Welcome to Issue 71 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter!
Happy Spring—Finally, Everyone!
Mother Nature dumped two feet of snow on Upper Michigan last week but that was followed by warm temperatures and now the snow is almost all melted so it’s time to get ready to be outdoors. It’s even time to start buying those beach and vacation books.
This month’s newsletter has several great books to read, as always, including this year’s winner of the Tyler R. Tichelaar Historical Fiction Award in the Reader Views Literary Awards. Every year I sponsor the historical fiction award since I won it myself in 2008 for my novel Narrow Lives. This year’s award winner is Wickwythe Hall by Judithe Little. You can read all about it below as well as several other great books that are must-reads. Congratulations to Judithe, and if you want to read the other past years’ winners, you can find a complete list here.
Also, with spring always comes the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association’s annual conference. As President of UPPAA, I’m happy to announce this year’s conference will be held on Saturday, June 2 at the Landmark Inn in Marquette, Michigan. We have a great lineup of speakers, including our keynote speaker, Steve Lehto, author of numerous books including Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow. Lehto will share with us his publishing journey, including how he got Jay Leno to write the foreword to two of his books. You can register for the conference and see the full schedule at: https://uppaa.org/meeting-registration/
This Month’s Great Book Quote:
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
— Groucho Marx
We open this month with our award-winning historical novel: Wickwythe Hall.
Wickwythe Hall by Judithe Little is the kind of book I love, so I’m not at all surprised that it won First Place for Historical Fiction in this year’s Reader Views Literary Awards. It’s the perfect blend of history and interesting characters you come to care about. Right from the opening pages, the reader is caught up in the dilemma faced by Annelle, a young French woman who was orphaned with her two brothers and grew up in a convent. It’s May 1940 and the Germans have just invaded France. Annelle has intended to become a nun, but now with her older brothers fighting in North Africa and the sisters at the convent wanting to pray rather than flee to safety, Annelle makes the split decision to flee south, hoping to reach North Africa and find her brothers. The reader witnesses Annelle’s excruciating flight along the French roads, on her bicycle until it is damaged, and then on foot. Eventually, through a twist of events, she gets out of France, but rather than going to North Africa, she finds herself a refugee in England.
And that’s just what happens in the opening chapter.
To read more, visit Wickwythe Hall.
This book hasn’t yet won any awards to my knowledge, but it should. In The Puzzled, James F. Johnson brings all the pieces together from his first two books to reveal some shocking secrets about Kyle Rickett’s past. This third and final book in the Bullies and Allies series follows Disaster Island and The Goat Driver. In Disaster Island, readers were introduced to thirteen-year-old Kyle’s dysfunctional family, as well as the pediatrician, Dr. Krieg, whom Kyle has vague memories of having molested him as a child. Unfortunately, Dr. Krieg is Kyle’s father’s only friend, and now that Kyle is older, that doesn’t deter Krieg’s behavior. Kyle is surrounded by bullies at school and at home, while simply trying to survive. When things reach a crisis point, his family, not knowing how to deal with him, sends him for the summer to his Grandpa Louie in Minnesota. In The Goat Driver, Kyle arrives in Minnesota. During the summer, he makes a new friend, a young man named Tuck, who teaches him the true meaning of friendship and how to stick up for himself when he returns home.
To read more, visit The Puzzled.
Shirlene Reeves’ Selling Through Your Heart: Empowering You to Build Relationships for Financial Freedom goes beyond most sales and business books in offering practical advice and examples for how to find customers, get them interested, seal the deal, keep them coming back, and even referring their friends to you. After reading Shirlene’s personal story and her advice, you’ll find your sales increasing, and more importantly, you’ll find yourself developing meaningful relationships that make you happier because you’re not just making money but also making a difference in your life and the lives of your clients.
Few books start out with such dramatic openings as Selling Through Your Heart. Shirlene tells us briefly about her two marriages and how she built successful businesses with both husbands, only one day to discover she was divorced and broke. Not having food for her children, she found herself standing in front of a dumpster that people were diving in to retrieve spoiling watermelons to eat. In that moment, she knew she would find a way to turn this situation around.
To read more, visit Selling Through Your Heart.
In Loving You to the Moon and Back, Barbara Weber shares her personal story of spiritual growth and courage, describing how she left a small town and a restricting life to live her life fully, focused on healing herself and others. More importantly, she encourages readers to do the same—develop love for themselves and live to their full potentials. In these pages, she shares how to achieve that most important mission—loving yourself.
Life is full of obstacles for all of us, but within those obstacles lie miracles, as Barbara has often discovered the hard way. In fact, much of the book builds upon what she has learned through A Course in Miracles as well as creating daily practices for herself to nurture her soul. She is a firm advocate for starting a daily practice—whatever suits you—to help you deepen awareness of yourself and what is most important in your life. That practice could be meditation, keeping a daily journal, or some form of exercise.
One of the most important points Barbara makes about learning to love yourself is to stop comparing yourself to others.
To read more, visit Loving You to the Moon and Back.
In Sales Won’t Save Your Business, “Super” Joe Pardo answers the questions business owners have about how to create a viable and successful business beyond just selling. The book’s title is very apt because, as Joe points out, selling a lot of your product won’t help your business if you don’t have an effective team in place to handle customer service and you don’t have the right processes and procedures in place to prepare for the growth that results from sales. As a result, Joe takes the reader on a journey to the TOP by dividing the book into three parts that focus on Team, Offer, and Process.
Following a foreword by Lee Cockerell, Retired Executive Vice President of Walt Disney World® Resort, Super Joe jumps right into telling it like it is by asking readers to recall why they started a business in the first place, what is the biggest stress generator in the business, and what they can do to empower themselves in the business.
To read more, visit Sales Won’t Save Your Business.
In Living Your Exclamation Point Life!, Anne Prinz reveals how we can transform our lives to have daily fulfillment and long-term purpose. As a graduate of the Mary Morrissey Life Mastery Institute, Prinz has the skills and tools necessary to help others turn around their situations, embrace their passions, and find fulfillment. Perhaps even more important, she has a personal track record of overcoming difficult situations and applying these tools to improve her own life, so not only does she have experience, but she knows how to practice what she preaches.
Living Your Exclamation Point Life! is filled with powerful stories, helpful lessons, and practical applications to help the reader overcome whatever obstacles he or she faces. Don’t believe me? Then just read the story of how Prinz overcame her own obstacles. Her biggest obstacle was when, early in her architectural career, she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. For years she struggled; she had to give up her day job, could only function normally for a few hours a day, and needed constant rest.
To read more, visit Living Your Exclamation Point Life!
