Sonia Marsh's Blog, page 22
January 27, 2014
How I Became a “Gutsy” Mennonite
The Fear of Death
“My Gutsy Story®” Shirley Showalter
Behind all our fears, often hidden even to ourselves, lies one big fear.
Yes, you got it. The fear of death.
We can’t become truly gutsy, courageous, until we accept the reality of death and consciously seek to live deeply and fully in its presence.
I first stared death in the face at the age of six.
It happened this way:
On the evening of Dec. 20, 1954, my younger brother Henry and I were playing in a little stack of hay in our barn, making tunnels out of bales and talking about what we hoped for in our Christmas stockings. Cows chewed contentedly next to us. The DeLaval milkers sounded almost like heartbeats—lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub—as they extracted warm milk from each udder.
And then we heard it: a horrible, penetrating, animal-like scream, piercing that night and my life to this day. The terrible sound grew louder as Mother came toward the barn. She ran to Daddy and, still screaming, started pounding him on his chest.
“My baby is dead. Our baby is dead. My baby is dead.” That was all she could say, over and over again. Then she would throw back her head and wail.
I learned a lesson that night that I would have to learn again when my father died at age 55 and when several close friends died in sudden, untimely ways.
We all die.
From then on, life became even more precious. I decided to live twice, once for myself and once for the little sister who lived only 39 days.
When I played softball on the playground, I swung for the fences.
When I read books, like Little Women, I identified with the gutsiest character, Jo.
When I discovered you have to go to college in order to be a teacher I decided to go, even though my parents weren’t enthusiastic about the idea. Even though no one else in my family had ever gone.
When I stood up to the bishop in my Mennonite Church and told him that he wasn’t practicing what he preached.
What does it mean to live twice? How did it change my life?
In other words, my childhood and adolescence were never the same after I heard my mother scream and after I touched the cold, white skin of my baby sister inside that sad little casket in 1954.
Death made a searcher out of me. I sought out writers who understood urgency, such as Annie Dillard, who advised:
Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?
I love these words. I try to keep them in mind as I write my stories.
But I have to keep something else in mind also.
I believe that death is not the end of life. The writers I love best don’t dwell on morbidity, they face death and fear, and while doing so, come home to themselves by coming home to love. Engraved inside their hearts is the reminder that love is eternal.
But it wasn’t a writer that taught me that lesson first; it was my mother. After she shook my six-year-old world with her screams and tears, she took solace in her faith and accepted the comfort of friends and family. Depression tempted her. She could have withdrawn from life and hence from her living children. Had that happened, you would not be reading these words.
Sometimes the gutsiest things we do are to keep on putting one foot in front of another and continuing to live, determined to turn darkness into light.
Next month my mother turns eighty-seven. I no longer fear death because love has triumphed. Whatever is gutsy in me goes all the way back to 1954 and to the woman who never gave up on life, my mother.
SHIRLEY HERSHEY SHOWALTER, author of Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World, grew up on a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, dairy farm and went on to become a professor and then college president and foundation executive. Find her at her website: www.shirleyshowalter.com
Please watch my interview with Shirley Showalter about her memoir: Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Please join Shirley on her Facebook page, and on Twitter @Shirleyhs
Here is my 5-star review of Shirley’s excellent memoir, Blush.
***
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
Our January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” series started with:
Jon Magidsohn
Gillian Jackson
Eleanor Vincent
VOTING for your favorite January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” starts on January 30th and ends on February 12th. Winner will be announced on February 13th.
January 26, 2014
Get Paid as a Travel Blogger -LA Times Travel Show
Sonia and Elaine Masters
Do you love to travel? What about travel writing?
As a travel fan, author and blogger, I find that Trade Day at the LA Times Travel Show is the place to learn what’s new and hot in the travel business.
I follow several travel bloggers, but did not know about professional organizations that link travel bloggers with the travel industry. The Professional Travel Bloggers Association (PTBA) is an organization created by the efforts of almost fifty travel bloggers over the past year or so. They have specific requirements to join:
For travel bloggers: a minimum of nine months blogging and more than 3,000 page views in the last thirty days on your website. The annual fee is $75.
For travel industry and PR members: there is no minimum statistical requirement. The fee for a group/company/DMO/organization that wants to join is $300 per year.
There are several lists of professional travel bloggers specializing in family travel, eco-travel, luxury travel, and many other categories, you can join.
