Welcome to Issue 106 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter.
Hello Everyone,
Every March, I’m pleased to announce the winner of the Tyler R. Tichelaar Historical Fiction Award sponsored through the Reader Views Literary Awards. This year I am doubly thrilled to announce the winner is Teri M. Brown’s novel Daughters of Green Mountain Gap. Why doubly thrilled? Because Teri M. Brown is the first author to win the award twice and also in two consecutive years. Last year, she won for her World War II themed novel An Enemy Like Me. Daughters of Green Mountain Gap is a powerful story of love, conflict, and healing between three generations of women in the 1890s in the mountains of North Carolina. If you loved international best-selling author Sue Harrison’s The Midwife’s Touch, you’ll love this story of a “granny woman” healer. You can learn more about this year’s winner below.
I’m also excited to announce that six titles I’ve edited by Unleashing Your Rising Authors will be exhibited at the London Book Fair this year. They are:
Unleash Your Rising by Christine Gail
The True Power of Girls by Grace DeLynne
Be Free Beyond Fifty by Lynn Weimar
The Purposeful Growth Revolution by Mark Mears
Stroke It by Jenny Townsend
Frog in a Glass Jar by Anna Ashton
Here is a video featuring all the titles:
https://fb.watch/y9JgGadIH5/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Congratulations to Teri M. Brown and to all the authors featured at the London Book Fair. And be sure to check out all the other wonderful books below. I’m sure you will enjoy or find helpful at least one, if not all, of them.
I’ll be back after the snow in Upper Michigan melts. Think spring!
Tyler Tichelaar
This Month’s Great Book Quote:
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally—and often far more—worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
— C. S. Lewis
Teri M. Brown’s newest novel, Daughters of Green Mountain Gap, has won the Tyler R. Tichelaar Award for Best Historical Fiction in this year’s Reader Views Literary Awards, and it’s also won nearly twenty other awards. What makes this novel so loved? Well, it’s the story of three women in one family who are all devoted to healing but in different ways.
Maggie, the family matriarch, is a traditional healer, known as a “granny woman.” Living in the backwoods of North Carolina, she uses herbs and wise women’s methods to help her neighbors, along with knowledge she has learned from the local Cherokee. Her daughter, Carrie Ann, is a nurse, trained at a college, who looks down on her mother’s methods, which she considers little more than magical wishing at best and dangerous at worst when lives are threatened and people choose her mother’s methods over modern medicine.
The novel is set in the early 1890s, a time when modern medicine was starting to replace what today are known as homeopathic remedies. Caught between the two women is Josie Mae, Carrie Ann’s daughter, who has largely been raised by her grandmother while her mother focused on her medical studies. Josie Mae feels closer to her grandmother and is torn between her desire for her mother’s love and approval and her belief in her grandmother’s methods.
For more information, visit Daughters of Green Mountain Gap.
In Think Like a Game Designer, longtime game designer Justin Gary walks readers through everything they need to know to come up with great game concepts, create their games, test them, and successfully bring them to market. Even people who just love to play games will enjoy this book because of the inside look it provides into the creative and analytical mind of a great game designer.
For those who don’t recognize Gary’s name, he began his career by gaming. At age seventeen, he won the Magic: The Gathering US National Championships. He continued to play Magic professionally for many years, winning several more championships. Gary began designing games by working on the Vs. System trading card game and went on to lead-design the DC Comics: Infinite Crisis set. Afterwards, he created the World of Warcraft Miniatures game before starting his own company, Gary Games, in 2010, which released the hit deck-building game Ascension that year. His credentials just go on and on from there.
In Think Like a Game Designer, Gary reveals the secrets to his success, and any honest artist will tell you that those secrets boil down to having common sense and a willingness to work hard. Most people never succeed because they are afraid their ideas are bad and because they don’t make the effort to bring them to fruition.
For more information, visit Think Like a Game Designer.
Did you know that the ukulele can make amazing music? No one knows that better than Derick Sebastian, and in his new book, Daydreaming with Purpose: Self-Leadership Strategies to Manifest Your Passion into Your Profession, he shares the incredible journey he made to launch his musical career as a ukulele player. Today his success includes international tours, playing the national anthem at NBA and MLB games, and becoming a recording artist.
More than a memoir, Daydreaming with Purpose is a personal development book that will inspire you to find your passion just like Derick did and then turn it into your profession or at the very least get more joy out of life by turning your daydreams into your reality. It is all possible when you daydream with purpose, as Derick reveals.
