love, discipline, respect, and responsibility yet weak in education but rich in faith and religious beliefs. I am one who had an unfaithful father, a handicapped mother, a grandfather who was the apple of my eye, and a great grandmother who attended school only three weeks but knew the Word and lived the Life. Believe me, family life was great in my days!

After a face to face call from Jesus Christ to “be a missionary”, Finis left the security he had become accustomed to and moved forward in faith. The journey was a challenge, an adventure, and sometimes an unexpected and delightful experience as the Holy Spirit opened doors, and Finis simply stepped out with Shirley in faith and trust through a great 30 years of life as missionaries in South Korea!

Hooked on blogging is a compilation of short stories. They consist of memoirs and incidents both current and past in the life of the author. Some are funny, some are sad, many are thought provoking, all of them are true. The comments from others about each story are sometimes more interesting and meaningful than the story itself.