Navigatemediagroup.com
iAmbassador.com
Ecoadventuremedia.com
Bestfamilytravelexperts.com
***
Rob Holmes-Founder-Chief Storyteller GLP Films
Rob Holmes, founder and chief storyteller of GLP Films, spoke about “The Power of Storytelling–in Travel.”
Yes, even travel films and videos need authentic storytelling in order to engage their audiences.
Introducing GLP Films in a short video.
Holmes breaks down storytelling for film in a way that can help writers.
The Key Elements to storytelling:
Purpose
Journey
Location
Characters
Keywords (yes, that surprised me too!)
1). Purpose:
Ask yourself why am I telling this story?
Who am I going to target? (my audience)
What is the potential impact? (sales)
2). Journey:
What is the journey? (for example a great rafting trip)
What is the conflict? (to make it engaging)
What are the key themes in this journey or film?
3). Location:
You want diversity. What are the key locations?
How are the locations relevant to the characters?
Observe and obtain a diverse mix of shots.
4). Character:
Who are your characters?
What are their stories?
How can your audience connect?
In film-making, sometimes your best characters are not the CEO or employees, but some local character you didn’t expect.
5). Keywords:
Identify 10+ keywords or phrases to describe your story.
Research what your film partners, (or similar writers) are using as keywords.
What do you mean by keywords?
I asked Rob Holmes what he meant by keywords, and how to find new keywords for your content.
Rob suggested inviting 5-6 friends who know you well, and brainstorm. Ask them to come up with keywords that fit your theme. A glass of wine may help the process.
A great story just like a great film, needs to be:
Powerful
Engage the audience
Educate (or entertain)
You need to take risks to make it unique
It needs to be perpetual (do not date it)
I was impressed with the quality of GLP films, and also the power of storytelling in film.
***
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
Our January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” series started with:
Jon Magidsohn
Gillian Jackson
Eleanor Vincent
Monday, January 27th, Shirley Showalter will share his “My Gutsy Story®.”
VOTING for your favorite January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” starts on January 30th and ends on February 12th. Winner will be announced on February 13th.
January 23, 2014
How Storytelling Through Film Helps You Write
As a travel fan, I attended Trade Day at the LA Times Travel Show on January 17th, 2014.
Since I’m an author and a blogger, I selected presentations related to storytelling and travel blogging.
Rob Holmes, founder and chief storyteller of GLP Films, spoke about “The Power of Storytelling–in Travel.”
Yes, even travel films and videos need authentic storytelling in order to engage their audiences.
Holmes breaks down storytelling for film in a way that can help writers.
The Key Elements to storytelling:
Purpose
Journey
Location
Characters
Keywords (yes, that surprised me too!)
1). Purpose:
Ask yourself why am I telling this story?
Who am I going to target? (my audience)
What is the potential impact? (sales)
2). Journey:
What is the journey? (for example a great rafting trip)
What is the conflict? (to make it engaging)
What are the key themes in this journey or film?
3). Location:
You want diversity. What are the key locations?
How are the locations relevant to the characters?
Observe and obtain a diverse mix of shots.
4). Character:
Who are your characters?
What are their stories?
How can your audience connect?
In film-making, sometimes your best characters are not the CEO or employees, but some local character you didn’t expect.
5). Keywords:
Identify 10+ keywords or phrases to describe your story.
Research what your film partners, (or similar writers) are using as keywords.
What do you mean by kewords?
I asked Rob Holmes what he meant by keywords, and how to find new keywords for your content.
Rob suggested inviting 5-6 friends who know you well, and brainstorm. Ask them to come up with keywords that fit your theme. A glass of wine may help the process.
A great story just like a great film, needs to be:
Powerful
Engage the audience
Educate (or entertain)
You need to take risks to make it unique
It needs to be perpetual (do not date it)
I found several GLP movies fascinating. True stories of people from around the world. If you click on the link above, you will see the video on the The Okapi Conservation Project (OCP.) An organization in the DRC working to protect one of the planet’s most unique species, the okapi.
Here is an African teaser from GLP
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
Our January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” series started with:
Jon Magidsohn
Gillian Jackson
Eleanor Vincent
Monday, January 27th, Shirley Showalter will share his “My Gutsy Story®.”
VOTING for your favorite January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” starts on January 30th and ends on February 12th. Winner will be announced on February 13th.
