Archive for the ‘books’ Category
Giveaway: The Separated Woman’s Guide to a Bright Future
Today in honor of International Women’s Day, we have a special guest post and book giveaway geared toward women — separated women, in particular. Just leave a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. (CET) on Sunday, March 14, 2010 to be eligible for a free copy of The Separated Woman’s Guide to a Bright Future.
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Annette Jones is the author of The Separated Woman’s Guide to a Bright Future. In addition to being an author, Annette has an adult teaching degree, has trained as a Practitioner and Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), and now has a private consultancy practice and also conducts two franchises in the retail environment.
Annette was born in Manchester, England and moved to Sydney, Australia with her parents at the age of eight. In 2000, Annette married her second husband, but after a separation, divorced in 2006. She is now enjoying the fruits of her journey and has a happy, loving relationship on the Gold Coast after previous stays in Zimbabwe, Papua New Guinea, Queensland, and Brisbane.
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Hi and Welcome! My book is written to support and guide women through the process of separation and divorce and to inspire women to empower themselves through one of the most challenging parts of their lives. Lots of info, lots of ideas… and lots of fun; this book can help turn lives around!
Before writing my book, I spent many months researching databases on women’s issues and stories and interviewing a range of women who were divorced, separated, married or single. One overwhelming thing came from all of this: that women need to nurture themselves and each other to take control of their lives, loves and futures.
My book developed in three sections:
1. A practical guide to separation: What to do about property, children, money etc.; seeking legal and financial advice from trained professionals who have your best interests at heart (not the dearest but the best for you).
2. Your time following a break up: Nature and nurturing yourself, healing, dreaming, doing and finally re-entering the world of fun and love small steps at a time.
3. Socializing, such as dancing and dating: Whether it is the Salsa, burlesque, jazz, Belly Dancing, Latin Dancing or Tap, go for it! You’ll be amazed what it brings out in you.
This book will make you laugh, cry and think, and I will definitely help you “act.” If you’d like to act right now, here is purchase information for the book.
Some quick tips for “How to Survive Separation”:
Do:
1. Attempt to work things out for property settlement with your former partner.
2. Be realistic and get the facts about your entitlements in a property settlement.
3. When you decide on a property settlement, do have a solicitor advise on the settlement.
4. Monitor your children (if you have them) for behavioural changes.
5. Make time for yourself every day, time to nurture and care for yourself.
6. Do surround yourself with supportive friends and family. Girlfriends are wonderful at this time for you. They’ll support you, entertain you, laugh with you, cry with you or just be there for you.
7. Do take a moment, take several moments to sit quietly by yourself and ask, “Where would I like to be two years from now, what would I like to be doing, where would I like to be living, and how do I want to be feeling?
8. Get Grateful. What DO you have in your life right now that you are thankful for? Make a quick list of 10 things.
Don’t
1. Necessarily employ the best family law solicitor money can buy or one with the most impressive credentials and experience, as your partner may just use a common law solicitor.
2. Don’t speak ill of your former partner.
3. Don’t go on a spending spree.
4. Don’t jump into a new relationship straight away.
I hope you enjoy my book, and I would like to leave you with a final quote:
Find out who you are and do it on purpose.
~ Dolly Parton
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Thanks Annette! Remember to comment to enter the contest,
and Buona Festa della Donna!
E-Book Giveaway & Guest Post by Author Elisa Lorello
As part of the WOW blog tour, Elisa Lorello stops by Bleeding Espresso today to talk about something that has within the past few months become near and dear to my heart: e-books!
Since I treated myself to an iPod Touch two months ago, I’ve become a proud e-book convert after *swearing* I would never get used to the feel of a gadget in my hand instead of all those gorgeous pages. Of course I still love paper books, but getting used to e-books was *much* easier than I had imagined–and talk about instant gratification. I can pick out a book and have it literally in my hands in SECONDS.
Elisa is the author of Faking It and Ordinary World, and has offered up some free e-copies for lucky BE readers. Just leave a comment on this post by midnight on Sunday, February 28 (Italy time), and you’re eligible. You can get extra entries by tweeting or posting about the contest on your blog and/or Facebook (four possible entries total). Be sure to let me know about your extra entries via e-mail, Twitter, or FB.
Now, here’s Elisa!
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E-books Are My Friend
E-books and e-readers have been the target of some doomsday scenarios. “Watch out, they’ll destroy the publishing industry as we know it.” “Bookstores will be no more.” And while it’s true that the e-reader (namely, the Amazon Kindle) has rattled booksellers, I’m not ready to paint it as the Big Bad Wolf just yet.
