Who Can Benefit from This Book on Ascension?

This book is for those interested in spiritual awakening and rapid transformation. It will also help those who are fearful of our future due to having been indoctrinated into religions that teach a dreadful end of time. Many of these people are having experiences that religious dogma can’t explain. They are searching for answers. In this book, with a fresh approach to the ascension and immortality of Jesus Christ, I believe these dear ones will find a lot of the answers they are looking for.

The paperback version of Shifting into Purer Consciousness ~ Integrating Spiritual Transformation with the Human Experience is available in the US on Amazon.com as well as on CreateSpace.

You may order an autographed paperback copy of this book directly from the author using the PayPal button below.

$16.99 USD includes shipping within the US.




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The 7 Graces of Marketing: how to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell

Today I have the great pleasure of being the host on Day 11 of the Virtual Blog Tour of author Lynn Serafinn whose book The 7 Graces of Marketing: how to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell launches on Amazon on Tuesday December 13, 2011.

Lynn Serafinn, MAED, CPCC is a certified, award-winning coach and teacher, marketer, social media expert, radio host, speaker and bestselling author. Her eclectic approach to marketing incorporates her vast professional experience in the music industry and the educational sector along with more than two decades of study and practice of the spirituality of India. In her work as a promotional manager she has produced a long list of bestselling mind-body-spirit authors. Passionate about re-establishing our connection with the Earth, she supports the work of the Transition Town network in her hometown of Bedford, England.

Yesterday, Lynn visited Gregory "Coach" Fernander at http://coachatgregory.blogspot.com , where they talked about the subject of responsibility in marketing & in life.

Today, I'd like to share with you a recent podcast interview I had with Lynn when she speaks about the 7 Graces of Marketing.    I hope you enjoy it.

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I hope you enjoyed this interview with Lynn Serafinn and that you’ll check out her book The 7 Graces of Marketing: how to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell at http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/book-launch/pages/pre-launch.html

Here's why:

The 7 Graces of Marketing Telesummit

A FREE 7-Part Online Happening!

December 6th-9th, 2011

Register at http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/free-telesummit

When you visit the page at the link above and request a "launch reminder", you will automatically receive a FREE pass to Lynn's 7-Part online happening “The 7 Graces of Marketing Telesummit” with an illustrious panel of 24 bestselling authors and world-renowned speakers and media experts on society, business and marketing coming together to discuss how we can bring ethics and values back our business and marketing practices, and restore balance to our health, our economy and our natural environment.

Here's the spectacular list of guests speakers for the event:

Dr. Joe Vitale * Greg S. Reid * Dr. Eric Pearl * Dan Hollings * Pamela Slim * Liz Goodgold * Allison Maslan * Suzanne Falter*Barnes * Tad Hargrave * Misa Hopkins * Richard S. Gallagher * Ward Vandorpe * Barbara Altemus * Andrea Conway * Renee Baribeau * Renee Duran * Michael Drew * Chris Arnold * Jeffrey Van Dyk * Tanya Paluso * Kate Osborne * Shelagh Jones * Paula Tarrant * Lynn Serafinn

You can listen to the telesummit online in the comfort of your own home, and even ask questions during the broadcast.

                                        

If you are reading this after Dec 9th, 2011 you can still access the playback for a limited time when you register at http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/free-telesummit

This telesummit is a completely free
"no purchase necessary" gift from Lynn

FREE GIFTS

When you buy Lynn's book on Tuesday December 13, 2011, you can ALSO receive the MP3 download of all 10 hours of this historic telesummit, plus a complete library of beautiful personal development gifts from authors, speakers, coaches and other enlightened professionals from around the globe including one from me;

An audio book titled: Bliss in Divine Oneness

To claim your FREE pass to the 7 Graces of Marketing Telesummit

and read about the free gifts, go to:

http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/book-launch/pages/pre-launch.html

Thanks for reading! As usual, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts below. I love reading your feedback.

AND… be sure to follow Lynn tomorrow when the next stop on the Virtual Blog Tour is Tambra Harck, who will be interviewing Lynn on how can consumers help biz owners behave with more Grace? To visit that "stop" on the tour, go to http://theartofwellbeing.typepad.com/the_art_of_wellbeing/

Why Wait? The Baby Boomers' Guide to Preparing Emotionally, Financially and Legally for a Parent’s Death

Today I have the great pleasure of being the host on Day 10 of the Virtual Blog Tour of author Carolyn A. Brent whose book Why Wait? The Baby Boomers' Guide to Preparing Emotionally, Financially and Legally for a Parent’s Death launches on Amazon on Tuesday November 15, 2011.

