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The question was easy enough: Just how do you become successful in life? The answer, offered by those already there, was not easy. Nevertheless, more than 200 celebrities from movie stars to astronauts, from baseball players to romance novelists, from rock musicians to progressive politicians, gave it their best shot. In the end, what Ron Stovall and Joe Kraus, co-authors of the new book The Famous & Successful: Their Advice for All of Us found was that there are many paths to being successful in life. At the same time they found that there were common threads to that success. They found that these general assessments, shared by the majority of successful people, can turn losers into winners, lives of despair to lives of hope, individuals once poor in body and spirit to people rich in outlook and opportunity. The book, which took 13 years to solicit and compile results, is in essence a guidebook for anybody who wants to be successful in whatever they do. Even just a quick reading, the authors say, can turn lives around and point their ambitions in the right direction. The job then would be to keep going and going and going. They will know they have arrived when the day someone else comes forward to ask them - just how do you become successful in life? Now, just how did this project come about? Why was it launched and how was it that so many celebrities participated? The answer to these questions is a story in itself and fully explained in the softcover, 150-page book. It is available through Amazon, Barns & Nobel and other major bookstores.

Ron Stovall was raised in Pittsburg, California, and graduated from high school in 1983. Later he received diplomas in Business Management and Office Administration. He is a graduate of programs in Professional Bookkeeping and Accounting as well as Nonprofit Leadership and Management. He is currently enrolled in community college classes continuing his study in accounting and marketing. He also volunteers as a tutor for Parkside Youth Literacy Project, a charitable organization that teach boys and girls how to read and write. Ron enjoys autograph collecting and reading Star Wars novels. Ron is currently incarcerated at Folsom Prison. The prescription for life project took nearly 13 years of letter writing, soliciting responses to complete. Joe Kraus is a United States Navy veteran and has been married for nearly 50 years to his wife Karren. They have three grown children and six grandchildren. He spent his whole working life as a journalist including 15 years as managing editor of various daily newspapers. He has written for national magazines with more than 300 feature stories published in about 60 different publications. He founded the Autograph Collector’s Magazine in 1986 and Child Star Magazine in 1992. His two non-fiction books published to date are Alive in the Desert and Tales from the Deep. Several more books are in production. Joe was contacted by Ron for assistance in the book project after seeing his name associated with the autograph magazine. Because this book project was such a unique idea, especially with the autograph element, he couldn’t refuse the offer to help. As a bonus, a long standing and close friendship was born.