January 20, 2014
Letting Go; Allowing My Daughter to Die
The Greatest Gift
“My Gutsy Story®” by Eleanor Vincent
I stared out the window in the Neuroscience ICU waiting room. Below me, stick figures moved across achingly green lawns. They looked like a cardboard tableau of normal life. Mt. Diablo’s saw tooth outline cut through a ribbon of clouds. A grandfather of a mountain, its hulking presence loomed above the rolling hills and valleys of Contra Costa County, a collection of suburban towns east of San Francisco. My older daughter Maya’s accident had happened three days earlier on a hot April afternoon in the foothills of Mt. Diablo.
She had hiked to a meadow laced with oat grass and wildflowers. A ravine full of scrub oak and laurel trees tumbled down to a dry creek bed. One of her friends dared her to ride bareback on a horse they found there unfenced and unsecured. The animal reared and threw Maya to the ground with such force that she never regained consciousness.
For the last 72 hours, we had endured the hell of waiting at Maya’s bedside.
Now, I looked at my watch, steeling myself to face the double doors that led into the Intensive Care Unit, and another ten minutes with my comatose child. I lifted the house phone.
“This is Maya’s mom. Can I see her now?”
“Yes,” a voice answered. “I’ll buzz you in.”
I walked toward my daughter’s bed, past the curtains surrounding families bent over other silent forms. After three days of willing my daughter to recover, an impossible thought dawned – Maya might not make it. When I reached her bedside, I took her hand in mine.
“Sweetheart, it’s Mom. I’ve been telling you that you will get well. But maybe what I want isn’t what matters.”
A roar filled my brain. I shook my head, trying to silence my own resistance. I spoke to my nineteen-year-old daughter, saying out loud what I would never accept in my heart. “You decide, honey. I won’t hold you back.”
Maya
I looked down at the beautiful young woman she had become. Maya’s face, inanimate as ice, was rosy-cheeked, bride-like against the stark white sheets.
I leaned into her and whispered the biggest lie of my life, never doubting she could hear me. “I’ll be all right, sweetheart, if you need to go.”
I wanted to throw myself across her chest and give in to hours of suppressed weeping. But then I had a new thought: If I break down, it will be too hard for her to die. My task now is to let her go.
Maya’s chest rose and fell. The ventilator hissed, the monitors beeped, a fiber optic cable snaked into her skull to measure the pressure inside her brain. Over the last three days I had become expert at reading the peaks and valleys on the monitors.
I whispered, “It’s between you and God, now, Maya.”
* * * * *
The next afternoon, Maya’s brain surgeon, Dr. Carr, asked to speak with us about the results of the cerebral blood flow study he had ordered. One of the nurses gathered us into a windowless conference room where a hospital social worker sat at the opposite end of the conference table, looking grave and sympathetic.
Dr. Carr came in, his white coat flapping, and sat down at the head of the table. I sat on his left side, staring at him.
“The test we did shows how much blood is flowing to the brain.” He spoke to the wall, not looking at us. “There is none, absolutely none, zero blood flow. I’ve declared her brain dead.”
I could not move, or even blink. A collective gasp filled the cramped room. Maya’s boyfriend, Dale, groaned. My ex-husband, Dan, put his head in his hands.
“I’ve called in a second surgeon to confirm the diagnosis of death by neurological criteria,” Dr. Carr said. He spoke with exaggerated calm, seemingly oblivious to the emotions swirling around him.
My eleven-year-old daughter Meghan leaned against her father and wept. Dale’s mother began screaming “NO!” over and over.
Hot tears of disbelief trickled down my cheeks. Of all the people in the room, I was the only one who did not move, or cry out. I felt granite-hard, yet sensitive as a tuning fork, paralyzed with grief.
For the first time since he had entered the room, Dr. Carr met my gaze. His eyes were like icy blue marbles. “Would you consider organ donation?”
The question hung in the air for a long moment. I pictured families in other hospital conference rooms waiting for bad news.
“Yes,” I heard myself say.
Dr. Carr nodded. “At least it won’t be a total waste,” he said. I recoiled.
He waved his hand in the direction of the ICU and all the high-tech gadgetry keeping Maya’s heart beating, her lungs pumping, her blood circulating. I could see he meant that all the effort and resources spent on a hopeless case would not be in vain. But my “yes” meant that the love and energy I had poured into my daughter, her very life, must continue. I could no more accept that Maya was truly dead than I could fly to the moon or allow any vital part of her that could save another human being to go to her grave.
I trembled uncontrollably. I was about to give my daughter away in pieces. If I had fought harder, could I have held her here? I gave Maya ultimate freedom and she took it.
