The Iranian revolution of 1979 launched a vast, global diaspora, with many Iranians establishing new lives in the United States. In the four decades since, the diaspora has expanded to include not only those who emigrated immediately after the revolution but also their American-born children, more recent immigrants, and people who married into Iranian families, all of whom carry their own stories of trauma, triumph, adversity, and belonging that reflect varied and nuanced perspectives on what it means to be Iranian or Iranian American. The essays in My Shadow Is My Skin are these stories. This collection brings together thirty-two authors, both established and emerging, whose writing captures the diversity of Iranian diasporic experiences. Reflecting on the Iranian American experience over the past forty years and shedding new light on themes of identity, duality, and alienation in twenty-first-century America, the authors present personal narratives of immigration, sexuality, marginalization, marriage, and religion that offer an antidote to the news media’s often superficial portrayals of Iran and the people who have a connection to it. My Shadow Is My Skin illuminates a community that rarely gets to tell its own story.

In the blink of an eye, a person's entire existence can change forever. At eighteen, Samantha Michael learned this in the most challenging way imaginable, when she was in a severe car crash at the hands of an impaired driver. After being rescued from the accident, Samantha was comatose and barely alive. Later, as she emerged from her coma, she would come to discover that terrifying moment was not the end but the beginning-the beginning of a lifetime of challenges and changes, tribulations and triumphs. With wisdom, grace and humour, Samantha recounts the aftermath of her injury and her personal, medical and emotional struggles to win back the happiness which was taken from her. She describes the impact on her family and friends, the lasting physical trauma with which she had to struggle, the pain of deferred dreams and the joy of eventually reclaiming her life and self, piece by piece, day by day. The Beauty of My Shadow will pluck a range of emotional chords as the reader experiences the euphoria, hope, doubt, fear, love and other feelings Samantha herself lived through in the days since her life was forever altered. Written candidly and from the heart, Samantha's story gives hope to those who have suffered similar trauma, as well as those who are simply wrestling with the ordinary challenges of daily life. Her memoir serves as a powerful reminder of the strength and versatility of the human spirit-that while adversity derails our path in life, undefeatable perseverance often helps us discover another route to take. A percentage of author royalties from the sale of this book are donated to charity. See book for details. Donated royalties are net of commissions.

Journey One: The story begins on Christmas 1988. The protagonist Alonzo/Alonso is riding on a bus crossing the Andes into Argentina from Santiago, Chile. He is traveling to San Francisco (Córdoba) to visit his exchange-student host family for the first time in ten years. During this journey, he is confronted with memories of the past through a continuous series of flashbacks. These include growing up black in a racially divided Chicago; the lingering effects of a sexual assault at ten; living in Madrid, Spain for two years; and his first visit to Argentina as an American Field Service participant, arriving to the town of San Francisco on his host brother s birthday and a day before Argentina won its first World Cup soccer championship. The first part ends when his host brother Sergio is smitten with a beautiful young travel agent assisting them in rearranging Alonzo s return ticket to the States. Journey Two: Alonzo returns to Argentina after one year and three months to be his host brother s best man; Sergio is marrying the young lady who assisted them in the travel agency. Alonzo s week-long stay and, in particular, Sergio s wedding day, are highlighted. This section ends at the Córdoba International Airport with Alonzo giving his good-byes to his host parents. Journey Three: The final portion focuses on specific events from 1994 2009. It begins in July 1994 with the death of Alonzo s mother, followed eight months later by the death of a sister from cancer. Subsequent chapters highlight his relocation from Lafayette, Indiana, to Ann Arbor, Michigan (with a month-long stay in Toledo, Ohio, during the OJ Simpson trial proceedings) and finding employment at the University of Michigan; traveling to Argentina in 1997, and again in 1999 for the last time; and finally, corresponding with Sergio in December 2009 from Santiago, Chile, before returning to the States after visiting a friend in Viña del Mar.

This is what I see exaggerated. That is why this is fiction! With me a new twist of the conscious. We think but never speak about the sensitive side. Place in metaphors and statements, presenting reality and a bonus of fiction. Welcome to my sighting, vision, and exaggeration of what could be true. Become my eyes, as you focus on the words. Now can you see what I see? Twisting scenes, transferring thoughts to an emotion, touching the unseen, holding hands with fear, realizing it's truth to an open opinion. This is why I felt compelled to tell the story. A plan from deep within set a sail for my new adventures of what I see, and what I think I see, and to learn the difference. Taught speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil, so I wrote it instead. These rules were never clarified outside the main ingredients. So telling the story this way makes it easier for my conscience, releasing a poison that was slowly trying to kill a humble soul. Sins and unwanted memories can be at peace, through the conclusion of a fictional story. Or is it? My gift of a fictional horror with an inspirational meaning. Read my exaggeration, and form your opinion of a book called Can You See What I See? I'm not a big fan of gambling, but I bet a pocket full of coins that this book is different, heads or tails. P.S. Remember three is a charm. Two more will follow.

POWER OF THE BLOOD WORLD Revised and Updated! Bloodlover is book 4 of a 4 vampire-novel series that throbs with danger, treachery, betrayal, cruelty and dark, sultry romance. In a world where the undead are wary of and competitive and view humans as only prey, amazingly, three Blooddrinkers from different eras and cultures are able to form relationships. But change breeds more change as their individual stories unfold, blending and escalating, adding pieces until the horrifying picture becomes clear: both species are in danger of extinction! Book 4 – BLOODLOVER Julien is the most compelling and mysterious of the elder vampires. His story predates that of the other three. The cruel century that spawned him and those that followed when he walked the earth alone and alienated have left him neither kind nor trusting. And Jeanette, the mortal he stalks, is definitely not trustworthy.

There will be blood. Ace of Spades meets House of Hollow in this villain origin story. Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood. The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom. But even as undeniable as she is, Laure is not the only monster around. And her vicious desires make her a perfect target for slaughter. As she descends into madness and the mystifying underworld beneath her, she is faced with the ultimate choice: continue to break herself for scraps of validation or succumb to the darkness that wants her exactly as she is—monstrous heart and all. That is, if the god-killer doesn’t catch her first. From debut author Jamison Shea comes I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me, a twisted dark fantasy that lifts a veil on the institutions that profit on exclusion and the toll of giving everything to a world that will never love you back.