April 2019 Rundown | Interviews| Reviews| Focus Feature

Release Date: 2019
Genre: Interviews, Rundown
Author: Christopher Golden, Cody Goodfellow, David Goggins, Dean Karnazes, John Langan, Nathan Ballingrud, Rob Hart, Tim Lebbon

Reviews Of April

Interviews of April

Cody Goodfellow on his Unamerica, writing, and inspirations.

Read Interview

Nathan Ballingrud On his Wounds story collection, and Writing.

Read Interview

John Langan On Sefira and Other Betrayals, and Writing.

Read Interview

Rob Hart On his novel The Warehouse, writing, and inspirations.

Read Interview

Christopher Golden On his novel The Pandora Room, writing, and inspirations.

Read Interview

Tim Lebbon On The Silence, writing, running, and inspirations.

Read Interview

FOCUS FEATURE ON:

ATHLETE – AUTHOR – ACTOR

DRIVE – INSPIRATION

MENTAL FORTITUDE – ENDURANCE

EMPOWERMENT- CHARITY

With:

Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca)

David Goggins

Dean Karnazes

Eliud Kipchoge

My focus feature with the extraordinary, driven, inspirational, legacies and endeavours empowering others, I hope live on paying forward, with these fine characters I have chosen for my focus part of my April rundown piece.

Peter Mayhew

Peter William Mayhew^[2] (19 May 1944 – 30 April 2019) was an English-American actor, best known for portraying Chewbacca in the Star Wars film series. He played the character in all of his live-action appearances from the 1977 original to 2015’s The Force Awakens before his retirement from the role.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter Mayhew

A great presence in Star Wars as Chewbacca, a great man helping others off the screen.
I found that he was in another memorable film of my youth, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, as Minoton, a memorable bad villain on the screen.
I next ventured into the world of Peter Mayhew, the great gentle giant with a big heart behind the Wookie and he has been done many things for people getting through hard times terrible pains with bettering lives through his foundation he even had two children’s books.
After reading Hamill’s words in Twitter about his friend and co-Star I then read a tweet by an author who was directly affected by Peter Mayhew’s kindness and helping his brothers cause live on.
This author had lost his brother at young age to Muscular Dystrophy, a muscle-wasting disease, his parents were fundraising for MD Association and asked Peter Mayhew as a guest celebrity attendee to raise awareness and funding, and he gladly helped. There must be many stories like this out there unearthing due to his passing touching real life tragedies brought together with light against darkness.
Every person has some kind of tragedy but it’s those great leaps or small steps that individuals make that make all the difference to ones universe.
Empowering, using that Wookie energy and presence as a force for good for the unheard to feel great and heard that Wookie that had few words but great ambition strength and heart amongst the human looking band of warriors in Star Wars maybe he was the different one but the Centre they all revolved around, the balance in the drama unfolding, that one great star of the Star Wars.
Outsider, misfit, geek, and Chewbacca on the stage, a giant, hairy individual with few words but great strength, humor, empowering and warming hearts making a difference in lives would be missed by the masses across the world a figure who symbolized many great aspects of humanity, I hope good for his foundation’s far reaches of this earth in non-profit cause in aiding the needy as it has done in the past.

“Support the littlest Wookiee”

http://petermayhewfoundation.org

“The Peter Mayhew Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization devoted to the alleviation of disease, pain, suffering, and the financial toll brought on by life’s traumatic events. By providing its available resources directly to deserving children and adults in need, we assist numerous charitable organizations in order to promote and boost their effectiveness and provide support where needed.”

David Goggins

David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL and the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces ever to complete SEAL training, U.S. Army Ranger School, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller training. Goggins has competed in more than sixty ultra-marathons, triathlons, and ultra-triathlons, setting new course records and regularly placing in the top five. A former Guinness World Record holder for completing 4,030 pull-ups in seventeen hours, he’s a much-sought-after public speaker who’s shared his story with the staffs of Fortune 500 companies, professional sports teams, and hundreds of thousands of students across the country.

https://davidgoggins.com

Review of his Can’t Hurt Me:

From nothing to something, from darkness to light and paying forward.
Grinding everyday, you can’t hurt him now, and he wants you to not hurt too, to take it on, enter the arena and dare greatly.
He dares you to step in the arena, his voice unfiltered and raw, embracing the darkness and rising from it, using the darkness as fuel, the negative as fuel.
He uses courage to bare his sole, fears, frailties, and his metamorphosis.
He turns every negative upside down, getting back up from defeat and never submit to failure, rising form the hole, the darkness, the brokenness and reinventing the metamorphosis into a new man empowering all that dare to step into terrain untrodden, hearts at battle with themselves daring greatly with the complexities and insecurities.

