Lighting the Path: Leaning into a Hopeful Future as a Special Needs Parent by Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon

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Lighting the Path: Leaning into a Hopeful Future as a Special Needs Parent by Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon

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Genre – Self help, Parenting, Special Needs

Page Count – 200 pages

Cover Designer – Miblart

GOODREADS – http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/132182750-marcia-nathai-balkissoon

Whether your child was born with special needs or developed them following illness or injury, you walk a hard road as a special needs parent.

 

With a child born with heart challenges and then severely brain injured at eight months old, Dr. Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon weaves her powerful story and experiences with observations and strategies that support a hopeful future in Lighting the Path.

 

Leaving no stone unturned, Marcia reduces the anxiety felt by many special needs parents by helping them through the most commonly faced circumstances—processing their new reality, skill development, career balance, financial planning, medical practitioners, appointments, therapies, caregivers, health, maintaining care for all family members, self-care, the rapid firing of emotions from isolation to judgement, and more—all with the goal to provide hope and support so you don’t have to walk this path alone.

If you’re facing many unknowns in your special needs journey, Lighting the Path combines compassion with a wealth of ideas and actions to help you build a better future for yourself and your entire family.

~ AMAZON ~

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Dr. Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon is a storyteller and educator who believes that we each have a powerful purpose that should guide our lives. As one of her children is brain-injured and bedridden, Marcia and her family have traversed significant challenges. She is passionate about helping special needs families to feel more connected, gain visibility, access and support, and tap into their resilience.

Beyond the special needs context, Marcia helps people connect deeply with their purpose so they can experience more joy and fulfilment. Through intuitive and logical interventions, her work seeks to shift mindsets, build habits, foster creativity and curiosity, and enable people to live their best lives each day, trusting they are enough.

Currently a tenured lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Marcia is most drawn to the fields of health, safety and wellness, business and personal strategy, and teaching and learning. She is a certified Parent Skills Master Trainer and enjoys working with her husband to adapt interventions for their daughter and helping other parents to do the same for their children.

Author Interview With Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon

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I Once Was Lost but Now I’m Found: Daisy and the Olympic Animal Sanctuary Rescue by Laura Koerber

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I Once Was Lost but Now I’m Found: Daisy and the Olympic Animal Sanctuary Rescue by Laura Koerber
Genre – nonfiction, animals, animal rescue
Page Count – 206 pages
Cover Designer – Tamira Thayne
Packed inside a warehouse, living in filthy conditions, were once over 120 dogs. Some of the dogs were kept in crates piled high on shelves, arranged in rows along the walls, and shoved into corners behind heaps of garbage and urine-saturated straw. Some of the dogs were confined to wire-sided or glassed-in kennels. One was kept in an old horse trailer. Dead ones were stored in a cooler.
In one of the crates was a black dog named Daisy. This is her story.
It is also the story of the rescue of one hundred and twenty-four dogs—and one snake—from the Olympic Animal Sanctuary, the only large-scale dog rescue in the U.S. to be carried out with no support from local government. The OAS rescue was an epic narrative that extended over several years and featured small town politics, protests, assault, lawsuits, arrests, and a midnight escape, all played out to a nationwide audience.

~ AMAZON ~ BARNES AND NOBLE ~

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I live on a island in the Puget Sound with my husband and my dogs. I am a retired teacher, presently doing in -home care for disabled people while volunteering at a dog rescue

My degree is in art, and I am a painter, graphic artist, and ceramic sculptor. The writing started about five years ago, a surprise to me and everyone who knows me, since I had never written anything before.

The review for my first book in Kirkus Review: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re…

I think I learned to write by reading. I am a voracious omnivore of books.

Author Interview With Laura Koerber

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The Last Playlist: A Sonic Epitaph by P.A. Kane

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The Last Playlist: A Sonic Epitaph by P.A. Kane
Page Count – 212 pages
Genre – Memoir/Essay/Music
Cover Designer- Donna Kane
When my mom passed, I found I didn’t know her beyond a typical child/parent relationship. I didn’t want that for my own children and since we always bonded over music, I thought to write some stories about my life linked to songs I found meaningful. In addition to telling stories about my life, I also relate some of the formative experiences that shaped me, as well as providing lighthearted instructions for my funeral party, at which there is to be no white wine/white claw and the music is the eighteen songs profiled in The Last Playlist.

