Welcome to Issue 50 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter!
Happy New Year Everyone!
I’m starting off the year right by releasing my newest book, Melusine’s Gift: The Children of Arthur, Book Two. Read all about it below.
Winter tends to be a slow time for book events, but a busy one for catching up on my writing and doing research for my books. That said, neither you or I have to wait for winter to write. I have people tell me all the time they are going to write their books once they find the time. But waiting for that time never comes. You don’t need hours, days, weeks, or an entire season to start on your book. All you need is fifteen minutes a day. If you can commit to staring at a computer screen or a piece of paper for fifteen minutes a day, you can write a book. If you can just fill one page in those fifteen minutes, you’ll have written a book within a year. Yes, I know you’re thinking, “It’s going to take a whole year!” But 2016 is going to come whether you write that book or not, so wouldn’t you rather that when it does come, you have fulfilled your dream? Go for it!
I hope 2015 is your best year yet! And keep reading and writing!
Tyler
New Books
Following his father’s death, Adam Delaney has acquired his father’s title as Earl of Delaney and married Anne, who has given birth to their twin sons, Lance and Tristan. Now Adam and Anne have taken a much-needed vacation in France, leaving their sons at Delaney Castle with Adam’s mother and grandmother and Anne’s father.
But what begins as a pleasant and long overdue honeymoon soon becomes another strange mythical adventure when Anne reunites with her old friend, Morgan, while the couple is visiting Lusignan, home to the legendary fairy Melusine. Before Anne knows it, she finds herself listening to stories within stories about the fairy Melusine and the magical rings she left to her children, magical rings that are tied to Adam and Anne’s future in ways they can scarcely imagine.
Melusine’s Gift is the second of five books in Tyler R. Tichelaar’s Children of Arthur series following Arthur’s Legacy. Arthurian characters Morgan le Fay and Merlin return in the time of Charlemagne and new legendary figures are introduced in this complex and creative historical fantasy novel.
To read more, visit Melusine’s Gift.
I love the title of this book: Good Decisions...Most of the Time. I confess I mostly like the “Most of the Time” part. But Danielle Brooks is very practical, and while she wants us to make healthy eating decisions, she believes we deserve to enjoy life too. She explains her intention with this title early in the book:
“Now, life is too short to skip the occasional bacon cheeseburger with French fries and an ice-cold beer…and life is definitely too short not to eat chocolate. That’s why I titled this book Good Decisions…Most of the Time. When you make Good Decisions…Most of the Time, your body will be better able to deal with the occasional sweet treat or processed food. These indulgences won’t influence your health as adversely when you don’t consume them on a regular basis. In fact, the more Good Decisions you make, the more your cravings for unhealthy items fade.”
And believe it or not, she’s right.
To read more, visit Good Decisions...Most of the Time.
James Lehman has had an interesting career to say the least. Early in Maneuvering Your Career, he shares with us his diverse work history and the job instability and difficulties he has experienced throughout his years of employment:
“As I have had to maneuver my career, I have been fired multiple times, had my position eliminated multiple times, have quit before getting another job more than once, and had my employer be acquired, merged, closed, and go bankrupt. I have worked for the same employer three different times. And I have been self-employed. My shortest job has been eight days (not including the weekend). My longest tenure has been just shy of five years. Along the way, I have collected severance and unemployment. I have filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) claim, and I have won an appeal of an unemployment decision. Although not my plan, I even collected severance from two different companies while working for another.”
While most of us may not have experienced so many job changes in our careers, I doubt there is a reader out there who has not known the worries of losing a job, finding a better job (or any job), or at the very least, having to deal with a crazy boss.
To read more, visit Maneuvering Your Career.
Anyone who has ever been in a position to hire employees knows how difficult it is to find the right people. Too often, employers find themselves in situations where they need to replace someone quickly or add staff, and they don’t have time to do the due diligence to recruit the best people. Other times, it seems like the best people just aren’t out there, or they end up going to the competition.
Jeff Jensen understands these issues and he knows the best way to resolve them is to keep recruiting at the forefront of your business processes. He’s been recruiting people for over thirty years for various companies he has owned or where he has held executive positions. Now, he shares his experience and his methods for success in his new book What a Hoot! Let’s Recruit!
Early on in the book, he says if you want your recruiting efforts to succeed, you can’t just read this book. “Think of What A Hoot! Let’s Recruit! as more of an app to apply right now.”
To read more, visit What a Hoot! Let’s Recruit!
For years, David Mitchell has been coaching businesses and business leaders to success by helping them build the tools and processes they need to make a business successful. He knows the secrets for why businesses succeed, why customers stay loyal or leave, and how to be an effective business leader. Since it would be impossible for him to coach every business, he has written Building Your Booming Business to share the main strategies businesses need if they want to get ahead and stay there in a competitive marketplace. And surprisingly, it’s not all about profit or even having a better product.
Mitchell walks the reader through what he terms The Five Foundations of Business necessary for any company, no matter how large or small, to make it in today’s business world. I don’t think I’ll be giving too much away or surprising anyone by stating what those foundations are: Marketing, Management/Leadership, Operations, Finance, and Systems and Controls. But what makes this book stand out is that Mitchell knows you have to keep all these foundations strong at the same time. He compares this situation to trying to spin plates, and if it’s not done right, one of your plates or foundations can come crashing down, resulting in the entire enterprise failing.
To read more, visit Building Your Booming Business.
Mark Matteson’s new book It’s About Time is a practical and insightful look at how to find more time in our lives. It begins by first considering the problem, which is surprisingly, not lack of time, but how we perceive time and what kind of relationship we have with it. Matteson shows that often our reasons for thinking we do not have enough time are excuses we make to keep us from doing what we really want to in life—the revelation readers may then have is not that we don’t have enough time, but that we procrastinate, allowing fear to hold us back from doing what we truly want.
Matteson includes a substantial list of “rational lies” we tell ourselves about time, including, “You just can’t get organized around here” and “People keep interrupting me.” Once we admit that we are lying to ourselves, we will realize that the only one controlling our time is us, and then we can learn to make better use of our time according to our true priorities.
To read more, visit It’s About Time.
