Katrina is unique: her psychic powers allow her to recognize energy waves with her mind. But her ability comes with a price, and she must treat the symptoms arising from using it. While writing a letter to her daughter, Emma, as an apology for the stress Katrina put her through, she gets a call from her estranged father. He requests her to visit him in Washington DC. During the visit, her disciplined father opens up as he takes her to Arlington National Cemetery where he reveals two secrets. One is about her late brother, who passed from a rare brain cancer, and the other reveals why she has the ability. Her father details the events that happened to him as a young private where he was assigned to help recover the remains of a UFO crash near Corona, New Mexico. Events related to the assignment would have a great impact on him, and later, his family.
Born in Italy, Paul arrived in the United States at the age of three. The family settled in Chicago for a couple years, then moved to the southwest suburb of Hickory Hills.
After graduating public high school, he was admitted to the University of Illinois, Chicago for architecture. He earned a professional degree in 1981. Afterwards, he applied and was accepted to United States Air Force Officer Training School where graduation resulted in a commission as a second lieutenant. He stayed in the Air Force until he was granted an honorable discharge in 1995.
After sixteen years of working in a few private firms, he applied to the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 2012. Paul is a design manager for projects associated with bases in the Middle East.
His first, novel, The Disclosure Paradox, was self-published 30 October 2019. It enjoys high ratings on Amazon and Goodreads with approximately 400 copies in circulation.
He lives in rural West Virginia where his wife, adopted grandson, and two older rescue mutts work and play on six acres of woods, high grass, and wild flowers.
Katrina was forced into her identity in response to her father's anti-social behavior. Kids got cues from their parents on Katrina and her family. She took this perceived weakness and turned into a strength, bolstering her strangeness to the point of making kids uncomfortable. Our individuality is a natural asset. In addition, a society rich with individuals offers a better chance for cultural evolution than one that rewards mindless conformity.
Book Excerpt
What Doesn't Kill Her
She conquered the stigma, not by trying to fit in with the normal kids, but by rebelling against the popularity cults. She used her wild and off-beat imagination to make the others think twice about teasing or bullying her. She learned this defense mechanism in the early grades, and refined it to an art later in her pre-adolescent years. It eventually turned out to be a source of personal entertainment for her. Instead of her being the subject of scrutiny and inspection, she put her classmates through her own social experiments. Her imagination and morbid sense of humor terrified them.
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