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When I emailed an epub version of Painted Black to Jenn’s Review Blog on May 8, I did so hoping she’d be able to get to it by the end of June. Reviewers are swamped these days with review requests and Jenn had only been able to tell me she would get to it as soon as she could.

So I was very surprised to get her email May 31 saying she was already done and had posted the review on her blog. According to her email: “Once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down! Review is posted on my blog and I am posting to Amazon, B&N and Goodreads also 🙂 I hope you will consider asking me to review your next book, I loved the character of Jo Sullivan! Thanks again for the opportunity.”

Click the link below to read her full review.

This is one of those stories that really opens your eyes. Homeless street kids are everywhere but do we really stop and notice them as we go about our day to day lives? Jo Sullivan is a reporter writing a Street Stories column who after a brief meeting with Lexie Green becomes embroiled in one of the most unique mysteries I’ve read in a long time. From drugs, hustling, and child abuse to the seedy and disgusting desires of a strange and twisted man this story keeps you reading from page one to the last word. Dark, gritty and suspenseful this is a seat of your pants ride that you won’t soon forget.

via Jenn’s Review Blog: Painted Black.

Homeless in Seattle is a Facebook page I found for an organization based in the Freemont neighborhood of Seattle. I continue to be touched by the photos and stories posted by Rex Hohlbein and wish I could just post every single one of them on this blog as well. But they deserve their own forum. All I can do is call the page to your attention once in a while and encourage you to “friend” them so you, too, can hear the stories as they happen.

Photo courtesy of Rex Hohlbein Photography

We all have people that we feel fortunate in life to have met, the person that stops you in your track, causes you to look a little bit closer, inspires you, stirs something deep inside, and ultimately moves you forward in your life-journey.

On Friday I had the sincere pleasure of meeting Matthew Barrett and I can’t stop thinking about him, he is a remarkable person. His life story is hard to imagine, hard to know what to think or how to feel when you first begin to understand what he has been through, what he is still going through.

Matt has been dealing with a genetic form of cancer since the age of two. Since then he has had over 2,000 major operations. He has also been homeless for 15 years, moving in September of 2011 from Tent City 3 into low-income housing downtown Seattle.

Despite all of this life-struggle, Matt has a beautiful life-view. I would like to share the first few lines of a poem he wrote titled, “Homeless”. It goes,

Homeless does not mean helpless as some people think, we are not all lunatics or alcoholics on the brink, our lives have just been changed to a great degree, but we are still human beings if only you would see.

If you are interested in reading more of this poem or others that Matt has written, please purchase his book titled “A View from the Street.” You can purchase through the following link https://www.createspace.com/3738197or if you want an autographed copy let me know at HomelessInSeattle.

Thank you in advance for taking an interest in Matt’s life.

Downtown Seattle neighborhood | Rex

via Homeless in Seattle.