Author Carolyn A. Brent, M.B.A. is a former clinical educational manager in the pharmaceutical industry. She is an avid activist and advocate working with the U.S. Congress for the purpose of creating change to protect seniors and veterans from financial and medical abuse. She has appeared on many local and national TV and radio shows, and is a sought-after keynote speaker.

Yesterday, Carolyn visited Joyce Joneschiet at http://aginginplaceoptions.com/2011/11/how-to-protect-your-parents-and-make-caregiving-a-family-affair , where they talked about Carolyn writing the book and couple on smoothing certain emotional conversations.

Today, I'd like to share with you a recent podcast interview I had with Carolyn. I hope you enjoy it.

I hope you enjoyed this interview with Carolyn A. Brent and that you’ll check out her book Why Wait? The Baby Boomers' Guide to Preparing Emotionally, Financially and Legally for a Parent’s Death at http://www.babyboomersguide.org/book-launch/pre-launch.html

Here Are Two Reasons Why:

FREE 3-DAY PASS

When you visit the page at the link above and request a "launch reminder", you will automatically receive a FREE pass to Carolyn's 3-day "Why Wait? Telesummit", with a panel leading experts preparing emotionally, financially and legally for the death of a parent.  You can listen to the telesummit online in the comfort of your own home, and even ask questions during the broadcast.

This telesummit is a completely free
"no purchase necessary" gift from Carolyn

To register, go to

http://www.babyboomersguide.org/book-launch/telesummit.html

FREE GIFTS

When you buy Carolyn's book on Tuesday November 15, 2011, you can ALSO receive a complete library of beautiful personal development gifts from authors, speakers, coaches and other enlightened professionals from around the globe including one from me:

MP3 audio book of More Than Meets the Eye ~

True Stories about Death, Dying, and Afterlife

To claim your 3-Day Pass and read about the free gifts, go to: http://www.babyboomersguide.org/book-launch/pre-launch.html

Thanks for reading! As usual, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts below. I love reading your feedback.

AND… be sure to follow Carolyn tomorrow when the next stop on the Virtual Blog Tour is Shelagh Jones, who will be podcast interviewing Carolyn on her show.  To visit that "stop" on the tour, go to http://SpiritualMarketing-Blog.com/books-by-spiritus-members/carolyn-a-brent-why-wait/  

19 Ways to Get More Readers for Your Author Blog

by Joel Friedlander

Author blogs are an intrinsic part of your author platform. You can get more readers for your blog. You may have read many of these ideas before, but let me ask you: How many have you done in the last 30 days?

Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. You are building a media asset, and that takes time. Many of these techniques take a little effort and can be done in a few minutes a day. There is never going to be a day when you do them all at once, so look at it more like a menu.

1.       Write more often—if you don’t have enough traffic, write more often. This is not necessarily good news, since you may feel you already have enough to do. But when you’re growing a blog, there’s no better way to increase the energy flow to your blog than increasing the amount of energy you put into your blog.

2.       Write better articles—look at the last 10 articles you’ve posted to your blog. How many did people really care about? How many did you write for yourself, more than your readers? If you have to, and in contradiction to #1 above, write less frequently but better.

3.       Do something different—give readers a reason to come to your blog. If you’re doing what everyone else in your niche is doing, why should they? What is it that no one has done? What angle is uncovered? What insight is lacking in the conversation?

4.       Do something big—create a big list, a smashing resource directory, an exhaustive collection of tools, a survey of every viewpoint on a subject. Whatever it is, make it useful, the kind of thing you yourself would link to or bookmark for future reference.

5.       Kidnap a celebrity—interview the biggest star in your niche, or the most controversial, or the person with the biggest blog in your field. Aim as high as you can, you will be surprised. Make a regular feature of profiling or interviewing movers and shakers in your industry.

6.       Start an argument—disagree loudly with an established authority in your field, an “A-list” blogger, or the institutional overseers of your domain. Demand a response.

7.       Rant—find an injustice in your field, something blatantly unfair or a monopolistic company taking advantage of the little guy. Rant about it, invite others to contribute.

8.       Guest post—take your show on the road. Create a goal to contribute to someone else’s blog on a related topic once a week, once a month, whatever you can do. Query bloggers and read their archives. Fashion a headline for an article they’ll find irresistible.

9.       Comment—leave comments that add to the discussion, that amplify what others have said, that disagree respectfully with the author, that bring something to the table. Pick 5 or 10 blogs and stay in touch with them, commenting when appropriate.

10.   Upload articles—put some articles on articles sites like ezinearticles.com and make sure you link back to your blog. Use the same keywords you use in your blog posts.

11.   Explore your analytics—dive into your blog’s analytics to find the keywords people are using to arrive at your blog, then. . .

