Welcome to Issue 107 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter.
This is a true SUMMER BONANZA EDITION! We’ve got double the number of books in this issue because Larry and I at Superior Book Productions have been super-busy this year helping authors to get their books edited and published. And we couldn’t be happier to be part of bringing to readers so many great titles that will entertain, heal, and inspire as well as make the world a better place. You can check out the full list of recent titles we’ve helped to produce below.
As for myself, I’ll be selling books in my usual place at the annual Outback Art Fair in Marquette, MI at Shiras Park/Picnic Rocks on Saturday, July 26, from 10-6, and Sunday, July 27, from 10-5. I will have copies of all twenty-five of my books for sale, including my most recent title, The Mysteries of Marquette. I am always happy to autograph books or just talk to visitors about local history or writing and publishing. I hope to see you there!
Enjoy the rest of your summer. We’ll be back soon with more great books to explore so get busy reading!
Tyler Tichelaar
This Month’s Great Book Quote:
“Students need to read books. Entire books. Our society is distracted, unfocused, and in a hurry.
A curriculum that rushes through content perpetuates the anxiety of our time.
Reading a book (slowly and leisurely) is a countercultural act.”
— Brian Tolentino, M.Ed
Julie Chiya has not had an easy life, but in her new book Pushing Through Your Obstacles: Self-Leadership Strategies to Empower Your Life and Achieve Your Dreams, she reveals how she overcame all the obstacles others might use as excuses to keep them from making positive changes in their lives and succeeding.
Designed as both a memoir and a personal development book, Pushing Through Your Obstacles is divided into twenty-four chapters that chronicle Julie’s life from her early childhood to the present when, at age thirty-one, she has now become an educational administrator, wife, mother, homeowner, and published author. Each chapter ends with a discussion of what she learned from the life experiences she shares, plus tips for the reader when handling similar situations, and exercise questions so the reader can reflect upon what they learned in the chapter and apply it to their own life.
Julie is truly someone who doesn’t let problems stand in her way. And problems began in her childhood. She begins the book by stating, “Looking back at my beginnings, I recognized how deeply my mother loved me.” She goes on to describe life with her single mother, brother, and grandmother. She was happy and loved and didn’t even realize they were poor.
For more information, visit Pushing Through Your Obstacles.
Erica Bonham’s new book Always Enough, Never Done: Heal Your Nervous System, Turn Wounds Into Wisdom, and Cultivate Your Inner Badass is the first of two volumes that offer an insightful path to recovery that exceeds most of the recovery and personal development books out there. Erica, a Licensed Professional Counselor, certified EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) clinician, consultant, and trainer believes that healing is possible for us all, but as her title proclaims, it is an ongoing process, so we must embrace it and continually work at it. While healing our pain is not easy, she also reminds us that “self-affirmationing your way out of trauma” doesn’t work. While affirmations are great, we also need to do the hard work.
Erica doesn’t mince words about what needs to be done, but she has such a great sense of humor and overall concept of the power of healing and owning your “inner badass” that reading this book is like having a best friend coaching you on your recovery.
The book is divided into six sections, each section full of wisdom, humor, practical advice, and activities to help you heal.
For more information, visit Always Enough, Never Done.
Alin Marin’s new book Construction Project Management Success: Transforming the Mindset of Professionals with Practical Advice, Lessons Learned, and Key Strategies is the perfect book for anyone who has a project to manage, wants to become a better leader, and specifically is in construction or wishes to become a better person all around.
Marin has spent decades studying project management and then applying it in his career. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and business management and a master’s in project management. He has worked on multi-billion-dollar construction megaprojects in mining, infrastructure, and liquefied natural gas. He has also experienced cultural diversity and how to work with people from a variety of cultures. Romanian by birth, Marin migrated to Australia at a young age, was educated there, and has dual Romanian and Australian citizenship. His career has taken him from working in Australia to Kazakhstan and Qatar. He has now shared his decades of knowledge and experience in his new book.
Construction Project Management Success is designed as a quick reference guide, although you can certainly read it from cover to cover. The book is divided into two sections: Project Management Key Knowledge Areas and The Mindset of Project Management Success.
For more information, visit Construction Project Management Success.
