Straight from the Library: Straight Chatting from the Library: Delicia Niami

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will award a randomly drawn winner a signed special edition copy of the book. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

READ THE INTERVIEW

What is the favorite book you remember as a child?
The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende. I also really liked the Flowers in the Attic series.

What is your favorite book today?
I’m a nerd about books and mostly only like self-help type books so I’d say at the moment it would have to be The Body Keeps The Score, by Bessel van der Kolk

Tell us about your current book in 10 words.
A hard read. Will inspire you to know everyone’s ResilientAF!

What are you reading right now?
I am editing Not My Circus so I can get it out to the world…I’ve been doing nothing but reading this for a while now. Trying to make it the absolute best it can be.

What books do you have on hold at the library?
I haven’t been to a library in quite some time. Did you know they have a program where if they don’t carry the book you want they will order it to be delivered to your house and then you return it when you are done and it goes into their stacks. Not sure they have it everywhere but it’s something that not a lot of people know is available in California.

Do you have any bad book habits?
I work too much on them.

E-Reader or print? and why?
Definitely print! I like to hold and feel what I read, not to mention I work for a printer.

One book at a time or multiples?
Multiple just like life, I need to have many hats in the air.

Dog-ear or bookmark? (don't worry—Librarian Judith won't hold it against you—much)
Both, depends on the book and if I have a bookmark LOL. Usually I will dog ear my school books or books that teach me something but I will use a bookmark for pleasurable reading.

Favorite book you've read this year?
I’ve only read one and it has been the next book in my series, Not My Circus. I am trying to get it to be the best it can possibly be before sending it out into the world.

Favorite place to read?
The beach, in a lounge chair with a virgin pina colada in hand.

Favorite genre?
Self-Help

Do you loan your books?
Sure, I’d be happy to loan certain books only…

Favorite book to recommend?
The Body Keeps The Score

How do you keep your books organized?
Right now, in a box in storage…I’m building a home and I live in a yurt there is no space for anything.

Re-reader or not?
Really depends on what it is. Pleasure read, probably not. Self-help more than likely if it was good. I would at least reference back to it.

What would make you not finish a book?
Sadly, normally most fiction I can’t seem to finish. It doesn’t hold my interest. Kind of like watching TV, I feel like I’m wasting time (even though I know it’s not) I just need to always feel like I’m learning something.

Keep books or give them away?
I keep most, I will give books away to someone if I think it might help them.

READ THE BLURB

Resilience isn’t inherited. It’s a hard-fought skill forged by our ability to pick up the broken pieces of our past and remake them into something new.

Meet four-year-old Delicia, a poor but carefree child who is about to have her world shattered. Along with her seven-year-old brother Nile, she is kidnapped from her Los Angeles home by her estranged father and taken to Iraq, a foreign world she has never known. This is just the beginning of a string of traumas, hardships, and assaults Delicia will endure throughout her tumultuous childhood.

Now an adult living back in California, Delicia Niami bravely recounts how she survived the unimaginable in her debut memoir. Kissing Asphalt, the first in her memoir trilogy, ResilientAF, grapples with the power of resilience, acceptance, and self-love. She revisits her terrifying past with vulnerability, compassion, and the honesty of a true survivor. Hold hands with Delicia as she faces her childhood scars and learns how to confront her fears, accept her true value and identity, and embrace her unique gifts. It’s a multi-decade roller coaster ride that is the beginning of her liberation, propelling her to live an inspired life and embrace her full human potential—a human potential she knows lives inside everyone, no matter what life has thrown at us.

For anyone who has struggled with childhood trauma, Delicia’s unflinching journey through darkness and back to light will resonate. She has decided to share her story publicly in hopes that it will serve as a guide to the many who have suffered in silence and continue to struggle against the daunting weight imposed by childhood trauma.

READ AN EXCERPT

The minute our father, Hazim, got us onto Iraqi soil, my mother lost all her parental rights. One moment, we were happy kids playing on the lawn of our San Fernando Valley home, and in the blink of an eye, we were ripped away and taken to a country we knew nothing about. Everything was new. New culture, new rules, new language—no mother, no mother, no mother!

I think my brother understood better than I did the consequences of being in Baghdad, but he was being strong for me. He had to protect his little four-year-old sister from knowing the reality of the situation. We had been kidnapped by our father and taken to another country far, far from home.

MEET THE AUTHOR