* * * * *
Maya’s organs were donated to critically ill patients. My decision saved four lives. Her bone and tissue helped restore sight and mobility to dozens more. In the 21 years since that April day when I made the most difficult decision of my life, I have often wondered what gave me the strength to say yes. From someplace deep within came a sure knowing that donation was the right thing to do. It was the gutsiest moment of my life.
ELEANOR VINCENT is an award-winning writer whose memoir, Swimming with Maya: A Mother’s Story, was nominated for the Independent Publisher Book Award and was reissued by Dream of Things press early in 2013. She writes about love, loss, and grief recovery with a special focus on the challenges and joys of raising children and letting them go. She is a national spokesperson on grief recovery and organ donation, appearing on radio and television programs around the country.
Click on cover to go straight to Amazon
To connect with Eleanor please click on her sites:
Website
Twitter @Eleanor_vincent
***
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
Our January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” series started with:
Jon Magidsohn
Gillian Jackson
Monday, January 27th, Shirley Showalter will share his “My Gutsy Story®.”
VOTING for your favorite January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” starts on January 30th and ends on February 12th. Winner will be announced on February 13th.
January 16, 2014
Winner of the December 2013 “My Gutsy Story®” is Laurie Buchanan
We had 5 outstanding “My Gutsy Story®” authors in December, and first I’d like to congratulate all of them. Their stories will be included in our 2nd “My Gutsy Story®” Anthology, published in the Fall of 2014.
Laurie Buchanan
CONGRATULATIONS to Laurie Buchanan who won the most votes for her “My Gutsy Story®”. Her story was titled, “I thought I was stupid but now I have a PhD.”
Laurie Buchanan
2nd Place goes to Felicia Johnson who wrote, “How Writing Saved My Life.”
Felicia Johnson
Felicia Johnson shares how writing became her therapy.
Felicia Johnson
3rd Place goes to Jessica O’Gorek.
The title , “Why I love Crack Cocaine” shocked many readers, but Jessica has been drug-free for over ten years and was written to help and inspire others. She wrote her “My Gutsy Story®” with such honesty.
Jessica O’Gorek
In 4th Place, according to the vote count only, we have Marian Beaman’s story. She writes about her “gutsy” stay in the Ukraine, and “Rising Above the Pettiness, to Focus on the Positive.”
Marian Beaman
Now Ian Mathie’s “My Gutsy Story®” was full of adventure. How often does anyone get to experience riding, and waiting for their camel to return in the desert? “Waiting for My Camel to Come Back.”
Ian Mathie
Thank you to all five authors. Your stories are all WINNERS.
***
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
Our January 2014 stories have started with Jon Magidsohn, and Gillian Jackson sharing their “My Gutsy Story®.” Next Monday, January 20th, Eleanor Vincent will share his “My Gutsy Story®.”
January 13, 2014
Why did I Crack After Over Forty Years of Silence?
Moving On
“My Gutsy Story®” by Gillian Jackson
The complexities of keeping secrets can be a heavy weight to carry around; a burden which grows heavier with passing time and, like telling lies, compounds as the secret ages. When I reached the grand old age of fifty, my life began to crumble and my secret came out. As a little girl, I was sexually abused by an ‘uncle’ over a period of three or four years, abuse which began when I was about four years old.
I cannot claim that my life had been completely ruined by this experience. The inbred ‘survivor instinct’ has given me a degree of strength and I entered into a happy marriage and gave birth to two wonderful children. I also enjoyed a successful career as the owner and manager of a Day Nursery in my home town in North East England. So why did I crack after over forty years of silence? With hindsight I can identify a number of incidents which were perhaps triggers, bringing old and painful memories to the fore. Working in childcare, it was inevitable that at some point I would encounter instances of abuse. Generally I could be objective and professional in such cases but in the later years of my work at the nursery we cared for a little girl who presented physical signs of sexual abuse. It was an upsetting case and I floundered somewhat in my responsibilities, passing the case on to my deputy which turned out to be the correct thing to do. But the incident forced me to acknowledge that I had buried trauma from my own childhood which I had been hiding from myself as well as the rest of the world. I sank into depression and my usual ‘pull yourself together’ attitude failed me. This coincided with a medical problem which forced me to retire from my work in the nursery, a career choice which had probably been shaped by my early life experiences. I can also now acknowledge that I had been an over protective mother. Not to the point of being suffocating, but I trusted no-one to care for my own children as well as I could. Fortunately they have grown into happy, well-adjusted adults of whom I am extremely proud.