Melissa Dederer’s new book Debt-Less Living: Your Journey to Gaining Control of Your Finances offers simple, practical ways to reduce your debt and understand your current financial picture as well as how to improve it. While the term debt-free is often used today, as Melissa astutely remarks, it’s not possible for anyone to be debt-free. “Even if we could pay off all of our credit cards and loans,” she says, “we still would owe something to someone. There is always rent or a mortgage, water, gas, or electric bills, local, state, and federal taxes, and other essentials. We can never truly be Debt-Free. We can, however, be Debt-Less.”
Melissa then takes the reader on her personal journey to becoming debt-less. Step-by-step, she walks us through her methods so we can learn to apply them to our own lives. If you think managing your money is difficult or impossible, think again. Melissa learned how to do it on her own, even though no one ever taught her about money management. Nor did she need complex methods or fancy technology. She began in the 1970s as a stay-at-home mom by saving five dollars a week in an envelope that she kept under her mattress to build up a nest egg for her family.
For more information, visit Debt-Less Living.
Emily B. Johnson, mother of three, is dedicated to raising her children to believe in God and know He is always there for them. After years of parenting, she wrote Parents—Prophets of the Home: Your Kingdom Culture Toolkit to Prepare Your Child to Fulfill Their Destiny to share with other parents the strategies she has used. These strategies not only teach children about God and how to create a kingdom culture in the home, but they help children believe God has chosen them for special things—specifically their own unique kingdom assignments. Most importantly, the book is designed to assist parents in helping their children determine what those assignments are and live them.
Emily makes it clear every child was created with a unique destiny, a kingdom assignment, that only they were put on this earth to fulfill. This concept is mirrored in the biblical Book of Esther where Esther is called to save the Jewish people. Imagine, however, if Esther had chosen not to fulfill her kingdom assignment. Few things are worse than people who don’t fulfill their purpose in life, and Emily has written this book to help prevent that from happening with the next generation.
For more information, visit Parents—Prophets of the Home.
In Walking in Your Sunshine: Discover the True Light of Forgiveness After Childhood Emotional Abuse, Lori Ann Beaucage shares her journey of how she tried to forgive and understand the father who emotionally abused her. She came to the realization that the only way she could heal from the pain was to forgive, and she wanted to learn to forgive her father before he died. The journey was often tumultuous, but it eventually brought her peace. She has now written this book to help others who are struggling to forgive a loved one.
One important aspect of Lori Ann’s journey was her realization that her father had done the best he could with what he had. He had also been abused, by his father and other relatives. She never knew the details of the abuse—her father never told her—but she knew about it from her mom. She was also able to tell her father how he had made her feel as a child. He then explained why he had acted that way—often because he wanted to teach her right from wrong, but also because sometimes he had just lost his temper.
Lori Ann refused to give up on her father.
For more information, visit Walking in Your Sunshine.
Dr. Jason Plotsky is a man with a mission. After his father, who had never been sick, died of a heart attack at age sixty-two, Plotsky realized appearing healthy and being healthy were not the same thing and that his family history meant he better pay attention to his health. As he states, “A lack of symptoms is not the definition of health; one does not cancel out the other,” and “judging your overall health by how you feel now is a bad plan.” After his father’s death, Plotsky went on to become a doctor, and now, he has compiled a career’s worth of knowledge into his new book Simple Steps to a Longer Life: The 6 Pillars of Staying Healthy Forever.
Even if you are healthy at this moment, it’s worth paying attention to your health since, as Dr. Plotsky notes, an estimated 70 percent of North Americans will be diagnosed with a chronic disease by age sixty-five. The most common chronic diseases are what he calls “The Big Four”—cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases/dementia, and cardiovascular disease. However, through taking preventative measures now—simple concrete actions—we can turn that future around for ourselves without having to eat only lettuce the rest of our lives. Dr. Plotsky believes as long as you stick to your health strategy 90 percent of the time, you can stay in peak condition.
For more information, visit Simple Steps to a Longer Life.
Manuel Veincent, known as “Uncle Manny” to those who have had the good fortune of knowing him, has led a fascinating life that encompasses and embodies a great deal of Hawaiian history, the true aloha spirit, and a lot of grit and determination. Now, in his memoir, Born of Two Oceans, Veincent shares his experiences, from his very traditional Hawaiian upbringing in the 1930s and 1940s, to his years fighting in the Korean War, his experiences ranching, beginning a canoe club in Hawaii, and his years working for the fire department. This book is not only a celebration of the life of an extraordinary man, but a work that captures important cultural and historical details that will make you feel like you’ve come to know Hawaii very well, even if you’ve never been there.
