Thursday, July 29, 2021

Review Corner: TELL HER SHE CAN'T by Kelly Lewis @gokellylewis @tellhershecant #bookreview

thewriterslife July 29, 2021 0 Comments

Title: TELL HER SHE CAN’T: INSPIRING STORIES OF UNSTOPPABLE WOMEN
Author: Kelly Lewis
Publisher: Go Girl Publishing
Pages: 210
Genre: Nonfiction / Inspirational
BOOK BLURB:
Who says you can’t?
Tell Her She Can’t is the manifesto for every woman who has been told she isn’t strong enough, smart enough, or capable enough to excel-and the motivational anthem for those who have succeeded despite doubt.
Entrepreneur Kelly Lewis shares the true stories of 35 inspirational women who overcame the naysayers to achieve “impossible” dreams.
Tell Her She Can’t is packed with motivational stories of adventurers, changemakers, and prevailers who have taken on the world to become pioneers in their fields or challenged gender stereotypes to build million-dollar businesses. These inspiring women transformed adversity into a springboard for empowerment and success-and you can too.
A powerhouse guide for every modern woman and girl, Tell Her She Can’t invites you to blast past the gatekeepers of “can’t” and become unstoppable.

ORDER YOUR COPY

Amazon → https://amzn.to/3uuMdE4

Barnes & Noble → https://bit.ly/3qgWK5f

Apple Books → https://apple.co/3d4jQXg

When I first picked up this book, I knew I was in for a treat because...I love reading inspirational true stories of women who have defeated the odds. The book starts out with the author telling of her childhood and how her step-father and step-brother would completely humiliate her...one instance they both decided it fun to 'pretend' smother her with a pillow. I imagine something like this would really persuade you to leave home.

Her background is what I believe caused her to have an intense urge to travel and travel she did. Her traveling wasn't about shopping trips - it was to discover the real me inside of her. Reading about her pursuits (Lord knows I'd never had the guts to do them) it gave me insight into what is wrong with myself - always scared or fearful to do things that I didn't believe I could do. The author aces getting the point across.

And this is what drove her to listening to other women's stories of how they got past their fears and became successful in whatever they were striving to do in life. Believe me their stories are amazing. As the author so aptly puts it, "They (these women) are Changemakers, Champions, Warriors, Trailblazers, Adventurers, Visionaries, and Prevailers."

One story after another, the inspiration in the form of ideas, formed in my head. All it took was an almost life-saving incident. You can't just wake up one day and say I'm going to make a better loaf of bread than anyone else - there must be a drive. A purpose. Because it's that drive and purpose that makes you go your full strength. That's what I got from reading these incredible stories.

Highly highly recommend and I give it 5 gold stars!

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

5 Things You Should Know About Song of All Songs @donnadechen #5Things

thewriterslife July 27, 2021 0 Comments

5 Things You Should Know About Song of All Songs

This book comes from a place of deep concern and compassion for the future of the human species and planet Earth.
The author of the book is an anthropologist who spent many years in the academic study of human cultures. She finds writing science fiction stories far more gratifying, liberating, and sheer playful fun than writing academic papers!
There may be elements of the classic hero’s journey evident in Meridia’s story. (What’s a word for something that’s neither purely accidental nor consciously intentional?)
Song of All Songs may belong to that liminal sub-genre called “science fantasy.” I’ll let you be the judge of that!
Song of All Songs is book one of a trilogy. You have two more books to look forward to as Meridia’s journey continues!

About the Author

When Donna Dechen Birdwell was about ten years old, she became obsessed with the idea that if she was thinking with her brain, she ought to be able to think how it works! She’s been trying to wrap her mind around reality (and how humans experience it) ever since. She made a career out of anthropology—that utterly boundless science of humankind and how we got here—and then sidestepped into Buddhist philosophy and then art and photography and writing stories that tend to fall somewhere in the neighborhood of speculative and/or science fiction. She’s a big fan of Ursula LeGuin and N.K. Jemisin.