Another significant contribution to eventual breakdown was a new role in life as a grandmother. This seems a contradiction, as becoming a grandparent is one of life’s best experiences. I found it every bit as emotional as becoming a mother had been twenty eight years previously. All my maternal feelings were again brought to the fore, coupled with that overwhelming protective instinct that almost knocks you off your feet. It was a wonderful time in many respects and I had the privilege of attending my first grandchild’s birth, amazing. But I felt lost, scared and fearful for the future.
I am fortunate in having an extremely caring husband who played an enormous part in helping me overcome my negative childhood experiences. He is the one in whom I first confided and who persuaded me to seek help from my GP, the start of confronting my past and moving on with my future. And so began the path of recovery
It was hard to be honest with my doctor but I soon learned that this was the only way he could help me and eventually I was referred to a counsellor who suggested I would benefit from group sessions. Shock! Horror! It had taken me forty something years to get to this point, did she know what she was asking? The answer to this yes and I began a journey which was to change my life, a journey which has been an education. I know and understand myself much better now than I have ever done. I don’t like everything I’ve found out about myself, but I have a greater understanding about why I’m the way I am, and why I do what I do. In short, I’m more at ease with myself than I have ever been.
Enough of the negatives. How can I be so positive and fulfilled today? Well, as part of the healing therapy I decided to try writing, a pleasure which I had never had time to pursue. I scribbled furiously, recording all those painful memories and my shifting emotions and then took great pleasure in tearing the pages into tiny pieces, a truly cathartic process. I also became fascinated with the theory of counselling and two years later returned to college to train as a counsellor. Simultaneously I embarked upon a writing course, two new passions in which to channel my energy.
It’s now eight years since I took that difficult step to disclose my past abuse and I am a changed person (for the better I hope!) I use the skills learned in counselling by doing voluntary work for an organization which visits and supports victims of crime and the writing bug has consumed me! I combined my new passions by writing novels about a therapeutic counsellor, Maggie Sayer. The books particularly appeal to women who seem to connect with the emotional content and I’ve been thrilled by some of the positive reviews they’ve picked up. The first book is simply titled, ‘The Counsellor’ and introduces Maggie and three of her clients. It follows their stories which generally have positive outcomes, (I’m a sucker for a happy ending!) But one novel wasn’t enough and there are now two more in the series, ‘Maggie’s World’ and ‘Pretence’ and I’m currently working on number four. The novels sell mainly as ebooks, with paperback copies also available. I now have a new career as a writer and cannot imagine life without my writing projects and am rarely without my laptop or a note book and pen!
Working through past issues was not an easy task and although I had some excellent support it was at times a steep path to climb but I have no regrets and I thank God for giving me such a new and fulfilling life.
GILLIAN JACKSON is a passionate writer who lives in North East England with her husband Derek. When prised away from her lap-top and writing projects, she works voluntarily for a charity supporting victims of crime, as well as spending time with her four adult children and eight grandchildren. An interest in psychology and counselling inspire her novels, with all three offering readers the unique opportunity of being a ‘fly on the wall’ in counselling sessions. Gillian tackles gritty contemporary issues but in a sensitive, positive and non offensive manner. She is a great believer in happy endings!
Please visit Gillian’s website: www.gillianjackson.co.uk.
Follow her on Twitter: @GillianJackson7
and on Facebook
Click on cover to go straight to Amazon
The second two books in the ‘Maggie Sayer Trilogy’ are ‘Maggie’s World’ & ‘Pretence’
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Click on cover to go to Amazon
SONIA MARSH SAYS: It’s so nice to hear a positive ending, and that your husband was so supportive and helpful during this difficult time. I am also amazed at how your writing has blossomed and helped you through everything.
***
Please VOTE for your favorite one of 5 “My Gutsy Story®” submissions. You have from now until January 15th to vote on the sidebar, (only one vote per person) and the winner will be announced on January 16th, and will select a prize from our generous sponsors.
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
***
Next Monday, January 20th, we have Eleanor Vincent’s “My Gutsy Story®.” Please stop by, you’ll love it.
January 9, 2014
3 New Book Marketing Tips to Try
A fresh start to a new year generally means change.
If you’re like me, you’ll want to:
Work more efficiently
Save time
Try a new way to connect with your readers
Here are 3 new tips for you to try.
The book insert card
Connect with readers on Amazon Forums
Ask an Amazon top reviewer for feedback
Let me explain them in order.
1). The book insert card.