Uncle Manny has an inner strength or toughness most of us would envy. He clearly inherited some of this fortitude from his grandparents. His description of his childhood is colorful and unforgettable, and his grandparents, known as Tutu Man and Tutu Lady, were at the heart of it. He describes how tough his grandfather was. This was a man who smoked Bull Durham raw tobacco and consequently had bad lungs and coughed all the time, yet when Manny went fishing with him, he would be amazed by how the old man could hold his breath underwater and walk on the ocean floor to lay his traps.
For more information, visit Born of Two Oceans.
Jim Menge has worked in the travel industry for more than a decade and visited more than one hundred countries so it’s no surprise that he advocates for the value of travel in his new book, Never Travel in a Straight Line: Self-Leadership Strategies to Discover Your Life’s Purpose and Live Out Your Passions. In the book, he shares his story of traveling, both for business and pleasure, and the epiphanies, lessons, and moments of awareness he experienced along the way.
The book is divided into four parts that focus on navigating your life journey, navigating toward purpose, navigating life’s challenges, and navigating epiphanies to reflections. Interspersed with the parts are excerpts from his poem “I Am a Traveling Man” that offers a humorous look at his experiences. A large part of the book focuses on dealing with the unexpected and not letting the long lines at airports, delays, or other disruptions disturb you. This passage from his poem reflects that:
I’m a Traveling Man; I’m a Traveling Fool.
I make standby look fun and delays look cool.
I’ve been checked in, checked out, and cross-checked;
bumped, booked, and over-booked.
Full-board or half-board, when I’m on board, I’m never bored.
For more information, visit Never Travel in a Straight Line.
In Destination Worthy: Experience Transformative Healing Through Love and Grace, Rachell Macom shares her inspiring story of how she grew in her relationship with God and learned to overcome her childhood feelings of not being wanted or loved until she finally came to believe she was worthy.
The book begins with an exciting message: “Your 41 Is Coming!” I had never heard that expression before, but Rachel explains how in the Bible the number forty is significant. During the flood, it rained forty days and forty nights. On day forty-one, the rain stopped. Moses led the Israelites for forty years. In year forty-one, they entered the Promised Land. Numerous other examples exist. The point is we can all achieve our forty-one, and this book details how. In fact, Rachell was forty-one when she finally reached her destination: Worthy. It was then that she found her true identity in Jesus.
Rachell explains that while she had always identified as a Christian, she did not always live like one. It usually took a tragedy, like when she nearly died from COVID-19, to get her back on the path she had strayed from.
For more information, visit Destination Worthy.
Dylan Stafford’s new book, Daddy Muscles Too: Believe in Your Children, Teach Strong Values, Succeed as a Father is a sequel to Dylan’s earlier book, Daddy Muscles, in which he told the story of becoming a father to his firstborn, Jackson. In this second book, Dylan chronicles his journey raising Jackson with his wife Marisa, as well as his and Marisa’s decision to adopt a second child after they had so much difficulty getting pregnant with their first child.
Written as a series of heartfelt journal entries, Dylan began chronicling his fatherhood journey because he did not want to forget the special moments as a father. He knew in time his memory would be faulty, but a documented journey would help him to relive those magical times and also leave behind a legacy for his children.
Far more than just listing daily events, Dylan’s journal entries are heartfelt and authentic expressions of his mindset along the journey. He shares the happy moments, but also the moments of panic, fear, self-doubt, and bad moods.
For more information, visit Daddy Muscles Too.
JOYBeing: Connecting With Your Essence and the Rhythm of Life to Thrive and Inspire is a dynamic new book by Ann Van Eron and Gila Ancel Seritcioglu that encourages us all to seek moments of joy in our lives and shows us how to find them.
The authors believe the need for joy is more necessary now than ever before. With all the turmoil and polarity in our world, all the conflicts, climate change concerns, technological disruptions, etc., it is easy for us to feel disconnected from ourselves and others. However, emotions are contagious, so if we strive to be joyful, we can spread joy and hope to others, creating a better future for everyone.
Ann and Gila coined the phrase “JOYBeing,” which they define as “connecting with awareness to the internal energy of aliveness in us as we experience and manage the challenges and joys of life…. JOYBeing is the joy of being alive. It is our ability to be awake to experience all facets of the rhythm of life.”
Using a garden metaphor, the authors show us how to plant seeds of JOYBeing. We can do this by being open to experiences so the seeds have a place to grow.
For more information, visit JOYBeing.
