Author Ray Faulkenberry, Ph.D, has composed over twelve books and is currently working on a movie. Faulkenberry, who is best known as The Corporate Samurai , recently published Twice In A Lifetime . The fictional piece pays homage to the ultimate question of "what if." Besides the writing being true to Faulkenberry’s inspirational, self-help style, Twice In A Lifetime offers mass appeal with its main story line.
Most people want to know what would have happened if they had changed one thing in their life. What if just one simple decision could evolve your quality of life? Several other books and movies are the basis for this concept. However, Faulkenberry’s writing exceeds where others have fallen short. Perhaps it is his background as an ordained minister or his work with recovering drug addicts that allow his latest literary work to receive five out of five stars on Amazon.com.
Misplaced in his own life and disassociated with the reality of his existence, Faulkenberry’s main character finds himself engaged with the past and avoiding his own future. The story holds a compelling pace and challenges the reader to self-examine his or her place within the universe. The best part of this book is the author’s ability to subtly take his audience to a place of introspection. This is something very hard to do through fictional work without the characters coming off as boring, needy, or worse — crass.
The energy we all have as humans draws us to people and things we identify with. As some may view Ray’s traditional self-help books as “hokey” or for the weak, almost everyone can find comfort in relating to a fictional character. As an example, for the last two summers teen girls identified with Bella from the bestselling Twilight book series. Even though the series contained various moral and life lessons, girls were able to relate better to the fiction character of Bella then if they were presented the same material in a self-help manner. In Twice In A Lifetime Ray manages to combine his popular self-help message with an entertaining storyline and interesting characters.
The book ends up being more of an inquisitive trip down memory lane for the reader than for the main character. As the main character comes to painstaking realizations about who he is vs. who he thought he was, so does the reader. For those unfamiliar with Faulkenberry’s brand of human empowerment and corporate enchantment, Twice In A Lifetime acts a great introduction!
Article comments
1 - janet
As a writer, this article could be less painful to read if it had been proofread prior to publishing. However, the reviewer was able to make Faulkenberry's book interesting as a self-help journey through the eyes of a fictional character.
2 - Nikki
Also as I writer, I don't understand what Janet is speaking of. I liked the article and will buy the book. I believe the article had to go through a clearing process with BC. I do think the name of the book should have been changed. When I looked it up on Amazon there are other titles with the same name.
3 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Hi Janet: Could you provide any examples you consider not "proofread"?