In her EarthCycles series, Donna imagines a far, far future world in which pockets of survivors of a global apocalypse have evolved new ways of being human. “Not altogether new,” she says. “More like rearrangements of certain aspects of our inherent human potential.” The first volume of EarthCycles, Song of All Songs, received the 2020 silver medal from Self Publishing Review. The book introduces a mixed-race main character making her unique way through a deeply conflicted world. The second book in the series, Book of All Time, is set for release in August of 2021.

Donna’s first trilogy (Recall Chronicles) is set in a hauntingly familiar 22nd-century world in which nobody grows old, an achievement that turns out to be not nearly so utopian as one might expect. Each volume tells the story of a different character’s experience of that world, but the stories are intertwined and some of the same characters turn up in all the books.

A stand-alone contemporary fiction book, Not Knowing, explores intergenerational PTSD in the life of an archaeologist working in Belize. Donna worked as an ethnologist in Belize for many years, so there’s a lot of her heart in this one.

Before anthropology, Donna worked as a newspaper reporter, and beyond anthropology she studied Buddhist philosophy (and practice) and then became an artist and photographer. Her paintings are done in acrylics on handmade Nepali lokta paper. Her primary photographic interest is in Miksang contemplative photography.

Donna earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and previously taught at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: https://donnadechenbirdwell.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/donnadechen/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wideworldhome/

Book Description:

Title: SONG OF ALL SONGS: EARTHCYCLES BOOK ONE
Author: Donna Dechen Birdwell
Publisher: Wide World Home
Pages: 375
Genre: Science Fiction

BOOK BLURB:

Long after the apocalypse, Earth has repeopled itself. Twice.

Despised by her mother’s people and demeaned by her absent father’s legacy, Meridia has one friend—Damon, an eccentric photologist. When Damon shows Meridia a stone he discovered in an old photo bag purchased from a vagrant peddler, she is transfixed. There’s a woman, she says, a dancing woman. And a song. Can a rock hold a song? Can a song contain worlds? Oblivious of mounting political turmoil, the two set out to find the old peddler, to find out what he knows about the stone, the woman, and the song. But marauding zealots attack and take Damon captive, leaving Meridia alone. Desolate. Terrified. Yet determined to carry on, to pursue the stone’s extraordinary song, even as it lures her into a journey that will transform her world.

PRAISE

“When anthropologist Donna Dechen Birdwell turns her keen sense of how societies evolved in the past toward imagining a post-apocalyptic future, the result is a thoughtful, nuanced, intelligent thriller.” — Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of The Oppenheimer Alternative

“Song of All Songs is a beautifully written and richly realized vision of the future, informed by a deep understanding of humanity.” — Christopher Brown, Campbell and World Fantasy Award-nominated author of Tropic of Kansas and Failed State

“An immersive and visceral vision of the future. This first installment of the EarthCycles series plays out as both a wonderful adventure and a well-crafted prophecy. The economy of language in certain moments is striking, while the poetic flow in other passages makes this novel a delicious pleasure to consume. This rare blend of naked imagination, careful storytelling, poetic flair, and meticulous language is reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin at her best. Showcasing the speculative fiction of a wildly gifted author, Song of All Songs is a very special book – an enigmatic and inventive treasure, and certainly not one to be missed.” –-Self-Publishing Review

ORDER YOUR COPY

Amazon → https://amzn.to/3dHPNVy

Meet Your New Memoir Read! MY FEATS IN THESE SHOES by Ronda Beaman #Memoir

thewriterslife July 27, 2021 0 Comments

Feats In My Shoes is a culmination of shoe stories to move your soul and your soles…

By Ronda Beaman

Title: MY FEATS IN THESE SHOES: A SOLELY ORIGINAL MEMOIR
Author: Ronda Beaman
Publisher: Adelaide Books, NYC
Pages: 190
Genre: Memoir / Inspiration

BOOK BLURB:

If memoirs, done right, tap the right sort of personal journey to ignite fresh insight and inspiration into the human journey, then what better way to humorously and poignantly illuminate the sequential steps and stages of life than with shoes?

