Welcome to Issue 67 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter!
Hello, Everyone.
It’s summer. Time to catch up on your summer reading.
I’m pleased to announce that if you’ve been holding off reading my Children of Arthur series until the last book is published so you can read them all straight through, now’s your chance. I just published Arthur’s Bosom: The Children of Arthur, Book Five. This final volume takes King Arthur’s descendants back in time to the age of Camelot. Lance and Tristan Delaney have many exciting adventures, all while trying to figure out how to get back to the twenty-first century. Readers will meet the Lady of the Lake, the Questing Beast, Morgan le Fay, the evil Gwenhwyvach, the Fisher King, Tristan and Iseult, and many more favorites of Arthurian legend. The title refers to a line from Shakespeare’s play Henry V, which is a reference to an Arthurian form of heaven. For more information, visit www.ChildrenofArthur.com.
I’m also happy to announce that the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association (UPPAA) has released the first volume of its annual literary magazine, U.P. Reader. This first volume contains works by twenty-eight authors from Upper Michigan, ranging from poems to short stories and essays. There’s nature poetry, horror, the paranormal, fantasy, and plenty of U.P. atmosphere—a little bit of something for everyone. The book is available in several U.P. bookstores and gift shops or you can order it online at Amazon.
Finally, if you want to meet some great authors in person, come to this year’s Outback Art Fair at Picnic Rocks in Marquette on Saturday and Sunday, July 29 and 30. I’ll be there selling and signing my books, and other authors from the Upper Peninsula will also be present including Gretchen Preston, Deborah Frontiera, Larry Buege, and Michael Carrier. It’s a fun event, rain or shine, so I hope to see you there.
And, of course, check out the great new books below, a wide variety of options, at least one of which will be perfect for your summer reading!
This Month’s Great Book Quote:
“F or one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”
— Louis L’Amour
Few books have grabbed my attention from the first page the way Fearing Nothing by Michael O’Brien did. Michael begins this book by sharing his personal story of how he had won bodybuilding contests and was attending another one when he had his first panic attack that caused him to rush out of the auditorium.
Wow! I thought. You mean even bodybuilders have anxiety attacks and suffer from fear and depression? And that was just the beginning for Michael. He found himself unexplainably having to get out of a car and run three miles in his dress shoes, having to run out of a restaurant while having lunch with his brother, and then being unable to drive or even leave home. Too often, people with anxiety and fear issues stay silent, trying to hide their problems from others, so I want to say, “Michael, thank you for sharing your story because it makes the rest of us realize we are not alone and it gives us the courage to share ours.”
To read more, visit Fearing Nothing.
In the Foreword to Karen Putz’s new book Unwrapping Your Passion, bestselling authors and self-help gurus Debra Poneman and Janet Attwood, state about Karen, “How amazing is that woman?” I have to agree. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone as passionate as Karen about her own passions as well as helping others discover theirs. In addition, she’s deaf but doesn’t let that get in her way, and one of her biggest passions is barefoot water skiing, a sport she took back up at age forty-four. Now she water skis across the United States year-round, pursuing her passion.
“What’s your passion?” is the question Karen Putz challenges her readers with. She believes we all have a passion, and once we find it, we can enjoy our lives like never before. Sometimes we just need a little inspiration and help in discovering it, which is why Karen has written this book.
To read more, visit Unwrapping Your Passion.
Lyssa Danehy deHart, a transformational coach and self-professed storyjacker, reveals in her new book, Storyjacking, how our lives are determined by the stories we tell ourselves. Unfortunately, too often, those stories hold us back. She believes we have to “storyjack” our stories—take them over and change our versions of them or the directions they go in—so we can change our lives in positive ways that allow us to move forward and fulfill our dreams.
While the concept isn’t new, the term storyjacking is, and it’s about time we had a term for this concept. I’ve always found that when a problem exists and we find a way to label it, we become empowered to overcome it. We all have voices in our heads that hold us back—voices that tell us to be afraid, to fear what others think, that we’re not good enough to do something, etc. Now we can say to ourselves when we hear those voices, “It’s time to storyjack that belief.”
To read more, visit Storyjacking.
In Landing Internships and Your First Job, Jerome Wong offers invaluable career-preparation advice to college students about to enter the workplace. The subtitle, Why Qualifications Are Not Enough, reveals that hiring managers look for more than just academic success and so-called “hard skills” when evaluating candidates.
Wong has spent plenty of years on both sides of the hiring process. He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tufts University, has had a career in technology, received another degree from Columbia Business School and then entered the banking world, and eventually, began his own company, Real World ExpertsTM, to advise students on the entire career-preparation process. Besides being interviewed for jobs many times himself, Wong has frequently interviewed prospective employees, participated in campus recruiting teams, and worked with the human resources departments at the firms he worked for to hire the best college talent available. Today, through his company, Wong coaches students on the entire job search process, including interview techniques and proper business etiquette. Now he shares all his experiences, thoughtful insights, and actionable strategies in his new book.
To read more, visit Landing Internships and Your First Job.
Dr. Teddie Malangwasira’s new book Leadership Is Not About Race: How Leaders and Followers Inspire and Influence Each Other brings ideas about leadership into the twenty-first century by advocating for equal opportunity among leaders—in fact, this book levels the playing field by revealing that we are all leaders in our daily lives. By extension, you do not need to be the stereotypical white, eye-glass wearing, balding, middle-aged or older male to be a leader. Leaders can come from any race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or other group designation you can imagine.
In his preface, Dr. Malangwasira describes how he wrote this book in the wake of the violence he has seen erupt in the United States in recent years—violence resulting from hate crimes, police brutality against African-Americans, and white supremacists trying to take back power. As an immigrant to the United States who was born in Malawi in Africa, Dr. Malangwasira has embraced the opportunities that exist within the United States, a country that promotes equality and diversity, but whose people often act in ways not congruent with those beliefs.
To read more, visit Leadership Is Not About Race.
The Selected Sermons of Dr. Roger Bourland is a compilation of the works of one of America’s best and best-known preachers. In 1976, Dr. Bourland was the recipient of the United Methodist Church Outstanding Preacher Award and he was also a speaker on The Protestant Hour, a popular radio show that made its way into countless American homes each week. Now his son, Joe Bourland, has compiled some of his father’s best and most popular sermons into one volume for readers’ enjoyment and spiritual nourishment.
The first section covers sermons Dr. Bourland gave when he was “preacher to the pack.” For several years, Dr. Bourland was a pastor in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and consequently, he had several of the Green Bay Packers’ players and coaches in his congregation, including Bart Starr. He often spent time with them, even worked out with them, and best of all, he talks about how no kid in his congregation will ever believe church is for “sissies” when he has the memory of a 250-pound pro football player sitting beside him in church.
To read more, visit The Selected Sermons of Dr. Roger Bourland.