I thought about a way to remind those who purchase my book at an event, to review it, to encourage others to read it, and to invite me to participate in a Skype book club “Meet the Author” event. Below is my 5×8 card I insert into each book. It fits perfectly, since my book is 6×9. I’m hoping this will encourage more reviews. I designed one specifically to inform readers about the other books I have for sale. Take look at the card below.
2). Connect with readers on Amazon Forums
I thought it would be a great idea to thank my reviewers for reading my memoir and to offer them a free Kindle version of the 2nd book:
My Gutsy Story® Anthology: True Stories of Love, Courage and Adventure From Around the World
I know this could be risky (financially) as I would be “gifting” it to them at my own expense, however, I believe the more you give, the more you get back.
Anyway, before attempting to post my Dear Reader letter on my Amazon Author Central page, I thought it best to send a copy to Amazon customer service first and see what they said. After all, you don’t want to get in trouble with Amazon.
Here is the response I got from Amazon customer service:
“I understand you would like to thank reviewers for reading your first book, “Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island.”
“Currently, there is no such option or category on Author Page to post the content you mentioned. However, I found a way to take are of this for you.
– The Customer Discussion forum on the bottom of the Author Page allows you to share your questions, insights, and views about your books with other customers.
If you’d like to preview a Customer Discussion, go to the bottom of the Author Page and point your mouse at the arrow to the left of a discussion to preview the first couple posts in a discussion.
Anyone who visits Amazon.com can read a discussion, but you must have a purchase history and be in good standing in the Amazon community to contribute to a discussion or start a new one.
You’ll find the rules for posting and answers to some frequently asked questions here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/forum/content/db-guidelines.html/
—We also offer the Meet our Authors Community in the Amazon.com discussion boards. Here, you can browse the different active discussions and post information about your books in the discussions you feel your book will best fit.
http://www.amazon.com/forum/meet%20our%20authors
I’m sorry that I couldn’t offer much help in this regard through Author Central. However, I’ve passed your message to the Author Central development team for consideration.”
I checked the Meet our Authors Community in the Amazon.com discussion boards, and you can add your book to the appropriate genre list.
3). Ask an Amazon top reviewer for feedback
I was fortunate to get a review from one of the top 500 Amazon Reviewers, when Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island was published. (Read her review here.)
I thanked her for her review, and asked her for her feedback on who she thought my target audience was. She surprised me with her detailed response as she brought up a younger demographic of women than I had expected, (25-40) as well as the over 50, and retired group. She also suggested dropping my book off at libraries, which I’ve done, and to book club members. Ionia also mentioned those with physical disabilities, senior centers and the incarcerated.
Here is the review; I received 5 stars by Ionia Martin.
Have you tried new ways to market your books? Please share your comments, and if you find this post helpful, please share on social media.
THANK YOU.
***
Please VOTE for your favorite one of 5 “My Gutsy Story®” submissions. You have from now until January 15th to vote on the sidebar, (only one vote per person) and the winner will be announced on January 16th, and will select a prize from our generous sponsors.
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
January 6, 2014
Mourning the Loss of My Wife With My 10-Month Old Son
Three of Us
“My Gutsy Story®” by Jon Magidsohn
My ten-month-old son, Myles, and I had been on the road for two weeks by the time we crossed the border from Kansas to Colorado. After hours driving through blanched wheat fields, the landscape suddenly turned green; rambling stands of cottonwood trees sprouted from the moist woodlands, which drank from the streams fed by constant mountain run-off. Myles, rear-facing in his car seat, watched the great plains drifting away into his horizon while, about eighty miles in front of me, I could see the approaching Sangre de Cristo mountains fading into view, the red sandstone dotted with blue-green Piñon Pines as it arched its way down toward New Mexico. Having endured nearly a week of featureless views, I welcomed the sight of the mountains like they were a long-absent parent. My thoughts, which had been as arid as the prairies this mid-summer, were rejuvenated by Colorado’s verdant vista.
Sue had died less than four months earlier, ten months after her breast cancer diagnosis and nearly a year after we learned she was pregnant with our first child. Impending parenthood and countless visits to doctors of various specialities had inured me against recognizing the signs of normal. After she died, normal simply evaporated. What I did recognize, being a widower now miles from home, was that I didn’t just grieve for my wife; I also mourned the loss of the future we were supposed to have had together. My instinct as a single dad told me to kick-start the discovery of my new life by taking it on the road. Myles and I had left Toronto in late July with a car filled like a jar of jelly-beans and little in the way of a plan. We were moving forward.