“My Feats in These Shoes” is an exuberantly spunky woman’s spirited and irrepressible romp—slips, missteps, leaps, scuffs, and twirls—toward becoming something bigger, something better, something more.

Far from serving up trauma porn (or emotional bunions), this memoir is an upbeat, humorous, affectionate and affecting coming of age memoir that ends each chapter with a ‘Put Yourself in My Shoes’ section for readers to consider their own strides in pursuing an out of the shoe box life.

I have never known anyone great who didn’t face hundreds of pebbles in their shoes as they climbed their mountain of purpose, contribution, and meaning. What do they do? They untie their shoes, pick out the biggest pebbles, throw them underfoot, put their shoes back on and then put all their weight into pulverizing the remaining gravel holding them back or down—and then they keep climbing.

Dr. Ronda Beaman has been Chief Creative Officer for the global research and solution firm PEAK Learning, Inc., since 1990. As a national award-winning educator, Dr. Beaman is Clinical Professor of Leadership at The Orfalea School of Business, California Polytechnic University. She is Founder and Executive Director of Dream Makers SLO, a non-profit foundation granting final wishes to financially- challenged, terminally-ill adults, and serves on the Board of Directors for the National Pay It Forward Foundation. She was recently named a Stanford Fellow at the Distinguished Career Institute.

Her national award-winning book, You’re Only Young Twice, has been printed in five languages. Her memoir, Little Miss Merit Badge, was an Amazon bestseller and was featured at The Golden Globe Awards. Her children’s book, Seal With a Kiss, is designed to improve skills for beginning readers and is offered at Lindamood-Bell Learning Centers internationally. My Feats in These Shoes will be released in Spring 2021.

Dr. Beaman is an internationally recognized expert on leadership, resilience, fitness, education, and life coaching. She has conducted research in a host of areas, written many academic articles and books, and won numerous awards. She was selected by the Singapore Ministry of the Family as their honored Speaker of the Year and named the first recipient of the National Education Association’s “Excellence in the Academy: Art of Teaching” award. She has been selected as a faculty resource for the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) university in Argentina, Kyoto and India, where she received the highest speaker ratings among 36 elite faculty. She has been featured on major media including CBS and Fox Television, USA Today, and is a national thought leader for American Health Network.

Dr. Beaman earned her doctorate in Leadership at Arizona State University. She is also a certified executive coach and personal trainer with multiple credentials from the Aerobic Research Center. Her family was named “America’s Most Creative Family” by USA Today and she won the SCW National Fitness Idol competition.

WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM

OTHER BOOKS BY RONDA BEAMAN

Little Miss Merit Badge

You're Only Young Twice

MORE...

Monday, July 26, 2021

Safe Harbour Book Teaser Trailer @MIKE54MARTIN #mystery #booktrailer

thewriterslife July 26, 2021 0 Comments

Inside the Book

Title: SAFE HARBOUR
Author: Mike Martin
Publisher: Ottawa Press and Publishing
Pages: 264
Genre: Mystery

BOOK BLURB:

Sgt. Windflower is on a special assignment in St. John’s and adjusting to life in the big city. He is navigating traffic, a difficult boss at work and what seems like an epidemic of missing girls. He becomes more interested when he discovers that one of the girls is from Grand Bank. Then a girl approaches his RCMP van one night and he is pulled into the underlife of the capital city. But he still manages to enjoy all of the good things in life. His family, old and new friends, and the love of living so close to the Atlantic Ocean. Welcome back to St. Windflower Mysteries.

PRAISE

“Safe Harbour is a thought-provoking, fast-paced read. The mystery woven around his home life is very nicely done, containing just the right amount of tension and development to make for an inviting leisure read.” – Midwest Reviews

Safe Harbour is available at: