Welcome to Issue 99 of the SUPERIOR BOOK PRODUCTIONS newsletter!
Happy Halloween, Everyone!
It’s my favorite holiday, and to celebrate, I’m thrilled to announce the release of my first audiobook. Haunted Marquette: Ghost Stories from the Queen City has been one of my most popular books so I have released it as an audiobook in time for Halloween. It is available at Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. I hope you enjoy listening to spooky stories of the more than forty places allegedly haunted in my hometown of Marquette.
Keeping with the holiday spirit, I will also be presenting “A Short History of Gothic Fiction” on Wednesday, October 25 at 7 p.m. at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette. The talk will provide an overview from the first Gothic novel written in 1764 through novels written in the twenty-first century, and including highlights like Frankenstein and Dracula. It is based on my decades of reading and researching Gothic literature as reflected in my books The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption and Vampire Grooms and Spectre Brides: The Marriage of French and British Gothic Literature.
For more on all things Gothic, visit my website www.GothicWanderer.com.
I hope you all have a fun, spooky, and safe Halloween!
Tyler
This Month’s Great Book Quote:
“Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.”
— Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three
Embody Your Worth: Essential Strategies to Live Confidently and Create Your Dream Life is a powerful new book by Amanda Wallingsford that will help anyone struggling to know their worth.
Wallingsford begins by sharing her own transformative story about how she went from believing she was worthless to living a fulfilling life. She opens the book by recalling a dark day in 1999 when she had an overwhelming feeling that she was a complete burden to everyone in her life and asked herself, “What if I am better off dead?” Instantly, she realized why some people turn to suicide when they reach the point of feeling completely worthless.
She goes on to share her personal story, including the most devastating event of her childhood—her biological father decided to leave her and her mother, and eventually, he started a new family. As a small child, Wallingsford felt she must have done something wrong or that something was wrong with her for him to leave. She could not understand how he could love his new children and not her. Even though her mother remarried a man who eagerly stepped into the role of a loving dad, she still blamed herself for her biological father’s decisions, which she only understood as an adult were really about him and not her.
To read more, visit Embody Your Worth.
In Legacy of an Immigrant: Four Generations of Flying, Maria Vezzetti Matson shares the story of her incredible pioneer Italian-American family. This book, although based on Maria’s family history, is written as historical fiction. Maria takes some small license with the past and present to tell the story of Eugene Vezzetti, her brother, who became a pilot himself.
The story opens in the summer of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic has everyone worried and keeping their distance from each other. Eugene is spending the summer at his family camp in the U.P. with his three teenage grandchildren, who have flown in to visit him. When Eugene gets a strange call, he finds himself uncomfortable with the personal questions the caller asks. The caller begins by questioning Eugene about his flying experiences and his memories of his grandfather, Caesar Lucchesi, who was a pioneer pilot in the Copper Country area and flew out of the Sands airport. Eugene is surprised someone would be so interested in his aviation career, and he also feels the caller gets a bit too personal when they ask about his feelings on the day of his grandfather’s funeral. Eugene begins to suspect the caller is some kind of jokester and that his grandchildren are in on the joke, but regardless, he agrees to meet the caller later that day.
To read more, visit Legacy of an Immigrant.
Ty Reed’s Second Chance Hiring: Human Resources Strategies to Lower Your Risk Through Inclusive Recruiting is an eye-opening and fact-filled book about how businesses can benefit by hiring from the large pool of Americans—more than 70 million—who have a criminal record but want to be a viable part of the workplace.
While many businesses may feel reluctant to hire someone with a criminal record, it is hard to argue with the facts and benefits Reed provides, and he certainly is knowledgeable about his topic. For starters, Reed has his own criminal record. He has been a drug addict and homeless. But he was given a second chance and has never forgotten it, and now he works to help others who find themselves in similar situations.
However, Reed’s arguments are not based in feeling good because you helped someone else—though that is definitely part of the equation. The fact is that hiring the formerly incarcerated can offer an advantage to your business. It is largely a myth that those with criminal records are unreliable or might commit a crime on the job. Reed shows that the real experiences of companies who have hired from this population do not support this misperception.
To read more, visit Second Chance Hiring.
Everyone has heard of PetSmart whether or not they have a pet. The store chain revolutionized the pet industry by showing that a market existed for big box pet stores and that enough pet parents were out there to support them. But how did this game-changing business get started? It was the brilliant idea of Jim Dougherty, and in his new book, Pet Project: How a Simple Idea Transformed the Pet Industry—Furever, he shares the story of how he began both PetSmart and Petsense by Tractor Supply.
Dougherty begins by sharing his early years from his difficult childhood to the various careers and entrepreneurial ventures he made before he launched PetSmart. Among his efforts, he operated a bike shop and invested in companies doing mail order medical equipment and selling alfalfa sprouts. He did well, but health problems led to the end of his businesses. And then he entered the pet industry and discovered what it means to have enormous success. First, Dougherty was hired to operate a Pet Food Supermart store in Las Vegas. Next, he operated a second one in Phoenix. Then he realized it was time to branch out on his own and began PetSmart. Dougherty is humble about how he came up with the idea for PetSmart, saying he was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time when the pet industry was ready to be revolutionized.
To read more, visit Pet Project.
Scattering Hope: A Guide for Healing After Losing a Loved One to Suicide is a heartfelt and helpful new book by Crystal Partney, who knows what it is to have a loved one take their own life.
Crystal’s older sister Gina was someone she looked up to and learned a lot from. They had a strong relationship. Gina even gave her helpful parenting advice when Crystal had her daughter. Then one day, the day before Crystal’s birthday, Gina took her life. Crystal shares all the wonderful things about her sister as well as the difficulties in her life that led up to that devastating day when she learned she no longer had her sister. And then she details for us her journey of how she sought to heal from her grief. Now, four years after Gina’s death, she has written Scattering Hope to share what she has learned and to help others who have also lost a loved one to suicide.
Crystal explores the pain of loss and how grief can rise up on you unawares, such as on holidays and anniversaries, or just strike you when someone says something that sends your thoughts to your lost loved one. She admits there is no easy answer to how you heal. The process will be different for everyone, and while there are stages of grief, they do not happen linearly but ebb and flow.
To read more, visit Scattering Hope.
In Wholehearted Leadership, David MacLean offers a collection of essays about leadership focused on the need to lead and live wholeheartedly. In the first essay, MacLean discusses how a senior leader at Ikea told him the company has a “hands, head, heart philosophy.” MacLean goes on to say, “The leadership at Ikea understands they can buy their employees’ hands and train their heads, but until they have their hearts, they do not have the whole person.” This concept of putting employees first when you are a leader permeates the entire book.
MacLean makes it clear early on that business is not just about profit. Profit is a given goal, but successful businesses are about leadership and people. Without the people, you can do nothing, and the happier and better led people are, the more productive, profitable, and successful the business will be.
This concept may not be new, but it is one many organizations have failed yet to understand and take action on. As MacLean states, Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workplace survey found 85 percent of employees are not engaged in their workplaces. MacLean believes wholehearted leadership—leading from the heart—is how to engage those employees.
To read more, visit Wholehearted Leadership.
