December 2013

Welcome to Issue 39 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter!

Happy Holidays Everyone!

This time of year is always a busy one for authors.

Here are a couple of the events I’ll be at in the weeks to come.

TV6 Christmas Craft Show, Superior Dome, Marquette, MI. Friday, December 6–Sunday, December 8. I’ll be in Booth 251.

Snowbound Books, Marquette, MI. Saturday, December 14, 2-4 p.m. I’ll be signing books along with several other U.P. Authors: John Gubbins, Mike Carriere, Daniel Fountain, Matt Bell, Gretchen Preston, and Carrie Pearson.

And don’t worry. I’ll have plenty to do in 2014 when I begin to publish my new King Arthur novel series, as well as continue to edit and review other authors’ books.

Have a wonderful holiday season, and here’s hoping 2014 is your best year yet!

New Books

What better book to start off a holiday newsletter than one that reminds us that giving is better than receiving.

Reverend David Peterson’s new book Receiving and Giving is a beautiful testament to God’s true purpose in our lives and the purpose He holds for us. Peterson begins by telling us that: “In the Bible are 475 references to ‘blessing.’ Interestingly, there are only 309 references to ‘pray’ and a 109 more to ‘prayer.’ I take this difference to add gravity to God’s commitment to the act of blessing as His central occupation.”

Peterson continues by revealing how blessings from God surround us everywhere we look. And giving blessings is easy. We just have to be willing to find space in our busy lives to take a minute to bless others. Reading this book will convince you that it can be done and that it will be more than worthwhile. Will you accept this Bless Challenge?

To read more, visit Receiving and Giving.

If you really want to make Mom happy this holiday season, give her the help she needs around the house and join in to create a fun and meaningful family event.

Author Carol Paul knows all about teamwork, having spent more than twenty years involved in her father Coach Wooten’s basketball camps. And she knows what it is to have family members not behave like team players. For years, she tried to keep the house clean on her own, and she tried hiring maids, only to have to clean before they came. Tired of this situation, she realized if a maid service could clean her house in an hour or two a week, there was no reason why her family of six could not do the same.

And so the Team Clean formula was born. I don’t want to reveal all of Carol’s secrets for how to get your spouse and children to help you clean, and more than clean, enjoy it as part of a regular weekly activity. I don’t want to reveal the secrets because I really believe you will not only benefit from reading this book, but you’ll come to enjoy cleaning with your family yourself.

To read more, visit Team Clean.

No gift we have is more important than our health; if we don’t have our health, we have nothing.

In Health + Happiness = Wellness, Rakesh Sethi, a certified Ayurvedic health practitioner, brings to a Western readership the secrets of Ayurvedic medicine in an easy-to-read and follow format that will change people’s perceptions of their bodies and what is necessary for good health. Don’t let the term “Ayurvedic” turn you away; it is simply Sanskrit for “the science of life.” And this book discusses what you need to know to make your life as happy and healthy as possible. The concepts presented here are not difficult, but they are so accurate that I am sure readers will, like me, be both surprised and inspired to make the simple changes necessary to improve their lives; in fact, the changes are so easy to make that it is a relief to read the book and discover how altering just a few foods in your diet or changing your sleep or exercise patterns can revolutionize your life.

To read more, visit Health + Happiness = Wellness.

A lot of books on leadership exist, and so do a lot of books about how to run a business or organization. Cory Bouck’s new book The Lens of Leadership stands out because it uses a “Serve-Build-Inspire” model that is really not about the leader but his or her followers. In fact, Cory begins by stressing that people who want to be leaders have to start by learning how to be followers, and from there, he goes on to discuss how leaders should lead and treat their followers. A good leader is not afraid to look at his leadership abilities through the “Lens of Leadership.”

One leadership aspect that I appreciated Cory writing about is how leading is about serving. People should not become leaders because they are proud. Cory focuses on the importance of humility for leaders, but also the nobility of being a leader, stating, “all leadership is noble. The act of leading, done well, improves the material and emotional welfare of others. It is a noble act, worthy of pride and respect.”

To read more, visit The Lens of Leadership.

At the holidays, hope and faith are never far from our thoughts. In Beating Adversity, Randy Mallory gives hope to his readers by showing them just how any situation, no matter how challenging, can work out.

After Randy Mallory experienced a traumatic motorcycle accident that should have taken his life, he had a long road of recovery before him. Many people would have given up on life at that point, but not Randy. All his life, Randy had worked hard, and now he was prepared to do the same to return to as normal a life as possible. Every bad event that had previously happened to him could not compare to his motorcycle accident, but he had learned a lot from all those encounters with adversity, and now they prepared him for the fight of his life.

To read more, visit Beating Adversity.

Is 2014 the year you will give yourself the gift of retirement? Even if retirement is years off, it’s never too late to start planning, and Mark Stern’s new book Reaching Retirement Success is a great place to start. Stern begins by showing readers just how much the world of investing and retirement planning has changed in the last two decades. In the book’s beginning, he cites retirement advice from 1994, including forecasts of how strong the financial markets would continue to be. Needless to say, the forecasts were far off, yet many people are still following the investing advice those forecasts were built upon.

The information in Reaching Retirement Success is detailed but also refreshing because Stern comes at it from various angles, not the least of which is that he had previous careers in respiratory therapy and aerospace engineering before coming to financial investing in 1994. Stern thinks outside the box to show what was wrong with past investing strategies, and he uses common sense backed by plenty of statistics and examples to explain the realities of financial investing today.

To read more, visit Reaching Retirement Success.