He is all about the drive, no fluffy motivation, but grinding every day hard and pushing beyond limits and comfortableness into a new self.

This book is about David Goggins, his memoir, failures, defeats, and overcoming things, he never said follow me every step and move but he set in stone an example of a man driven, never giving up even when everyone is against you, even when the dream goes askew, against racism and abuse at hands of those should love and protect, instead now he gives back to the world with love and protection with sheer grit and grind.

This was in my best of 2018 list after listening to the great audiobook that coupled as a podcast with all the behind the scenes of the narrative with David Goggins right there with you, I listened to it again and again and this time put together a review, one long overdue.

Dean Karnazes

An internationally recognized endurance athlete and New York Times bestselling author, Dean Karnazes (www.UltramarathonMan.com) has pushed his body and mind to inconceivable limits. TIME magazine named him as one of the “Top 100 Most Influential People in the World,” Men’s Fitness hailed him as the fittest man on the planet and he was the winner of the 2008 ESPY Award for “Best Outdoor Athlete.”

Among his many accomplishments, he has run 350 continuous miles, foregoing sleep for three nights. He’s run across Death Valley in 120-degree temperatures, and run a marathon to the South Pole in negative 40 degrees. On ten different occasions, he’s run a 200-mile relay race solo, racing alongside teams of twelve. His long list of competitive achievements include winning the world’s toughest footrace, the Badwater Ultramarathon, running 135 miles nonstop across Death Valley during the middle of summer. His most recent endeavor was running 50 marathons, in all 50 US states, in 50 consecutive days, finishing with the NYC Marathon, which he ran in three hours flat.

As an author, his first book was Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner. His 50-marathon feat was the basis for 50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days — and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance! And on March 1, Rodale Books will publish Run! 26.2 Stories of Blisters and Bliss, Karnazes’s new inspirational memoir, told in 26.2 chapters that take readers inside the heart and mind of someone who pushes himself to the limits of physical achievement.

www.ultramarathonman.com

Ultramarathon Man Review:

Ultimately the author has laid down in words answers to why he runs, what compels him to do ultramarathon running, his desires and passions, all honestly written in easy reading nicely packet together narrative that can inspire and aid the one wanting to push themselves to their limits and beyond. Heartfelt testaments from a man who is truly someone pushing himself beyond human limitations.
He tells how he had a need to fill a void despite having a good job and financial security, and he takes the reader upon his road expounding on his pursuit of happiness by doing something that makes him happy, running, very very, long distances.
Those distances went through extremes, from South Pole -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit, to “Running down the white line on the highway to hell,” at Badwater with the temperatures can exceed 130 degrees Fahrenheit with asphalt melting the soles of his trainers.
He takes you through all these extraordinary challenges daring greatly into the arena of human heart at conflict with itself, the enemy being the idea that something was not possible, the self into untrodden terrain building and discovering inner strengths and mental toughness, he is a fine example of this and then there are the charities, lives inspired, lives in need of a donor helped, the people he aided, in these efforts a great fete.
He symbolises sheer determination, endurance, and never giving up, and following your dream, the king of pain not giving in and up, a family man, proving, “nice guys can finish first.”

Eliud Kipchoge

A record breaker, a humble man, giving back to his peers and community, pushing human limits, had won again another marathon, the London Marathon 2019, well done!

From Wikipedia:

Eliud Kipchoge (born 5 November 1984) is a Kenyan long-distance runner who competes in the marathon and formerly the 5000 metres. He won the Olympic marathon in 2016 and is the current marathon world record holder with a time of 2:01:39 hours. Kipchoge’s world record run at the 2018 Berlin Marathon broke the previous world record by 1 minute and 18 seconds.^[1] This is the greatest improvement in a marathon world record time since 1967.

NN Running Team describe him..

“The greatest marathon runner in history and leading light in the NN Running Team, it is impossible to not admire the achievements and inspirational qualities of this extraordinary athlete.“
Read More From https://www.nnrunningteam.com/en/team_member/eliud-kipchoge/

Reviewed by Lou Pendergrast on 10 May 2019