12.   Research keywords—use keyword tools to find as many keywords related to your blog as you can. Compare different forms of common terms in your field, since they can have radically different search volumes. Use this information when you write your blog posts.

13.   Curate content—serve up links to content elsewhere that you’ve checked out. Use your expertise and the time you spend surfing to collect links that others will find useful. Use social media to spread these links and do link posts on your blog to save others the time of finding great content.

14.   Run contests—have a regular contest, giveaway, prize, sweepstakes, awards or some way to create an event. Use your blog to promote it and ask participants to link back.

15.   Frequent forums—make a habit of commenting on forum threads that concern your topic. Like commenting, aim to improve, amplify or otherwise contribute to the ongoing conversation. Don’t forget to put a link to your blog in your signature that shows up when you post a comment.

16.   Give something away—put together an e-book, a PDF, a template, a checklist, a special report, a worksheet or anything else that others can get real value from. Give it away every day, not just once. Make sure people know they can share it with everyone, and remember to put a live link back to your blog in the giveaway.

17.   Write list posts—write the top 7 things, the best 9 widgets, the 5 things people haven’t considered, the 9 top places to get stuff, the 5 best tools for the job, and the 3 reasons list posts beat all others.

18.   Take a course—there are several excellent blogging courses that will teach you a huge amount about blogging and gaining traffic. Blog Mastermind is the one I used to grow this blog, and you can find others. Invest in yourself, it pays. (affiliate link)

19.   Ask readers—run a survey, ask for comments, ask your readers what they need, what articles they would like to read, where they are stuck, what they need help with.

Blogging is more fun, and more effective, when you have more readers. Every blogger wants more readers, but you have to spend time on more than just your writing to get that blog traffic.

Pick a couple of these ideas and put in 15 minutes today. It takes many little streams to build to a river.

Got something to add to the list?

Article by Joel Friedlander

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author and book designer who blogs about book design, self-publishing and the indie publishing life at TheBookDesigner.com. He's also the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, where he helps publishers and authors who decide to publish get to market on time and on budget with books that are both properly constructed and beautiful to read.

Top Book Awards Authors Should Pursue

By Scott Lorenz
Westwind Communications

Do book awards matter? Absolutely YES! In fact, just recently one of my clients won the prestigious Los Angeles Book Festival award. That then led to a flurry of media interest, which then led to a major New York agent deciding to represent the book and pitch it to all the major publishing houses. Deals are in the offing. This author, needless to say, is happy he decided to enter.

Pursuing and winning book awards will give you another opportunity to reach out to the media, booksellers and agents. Awards create interest in your book, which can lead to more sales and other opportunities. A book award may cause someone to stop in their tracks and consider picking up your book in a book store. A book award can give you an edge and sometimes that’s all the difference you need to propel your book into bestseller territory. If you win you can say you are an “award winning author.” Doesn’t that sound better? Of course it does, and you get a little magic that comes from a third party endorsement because an authority says your work is worthy, and that’s priceless.

Most awards charge a fee to enter. Not all awards have a category for your genre and not all of these will work for every book.

Here’s a list of my Top 22 book awards worthy of your consideration.

Enter to win The 2011 Independent Book Publisher Awards between January 1 and March 15 at https://secure.independentpublisher.com/trans_entry.php?srcg=ipggl1

Entering the Book of the Year Awards should definitely be on your end-of-the-year to-do list. Check it out here http://www.bookoftheyearawards.com/
Check out the National Book Critics Circle Awards and enter by December 1 http://bookcritics.org/awards/award_submissions/

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction boasts that the prize is the world's most important literary award. Enter to win by July 1 http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/about/rules-and-entry

The Newbery Medal was the world’s first children’s book award. Enter before December 31 http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/newberymedal/newberyapp/newberyapplication.cfm

Enter to win the Caldecott Medal before December 31 for your Children’s picture book http://www.blogger.com/goog_1228723339

IACP Cookbook Awards deadline is October 29. Check out how to enter http://www.iacp.com/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=745

Hugo Award deadline is March 26, check out science fiction’s most prestigious award details http://www.thehugoawards.org/about/

Strive to be nominated and win the Nobel Prize in literature. Who can nominate? Professors of literature and of linguistics at universities and university colleges to name a few. (Another reason it pays to keep the ties your alma mater!) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/nomination/

The Edgar Allan Poe Award for books submission deadline is August 15. See how to submit your book http://www.mysterywriters.org/?q=Edgars-Info

FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year submission deadline is June 30 http://www.mysterywriters.org/?q=Edgars-Info

Enter to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction before February 2 http://www.pulitzer.org/how_to_enter

The National Book Award deadline is June 15. Learn how to submit your book here http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaentry.html

Submit your work by October 31 to win the Stonewall Book Award. Click for details http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/glbtrt/stonewall/index.cfm

