Former Abingdon resident releases self-help book

“Excuse Me, Your God Is Waiting,” Michelle Epiphany Prosser, (Hampton Roads Publishing, $15.95, 2008)

With both whimsy and wit, Michelle Epiphany Prosser dives into the unlimited forces that shape us all in “Excuse Me, Your God Is Waiting.”
Prosser’s 193-page paperback can only be categorized as a self-help book. Yet it is also a journey of justification, lighting hallways where darkness might only be found, especially in tackling the threats of spousal abuse, abandonment and rejection.
A former Abingdon, Va., resident, Prosser’s prose disregards rules for mainstreaming, with people plodding through blank lives, like so many cattle being lead to the trough. Instead, she shapes this spiritually charged book with ideas for casting off molds that bind. The need for a greater fulfillment, she contends, can simply begin with self-awareness.
Prosser charges each reader with an overwhelming yet comforting task of discovering the emotions of a higher power: Feel God, search for God’s face, receive God.
“Excuse Me, Your God Is Waiting” reads like an instruction manual for being happy. The directions are simple: Listen to the angel on your shoulder, hush the inner critic and harvest light energy – not dark energy.
Through 14 engaging chapters, Prosser spells out a plan for better living that could save thousands in therapy – and years of mistakes. And it all comes honestly, relating such stories as the pain in the breakup of her marriage.
Readers can benefit from tracing her ups and downs.
“As I reread these pages, I feel naked – so vulnerable that perhaps you can see some of me in you,” writes Prosser, a corporate and life success coach. “I share my joys and triumphs, my follies and mistakes, my grief and heartaches ... There is no hiding from God, so I choose not to hide from you.”

“Three Feet from Gold: Turn Your Obstacles Into Opportunities,” Sharon L. Lechter and Greg S. Reid (Sterling Publishing, $22.50, 2009)

With a common sense approach, Napoleon Hill won over millions with his classic “Think and Grow Rich,” a book based on interviews with many of the most successful achievers of the early 1900s.
Hill, of Pound, Va., wrote “Think and Grow Rich” a few years after interviewing Andrew Carnegie, then the richest man in America, in 1908.
Released in 1937, “Think and Grow Rich” has since sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.
Now fast forward a few more decades to find “Three Feet from Gold,” a new book based on Hill’s multi-pronged approach to achieving success through wise and effective principles of self-motivation, leadership and service.
“Three Feet from Gold” follows the story of a young entrepreneur who encounters a businessman, who challenges the younger man in a journey of personal, spiritual and financial growth.
Culling its title from one of Hill’s writings, this book by Sharon L. Lechter and Greg S. Reid taps into practical advice that should resonate in times of economic uncertainty: “Never give up. You could be three feet from gold – the greatest success of your life.”
The handsome hardcover volume was published with the collaboration of Don Green, the executive director of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, a non-profit educational institution based in Wise, Va.
Above all, it provides an often humorous update to what Hill said so simply, so many years ago, during the dark days of the Depression: Keep trying.