~ AMAZON ~

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Growing up in a three bed/one bath house with nine siblings in Buffalo, New York it was a just the facts, assembly-line type of childhood. However, one day during my tumultuous teen years in the late seventies that all changed when my exhausted mom uncharacteristically asked several probing questions about how I was doing, what I wanted of life and how I was going to get there . . . totally confounding me. She was supposed to dish out commands and make declarative statements—take out the trash, don’t come home unless you’re bleeding, every time you masturbate it’s a hundred-years in purgatory. She wasn’t supposed ask articulate, inward looking questions. Self-examination and contemplation, was light years beyond my transactional existence.

Eventually, though, due to a certain amount of aimlessness and failure I did come to consider my mom’s questions and many more which led me to writing. Presently, I am the author of two novels Written In The Stars: The Book Of Molly (2016) and Leaving Jackson Wolf (2018) and now a book of essays, The Last Playlist: A Sonic Epitaph.

Presently I live in West Seneca, New York with my wife and my son, who is taking his good ole time finishing his bachelor’s degree. I have a State University of New York background in English and I love trade paperbacks, quiet black mornings and The Ramones.

Author Interview With P.A. Kane

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The Dog Thief and Other Stories by Jill Kearney

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The Dog Thief and Other Stories by Jill Kearney

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Genre – Realistic fiction short stories animals

Page Count – 210 pages

Cover Designer – Tamira Thayne

GOODREADS – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32465702-the-dog-thief-and-other-stories

“Decrepit humans rescue desperate canines, cats and the occasional rat in this collection of shaggy but piercing short stories.”

Listed by Kirkus Review as one of the best books of 2015, this collection of short stories and a novella explores the complexity of relationships between people and animals in an impoverished rural community where the connections people have with animals are sometimes their only connection to life.

According to Kirkus Review:

“Kearney’s prose is elegant and unfussy, with threads of humor and lyricism. She has an excellent eye for settings and ear for dialogue, and she treats her characters, and their relationships with their pets, with a cleareyed, unsentimental sensitivity and psychological depth. Through their struggles, she shows readers a search for meaning through the humblest acts of caretaking and companionship.

A superb collection of stories about the most elemental of bonds.”

~ AMAZON ~

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 Laura Koerber is an artist who lives with her husband and two dogs on an island in Puget Sound. She is retired from teaching and currently works part time as a care provider. She writes stories drawn from her experiences as an in-home care provider and a dog rescuer in the impoverished rural southwestern corner of Washington state. “I began writing almost as a compulsion,” she said. “I met people and animals and got into situations that just demanded to be described in story form.” Most of her stories concern the lives of people like her clients who live on the margins of society. “I get stories by standing in line at the Food Bank,” she said. Other stories come from dog rescue experiences. “I’m interested in the lives of people who feel like they don’t matter to anyone.”

Author Interview With Laura Koerber

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CAFE CONFIDENTIAL: An unfiltered and intimate memoir by Lynda Filler

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CAFE CONFIDENTIAL: An unfiltered and intimate memoir by Lynda Filler Author
Genre – Memoir, Self-help, Adventure (travel)
Page Count – 191 pages
In 2018 three things happened that changed my life. First, I met a book critic from New Delhi on Goodreads, and we became very good friends. That same summer I spent a very long night on a flight to Paris and chatted the entire way with a young Muslim man who was on his way to Amman, Jordan for a wedding. And third, both things opened my mind to a world I’d never experienced so I made a decision to liquidate my life in Mexico and travel. I bought a series of one-way airline tickets with no return destination. Café Confidential is the story of my adventures and why I’m living in Istanbul today.

~ AMAZON ~

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Lynda is a Canadian born baby boomer brought up in a military household. In early 2000’s she moved to Mexico and worked on magnificent resorts. In early 2019, Lynda decided to sell her worldly possessions, pack one suitcase, take her computer in her backpack and see the world. After months traveling in Europe, the Middle East, India and Malaysia, she decided to put down temporary roots in Istanbul, Turkey! World politics aligned and Lynda found plots, mystery and romance in this stunning city once known as Constantinople. The Istanbul Conspiracy is book 7 in her Code Raven series. and she is currently working on Book 8.

Her work has received awards for both Contemporary Suspense and Fiction.

