Published Books

"A story of immigrant parents and their children, the only Chinese in a city in the Deep South, running a laundry from just before the Great Depression until the early 1950s when they moved to San Francisco to escape social and cultural isolation and join a Chinese community. The memoir raises issues that are central to the daily lives of immigrants from many lands as they struggle to adjust to a new country with a different language and customs. It describes how they encounter prejudice and discrimination against racial minorities in America, manage to earn a living through hard work and thriftiness, stay connected to family and relatives in their homeland, and eventually become acculturated to American ways.

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I wrote a book called A Fine Line A Balance to Survive. This book took over 4 years to write and was edited several times before the final version. It was a very difficult book to write as it my true life story. A story of a little girl that was severely and sexually abused by her Mum's boss at the age of 12 years. Her Mum's boss continued to do this for another 18 or so years by this time the little girl was completely groomed. Her Mum's boss was a woman. The young girl denied this was happening and managed to secure a job in a Bank. At the age of 17years her boss the Bank Manager invited her into his office to help her try to find her real biological Mum as she was adopted. She accepted his offer of help. He then attacked and repeatedly raped her, she accepted that this was normal and even when the bank managers wife befriended her she did not think it wrong to do what the Bank manager's wife asked. She requested this young girl allowed her husband to continue to rape and torture her nd report how and when he was doing it. Then after several months the Bank Managers wife persuaded her to take a lethal overdose. Against medical odds and with a stomach pump she survived, only because she had not eaten that day and the drugs were not absorbed. After this the young girl was attacked and raped by her vet, and then survived a murder attempt by her brother in law. She also managed to track her biological Dad and lived with him for a week with her half brother and sister who were not allowed to know who she was. Then after she managed to track her real mother. Years later when she was happily married with two very young children, she was persuaded to go into hospital to a psychiatric unit to offload the past. This turned out to be too traumatic and she ended up smashing through windows, being sectioned for 4 years and ending up in a High Secure Unit instead of a planned trip to Euro Disney Land. She escaped many times which involved police chases and helicopter chases with dogs.

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I thought I was saving him; little did I know the big, untrained pup would be the one to come to my own rescue..and together, we would travel down a path that was nothing less than miraculous...

I was a professional athlete vying for a spot on the United States Equestrian Team.

Dewey was a malnourished, 18 month old St. Bernard/German Shepherd pup facing euthanasia in desperate need of a home. I took him home with the hopes of fattening him up, putting some training into him and finding him a home. It worked. I took him home, put some training into him...and well, I adopted him. Little did I know that by saving this big, lovable mutt, I was securing my own fate.

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The following is an exerpt from “Above The Fold,” an unusual book by retired journalist Jimmy Edwards. In anecdotal form, he reveals the inside stories of the oddball characters and events behind the headlines during a time when newspaper reporters were as offbeat as those whose actions they put into print.

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Reviews:

Rear View Mirror is an autobiography that reads like a high-quality chick lit work of fiction. It is the amazing story of a woman's journey to find family wherever life takes her.
After the tragic loss of her mother and the later loss of her true love, she ends up in a painful marriage that results in the real love of her life, her son. Written in the first-person, you often find yourself feeling exactly how Cindy feels in those pivotal moments of her life.
I found myself laughing, crying, and feeling just like I had found a friend in this book.
We are all often haunted by those "what-ifs" that might have been, and the author's pursuit to settle it once and for all is simply magical.

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Replete with fifty photographs, The Revelation of a Star's Endless Shine unveils the gripping, never before told tale of child prodigy Shirley Cheng--a blind and physically disabled victim and survivor of severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) and more so of falsehood in American medical system--and her loving mother, Juliet Cheng. Enter a world of terrors, struggles, dreams, and triumphs in this true life story spanning twenty years as mother and daughter travel the world seeking care and compassion. From Shirley's painful diagnosis of JRA as an infant and the 1990 international news of Juliet's victory over injustice in her custody case, to their acceptance of a harsh and devastating fate, and the elation of Shirley's various academic and personal achievements, this autobiography will leave the reader inspired and thinking twice about life's true values and meanings.

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THE RANDOM THOUGHTS OF AN OLD MAN is a nostalgic look at life. It starts with a look at being raised in a small faming community in West Texas as well as on military bases in the forties. (I am an army brat) It describes the values learned by listening and watching the old timers that were part of my life at the time. There were valuable lessons that I learned from men that made a lot of west Texas history.

Then I discuss being a teenager and later serving in the military in the 50s. This is a real special time. I of course did not realize that this special time was special because I was white. I also got a taste of what segregation was all about in Mississippi when I was in the service. I discuss my experiences in Europe during this time as well.

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Notes And Documents of Free Persons of Color, is a book about People of Color who resided in Colonial Virginia. The author, Anita Wills, spent over twenty years researching and documenting the facts presented in this work. The main characters are related to Ms. Wills through her maternal line. In Pennsylvania and Virginia, Ms. Wills found elusive ancestors, who were Native and African American.

In Colonial Virginia Mary Bowden (born 1730- died after 1810), was born to a Mulatto mother and white father. Her mother was taken before a court, and accused of having a bastard child. Although her mother was married, it was not recognized by Virginia's courts because it was an interracial marriage. By 1737 Mary was an indentured servant at George Washingtons' family Plantation (George Washington is Americas' first President). Mary Bowden's mother was married to the Grandfather of James Monroe (also an American President).

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Stop the Damned Presses! by Harry L. Graham is a look back at The Orange County Register during the tumultuous days of hellpots and hot type, when newspapering was fun.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

By VANCE DURGIN
The Orange County Register

Veteran Register newsman Harry L. Graham, who worked in various editing capacities at this newspaper for 40 years, captures the experience in "Stop the Damned Presses!"

Graham signed on here for $100 a week in 1962 after 20 years in the Air Force and a stint as news editor at the Orange Daily News. On his first day, the big story was astronaut Wally Schirra orbiting the Earth in his Sigma 7 spacecraft. Schirra was going for a record six orbits. Imagine.

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Two Mississippi murders, following the trial of two men who killed young Emmett Till, received far less publicity -- nationally or statewide. Even today, few have heard the story of Clinton Melton and his wife, Beulah.

Once the J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant trial in Sumner, Mississippi ended for the murder of Emmett Till, less than a month later in the nearby small cotton town of Glendora, a black service station attendant and father of four children was killed by a friend of Milam’s.

Elmer Kimball murdered Clinton Melton and then nineteen days later, Melton’s young wife was killed, only a week before Kimball’s murder trial opened.

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“The Misfits of Channel 10” was inspired by the author’s experiences while growing up in the 60’s. He had a troubled childhood and a hard time dealing with the changes of adolescence. He was perpetually on the outside looking in. Through circumstance, he turned toward Citizen Band Radio and met others like himself that were alienated and ostracized from high school society.

This is a story about loners that yearn to belong. Misfits who create a common bond with others like themselves as voices over the Citizen Band radio. They wanted what all of us want, friends, family, understanding, and love. They formed a “gang” of a different kind with a pecking order based upon the quality of their voices and sharpness of their wit.

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