Maybe because e-publishing has been good to me. Last month, my novels Faking It and Ordinary World hit the Kindle Store Bestseller list. Faking It even cracked the Top 10! The Kindle Store was able to provide me with the mass distribution that chain brick-and-mortar stores typically refuse an independent author. That, in turn, provided me with a readership and recognition.
But that doesn’t diminish my love for the tactile book, or bookstores. Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC, for example, is one of my favorite places to be and one of the first places I show off to my out-of-town visitors. Moreover, if I’m not at a coffeeshop to write, then I’ve snagged a comfy chair so I can read a book. And my home is cluttered with books on shelves, nightstands, coffeetables, you name it. It’s a comforting feeling to be surrounded by books.
So who said you had to love either one or the other? Since when did a pleasurable reading experience become an ultimatum, warranting the kind of loyalty you’d show for your favorite sports team? My bookworm friends who own e-readers say they haven’t stopped buying (or reading) tactile books. The e-reader is a tool of convenience, great for travel, for example.
I see no difference between the e-book as one more reading experience option just as audiobooks are an option. In fact, I often listen to an audiobook during my daily commute or road trips. People download audiobooks on their MP3 players as well.
I think e-books and print books can peacefully co-exist, and I hope they do. I even think my protagonist, a writing professor and published author, would own an e-reader and be spotted in Harvard Square, a latte in tow, reading her husband’s favorite books. You could count on it.
Ordinary World is currently available in print and e-book at Lulu.com, and in e-book at Amazon Kindle Store.
About the author:
Elisa Lorello was born and raised on Long Island, New York. In 1995, she moved to southeastern Massachusetts, where she attended University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth for both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Her career in rhetoric and composition studies began in 2000, and since then she has been teaching first-year writing at the university level. Currently, Elisa lives and teaches in North Carolina and is co-writing her third novel. She is happily single.
To learn more about Elisa and her other writing projects, please visit her blog I’ll Have What She’s Having: The Official Blog of Elisa Lorello, or her official webpage at ElisaLorello.com. You can also follow Elisa on Twitter @elisalorello.
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For more information on e-books in general, check out these great articles written by Sara (of Ms Adventures in Italy fame) at her tech blog, When I Have Time.
Remember to comment for your chance to win some e-books!
Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner
I really loved Jennifer Weiner‘s first two books Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, so I was beyond excited to get an email asking if I’d like a review copy of her latest effort, Best Friends Forever.
Here is a quick plot summary from the book jacket:
Addie Downs and Valerie Adler will be best friends forever. That’s what Addie believes after Valerie moves across the street when they’re both nine years old. But in the wake of betrayal during their teenage years, Val is swept into the popular crowd, while mousy, sullen Addie becomes her school’s scapegoat.
Flash-forward fifteen years. Valerie Adler has found a measure of fame and fortune working as the weathergirl at the local TV station. Addie Downs lives alone in her parents’ house in their small hometown of Pleasant Ridge, Illinois, caring for a troubled brother and trying to meet Prince Charming on the Internet. She’s just returned from Bad Date #6 when she opens her door to find her long-gone best friend standing there, a terrified look on her face and blood on the sleeve of her coat. “Something horrible has happened,” Val tells Addie, “and you’re the only one who can help.”
I dove into this book with excitement and was still excited through the first few chapters as I got to know Addie and Val . . . but then I lost excitement as I, well, got to know Addie and Val.
I just didn’t connect with these characters or care what happened to them. I found them both to be rather pathetic in their own ways and cliché at that; needless to say, I didn’t find myself rooting for either one of them.
I also found the plot contrived and strange (unbelievable might be the word I’m looking for here), and I *really* wasn’t feeling the continual back story via flashbacks (I was always taught this was a huge no-no in storytelling and now I see why). When it comes down to it, the actual action in this book would probably fill 50 pages or so–and unfortunately that particular action seemed absurd at times.
All that said, I didn’t have any trouble picking the book back up again once I put it down or even finishing it, which I must attribute to Weiner’s writing; I love her conversational style and storytelling–I just didn’t particularly like *this* story or its characters.
Overall, this is still an OK book for the beach or to pass a weekend afternoon or two, but I’m sorry to say I did expect more from Weiner. If you’re looking to pick up her writing for the first time, be sure to go with one of her first two efforts and leave this one for later down the line, if at all.
I give this three espresso cups out of five, and do look forward to Weiner’s next book.
Book Giveaway: The Mystery of Lewis Carroll by Jenny Woolf
One of the best things about having this blog is the frequency with which I “meet” kind, like-minded people.
