Finalist at the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards

Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality was named Finalist at the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

1st Place Award at Royal Dragonfly Book Awards

Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality won 1st Place in its category at the 2014 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards.

Appearing at LitQuake's Off the Richter Scale: Life Stories

I will be part of a memoirist panel on Saturday, October 11th in San Francisco, Off the Richter Scale: Life Stories at the LitQuake festival. MC-ed by Tamim Ansary, other authors include Eileen Cronin, Karen Lynch, and Gordon Young.

"Every life is made up of millions of stories. In this hour we hear from four memoirists who have mined stories in their lives to explore deeper themes of nostalgia, home, family, loss, acceptance, and spirituality."

Reading at InsideStoryTime

I will be reading from my book at InsideStoryTime on August 19th, 2014.

MASKS AND MASQUES at La Movida Wine Bar & Community Kitchen, 3066 24th St., San Francisco, on Tuesday August 19th, 7.30-9.30 pm, will feature Richard Kadrey (The Getaway God), Novella Carpenter (Gone Feral), Lee Foust (Poison and Antidote), Makram Abu-Shakra (Interplay), and Melissa Dodd. MCd by James Warner (All Her Father's Guns).



InsideStoryTime.com

I will also be part of a Memoirist panel at the LitQuake 2014 festival. Stay tuned for more information.

Finalist at Indie Excellence Book Awards

This has been a positive month for my book Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality. In addition to receiving Honorable Mention at two book festivals, I was a Finalist at the 2014 National Indie Excellence Book Awards in the Spiritual category.

Interplay Received Honorable Mention at Two Book Festivals

Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality received Honorable Mention at the Paris Book Festival and San Francisco Book Festival this month.

I gave the following speech at San Francisco Book Festival on May 17th, given the request to speak briefly about why I wrote the book and the journey writing it:

"Before writing Interplay, I devoted much of my free time to making music, art, and fiction. What especially interested me in my creative endeavors was developing the art of poetic obscurity and enigma craftsmanship. Over the years, I accumulated experiences that were quite intense, and the insights harvested from these experiences came with an ever-increasing desire to share them with others, which became the primary impetus behind writing this book. And taking on this project was an excursion from my usual, mystery-seeking self because the nature of the book demanded explaining things in an accurate and straightforward fashion. This was contrary to my artistic nature and I detected a growing sense of inner dissonance or rebellion. It seemed like the closer I got to articulating my deeper insights, the more this rebellious side wanted to not necessarily negate my ideas, my expressions but shroud them in mystery, as if acting as a protector of difficult truths. This...unexpected interplay, which is documented in the book, led me to develop a form of intellectual thinking that did not temper the inner dissonance but embraced it."

Images from the festival:

Book Release - Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality

Posts have been infrequent here because I've been busy writing my book Interplay: An Artist's Approach to Spirituality and preparing for its release. The bulk of this blog so far can be described as an early rough draft of the book. Ideas are relatively underdeveloped here, and I invite the reader to turn to the book instead of exploring preceding posts.

Going forward, I will provide excerpts from the book and expand on the material. I will also offer new angles on the book's key concepts that present them in a more general light. In contrast, the book is largely autobiographical and the ideas are tied to personal experience, presented in the order they were conceived. Both styles of writing come with benefits and can be seen to be complementary.




Synopsis

Driven by the pursuit of inspiration and breakthrough experiences, musician, artist, and writer Abu-Shakra explores the inner terrain and develops a spirituality centered on attaining higher states of mind.

Interplay shows the benefits and risks of intensely energized, minimally disciplined spiritual development and emphasizes evoking the balancing process directly from life’s experiences.

Weaving memoir with fiction, discussions on art and music, and unique observations on the nature of reality, Interplay traces the author's progression from skepticism to groundbreaking revelations on synchronicity, mysticism, and the process of initiation.

Format: Softcover
Purchase Link: http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-8041-7

Format: Hardcover
Purchase Link: http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-8271-1

Format: eBook
Purchase Link: http://www.amazon.com/Interplay-Artists-Approach-Spirituality-ebook/dp/B00G4I2YX8/

Amazon Link:
http://www.amazon.com/Interplay-Approach-Spirituality-Makram-Abu-Shakra/dp/0741480417

Advance Praise

"As a story of spiritual transition and transcendence, this is a book that will be of great interest to many people. Open-minded readers will find a great deal to ponder." --BookIdeas.com

"A dynamic and thought-provoking account of one man’s spiritual and artistic evolution....This book acts as a challenge to skeptics and a heartfelt appeal to the open-minded....[Interplay] serves as a powerful treatise on spiritual discovery and provokes thoughtful introspection in regards to one's spirituality." --San Francisco Book Review

"Devotees of art and spiritual exploration will find much to contemplate in Interplay. Weaving various art forms together with spiritual and psychic exploration cannot help but motivate those who wish to use their own art as a means to awakening." --ForeWord Clarion Reviews

"In every stage of his development—both spiritual and creative—this musician/artist/fiction writer/philosopher creates a complex "palette" of perspectives. Beginning with this multiplicity he strives to reach a simplicity that retains the original rich complexity, much like the miraculous harmony that comes of mixing the color on a palette....the reader will return again and again to "Interplay" in search of anchor points, synchronicity and synthesis in one's own spiritual journey." --BookReview.com