Welcome to Issue 51 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter!
It’s already March, and hopefully, that means spring! Now that the snowbanks in my yard are five-feet high, I’m more than ready for it.
But whether or not it’s still winter where you are, it’s never the wrong time to curl up with a good book.
March is Small Press Month, which makes exploring new books and presses a perfect activity for this time of year. A “small press” is any traditional publisher that is not one of the big name publishers, but still produces a significant number of books a year and pays its authors’ royalties.
One of my favorite small presses is Loving Healing Press, owned by Victor Volkman, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Among its imprints is Modern History Press, which has published my books King Arthur’s Children, The Gothic Wanderer, and Creating a Local Historical Book, but that’s not the only reason why I love it. Loving Healing Press offers a variety of books that focus on providing information that helps people, ranging from self-help books for child abuse survivors, books that provide positive solutions for helping the homeless, veterans, and people with PTSD or substance abuse issues. The Growing With Love series highlights diversity and empowers children with developmental and physical disabilities. Modern History Press books tell personal stories through fiction, memoir, and poetry, such as those of war veterans, immigrant women, and the struggles of women in the developing world.
Loving Healing Press fills a wonderful need for a wide variety of people, so I invite you to check it out at: http://www.lovinghealing.com/.
Of course, as always, more great books are below for you to read, learn from, and enjoy.
I wish you all warmer weather, robins chirping, and snowbanks melting at a pace that doesn’t flood your garage.
Tyler
New Books
What does the California Gold Rush have to do with fulfilling your dreams? Chances are you don’t know the full story of the gold rush, so to find out, reading Kieran Murry’s new book Go for Your Gold! is a great place to start.
We’ve all heard of the California Gold Rush, but in this new book, Kieran Murry tells the gold rush story to illustrate the importance of going for your gold and never giving up. Of course, most of those who went searching for gold failed, but they gave up too easily. The same is true with most people in this world, but there are some of us who can go for our gold, and there’s a good chance if you read this book, it will be you.
There are a lot of naysayers in this world who don’t believe they can get anywhere. In fact, Kieran explains in the beginning of this book that there was a time in his life when he felt life was basically over for him. Divorced, separated from his child, and deeply depressed, he thought about ending it all, but then a spiritual experience changed everything for him.
To read more, visit Go for Your Gold.
What do you think would happen if most people spent as much time planning their retirement and investments each year as they spend watching football? I suspect we would all have a lot more money, be better prepared for retirement, and maybe even be able to afford tickets to the Super Bowl every year.
Steve Roberts, with nearly twenty years of experience in the financial industry, knows that most people—including himself—would rather play or watch football than the stock market. After all, Steve himself was a three-sport letterman in high school, lettering in football, basketball, and baseball. He was a member of Ricks Junior College football team, and today he coaches youth football. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t value financial planning and realize its importance. What it does mean is he had the brilliant idea to write a book about financial planning using football metaphors to make the topic not only more interesting but easier to understand for his many readers.
To read more, visit Football Financial Planning.
Today, one in fifty boys is diagnosed with autism, but Jennifer Witten never suspected her own son would be one of them. For Jennifer and her husband, Mike, the diagnosis was both heart-wrenching and one that finally provided some answers to why their son Matthew seemed to be developing slowly. But it also raised more questions about what causes autism and how they could help Matthew.
In Goodbye, Short Bus, Jennifer shares her family’s story with honesty and insight into Matthew’s struggles and the family dynamics that resulted from his autism diagnosis. Jennifer admits her sadness in seeing her child unable to do what other children could at his age, including his difficulties in making friends and knowing how to play with others. She reveals the toll her frustrations over the situation took upon her and the way it affected her marriage. She also shares the moments of hope and triumph when Matthew made big improvements or when she found people able and willing to help her son have a fighting chance at a normal life.
The “short bus” refers to the bus for special needs children that came every day to take Matthew to school.
To read more, visit Goodbye, Short Bus.
Anyone who thinks you cannot make a living as an artist had better think again because Heather Allen is not only here to prove that old myth wrong, but she is ready to share common sense about being an entrepreneur and how to make a career out of your passion.
As a self-employed author myself, I wish I had been able to read this book when I first set off to support myself through writing and related activities. Let Your Creativity Work for You is the perfect guide for anyone who wants to set up a business, who wants to make a living through his or her artwork, and who isn’t afraid of making money or being a success. It’s time for people to quit thinking that being an artist means having to starve in a garret. Great artists deserve to be appreciated and make a viable living, and the world deserves great art to make it a better place.
To read more, visit Let Your Creativity Work for You.
Ron Elgin may be one of the luckiest people who ever lived—and he knows it. He has been fortunate to be surrounded by smart people with bright ideas, including his business partner, David Syferd, who first had the idea that they establish their own ad agency. Huckster tells the story of that agency from womb to tomb and the role Ron played in its success. Established in 1981, for 30 years Elgin Syferd was a powerhouse ad agency in the Pacific Northwest. Ron was also lucky or smart enough to marry “the Beautiful Bonnie” so she could keep him in line when he needed it, to hire people smarter than himself, and to have enough sense not to hire jerks.
Fortunately for us, Ron also was smart enough to write this book and to write it well. He didn’t want to write a dry “How To” book, so he wrote this collection of stories about the history of his ad agency, filled with words of wisdom about how to run a business, and also loads of hilarious stories that will make anyone laugh regardless of any interest in advertising.
To read more, visit Huckster.
What if your name was Jennifer but you wanted to be Jeremy? What if you knew you were a boy and you wanted to do boy things like play sports, but if you had to take a physical and it included a pap smear, the results would say you were what you most feared? What would you do if you got boobs and had a period, and you worried that no one—not even your parents and sister—would understand why you felt trapped in the wrong body?
Jeremy Wallace has been through all those feelings, and in Taking the Scenic Route to Manhood, he shares all the questions, self-doubt, anxiety, fear, frustration, depression, laughs, and hopes that such a realization can bring. From growing up wearing dresses he despised and trying to live life as a tomboy, through questioning whether he was a lesbian, to discovering the new term “transgender” in the early 1990s, and starting to find answers, Jeremy takes us on a whirlwind tour of growing up in the Midwest in the 1970s and 1980s, and how he finally came to the realization as a young man that it was time he transition to being male.
To read more, visit Taking the Scenic Route to Manhood.
