TO YOUR OWN SELF BE TRUE [Kindle Edition]

Ray Melnik (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

It is the year 2021 and Kaela is twenty-three years old when her father shares his secret about an extraordinary event that changed his very existence fifteen years earlier. She was taught many lessons in moral principles growing up, but it's rare that the most profound of them would be put to the test. A convergence of events gives her father the opportunity to teach her one of the greatest lessons of all.

Although it is written to stand on its own, To Your Own Self Be True is a sequel to The Room, published in 2007 and features some of the characters from that novel. The events in The Room take place fifteen years earlier when our narrator, the grown up young scientist Kaela, is just 8 years old. Her father Harry – humanitarian, self-taught scientist, deeply committed to reason vs. superstition – experiences an extraordinary cosmic event in a bedroom of his dying mother’s home. From then on, nothing is ever the same.

See: The Room
ISBN-10: 0595470297

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 273 KB
• Print Length: 222 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1440128561
• Publisher: iUniverse Inc.; 1 edition (March 21, 2009)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0024FAHDE
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #213,524 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Just before college, Ray won first place in the National Pen Women Competition for his fictional short story, Distinction, as well as winning second place in the New York Best of City - The Written Word. While attending college, Ray Melnik's course on existential literature opened a whole new world for him with the study of writers such as Sartre and Camus.

He pursued a musical career as a singer and lyricist, after leaving college. In the early 1980s he was the lead singer for One Hand Clap and then Fine Malibus, with Steve Stevens, current guitarist and song writer for Billy Idol. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ray was engineer and co-owner of MANNIK Productions, a recording studio in the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York. In addition to lyrics, Ray, wrote a monthly column about pro audio for a music trade magazine, American Liverpool.

Later moving into the field of technology as a network engineer and then architect, he wrote for the technology panel of a regional newspaper, Times Herald Record, and was the primary writer of articles based on home technology for the website New Technology Home. Ray currently works as a Senior Network Architect in New York City, New York.

His insatiable interest in science and unbending commitment to reason makes his first novel, The Room, a story of a life grounded in both. His second novel, To Your Own Self Be True, follows with the same intention. Burnished Bridge is a short novella set in the same town as the novel series and is a love story with a twist.


THE ROOM - novel
TO YOUR OWN SELF BE TRUE - novel
BURNISHED BRIDGE - novella

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Endless Possibilities, December 3, 2009

By 

Gail Engles - See all my reviews

This review is from: To Your Own Self Be True (Hardcover)

Ray Melnik's second novel "To Your Own Self Be True" and sequel to "The Room" opens us up to "String Theory" and the science relating to it while incorporating the love interest of his characters in a way which makes "all things seem possible". Through his characters, Mr. Melnik shows us how our world could benefit from scientific research in String Theory and Quantum Physics . Mr. Melnik leaves us questioning our religious beliefs as well, relative to Creationism and opens our minds up to a universe of endless possibilities. I enjoyed reading "To Your Own Self Be true" and would highly recommend it to everyone.

5.0 out of 5 stars A technnical journey, September 21, 2009

By 

M. Morrison - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: TO YOUR OWN SELF BE TRUE (Kindle Edition)

I enjoyed the story thoroghly. A facinating fantastic look into a possible future. This sequel flowed as nicely as his first but also will read well on it's own. Thanks Ray... give us another one!

3.0 out of 5 stars Looking for Reality, August 4, 2009

By 

L. Binnie (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Your Own Self Be True (Paperback)

In this new work, Ray continues to create a wonderful world of the near future where good people can make the world better and seek to do so in all their words and deeds. And along the way amazing and miraculous things happen to them. And what is so reaffirming is that this is accomplished with a firm grounding in the real world as opposed to the faith based scenarios that offer so much to the gullible but must in the end provide next to nothing-

I do not possess the bona fides to understand the science that strongly conjectures in favor of multiple and concurrent realities. But know that it is based on tangible and demonstrable truths.

This is Faith I can believe in.
This is a paradigm change in my world view that I can believe in.

This is a story that you will want to read straight through to the end.
It entertains and it opens up thinking so that you want to explore the threads that are begun in these pages.
It makes you want to be the better person in your soul we sometimes forget about when the daily travails of life overwelm-

This is about all we can hope for- Well done- Enjoy!