Driving had taken on a new characteristic by the time we reached Colorado. It was no longer simply meditative and cathartic; it had become an inevitability, each leg of the journey fulfilling an insatiable urge to be satisfied. Being in the car with my son was as necessary as breathing. To drive was to be. The silver Rav4 had become a part of our mobile family; an extension of me and Myles that sheltered and guided us and in return deserved our love and respect.
We were a threesome again, like the trio Myles, Sue and I never had the chance to explore. We could have been the exemplar of families. Sue and I might have raised Myles to be the perfect combination of his parents; from me he’d be patient, musical, light-hearted; from his mother shrewd, dedicated and fiery. Even before Sue was diagnosed – before the medical incentives – we never wanted a second child. As a threesome we would be complete.
Maybe it was the endless stretch of grey road winding through America, because even though I’d told myself this excursion was all about forward momentum, it began to feel like I wasn’t going anywhere. The one-sided conversations with Myles in the back seat did little to distract me from the empty seat next to me. I’d spent so much time with myself recently, I was beginning to forget what it was like to have a partner.
Loneliness crept up on me like a fiend. I thought I was coping well; I thought I was doing everything right. The reverberating blows of death would eventually dissipate, I assumed, but I didn’t think I could endure the loneliness. I understood that so-called ‘successful’ people can be some of the loneliest; movie stars with trampling entourages at their disposal, the embarrassingly rich, princesses. But I considered myself a success simply because I’d chosen to marry Sue. I had neither fame nor wealth nor royal blood but I did have intimacy and companionship. When Sue died she took all the fruits of my success with her.
So this was where the strange contradiction started. Deep down at the bottom of that dark empty hole that Sue left sat jolly young Myles stretching his little arms out as wide as he could and saying to me in his own wordless way, ‘Here I am Daddy and I love you and I’ll hold your hand when you’re feeling lonely and I’ll listen to your secrets and I’ll let you cry on my shoulder and we can be a family.’ And if that hole wasn’t in the process of growing persistently larger he might just have been able to fill it up.
Myles had served as the ever present counterbalance to the weight of sadness since before he was born. The anticipation of his birth gave Sue and me something to look forward to during the months of cancer management. He’d saved us from the constant burden of fear and doubt.
After Sue died he kept fulfilling his duty as my protector. The grief was manageable because of Myles, whether we were at home or driving through the middle of Middle America. I had to look after him so that he’d still be able to look after me. I needed those moments when he’d wrap his arms around my neck with unquestionable affection; those moments talking to him when he’d smile like a faithful companion. And the moments when he’d look at me with his bright, trusting eyes and I’d know there was love in my life.
After Colorado we’d spend ten days driving through the desert before reaching the west coast. Each region had its own unique effect on my moods and the reflections that accompanied them. By the time we returned home to Toronto, almost two months after we left, we’d covered more than 10,000 miles through 23 states and 2 provinces, four time zones and back, gotten two oil changes and emptied one jumbo box of Cheerios one ‘O’ at a time. I still had a long way to travel before the worst was behind me, but I was confident that my son and I were headed in the right direction.
JON MAGIDSOHN: is originally from Toronto, Canada. He’s written about fatherhood for dadzclub.com, the Good Men Project, Today’s Parent and Mummy and Me magazines. He’s also been featured on Chicago Literati and the What’s Your Story?-Memoir Anthology (Lifetales) and currently publishes three blogs. He’s been an actor, singer, waiter, upholsterer, sales representative, handyman and writer. He moved to London, UK in 2005 where he received an MA in Creative Non-Fiction from City University. Jon, his wife, Deborah, and their son, Myles, are now in Bangalore, India, where Jon writes full time. www.jonmagidsohn.com
Please follow Jon on Twitter: @JonMagidsohn
SONIA MARSH SAYS: Jon, your story and your words bring out so many emotions from love, to loss, to love. What a powerful and beautifully written “My Gutsy Story®.”
***
Please VOTE for your favorite one of 5 “My Gutsy Story®” submissions. You have from now until January 15th to vote on the sidebar, (only one vote per person) and the winner will be announced on January 16th, and will select a prize from our generous sponsors.
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
***
Next Monday, January 13th, we have Gillian Jackson’s “My Gutsy Story®.” Please stop by, you’ll love it.
January 2, 2014
Vote For Your Favorite December 2013 “My Gutsy Story®”
Happy New Year everyone and get ready to VOTE for your favorite one of 5 “My Gutsy Story®” submissions. You have from now until January 15th to vote on the sidebar, (only one vote per person) and the winner will be announced on January 16th, and will select a prize from our generous sponsors. (We have 2 new sponsors Shannon Hernandez and Dorit Sasson added to the list.)