When she’s not writing, you can find her walking through the parks along the Bosphorus Strait, photographing street art and the Istanbul cats, reading, listening to music, and overindulging in chocolates from the Spice Bazaar. She is currently studying Turkish but is exceedingly grateful for Google Translate!

Join her on her life-journey to parts unknown through Lynda Filler Author on Facebook or Lynda Filler Author and Creates on Instagram!

Author Interview With Lynda Filler

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Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings by Maria DeBlassie

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Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings by Maria DeBlassie

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Genre – Inspirational Nonfiction

Page Count – 200 Pages

Cover Designer – Harris Channing

GOODREADS – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37690869-everyday-enchantments

Everyday Enchantments is a love letter to the magic of everyday life, the sweet moments and the profound that we often overlook in our hurry to get from one place to the next.

What if we had the power to unplug from our daily hustle and bustle and conjure a more profound way of living rooted in natural mysticism?

We do. All it takes is the whispered wish for more everyday enchantment breathed onto a dandelion head. This collection of essays reminds us to escape into the ordinary, find beauty in a simple cup of tea or rereading a beloved novel—and joyfully let our world turn upside down when synchronicity strikes in the form of wrong turns down forgotten lanes and unexpected midnight conversations with the moon.

This book is a study in what it means to live deliciously, joyfully, and magically. And it’s an invitation to conjure your own bliss—-because let’s face it: we could all use a little more magic in our lives.

~ AMAZON ~

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Maria DeBlassie, Ph.D. is a native New Mexican mestiza blogger, writer, and educator living in the Land of Enchantment. Her first book, Everyday Enchantments, published through Moon Books, will be released in October of 2018. Her blogging life started as a year-long journey to write her back into happy, healthy, and whole through daily posts about life’s simple pleasures, everyday magic, and radical self-care. That year-long experiment turned into a lifestyle, a book, and her ongoing blog, Enchantment Learning & Living. She is forever looking for magic in her life and somehow always finding more than she thought was there. Find out more about Maria and conjuring everyday magic at www.mariadeblassie.com. And don’t forget to follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for regular inspiration on magical living.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH MARIA DEBLASSIE

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John the Baptist: As His Soul Remembers by Stuart Ledwith

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John the Baptist: As His Soul Remembers by Stuart Ledwith

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PAGE COUNT – 228 pages

Genre – Non-fiction, Inspirational

Cover Designer – Iconologist Paula Lichvar

GOODREADS – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54558951-john-the-baptist

Welcome to the life and times of John the Baptist, a Messiah, a prophet, a healer, a baptizer, a loner, a lover, a bringer of great news to the Jewish people and all others who listened. This is in no way a religious book. It is writen to clarify his life, his thought, his feelings and to set right a few wrongs.

Edouard, the philosopher, believes humans will always try to take over the things of souls and the things of God and when they do they misuse the word of God to fit their own needs for power and control. Edouard’s message was to listen to the word of God, love God as God loves you, live unconditional love, all are created equal.

In his lifetime there were no people in power willing to listen to him or his message. The mangods conspired to eliminate him. He died on the whim of a dancing girl who wanted his head on a platter.

~ AMAZON ~

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Dr. Stu has always enjoyed spending time and conversing with souls desiring to make themselves known to him. He finds it quite normal to converse with them as he would a human. When writing with them he writes what they say verbatum or as close as possible to the desired meaning, he describes pictures they present and the emotions displayed. In his last book he wrote for the soul of Sarah Tarbell, a distant cousin of his describing the harrowing tale of her abduction at age fourteen and her growth to adulthood in a very different world. In this volume he writes for the soul Edouard who enlivened the body of John the Baptist. These works are subtitled, “As His/Her Soul

Author Interview With Stuart Ledwith

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Build-A-Book Workshop (The Literary Handyman Book 2) by Danielle Ackley-McPhail

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Build-A-Book Workshop (The Literary Handyman Book 2) by Danielle Ackley-McPhail

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#indiepublishing #smallpress #bookdesign #BuildABookWorkshop #DIYBookDesign #selfpublishing #OnTour #ItsyBitsyBookBitsTours #BookSpotlightShowcase

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Genre – NonFiction

Page Count – 110 Pages

Cover Designer – Mike McPhail, McP Digital Graphics

GOODREADS – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53273501-build-a-book-workshop

Are you starting a new venture as an independent publisher?

Or are you already running a small press and you want to up your game?

Maybe you are an author planning to go it on your own for whatever reason inspires you.