The Deadline for the Autumn House Press award for fiction is June 30. Check it out here http://www.autumnhouse.org/contest-submissions/

Enter to win the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award deadline is December 17. Click for more details http://www.pw.org/writing_contests/hemingway_foundationpen_award

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction deadline is October 31. Check out how to enter http://www.pw.org/writing_contests/award_fiction

Get your book nominated for a Quill Award http://www.thequills.org/

Voting for the Indies Choice Book Awards ends March 31 http://www.bookweb.org/icba.html

Get your cook recommended for The Discover Great New Writers award http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/for_publishers/discover_program/discover_program.html

The Nautilus Book Award seeks books that make a difference and inspire. The deadline is February 25 http://www.nautilusbookawards.com/Guidelines_for_Entering.html#How_to_Send

With book trailers being an important part of all book marketing strategies be sure to enter your book trailer in the Moby Awards. They are looking for the best…and worst book trailers. Deadline in April. http://www.mobyawards.com/

Here’s a service where you can enter several book festivals at the same time for about $50 per festival. This is absolutely the best idea. Just do it. http://www.diyconvention.com/. http://bookfestivals.com/PORTAL/library/entry_form.pdf

The National Indie Excellence Book Awards competition selects award winners and finalists based on overall excellence of presentation in dozens of categories. April deadline. http://www.indieexcellence.com/

Have you written a business book? The Axiom Business Book Awards celebrate excellence in business book writing and publishing by presenting gold, silver and bronze medals in 20 business categories. They have a year-end deadline http://www.axiomawards.com/

ForeWord Reviews sponsors the Book of the Year Awards. It's open to all independently- and self-published books released that year. There are sixty categories, and in each category a gold, silver, and bronze winner. The deadline to enter is January. Check out: http://www.forewordreviews.com/

Need another reason to enter? Jim Cox of Midwest Book Review says, "The fact is award stickers help to convince buyers to purchase. I've seen this happen with librarians -- when faced with two competing titles and a limited acquisition budget the librarians will take the one that won an award, any award, over the title that doesn't have an award to its credit. I'm confident that this same phenomena works for bookstore patrons browsing the shelves as well."

The bottom line, book awards do matter. Enter a few and let me know how it goes. If you know of another book award I should check out, please send me the details.

About Book Publicist Scott Lorenz

Book publicist Scott Lorenz is President of Westwind Communications, a public relations and marketing firm that has a special knack for working with authors to help them get all the publicity they deserve and more. Lorenz works with bestselling authors and self-published authors promoting all types of books, whether it's their first book or their 15th book. He's handled publicity for books by CEOs, CIA Officers, Navy SEALS, Homemakers, Fitness Gurus, Doctors, Lawyers and Adventurers. His clients have been featured by Good Morning America, FOX & Friends, CNN, ABC News, New York Times, Nightline, TIME, PBS, LA Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Woman's World, & Howard Stern to name a few. Learn more about Westwind Communications’ book marketing approach at http://www.book-marketing-expert.com/ or contact Lorenz at scottlorenz@westwindcos.com or by phone at 734-667-2090. Follow Lorenz on Twitter @aBookPublicist

Should You Design Your Own Book? Pro and Con

by Joel Friedlander

Digital printing and print on demand have allowed authors to take control of the production of their own books. Thousands of self-publishers have flourished as a result, ushering in a new era of self-publishing, and many of them want to design their own book.

When authors decide to publish their own books they are thrown into a world that was always hidden behind the doors of large book publishing firms. They’re responsible for editing, proofreading, fact checking, indexing, marketing, public relations and more.

Not only that, but the conventions, vendors, and other standard ways book publishing works are new and foreign to most authors. The learning curve can be steep. Some authors throw up their hands and abandon their projects before they’re finished. That’s a shame.

It’s Always Been This Way for Self-Publishers

Of course, savvy self-publishers have been confronting this situation for many years, well before print on demand. And in this era of downsizing and outsourcing, there’s a lot of freelance publishing talent available. Self-publishers who aim to create a commercial product usually hire the help they need rather than trying to learn every job in the publishing process. This makes good business sense.

But one area in which authors vary quite a bit is in how they deal with the design of their books.

Some want to hire the best designers they can afford and leave it to a professional to take care of all the details that go into creating a professional-looking book. They want a book that will gain the respect of book industry buyers, distributors, and which will be able to sell head-to-head against books from major publishers.

Others decide that if you’re a self-publisher, you can design your own book. They either use the tools they have—usually a word processor—or buy complex layout software that comes with its own learning curve.

Before you decide whether or not to design your own book, you might want to consider the pros and cons of each approach.