Our 1st “My Gutsy Story®” is by Marian Beaman, “Rising Above the Pettiness to Focus On the Positive.”
Marian Beam
Our 2nd “My Gutsy Story®” is by Felicia Johnson, “How Writing Saved My Life.”
Felicia Johnson
Our 3rd “My Gutsy Story®” is by Ian Mathie “Waiting for My Camel to Come Back.”
Ian Mathie
Our 4th “My Gutsy Story®” is by Jessica O’Gorek, “Why I Love Crack” (an inspiring story of her recovery.)
Jessica O’Gorek
Our 5th “My Gutsy Story®” is by Laurie Buchanan “I thought I was stupid; Now I have a PhD.”
Laurie Buchanan
***
I hope you enjoy their stories and vote for your favorite one on the sidebar. Please check out their books as well. There are links to them at the bottom of each story.
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
***
Our first fantastic January 2014 “My Gutsy Story®” starts with Joe Magidsohn on January 6th. Please stop by, you’ll love it.
January 1, 2014
What would you be doing if no one was stopping you?
What would you be doing if no one was stopping you?
Go tell the world.
I love this question as it allows us to open our minds and brainstorm about what we truly want in our future. The next step is to create opportunities and make things happen.
I believe 2014 is the year to create new opportunities for ourselves.
What does this mean?
To me this means asking for what you’d like to have happen, rather than wishing for it to happen.
In other words, it means being gutsy and not waiting for that perfect moment when you think you’ll be smarter, more experienced or more confident.
That moment is now
As Ann marie Houghtailing says in her book, How I Created a Dollar Out of Thin Air,
“You might as well be waiting for Santa or the muse to show up. I prefer to create instead of wait.”
Yes it does take guts to ask people for help, or for what you want, and as long as you’re asking from “a place of worthiness and decency,” and not arrogance, this is how you’ll create your opportunities.
“Those who create opportunities insist that obstacles are opportunities disguised.” –Ann marie Houghtailing
Click on cover for Amazon link
Success depends on your attitude. If you feel that you’re not capable of doing something, then you’re probably right. Do you think an athlete motivates herself to win a race by stating, “There’s no way I can run fast enough to win this race?”
This does not mean you will not face challenges, setbacks and problems like everyone else. Your attitude will make you see things in a different way. Look at obstacles as part of life. Look at solving them and know that there is always a solution. Sometimes you just need to ask.
Here are some examples of obstacles I’ve faced, and how I’ve overcome them.
I was unsure of my brand as “Gutsy Writer” and knew I wanted to expand it to “Gutsy Living.” I asked my social media/blogger friend, Marcie Taylor, to have lunch with me. She helped me with the concept of starting the “My Gutsy Story®” series on my blog.
I needed help when I started my own indie publishing company, so instead of hiring someone, I decided to start my own FaceBook group, “Gutsy Indie Publishers.” The goal was to help one another with our indie publishing questions, and today we have 436 members who are eager to ask and answer questions.
I decided it would be cool to organize my own book signing at Costco, I asked to speak to the manager and he “yes,” and helped me get an event set up.
After several years of listening to a radio show called Writers on Writing, I asked the host, Barbara De Marco Barrett, to have a show with indie authors. She agreed to invite 3 indie authors, including me, on January 2nd, 2013.
Sometimes we reach a point when we have so many ideas swirling around that we feel uncertain as to which direction to proceed. We question which is the right choice; we are advised to make specific goals plan for the New Year, we fear taking the wrong path, so we procrastinate. I know this is where I am right now.
I’m asking for your help please.
What should I focus on that would interest you?
Where would you like to see Gutsy Living going in 2014?
THANK YOU TO ALL MY READERS AND DON’T LET ANYONE STOP YOU IN 2014.
***
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story®” you’d like to share?
Click on cover to go to Amazon
Would you like to submit your “My Gutsy Story®” and get published in our 2nd anthology?
Please see guidelines below and contact Sonia Marsh at: sonia@soniamarsh.com for details.
You can find all the information, and our new sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story®” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here
VOTING for your favorite December 2013 stories starts on January 2nd, 2014, and ends on January 15th. The WINNER is announced on January 16th. Please check out all our December stories with Marian Beaman and Fee Johnson, Ian Mathie, Jessica O’Gorek and Laurie Buchanan, sharing their “My Gutsy Story®.”
