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Marlan Warren is a journalist, novelist, editor, playwright, screenwriter, blogger, website designer, and publicist. She is the author of the fictionalized memoir, Roadmaps for the Sexually Challenged: All’s Not Fair in Love or War and the AIDS memoir, Rowing on a Corner. She reviews for Midwest Book Review. Marlan is also a filmmaker.

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My life, your life, our lives inside and outside of Los Angeles and its angels.

Monday, August 26, 2019

Midwest Book Review: Judith Fein's Taboo-Busting Book of the Dead


Book Reviews, Book Lover Resources, Advice for Writers and Publishers
Reviewer's Bookwatch
Volume 19, Number 9
September 2019



Marlan Warren's Bookshelf

"Communicating with the dead has been a secret part of my life for many years." –Judith Fein

Judith Fein’s fourth deep travel memoir, HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE DEAD AND HOW CULTURES DO IT AROUND THE WORLD, invites us along on her decades of investigations and explorations of the final frontier: Death.
For most of her life, Judith Fein has seen and heard dead people. Not all the time, thank goodness, or it would not leave much time for this prolific journalist to write about her soul-searching globetrotting with her ever-skeptical photojournalist husband, Paul Ross. "Judie and Paul" are the "Nick and Nora" of the travel adventure-supernatural set. She can see a ghostly figure in the middle of nowhere and believe it to be a specter. He can be right next to her, eyes huge, and afterward admit “maybe” it was real. Their yin-yang bonding and love adds to the delightful humor of this Odyssey.
HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE DEAD signals a coming out of the woo-woo closet for Fein. The Oxford dictionary defines "woo-woo" as "unconventional beliefs regarded as having little or no scientific basis, especially those relating to spirituality, mysticism, or alternative medicine…" Throughout her illustrious career as a journalist, Fein has occasionally penned articles about seeking healers and rituals in “exotic” locales; although mostly she has flown under the radar as a gifted intuitive herself. This book puts the spotlight on Fein’s spiritual truths as she has lived them, revealing how she has embraced and been embraced by others around the world who perceive those truths without shame.
There is no navel-gazing in these stories that take us from her father’s untimely death (and her first stunned awareness that she could hear him beyond the grave) to her late mother’s skepticism that she and her daughter could communicate after her transition (and how wrong that turned out to be) to various vortexes of cultures and religions that accept death as a fact of life that does not end the soul.
Fein’s passion to communicate with her living readers shines as an honest desire to help others move through their grief and fears to an understanding that death itself is not the final word on existence.
A discussion guide ends the book with such thought-provoking gems as:
"Would you like someone to contact you after you die? Why or why not?"

No matter what the answer, I’m willing to bet it won’t be boring. Fein invites readers to discuss the most taboo topic in America, as if to say:

"Hey, it couldn’t hurt!"


#JudithFein #TravelJournalist #Death #CommunicatingWithTheDead #GlobalAdventure #AuthorJudithFein


Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Author Marlan Warren reads from her memoir "Roadmaps for the Sexually Challenged" at the Annual Greater Los Angeles Writers Conference (8/16)





Los Angeles, CA, August 16, 2019 --(PR.com)-- Marlan Warren will read from her fictionalized memoir, “Roadmaps for the Sexually Challenged [All’s Not Fair in Love or War]” as a featured speaker in a workshop entitled “Writing a Best-Selling Memoir” on the first day of the Annual Greater Los Angeles Writers Conference (AGLAW), Friday, Aug. 16 at 6 p.m.

“It’s an honor to be included,” said Warren. “This will be my first public reading of this book.”

The e-book debuted as a "novel" on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) in 2015. "Roadmaps for the Sexually Challenged" is set in Los Angeles in the mid-90s with the O.J. trial in the background and plenty of steamy sex. The story follows the hot romance of a divorcing Jewish American woman with a Japanese American man who still bears the scars suffered by his family during World War II. As both are on the rebound, the woman's girlfriends cheer from the sidelines, while issuing small craft warnings.

“A paperback second edition will be coming out this Fall,” said Warren, noting that the story has its roots in diary entries, which qualifies it as a fictionalized memoir. "I altered reality here and there, including scenes that let me say what I wish I had said.”

Warren is also a documentary filmmaker and playwright whose topics often involve couples of mixed races or cultures: “As a film writer/producer, I tried for years to bring racially mixed couples to the screen, and hit the wall every time in Hollywood."

Her “Japanese American Internment” documentary “What did you do in the War, Mama?: Kochiyama’s Crusaders” is in post-production. Two years ago, her play, “Bits of Paradise: Kochiyama’s Crusaders” debuted at Rogue Machine Theatre in Hollywood.

The panel will be moderated by writer/editor Robin Quinn, and also feature readings by authors Madeline Sharples and Herbie J. Pilato.

AGLAWC runs Friday, Aug. 16 through Sunday, Aug. 18, featuring best-selling authors, editors, publishers, literary agents, publicists, and film industry experts.

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AGLAWC Info:

Venue | DoubleTree by Hilton | 6161 West Centinela Avenue, Culver City, California, 90230

Registration Details: http://www.wcwriters.com/aglawc/index.html
Program Details: http://www.wcwriters.com/aglawc/program.html
Contact: E-Mail: info@wcwriters.com | Phone: 310.379.2650

Book / Author Info:

Title: Roadmaps for the Sexually Challenged [All's Not Fair in Love or War]
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TYKV5ZG
Author Website: http://roadmapsforthesexuallychallenged.blogspot.com

Video Author Interview: "How a Memoir Evolves into a Work of Fiction"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuTSVEGcuVQ

Marlan Warren’s Film IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9545796/
Contact Information
Roadmap Girl Publications
Marlan Warren
323-347-6762
Contact       memoircity@gmail.com
http://roadmapsforthesexuallychallenged.blogspot.com

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