Grace Revealed Blog Tour! (+$25 Amazon GC Giveaway!)

Title: Grace Revealed 

Author: Greg Archer

Series: N/A

Pages: 266

Date Published: January 11th, 2015 

Publisher: NorLights Press

Format: Paperback

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Source: Goddess Fish Blog Tours
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Synopsis:
An entertainment journalist goes from glitz to the Gulags in a mesmerizing attempt to uncover his Polish family’s past. Ultimately, his personal quest reveals something that history forgot: Joseph Stalin’s wrath on nearly 2 million Polish people during the 1940s and the ripple effects that remain.

Seventy-five years after Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror across Eastern Europe, author Greg Archer takes a step back from Hollywood reporting and examines his Polish family’s mind-bending odyssey of the 1940s. In the process, he exposes one of the most under-reported events of the 20th Century: Joseph Stalin’s mass deportation of nearly 2 million Polish citizens to the Siberian Gulags and the life-and-death events that followed—from Siberia to the Middle East and ultimately, Eastern Africa. But the author’s quest takes a dramatic turn. As he walks an emotional tightrope between the past and the present, can a serendipitous overseas adventure become a saving grace, heal the ancestral soul and bring justice to his family and their forgotten Polish comrades?

~Guest Post!~

7 Things to Know About Grace Revealed: A Memoir

by Greg Archer

Writing, especially memoir writing, is a curious affair. And when you toss into the mix a gaggle of very loud and gregarious Polish relatives—all of whom survived a mind-bending journey during the 1940s—it makes the process all the more eventful, internally and externally.

That said, I thought I would offer a brief rundown of the book and an excerpt.

1) The book chronicles my journey uncovering his Polish family’s odyssey surviving Stalin’s mass deportation of Poles during the 1940s.

2) What? Wait! What did you just say?  Relax, it’s lighthearted, too—if the literary works of Carrie Fisher crawled under the covers with a Polish Alex Haley, it would be this book.

3) Grace Revealed follows a befuddled entertainment journalist (yours truly) after he gets a sign to explore his family’s past. In the process, he leaves Hollywood behind for a bit and eventually uncovers something that was nearly swept under the rugs of history: that Stalin deported nearly 2 million Poles who later became refugees and wandered into the Middle East, India and were sent to Eastern Africa.

4) What’s a neurotic creative to do? Explore more.

5) Part Two of the book reveals my family’s haunting yet inspiring tale of survival.

6) The book leans into the historical memoir realm, too, and readers appear satisfied with some of the historical information presented in the latter half of the book—why Stalin did what he did and what befell the deported Poles, as well as The Migut Family---my family.

7) Grace Revealed brings a nearly forgotten part of history into the mainstream, as well as offering generous doses of neuroses and soul-searching. It also illuminates how the threads of the past live on through us in an attempt to access our true calling and generate profound shifts. There’s more. (There’s always more…)

~Try an Excerpt!~

It all began with a broken picture frame and actor Ewan McGregor. But not at the same time. And a photograph of Ewan McGregor was not even in the picture frame. Nor did the Hollywood hotshot have anything to do with breaking it.

Allow me to explain …

It was the Fall of 2010 … which is the perfect way to begin a story, but for me, it really could be taken quite literally.

One morning, I walked into my third-floor office of the weekly magazine at which I was the editor in Santa Cruz, California. To my surprise, the double picture frame housing two different black-and-white photos of my Polish family lay face up on my desk and the glass from the frames broken, the remnants arranged in a clumsy collection of jagged shards right there atop of it.

My Polish grandmother’s disenchanted eyes stared up at me with haunting concern from one of those photos and her tightly drawn lips refused her powdered, solemn face to soften. Next to her lay a group portrait of my grandmother, my aunt, my three uncles, and my mother, all at various ages in their youth, sitting on a bench outdoors in Tanzania, Africa, during the 1940s.

I sat down behind my desk and quickly assessed the situation, glancing at the top shelf on the wall nearly three feet away. The picture frame typically resided there and during the course of any given week, I would peer up at those photos more times than I could accurately assess and ruminate—on my family’s strength, their will, how World War II affected them. At times, these deep thoughts temporarily assisted me in avoiding a life-long habit I had yet to fully overcome: Mood Swinging.

I would not necessarily call myself bipolar.

Emotional? Of course.  But bipolar. No. (Not yet.) 

~Meet Greg!~ 

GREG ARCHER

Author, Journalist, Cultural Moderator, More … 

GREG ARCHER is an author, cultural moderator, award-winning journalist, television host and motivational speaker. His latest book, GRACE REVEALED: A MEMOIR, goes from glitz to the Gulags as the popular entertainment reporter takes a step back from Hollywood to explore his Polish family’s mesmerizing tale surviving Joseph Stalin’s mass deportation of Poles during the 1940s. What he uncovers along the way fuels his mission to not only expose the nearly forgotten odyssey that befell nearly 2 million Poles 75 years ago, but to also expose the ripple effects that remain today.

**** GREG ARCHER’s work covering agents of change, history, travel and the entertainment industry have appeared in The Huffington Post, Oprah Magazine, San Francisco Examiner, The Advocate, Bust, Palm Springs Life, VIA Magazine, Jetset Extra and on variety of cable television outlets. A four-time recipient of the Best Writer Award in a popular San Francisco Bay Area Readers' Poll, he shines the light on change agents near and far, and other under-reported issues in society. His splits his time between his hometown of Chicago, and Palm Springs.

Greg will be awarding $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn host.

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