Virtual Book Tour: Confessions of a Self-Help Writer by Benjamin DeHaven

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card. Five randomly chosen winners via rafflecopter (US only) will win a signed hardcover copy of the book. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

A Day with Benjamin DeHaven Behind the Scenes

Not as exciting as my social media profile would have you believe. A saying as a child that always prompted a giggle. - “Call me anything, but don’t call me late for dinner."

The morning started in a familiar fashion--struggling through the CPAP machine wrapped tightly around my neck from rolling in circles all night as the Sodium Oxibate chased Morpheus through the back alleys of my dreams. Carradine would be proud. Awakened abruptly by the handful pills dispensing magic in my soul as I somehow had managed to swallow all nine off my bedside table without removing my mask. A glorious Halloween bag of success filled colors and shapes prescribed to cure my hypertension, high blood pressure, hypopituitarism, and narcolepsy. I always accomplished this snake oil task between the first alarm, which I snoozed through, and the faint smell of cigarette smoke and puppy dander that now filled my mask from the upstairs level of my aging parents' Town Home, where I often found myself in the winter. I pushed my fears aside, cracked another Adderall in half and began about the morning ritual of testosterone injections, vitamins, compulsive cleaning and a sick stomach. Ahh-yes-pills need food. No… I, thank you—my precious body for keeping me healthy. Don’t let them call me late for dinner. Don’t haunt me throughout the day. I’m sorry America! I was the first Outsourcing conglomerate. My body is too expensive, lazy, worn out, or maybe too efficient in its quest for gross margin to produce anything of value in itself. And for over 20 years I have outsourced almost all its essential functions in a mixed argument of “they’re taking our jobs-and no I will not pick up that elephant shit for any amount of money!” The situps, the situps, I have to do the sit ups. But why? I am constantly concerned I might be in a situation where a beautiful Italian traffic cop asks me to remove my shirt and retrieve a child’s toy from the Trevi fountain, and being a brand whore I refuse to go in with my “PINK” dress shirt. But alas-it's too late for the exercise. The speed is kicking in. I use my pork filled Kielbasa sausage fingers to shove my hairy old man belly past the European sized Label jeans. The computer is running too slow and my mind is racing.

So-pretty typical, usually followed by some self-loathing and a nap.

A ghost, a philanthropist, a con man, a devout Catholic, a gigolo, a savior, an heir, a common man, and an addict are just some of the words used to describe Michael Enzo, who some sources credit with ghost-writing more than 108 self-help books on behalf of celebrities, politicians and business leaders. After failing to make what he considered to be a positive impact on society he began to destroy those closest to him including Benjamin DeHaven, the author of this book, and former collaborator. Defrauding an industry for almost 20 years by exploiting people's insecurities and profiting from them, more than likely these friends contributed more to the field of self-help, while profiting from it, than they will ever know. Believing they could only understand people's problems by suffering along with them, they lived on the razor's edge. If you've ever picked up a tell-all biography of a celebrity or a title from the self-help section at the bookstore, certainly you would question the source.This is an inside look at the mind of Michael Enzo and it is the author's hope that people will start helping themselves again after reading it. Discover what turns someone from preaching salvation towards seeking its destruction. You won't believe this could be true.

About the Author: A Graduate of Columbia College in Chicago, Benjamin DeHaven keeps his heart in Chicago and his soul in New Orleans. He holds a MBA from Tulane and a film degree from Columbia. Once ejected from a community college for arguing Frost cried out for acceptance in Birches, he has since written screenplays, traded futures in Madrid, and was Editor in Chief of the Nola Shopper Newspaper, a free art newspaper and the 2nd largest monthly paper in the New Orleans, MSA. . He also has a "shout out" in a Jay "Z" Song.

DeHaven, who currently resides in Las Vegas began his writing career with Stone United, a Chicago based Film Company, which works primarily in independent film. As an unknown fiction writer, he feels the best description of himself, is a sarcastic one and is as follows:

Benjamin W. DeHaven was born on a pool table after a Waylon Jennings' concert in 1977. His personal success is outweighed only by his stunning good looks and adherence to unwritten moral guidelines. He has been described as a thinking man's Tucker Max as well as an idiot's Hunter S. Thompson. His goal is to die from an unwavering commitment to be more like Hemingway.

He and Michael Enzo were friends.

Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ YouTube ~ Amazon ~ Goodreads

Buy the book at Barnes and Noble or Amazon. a Rafflecopter giveaway