5 Reasons to Design Your Own Book

1. You want to keep complete control of the project—You’ve dreamed of holding your book in your hand and you’re excited about the opportunity to decide on margins, typefaces, widows and orphans and all the other decisions that go into a book design.

2. You have a clear idea of how you want your book to look—Perhaps you’ve been admiring the books of a certain writer, or from a particular publisher. You know exactly how you want your book to look and see no need to pay someone to do it for you.

3. Your budget just doesn’t include anything for book design—Book designers, like other professionals, cost money, and books with complex formatting, lots of extra-text elements, anchored graphics, charts, graphs, tables and so on take quite a bit of time to assemble.

4. You don’t think anyone else will get it—You feel your book is so unique that only you can correctly interpret it for the rest of the world, and you are dedicated to seeing it through, no matter how long it takes.

5. You need to experiment—Your creativity requires lots of experimentation, trying different things and pulling them apart, then doing completely different designs. For a professional designer, this could end up costing you quite a bit of money. It may be better to do this experimentation on your own.

5 Reasons NOT to Design Your Own Book

1. You simply don’t want to learn every aspect of publishing—Unless you have a passion for typefaces, running heads, chapter openings and the other minutia of book design, you might find it unproductive to study the entire field just to create one book.

2. Your time is very limited—Most self-publishers have a “day job” and publish in their spare time. In addition to everything else they take on, becoming their own book designer may demand just too much time, slowing the production of their book.

3. You want a book that looks just like one from a big publishing company—Let’s face it, the books we buy from traditional publishers usually look pretty good because they are the product of professionals at every step of the process. Unless you want to devote the time to acquire their expertise, the way to get a professional-looking book is to hire professionals.

4. Your book is very complex—In the case of heavily-illustrated, extensively annotated or graphically complex books, the difficulty involved in creating these books yourself may be overwhelming, creating frustration where you should have enjoyment in the process.

5. You’re publishing an art or photography book—Unless you have experience dealing with color correction, offset printing, RGB-to-CMYK color conversion and the advantages and disadvantages of various paper stocks, the production demands of these kinds of books pretty much require that you have a professional book designer involved somewhere along the line.

Whichever way you decide to produce your book, the best advice I can offer you is to spend a lot of time looking at books to see what the conventions are and how the books are put together. You’ll also get ideas that you can use in your own book.

The design of books hasn’t changed much in 500 years. Because of that, readers have clear (even if unconscious) expectations of what a book should look like. Follow these conventions and use good models for your own design, or hire a pro.

Either way, you’ll be doing what a lot of writers have only dreamed of: You’ll be a published author.

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author, a book designer and blogs about book design, self-publishing and the indie publishing life at TheBookDesigner.com. He's also the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, where he helps publishers and authors who decide to publish get to market on time and on budget with books that are both properly constructed and beautiful to read.

This Week's Podcast Guest: Hilderbrand Pelzer III

Award-winning educator Hildebrand Pelzer III joined us today for a discussion of his book, Unlocking Potential: Organizing a School Inside a Prison. This is inspiring book highlights Pelzer's 23 years in the service of Pennsylvania's students, including those often forgotten: incarcerated youth.

When Hildebrand Pelzer III became a teacher after graduating from college, he had no idea that education would become his life's mission. After several years at the School District of Philadelphia, he went on to lead the Penny Pack House School, located in the fifth-largest urban jail system in the United States. There, Pelzer directed the School District of Philadelphia's participation in the prison system and created the Juvenile-Focused Correctional Educational School Model, which has received national accolades and is the standard of success in educating school-age incarcerated youth.

In Unlocking Potential, Hildebrand shares both his passion for his work and his goal of bringing his Model to other prison systems across the nation. He serves as a source of inspiration, not only to America's students and educators, but to all aspiring writers who want to share their message.


To listen to the podcast, click here:

To buy the book or learn more about Hilderbrand Pelzer III's work, visit http://www.hp3-unlockingpotential.com (Also available at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and Outskirts Press)

Follow Hilderbrand Pelzer III on Twitter: @unlkpotential

7 Things You Can Do Today to Improve Your Book Design

by Joel Friedlander

We all want to make our books better, more readable, more attractive to both buyers and reviewers. Here are 7 things you can do today to improve the design of your book and create a great-looking product.

1. Use high quality fonts—there are a lot of fonts out there on the internet, and they’re not all equal. Here’s a suggestion, stick with Open Type fonts, which give you much more flexibility and frequently come with alternate characters and other typographic niceties that will improve the look of your book.

2. Create user-friendly margins—Lots of self-published books could be improved right away with better margins. Print on demand books tend to have tight spines, so make sure your gutter margin is at least .75″ or, if you have a long book, up to 1″.

