Blog Tour Interview & Giveaway - Practical Advice From an Evolved Soul by Marcus Dino

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Practical Advice From an Evolved Soul

Author: Marcus Dino

Genre: YA

Book Description:

"Fulfill your destiny Fifi, as you wander through the Wilderness," Goth her spirit guide tells her....

Marcus Dino's latest book 'Practical Advice from an Evolved Soul', an anthology like it's smash hit predecessor, 'Diary of a Mad Gen Yer.' has 21st century actress/heroine Cheryl 'Fifi' Larouche coming back outrageous as ever introducing new 'Silly Stories,' 'Silly Poems,' and 'Silly Blogs', plus an added new twist using the world of Twitter, Fifi's 'Silly Tweets.'

'Practical Advice from an Evolved Soul' is third in a series of 'Fifi's stories following Marcus Dino's top ten Amazon Bestseller 'Diary of a Mad Gen Yer' in addition to his original Hollywood novel 'Fifi.'

Many of the major characters from Mr. Dino's two earlier book are back in 'Evolved Soul' including Fifi's boyfriend Biff, her obstinate father Charles, and her two alien friends from the planet Zatoris, Alocki and Helos. In addition there are some very interesting new characters in 'Evolved Soul' including a long dead Englishman who said he knew great literary figures such as Dickens and Keats called 'The 200 Year Old Great Writer,' and two entities who say they are 'Fifi's Spirit Guides' Goth and Au.

Both Goth and Au write very inspirational blogs that convey a strong message in the 'Blogs' section of 'Evolved Soul.'

'Practical Advice from an Evolved Soul' is both humorous and inspirational and like it's two predecessors will entertain the reader from beginning to end.

Buy Links:

Amazon ¦ Smashwords

Author Interview

1. What inspired you to write your first book?
A spirit guide came into my head and told me “You will give birth to 'Fifimania.'  OK it's April Fool's Day so I felt like being a little humorous.  After writing my first novel Fifi about a young Hollywood actress Cheryl 'Fifi' struggling to survive the Hollywood jungle, I wrote a sort of anthology of Fifi's adventures that had a huge fantasy angle to it called Diary of a Mad Gen Yer, plus I introduced Fifi's silly blogs and silly poems.  In Practical Advice from an Evolved Soul, two amazing new characters, Goth and Au, Fifi's spirit guides come into the picture.  Perhaps it was my strong recent interest in spirituality and the power of the human soul that made me introduce Goth and Au.  I mean with Goth and Au they are basically tell Fifi what's more important to her?  A life of wealth and fame as a movie star or something else?

2. Do you have a specific writing style?
Yes I do.  Spontaneous.  I get something out of the blue like a song when I'm listening to my radio, my CD player, or mpg player when I'm driving.  A news article, something I see when I'm walking or I'm at work.  I jot down these ideas and voila they become a silly poem, a silly tweet, or part of a silly story,  I never can sit in front of a laptop and write a story.  I think I'm better at jotting down writing in my smartphone in my car, especially tweets, than sitting in front of a laptop.    Of course I make sure I park when I write.

3. How did you come up with the title for your book?
Practical Advice from an Evolved Soul, this took a little thinking.  I could have come up with a title like Fifi's Great Adventures Part 3 as this is the third book in the 'Fifi' series.  Two of the main characters in the book are Fifi's spirit guides Goth and Au.  I have a section as part of Fifi's blogs where they give 'practical spiritual advice'. This is the one serious part of the book where Fifi and her casual humorous wit is not involved. The theme in involved Evolved Soul is Au and Goth is basically telling Fifi and everybody else that there is more to life than fame and fortune.4. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

4. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Basically what I penned above.  Yes I put a lot of humor in Evolved Soul.  That's basically Fifi.  I try to make her the most entertaining fictional character I possible can.  But with advice from Goth and Au the basic theme is that we have an 'eternal soul' in all of us and that being  'Spiritual' is far more important in life than 'Material.'

5. How much of the book is realistic?
Goth and Au's spiritual advice I would consider very realistic.  I got a lot of the ideas in 'my head.' perhaps from my own 'spirit guide?'  As for Fifi's tweets, blogs, poems, and short stories.  Well that's for the reader to decide,  Would you consider a tweet such as “Ego Schmego who cares...Who cares?  The next time my reincarnated body comes to life I'll be an insurance salesman living on Mars,”  But then here's another of her tweets, “What am I doing paying an arm and leg to make ends meet and fighting all this traffic living out her in LA?” 6. What book are you reading now?  For a struggling young Hollywood actress I would probably consider that to be realistic.

6. What book are you reading now?
Today I just started reading The Power of Positive Thinking by Reverend Normal Vincent Peale. There are some amazing similarities between Evolved Soul and Positive Thinking.  In Evolved Soul I or 'Au and Goth' talk about how understanding and using the Power of your Soul affects your life and destiny here on Earth and in the Hereafter.  I see a similar thought in Positive Thinking, written 60 years before Evolved Soul. In Evolved SoulI have a chapter (by Au) called 'Use Positive Spirit in all of your endeavors' while Dr. Peale has a chapter called 'How to create your own happiness' in Positive Thinking.  And just as I am writing this the absolute moment I am answering this question, I put on TCM to take a few minutes break and what do I see?  A 1960s movie about Dr. Peale.   What are the odds of that occurring by random chance?  I have to tell you that synchronicity or amazing random coincidences are messages from Spirit  in helping you with your spiritual life here on Earth.  I talk about synchronicity in Evolved Soul and Reverend Peale uses examples of synchronicity.

7. Are there any new authors that have grabbed your interest?
Beside Dr Peale, yes a week ago I saw one of the best movies, in my opinion, made in recent years, the French movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  The story is about a Mr Jean Dominique Baby, who was editor of a well known woman's magazine and was debilitated by a massive stroke while still a relatively young man.  The only part of the body he was able to use was one eye.  Well guess what?  In a little a year after the terrible stroke he was able to publish the book.  He wrote the entire book, with help from an assistant, using his eye lid  to manufacture the words.  A very slow and time consuming process as at times he had to go over every letter in the alphabet to produce just one letter in each word.  I immediately ordered the book on Kindle and cannot believe how good a book this was, a best seller for many many weeks.  So well written and sadly Mr Baby passed away just days after the book was published.  If Mr Baby's feat is not proof of a amazing human soul, I don't know what is.

8. What are your current projects?
I have written three books so the next project is possibly a screenplay about Fifi's adventures combining elements of Fifi, Diary of a Mad Gen Yer, and Practical Advice from an Evolved Soul.

9. Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?
Combining elements of fiction and nonfiction and making it easy for the reader to follow.

10. What were the challenges (research, psychological etc) in bringing your story to life?
It was a little challenging getting  blogs, stories, poems on different websites plus my Twitter tweets and making an anthology out of it, but overall a fun and not to difficult a process.  Far easier than writing a book from scratch.  I could not handle sweating and trying to write a book while sitting in front of a laptop.  I went through that in writing my time consuming 300 plus page novel with Fifi. I'm the king of writer's block.

About the Author 

Marcus Dino has always wanted to be a fiction writer as long as he can remember. Living in Southern California plus his being a die hard movie buff has led him to write stories dealing with the struggles and conquests of heroic up and coming Hollywood actress Cheryl 'Fifi' Larouche.

Practical Advice from an Evolved Soul is an anthology and inspirational book and is Mr. Dino's third 'Fifi' series book. His first book, Hollywood novel Fifi was first published in 2003. His second book in ebook format, Diary of a Mad Gen Yer, an anthology and Amazon best seller in it's category, was published in 2009.

Mr. Dino has a Masters degrees in Education and Engineering and is a graduate of Chapman University.   He has a distinguished career as an electronics engineer working for several Aerospace companies and also as a mathematics teacher in Los Angeles area schools.  He currently resides in Santa Maria, California.

Author Links: 

Website ¦ Facebook ¦ Twitter

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