Hineni Here I Am by Marshall Schoenke

Blurb:

If you were to look around you, and I mean really open your eyes and look around, a revolutionary change is being prayed for before we destroy this world.

Jesus is back and he is willing to jeopardize his life again, to be laughed at, spit upon, tortured, imprisoned, rejected, and murdered—again.

He wants you to know you are just as loved as he is, and he is not returning to be worshipped.

The Reality is Jesus has returned to Destroy death, as is the full prophecy of Immanuel found in Isaiah from the Oldest known remnants of ancient Hebrew Scriptures. Just who could this be who has known the oldest priesthood of the one and only Most High God Before Abraham?

Peace be upon you.

About the Author:

Marshall Schoenke is a musician/carpenter from Wildwood, Illinois who has had some startling spiritual revelations. He comes from a large religious family, and is married with two daughters, one step-daughter, and a granddaughter who has him wrapped around her pudgy little finger. He and his wife, Elizabeth, live in Lake County, Illinois with their dog, Amonte and cat, Amoshi.

Review:

Again, I realize editors should not review the books they work on. But this one was just too fascinating to pass up.

A few years ago there was a pop song that started out, “What if God was one of us? Just a slob riding on a bus…” What’s really funny is that I’ve reviewed quite a few apocalyptic novels lately. What’s not funny is that this man really believes he’s the reincarnation of Jesus.

Hineni Here I Am is a thought-provoking book, to say the least. Mr. Schoenke tells his autobiography. He claims to remember the moment of his conception. Not so much gestation, and the story of his birth is told more from the memories of his parents than a first-person account (thank goodness!). He tells anecdotes of his childhood like the time he pulled his baby brother out of the crib, propped him up with a bunch of stuffed toys and proceeded to give them Communion. When his mother, aunt and grandma questioned him, he told them he was going to be the “top dog priest.” Another time, when serving as an altar boy, Mr. Schoenke was shocked to learn the youngest child of a family he was close to was being buried. He became hysterical, sure he could raise the child from the dead. He could always feel other people’s pain, and never understood why.

In fact, Mr. Schoenke didn’t understand much of what was happening to him until a wasp stung him and he coded. Most people go to the light and see deceased love ones. Mr. Schoenke saw three globes of blindingly bright blue-white light and heard music emanating from them. One came forward and said, “Welcome home, Jesus. You’ve done well.”

Up to that point, all he’d done was write a few songs with spiritual lyrics. He felt he had a lot more to do and said so. The Mother retreated, and a deep, masculine voice emanated from the center globe. “So mote it be. You may return.” When he returned to the room, he hovered over his body. The paramedics had already called time of death and were packing up. One had a breathing bag just sitting on his face. Mr. Schoenke returned to his body and moved his arm to get the guy with the bag to help him start breathing again. He suffered no brain damage.

That is just the beginning of Mr. Schoenke’s journey. He states he is not here to be worshipped, and that was not the message he was spreading the first time he was here, either. Actually, he confirms many of my beliefs about Jesus Christ, what his ministry was originally about, and how it got garbled as it came down to modern Christians. To be honest, in light of my own beliefs, I can’t completely dismiss the man’s claims. But I can’t completely accept them either. Nor does he want money.

Hineni Here I Am is clearly not written by a professional author. Mr. Schoenke even apologizes to me in the acknowledgments for not always taking my advice. (We did some wrangling, and a lot of my comments ended up being “Argh!” But it’s his book.) If you want something to think about with entertaining moments, I highly recommend Hineni Here I Am.

Author Website:  http://MarshallSchoenke.com

Heat Rating:  G

Length:  387 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $15.99

Digital:  $2.99

Buy Link:  TBA

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Letters to Daniel by Amy Leigh McCorkle

 

Blurb:

Through a series of open letters to her favorite actor, Daniel Craig, the author details her struggles with abuse, mental illness, and her ultimate triumph over both.

About the Author:

Amy McCorkle was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky.

She has lived in New Mexico and Texas as well, but she currently makes her home in Shepherdsville, Kentucky.

An award-winning blogger, she is also a successful author in both the sci-fi erotic romance genre with No Ordinary Love and a dark romantic suspense tale, Another Way To Die. She’s also written the first two books of a Mad Max meets Gladiator series set to be a trilogy. She has placed second in the 2011 Preditors & Editors Readers Choice Poll for Best Short Romance Story and semi-finaled with Another Way to Die in the 2012 Moondance International Film Festival.

From Hydra Publications, she has released Set Fire to the Rain as well as her first print novel, Bounty Hunter. She is co-authoring the Gunpowder & Lead series with Melissa Goodman.

Her work is flavored by her childhood heroes, pop culture, music, and the cinema, as well as the writers she still enjoys reading today.

Review:

Letters to Daniel was an excellent book that I couldn’t finish reading. Let me explain. It’s a series of open letters to Daniel Craig. Yes, the actor—the one who played James Bond. These letters detail Ms. McCorkle’s struggles with child abuse, bi-polar disorder, and food addiction.

To quote Meatloaf, “Two out of three ain’t bad.” Well, actually, in this case they are. Okay, you can almost make that three out of three. While Ms. McCorkle suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her cop father, I suffered emotional abuse at the hands of my adoptive mother. A friend recently told me about something going around on Facebook, I think, that said something like, “The compulsion to apologize is a sign of emotional abuse, so don’t be a jerk when you encounter someone who does that.”

To which I replied, “Thank you. I’m sorry.”

But I digress. I’m also bi-polar and a food addict. And I read Letters to Daniel the week I buried two human family members and one canine one. I wanted to eat everything in the kitchen, including the cabinets.

Did I mention I also spent a holiday weekend with my ex and his bride? He divorced me because of my mood swings. Don’t get me wrong, I really like his new wife. She’s a sweetie. But I felt overwhelmingly lonely the whole weekend. And guilty. There was my daughter’s father-in-law who’d just lost his wife of fifty-plus years, and there I was having a pity-party because my ex of thirty-plus years had remarried—again. Yeah, I know: feelings are neither right nor wrong; they just are.

So, I pick up Letters to Daniel, and except for the sexual abuse and the fact that Ms. McCorkle hasn’t yet married, I’m reading my life story. Oh, and Ms. McCorkle is much farther along in her career than I was at her age.

Then I started thinking about when my funk began, and I realized it was before the death-watch, before the funerals, before the ex and his bride came to town, before his mom took me aside and gave me the “Shelley Dear, I was so proud when you lost weight. What happened?” speech. (I’m still “Shelley” to a few family members.) That’s when I realized at least one of my meds has quit working. I’m seeing my psychiatrist tomorrow as I write this, and that’s at the top of my agenda.

I was seventy-two percent of the way through the book when I put it down and just cried. I guess I needed that. I’m told the end is very inspirational. Somehow, through the funk, and the self-pity, and the tears, I found the whole book inspirational. I highly recommend Letters to Daniel. I just don’t recommend reading it in the midst of a bi-polar/ food addict breakdown. Hopefully I’ll start new meds tomorrow and be able to finish it eventually.

Author Website:  http://www.amazon.com/Amy-Leigh-McCorkle/e/B006T5AAA0/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Heat Rating:  R

Length:  253 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $14.95

Digital:  $3.99

Buy Link:  http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Daniel-Amy-Leigh-McCorkle-ebook/dp/B01A1V35IQ

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