3. Use styles everywhere—Whether you’re doing your book in Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign or some other tool, use the style function. Why? This will help ensure that formatting is consistent throughout the book.

4. Use the right kind of fonts—Many otherwise decent book covers are worse-looking than they ought to be because they use the wrong fonts. You cannot use a font intended for text—like Times Roman, Palatino, or Garamond—for titles without it looking amateurish. Display fonts can immediately improve the look of your cover.

5. Stick with two fonts—Use one font for your text, another for display like your title page and chapter titles. Unless you’re an experience typographer it’s going to be pretty tough to integrate three or more fonts and have them come out looking good. Less is more in this case.

6. Use hyphenation and justification—Professional-looking books from all publishers are justified and use hyphenation to even out the spacing of lines of text. You should too.

7. Ditch the clip art—Don’t fall into the trap of thinking your pages have to look “interesting” to hold the reader’s attention. Adding crummy clip art or stock photos will only serve to cheapen your words which, after all, are why people are buying your book.

I could go on, but this list of ways to improve the way your book looks will get you off to a great start. If you’re designing or laying out your book, or getting ready to, keep this list handy and it will help you create a book you’ll really be proud of.


Joel Friedlander is a self-published author and book designer who blogs about book design, self-publishing and the indie publishing life at TheBookDesigner.com. He's also the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, where he helps publishers and authors who decide to publish get to market on time and on budget with books that are both properly constructed and beautiful to read.

Sudden Moves Book Review

Vonnie Faroqui reviews Sudden Moves, by author Kelli Sue Landon.

 

Book Title: Sudden Moves
ISBN: 978-1426945847
Publisher: Outskirts Press



Michelle Martin is worried. Her friend Katie went to Florida for spring break and never came back. It isn’t just that Katie left without saying good bye. That was bad enough, but Katie never returned the book she borrowed and Michelle is going to be in serious trouble if her mom finds out she loaned it to Katie. Author Kelli Sue Landon takes this simple turn of events in a teen’s life and weaves a mystery that is sure to please her young adult audience.

The dramas surrounding friendships, infatuations, academics, family difficulties, and the teen culture depicted in Sudden Moves are all believable and set the stage well for the mystery that Landon unfolds.

There are a few plot twists and surprises in store for the reader that I don’t want to give away. I can share that Landon reintroduces us to kids we remember from high school, only Landon’s teens are living and dealing with all the pitfalls, social environment and pressures of modern day America.

Landon successfully writes the teen mentality, capturing all of the frustrations and inexperience which lead her young characters further and further into danger and along the road toward adulthood.
She places obstacles in their paths that many young adults face and yet she does so without depicting all the adult characters as either foolish, self centered or villainous. The adults in Sudden Moves have as many problems and quirks as the teens, but the author doesn’t treat them as cheap comic relief or with disdain, as is often done for television.

The book has a good pace, with plenty of rising action carrying the plot forward. There is a criminal element to the story, with some implied and mild violence that advances the plot. Teens fourteen and above will appreciate this book and relate well with its characters. There is a good amount of interaction between the main character, Michelle, and her parents –with several realistic and trust building scenes. Law enforcement figures are treated respectfully by the author.

Sudden Moves is above all else a mystery and Landon works hard to give her audience everything they need to make sense of and unravel the truth, right along with Michelle, about what happened to Katie.

UNFEAR Introduction Video, with Karlin Sloan

Yesterday on the UNFEAR Tour, Dallas Woodburn’s Writing Life hosted an excerpt of Karlin Sloan's book UNFEAR Facing Change In an Era of Uncertainty.

The tour returns to Writers In The Sky for a video introduction about the book with author Karlin Sloan.





For the full tour schedule visit http://bit.ly/unfearvirtualtour

WITS Welcomes the UNFEAR virtual tour author Karlin Sloan!

March 6, 2011, A Successful Woman blog at hosted an article called "Defining Success." If you haven’t visited the article there a trip back to yesterday is worth the click.  Today, Writers In The Sky has a question and answer written interview with author, CEO, entrepreneur and executive coach, Karlin Sloan.

Karlin Sloan

WITS Question and Answer Interview with Karlin Sloan, author of, UNFEAR Facing Change In an Era of Uncertainty.

Host Vonnie Faroqui:  Welcome to Writers in the Sky Karlin. It has been a pleasure to read your book and to organize this virtual tour for you.  I have to say that the content of your book is especially timely and relevant.  Can you share with us the inspiration behind the premise of your new book Unfear: Facing Change in an Era of Uncertainty?

Karlin:  I have been inspired by our clients – people who work in senior level leadership roles in companies all over the world. They are coping with what seems like greater and greater levels of stress, fear, and complexity, and I realized that they need simple, clear practices to help them navigate in a very different business environment than we’ve had in the past.

