MSI Press Blog

  Just released: the audiobook edition of Passing On: Preparing for the Afterlife  by Joanna Romer. Book description: Existence makes sense only if we include the afterlife as part of our history. Scientists are exploring the concept that life, including what is called the afterlife, may not be as we perceive it. New discoveries having to do with the simultaneous nature of time and the relativity of space coincide dramatically with the testimony of Near-Death Experience (NDE) survivors. The question is, where does our energy go and how much of our identity goes with it? Passing On: How to Prepare Ourselves for the Afterlife attempts to shed light on these questions and many others, such as: Do we meet up with loved ones after we pass on? Do we take form as a physical entity or are we pure essence? Do time and space exist in the afterlife, and: What are the characteristics of the afterlife---is it as joyful, loving and forgiving as those who have undergone a Near-Death Experience claim?

  Existence makes sense only if we include the afterlife as part of our history. Scientists are exploring the concept that life, including what is called the afterlife, may not be as we perceive it. New discoveries having to do with the simultaneous nature of time and the relativity of space coincide dramatically with the testimony of Near-Death Experience (NDE) survivors. The question is, where does our energy go and how much of our identity goes with it? Passing On: How to Prepare Ourselves for the Afterlif e attempts to shed light on these questions and many others, such as: Do we meet up with loved ones after we pass on? Do we take form as a physical entity or are we pure essence? Do time and space exist in the afterlife, and: What are the characteristics of the afterlife---is it as joyful, loving and forgiving as those who have undergone a Near-Death Experience claim? This book is for people of all ages who are interested in a future beyond earthly existence, and what can be done

    What is a  book jewel ? A sometimes-overlooked book with remarkable insight and potential significance. Each month, we share near-daily, or as often as possible, reviews of the monthly book jewel - short, succinct reviews that can be read in 1-2 minutes with links to the reviewer by reviewers whose words are worthy of being heard and whose opinions are worthy of being considered. Sometimes a couple of minutes contains more impressive thought than ten times that many. We will let you decide that. This month's book jewel is  Jesus Is Still Passing By  by J Bennett Easterling. Description: Jesus has not limited his miracles to people who lived when he was on earth. Today, miracles continue--and nearly every day someone somewhere reports one.This book, written by award-winning author Bennett Easterling, shines a welcome new light on the miracles of Jesus. Thirty-six miracles are highlighted, then supplemented with helpful background information. Real-life applications applying to o

Excerpt from Passing On: Preparing for the Afterlife by Joanna Romer Meet Joe Black   At the beginning of the film Meet Joe Black , Anthony Hopkins’ 65-year-old character is awakened from his sleep one night by a voice saying, “Yes…yes…” He continues hearing the strange voice as time goes on, telling him odd things like: “I want you to get swept away”—until he meets the Angel of Death, played by Brad Pitt. The angel stays with Hopkins’ character, preparing him for death (and also, evidently, learning a thing or two about life for himself). Do we have people in our lives—perhaps angels—who come to us as the time grows nearer to help prepare us for what is to come? This is an interesting thought (and if such beings look like Brad Pitt, we may not mind too much). In Meet Joe Black , the angel helps Hopkins’ character make peace with his family and himself before he passes on. I believe that’s what our angel encounters are for: to help us find peace. The world is constantly pulling th

Farewell to Mother  Reading Dr. Alexander’s book about his near-death experience, I was immediately struck by the experience I’d had when my mother was in a coma. It was so vivid I can remember how it felt to this day, though it was now 29 years ago. My mother was a very healthy woman. In her 70s, she swam every day, worked on her writing and maintained a busy social life with the local garden club and other organizations. When my father died, Mom was 75 and her abilities were undiminished. After two years, sShe seemed to be rebounding nicely from Dad’s deathafter two years, yet something may have been missing that I wasn’t aware of. Or perhaps, as a neighbor hinted, she’d met a new man… One night I was awakened by a phone call around 1 a.m. “You’d better come down to Florida,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Your mother’s in a coma.” I was astonished. Just four days earlier I had talked to my mother and she’d told me she was on her way to Miami to see the Pope, who was visiting

  The following excerpt comes from Passing On: How to Prepare Ourselves for the Afterlife by Joanna Romer. CHAPTER ONE The message One day while meditating I received the following message: It is time to begin the ascent. Don’t be nervous. There is nothing scary about it if you’re aware. On the other hand, don’t over-dramatize. This is not about writing a book but about you. You are transcending. It’s what you wanted: to be conscious of the crossing over. Of course, you can write about it, but also learn, take it in; it’s an education. Now, what would you do if you got that message? Would you take it seriously? I did, for a couple of reasons. First, I had just turned 70 a month prior to its receipt. Of course turning 70 does not automatically mean the end of life as we know it, but it does start to make you think a bit about what’s to come. I’m reminded of that TV commercial where a woman at a restaurant is handed a note saying, “Your heart attack will arrive at 2 pm tomorrow”

  Achieving Native-Like Second Language Proficiency  (Speaking) by Betty Lou Leaver is a research-based catalogue of factors that would seem to predict ability to reach the highest level of foreign language proficiency and is based on common characteristics shared by more than 200 near-native speakers, identified by self-report, survey, and interviews by master testers. Following up on previous posts, one of the motivational frameworks considered was the desire to pass for a native speaker.  Some of the interviewees (13%) mentioned the goal of passing for a native speaker. This goal sometimes coincided with integrative motivation. In this case, the interviewee indicated the desire to blend in with and be part of the culture in order to be accepted and experience its nature the way native speakers do. However, far from all who expressed the native-speaker goal were integratively motivated and far from all who were integratively motivated had set a goal of passing for a native speaker.

  This week's blog post is the next in the series of book back stories and is the story behind Passing On: Preparing for the Afterlife  by Joanna Romer. From the publisher -  Joanna Romer, an author who had already written seven books for us and was, at the time, working on two others, Helping the Disabled Veteran and Life after Losing a Child (with Pat Young ), which were ultimately finished and published, came to me with a book proposal for a book on preparing for death. As a popular MSI Press author and retired professor of journalism, her books were well researched, and I was intrigued by how she might go about researching this one. But go about it she did, resulting in another popular book. Little did I know that she might have a very personal reason for writing this book. She passed away not longer after it was released, and her two final books were released posthumously, one with the help of one our copyeditors, who is already a developmental editor, Mary Ann Raemisch, and