Case in point: A while back, I got an email from Jenny Woolf, author of The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created “Alice in Wonderland,“ who wanted to chat a bit about blogging, book promotion, and the like. I quickly offered Jenny space here to introduce herself and her book as I, too, was fascinated to learn about why she chose Lewis Carroll as her subject.
I became even more interested in the back story once I started reading through The Mystery of Lewis Carroll (Jenny had sent me a proof copy). I love biographies in general, and this one about a legendary literary figure who has been portrayed in so many different lights does *not* disappoint. Even though many scholars have written about Carroll, Jenny managed to uncover something that no other researcher ever had before. Fascinating!
Haus Publishing has kindly offered up a free copy of The Mystery of Lewis Carroll for one lucky Bleeding Espresso reader, but you must have a mailing address in the UK, Europe, or the Commonwealth (where the publisher has distribution rights). If you’d like to win a copy and meet this criteria, please leave a comment below by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 21.
I will be announcing the winner on the Bleeding Espresso Facebook fan page and via Twitter @michellefabio. If you’re not a fan or following, please correct that!
Here’s Jenny, who you can also read at her blog, From Somewhere in Time and follow on Twitter @jennywoolf:
I loved Alice from when I was seven, and first became enthralled by her adventures. And I ended up writing The Mystery of Lewis Carroll because I wanted to know more about the man who had created my favorite book.
I started, like anyone would, by reading the biographies of him. But you know, I didn’t entirely believe any of them. As a journalist I’d written many magazine profiles, and I was well used to subjects and their friends trying to pull the wool over my eyes. So I wondered if Carroll had been using the Victorian equivalent of “spin” to hide various aspects of his own life.
I wasn’t thinking of writing a biography at this stage – I just wanted to understand Carroll. So my next approach was to start looking for little-known and unpublished documents that might illuminate him more.
I had some luck when I found his personal bank account, unseen for over 100 years and mouldering away in a bank archive. With my husband Tony, I transcribed, annotated and self published it as “Lewis Carroll in His Own Account,” and the BBC quickly got in touch and asked for a radio programme about it.
I did the programme . . . but I still didn’t think of writing a biography.
No, I wanted to create a highly illustrated, imaginative and colourful multimedia project to describe Carroll – because by now I’d discovered he was actually a fascinating, unusual, likeable, (although tricksy and secretive) person.
But publishers are conservative creatures. In the end, my multimedia dreams evaporated and I ended up writing a biography after all.
Or almost. Actually I prefer to think of it as a portrait. Because it doesn’t start at the beginning and end at the end like most biographies do. Instead, it takes ten important themes in Lewis Carroll’s life, and examines what they meant to him. From Alice in Wonderland to photography, from his little girl friends to his religious and supernatural interests, from his family to his sex life, I hope that it will offer a glimpse of the kind of human, emotional, eccentric and utterly unique person that he was.
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The Mystery of Lewis Carroll was published in the US on 2 February by St Martin’s Press and will be published on 1 March in the UK by Haus Publishing.
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Remember to leave a comment to win your copy! For those not eligible, please still feel free to leave your comment or question for Jenny–or even your own personal Alice in Wonderland memory (please tell me you’re not eligible though)!
Goat Zen in the Goat Pen
After compiling my part of the World Nutella Day round up and finishing some work assignments early in the week, I decided to enjoy the sunshine this afternoon and spend some time with my girls (of the caprine persuasion).
I never would have imagined how calming and reassuring just being in the presence of these goats can be. It’s really hard to be worried or stressed about anything when these sweet faces are looking back at you.
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Right now I’m reading Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese by Brad Kessler (recommended by a reader and native of Calabria, just down the road from me; grazie mille Anthony!).
Kessler describes the connection with nature, history, and yourself that raising goats provides, noting that throughout time, goats have been the subjects of many legends and stories, always “helping humans or leading them to unexpected places.”
“If you follow living beings assiduously in the field, or through the lens of a microscope,” writes Kessler, “they lead you to an understanding of their lives, and all life. They usher you into a kind of Eden.”
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Margherita and Carmelina usually don’t care *too* much if I’m in there with them–they often come to say hello and then just go back to eating, unless they’re not hungry, in which case they’ll stay for petties for a few minutes.
But my Pasqualina, who you might remember, I bottlefed, rarely leaves my side when I’m in the pen, even when I’m clearly disturbing her nap time.
There’s just nothing like goat zen in the goat pen.
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
Calabria Guidebook
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