Vonnie:  What would you say were the three greatest challenges for corporate leadership in America today?

Karlin:  I’d say #1 is that we are a deeply interconnected global economy, and that creates enormous complexity. Our decisions have a ripple effect, and we need to understand that ripple effect.  #2 is the pace of change. When we face change that is so rapid, it’s hard to act from a stable, grounded position. It’s impossible to have all of the data and to understand all of the moving parts. Leaders need to engage their intuition and their courage in order to thrive during times of great ambiguity. #3, and this is the one I think is most prevalent at every level of organizations right now – is that people are operating in a state of fear. Fear shuts down our “executive functioning” in the brain, and causes us to react out of defensiveness. We go into fight, flight, and flee behaviors that are not useful unless we are in physical danger. That fear is creating havoc in collaborative relationships, in strategic thinking, in decision-making.  If there’s one thing we need right now it is simply to operate from a more effective state of being.

Vonnie:  Are these challenges shared by your international clients or do they face a different set of challenges?

Karlin:  The fear in the US is palpable right now, but the pace of change is the same, sometimes even greater in our client organizations in Asia in particular. But really these challenges are faced by everyone to a greater or lesser degree. We are all operating in an interconnected, complex business environment and we all need UNFEAR.

Vonnie:  Does the word or rather concept of UNFEAR represent a shift in leadership thinking and strategies from the days when leaders actively used fear based tactics to manipulate their workforce?

Karlin: Absolutely we have shifted in what works in leading in a business environment. Our organizations are more matrixed, power is no longer centralized, and authoritarian leadership just doesn’t fly with our up and coming employee base.  However, UNFEAR is really about something we’ve always needed – confidence that things will work out in the end. My definition of UNFEAR is “confidence in one’s ability to overcome the odds, and to create a positive outcome no matter what the circumstance”. We know that we shut down and become defensive and instinctive when we operate from fear – and it’s time to start operating from confidence in our own resilience. We can get through this, we can learn, and we can grow.

Vonnie:  Why do you think the message of your book, Unfear, is so important?

Karlin:  I am a believer in our human capacity for innovation and creativity. If we can dream it, we can create it. If we focus on what’s wrong and defend against it, we may be sabotaging our ability to envision a positive future and work towards it.  We are facing a lot of drastic change on our planet; from rapid resource depletion and rapid climate change to the proliferation of instant information on the internet – these are challenges that we need to face head-on, with confidence and with enthusiasm for what is possible.

This interview continues tomorrow, March 8, 2011, when the UNFEAR tour visit's Ink Slinger's Whimsey's author promotions blog. Don't miss the second half of this written question and answer interview as Vonnie and Karlin go even deeper into UNFEAR.

Leadership Development Expert Karlin Sloan Celebrates Book with Virtual Tour

Business Leader Releases 

UNFEAR –Facing Change in an Era of Uncertainty

Chicago, IL March, 2011, — UNFEAR - Facing Change in an Era of Uncertainty (ISBN: 9781452885858,) had its official book launch on January 20, 2011. The book’s release is being followed by a virtual book tour on the Internet,  launched on March 1, 2011, from Karlin Sloan's Success TV blog with a discussion provoking article about future shock and facing change in an era of uncertainty.

March 2, 2011, the UNFEAR Tour moves on its way to the Internet site of ASuccessfulWoman.com with an article about "Three Steps to Being Complaint Free"

The UNFEAR Tour will be visiting Writer's In The Sky on March 7, 2011, with a written question and answer interview and again on March 11, 2011, with an introductory video about the book, UNFEAR Facing Change In an Era of Uncertainty.


This book and the UNFEAR virtual tour have come at a time when people across the U.S. live in fear of unemployment, the unpredictable economy, the threat of terrorism, and political unrest in the middle east that has a global scale impact.  Author, CEO, and leadership development expert Karlin Sloan addresses how to combat these worries in UNFEAR: Facing Change in an Era of Uncertainty.


As a consultant and executive coach, Sloan speaks with powerful corporate leaders every day and, over the years, has seen that many of the people she works with are living with stress and ambiguity.  Managing from a fear-based state affects an individual personally, which can lead to consequences that impede a work team and, in turn, the larger organization. The book inspires readers to make decisions out of hope and purpose, rather than out of fear.

"Many of the assertive, intelligent people I come into contact with are letting fear cripple their decision-making skills," says Sloan. "I wanted to write a book that provides them with useful tools to reduce fear-based behaviors, to inspire performance, and to align their team or greater organization around a larger purpose." 

Using examples from business leaders, including P&G, Walmart, Yahoo!, and LG Electronics, Sloan offers clear, effective, and practical strategies that enhance teamwork and leadership effectiveness regardless of economic uncertainty.