In the foreword, Michael A. Aczon, entertainment lawyer and artist manager, describes the effect of the book on the reader: “it’s almost as if Derick is lovingly teaching you how to play a song written just for you on the ukulele just like he does.” Whatever your own passion, Derick’s chapters will highlight important topics to consider and master.
For more information, visit Daydreaming with Purpose.
Dan Mumm’s new book Selling Your Luxury Home: Uncovering the Secrets of One of Las Vegas’ Most Productive Sales Professionals lives up to its title. Dan Mumm has sold nearly one thousand homes in the Las Vegas area, many of them luxury homes worth seven figures. And while this book may have a niche market since not everyone owns a luxury home, much of the advice is applicable to any homeowner. However, Dan reveals specific considerations for selling luxury homes that do not apply to the average home, such as making sure you receive offers from people who have the means to buy your home and whether solar panels will help or hurt you sell your home.
Dan begins by stating some important facts. Selling your luxury home is probably the most significant financial transaction of your life. If you are saving for retirement, the money from your home could affect your retirement, ability to take vacations or purchase a summer home, and your overall future. You cannot afford to receive less than your home is worth since it is the most valuable asset you own. However, many homeowners make mistakes in trying to sell their homes, whether in choosing the wrong real estate agent or doing FSBO (For-Sale-By-Owner).
For more information, visit Selling Your Luxury Home.
Joy Alboro’s Stop Shaming Yourself: Heal Your Trauma and Abuse by Forgiving and Loving Your Life is a dynamic new book about how change is possible even for those who have suffered the most. Part memoir, part recovery book for those who have experienced abuse, Stop Shaming Yourself will make even those who feel the most shame or believe themselves the most undeserving of love find hope and practical tools to overcome their pasts and learn to live new and happier lives.
I admit some of this book is hard to take. It is not for the faint-hearted. Those of us who have not been abused may find parts of it hard to stomach, but those who have been abused will realize Joy understands what they’ve been through, and that is precisely why she can help them.
Each chapter begins with Joy sharing one of the horrific stories of her childhood. Joy was one of eight children, all of whom suffered abuse at the hands of her father. Her mother was also abused by her father, but what Joy finds hard to understand is why her mother allowed her father to abuse her children. In the end, Joy realized her mother allowed the abuse to protect herself. And the abuse was horrendous.
For more information, visit Stop Shaming Yourself.
Nick of Time: The Reckoning Road by Tom Igou is a nonfiction book about Tom Igou’s effort to come to grips with the suicide of his son, Nick, and the other trauma he has experienced in his life. The book details how Tom partly coped with his grief by traveling around the Southwest in the early months of 2020 with his longtime friend, Jim.
The book opens with Tom and Jim rendezvousing in Austin, Texas, to begin their journey. They visit a bar they have visited many times in the past where the regulars and staff have become like family to them. Tom reflects on what family means and how one can find one’s tribe among similar-minded people and kindred spirits without being related to them.
As Tom details his and Jim’s journey to various tourist spots and places of interest—they are particularly fond of Native American sites and looking for fossils and prehistoric art—he fills us in on his backstory. We come to understand why Tom has adopted friends as family members since his relationship with his parents and other family members has long been strained to the point where he had to cut off contact with them after they responded coldly and poorly to his son’s death.
For more information, visit Nick of Time.
Leigh Daugherty’s new book, How to Get Your House in Order: Downsize Your Stuff, Organize Your Life, Prioritize What Matters, begins with a beautiful quote by an unknown author: “Maybe the life you’ve always wanted to live is buried underneath everything you own.” Unfortunately, that quote may be true for many of us. Leigh knows that as life goes on, we accumulate more and more for numerous reasons—from inheriting objects we may not want or buying things we do not need to overindulging in our passions by buying more craft items for projects we’ll never complete or more books we’ll never get around to reading.
Leigh understands because she’s been there. She confesses that much of her adult life she was hiding a dirty secret—literally. Her house and life were a mess. The demands of her career and being the mother of two young children meant she could not keep up. She felt guilty about it, but she also excused it. She states, “I felt my disorganization at home was my badge of honor—I mean, after all, I was a creative type. I had this delusional belief that routine and order would make me, well…ordinary. I couldn’t be organized and ordinary!” However, clutter and disorganization can be emotionally overwhelming and cause our lives to become disordered and chaotic.
For more information, visit How to Get Your House in Order.