 I just finished my first reading of UNFEAR and I'm deeply moved.  Karlin has done an amazing job of weaving and synthesizing important ideas and concepts in ways that support looking at ourselves, our organizations and our world in fresh, creative ways. UNFEAR is an inspiring and practical guide to facing our fears and taking on creating a world that we want to live in. - Marc Lesser, author of LESS: Accomplishing More by Doing Less

Karlin Sloan’s UNFEAR virtual tour will travel the Internet offering question-and-answer written and radio interviews with the author, blog articles, reviews, book excerpts, and more.  Each tour stop will explore the concept of UNFEAR, and the four practices taught by Karlin Sloan & Company to executive leaders around the world.  The Karlin Sloan virtual tour for UNFEAR is being produced by Ink Slinger's Whimsey and Writers in the Sky. Visit http://bit.ly/unfearvirtualtour  for further information and a tour schedule.

Karlin Sloan is the founder and CEO of Karlin Sloan & Company, a leadership development firm providing development consultation for national and multinational organizations seeking to advance through enhanced training and executive coaching.  Karlin holds a BA from Mills College, an MA in clinical psychology from the Professional School of Psychology in San Francisco, and executive coach certification through the William James Institute Center for Executive Coaching.

5 Reasons Authors Should Be Blogging Right Now

by Joel Friedlander

I’ve been asked to give a talk on author blogging next month, and it’s got me thinking. I’ll be speaking to a group of self-publishers, authors, indie publishers, and people who provide publishing or marketing services.

We talk a lot about author blogging, and why it’s a great idea for authors to create an author platform. Yet very few authors I know write regularly about their book, or its subject matter, or about anything at all.

Most blogs, in fact, are probably abandoned early in their life. There must be millions of “ghost” blogs around the internet, sitting in that same kind of stasis the old mining towns are in when someone stumbles on them in a movie set out west.

What Seems to Be the Problem?

The classic mistake made by self-publishers is not thinking about marketing until their books are at the printer. They are too busy, too wrapped up in the manuscript, or they don’t want to step so far out of their comfort zone.

I get this, I really do. We’re all busy, and marketing seems to most self-publishers like something somebody else does. But not any more.

If you’re like most self-publishers, you’ll be doing a lot of your marketing online, and that’s where a blog is going to help you out. You’ll be setting up an outpost on the internet, establishing a brand, and you can’t start too early.

Maybe you won’t have three years to blog before your book comes out, but it wouldn’t hurt. Whatever time you have, it’s important to make use of it.

Why? Read on.

5 Reasons to Start Blogging Now

1. Nothing happens at first—Although you can get started blogging within minutes, it takes time to build up some content and to get taken seriously by search engines. Lots of blogs are abandoned soon after they start, and search engines know this. Starting now is your best option, because you immediately start the clock ticking on getting search traffic.

2. It takes practice—You may be a perfectly good writer, but you’ve been writing books, or articles for trade magazines, or press releases or whatever. Blogging has its own rationale, and blog posts are not like other types of writing. You’ll need a bit of time to get used to the form.

3. You need to find readers—Maybe you’re an amazing writer, but there are a lot of choices for people who spend time online. At first, no one will know you’re there, and building a community of readers is an organic process.

4. Work on building connections—As your blog grows, you’ll naturally start to connect with other bloggers in your field. You may be surprised at how many connections you can make this way, and that there’s a supportive community you can become a part of.

5. Branding doesn’t happen in a day—Whether you realize it or not, you are creating an online author brand, a media presence, by building your blog. Brands have tremendous power over our buying decisions, but it takes time and repeated exposure to get traction for your brand.

Of course, the whole idea is that after you’ve been blogging for a while, establishing authority, building readership, gaining trust by delivering content of authentic value, there will be a payoff.

Imagine yourself a year or two in the future. You’ve done all these things, maybe because you read this article or another one like it. Now it’s time to release your book. You have an audience waiting, other bloggers ready to help spread the word, and access to media sources through your blog.

A Fine Example

This isn’t a fantasy or out of your reach. I’ve been watching (and helping) Joanna Penn, who blogs at The Creative Penn, as she launches Pentecost, her first novel. It will be a great success. Know why? She has spent the last couple of years connecting to people, delivering content of value, engaging readers and peers alike. Hundreds of people have voted in her polls about choosing a cover for the book. Everyone is anticipating its release.

Wouldn’t you like to publish your next book to an eager and waiting community of fans?

Start blogging today.

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author, a book designer and blogs about book design, self-publishing and the indie publishing life at TheBookDesigner.com. He's also the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, where he helps publishers and authors who decide to publish get to market on time and on budget with books that are both properly constructed and beautiful to read.