If any of those apply to you, this book is a good starting point for doing the job. The Literary Handyman: Build-A-Book Workshop takes decades of experience in book design and layout and parses it into an easy-to-understand blueprint for constructing a book that will only stand out for the best reasons.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Please note, this is a guide to understanding the basic elements of professional book layout, not a step-by-step tutorial on how to use publishing or art programs or how to artistically design a book.

~ AMAZON ~

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Award-winning author, editor, and publisher Danielle Ackley-McPhail has worked both sides of the publishing industry for longer than she cares to admit. In 2014 she joined forces with husband Mike McPhail and friend Greg Schauer to form her own publishing house, eSpec Books (www.especbooks.com).

Her published works include six novels, Yesterday’s Dreams, Tomorrow’s Memories, Today’s Promise, The Halfling’s Court, The Redcaps’ Queen, and Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, written with Day Al-Mohamed. She is also the author of the solo collections Eternal Wanderings, A Legacy of Stars, Consigned to the Sea, Flash in the Can, Transcendence, Between Darkness and Light, and the non-fiction writers’ guides The Literary Handyman and LH: Build-A-Book Workshop. She is the senior editor of the Bad-Ass Faeries anthology series, Gaslight & Grimm, Side of Good/Side of Evil, After Punk, and Footprints in the Stars. Her short stories are included in numerous other anthologies and collections.

In addition to her literary acclaim, she crafts and sells original costume horns under the moniker The Hornie Lady Custom Costume Horns, and homemade flavor-infused candied ginger under the brand of Ginger KICK! at literary conventions, on commission, and wholesale.

Danielle lives in New Jersey with husband and fellow writer, Mike McPhail and one extremely spoiled cat.

To learn more about her work, visit www.sidhenadaire.com or www.especbooks.

Author Interview With Danielle Ackley-McPhail

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On With the Butter! Spread More Living onto Everyday Life by Heidi Herman

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On With the Butter! Spread More Living onto Everyday Life by Heidi Herman
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#HeidiHerman #Family #NONFiction #OnWithTheButter #OnTour #ItsyBitsyBookBitsTours #BookSpotlightShowcase #vitality #thisis500 #retired
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Genre – Non-Fiction, Retirement, Aging, Self-Help, Motivational
Page Count – 246 Pages
Cover Designer – Kelly A. Martin, KAM Design
Carry on, keep doing what you’re doing, forge ahead, and keep moving. Icelanders have a saying for it: Áfram með Smjörið – on with the butter!

If you’re looking for new ways to add zest to your life or have free time in retirement, this book offers a wide variety of activities and challenges, along with inspiring and heartwarming stories. Discover ways to explore, play, take, chances, try new things, make a difference, and have more fun in life. You’re the activities director, and On with the Butter! is your guidebook.

As we get older, it’s easy to become consumed with our health and taking care of ourselves. We may change our diet, take prescriptions to treat medical conditions, and focus more on physical fitness. But while we’re working so hard to increase our life span, what are we doing to appreciate and make the most of that time? Those are the questions On with the Butter invites us to entertain.

So keep moving, keep doing, and keep spreading more living onto everyday life. After all, everything’s better with butter.

~ AMAZON ~ PUBLISHER ~

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Heidi Herman was born and raised in Central Illinois, but her passion and a common theme in her writing is her Icelandic heritage. After a 30-year career in business, where she authored magazine articles, white papers, and technical assessment reports, Heidi turned to fiction writing full-time, inspired by her mother’s example. In the winter of 2012, her mother, Íeda Jónasdóttir Herman, published a childhood memoir, which featured some of Iceland’s folklore. Heidi was immersed in childhood memories of the Scandinavian legends, lore, and imaginative stories. The myth of Iceland’s troll-like Christmas characters – Jólasveinar – sparked the imagination of many readers and led to Heidi writing her first book, “The Legend of the Icelandic Yule Lads.”

It was followed by two more books on Icelandic folklore: “The Guardians of Iceland and Other Icelandic Folk Tales” and “The Icelandic Yule Lads Mayhem at the North Pole.” In 2017, she co-authored and Icelandic cookbook, “Homestyle Icelandic Cooking for American Kitchens” with her mother, Íeda Jónasdóttir Herman, which won a US category in The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards that year. Heidi published her debut novel, “Her Viking Heart”, in 2018 and it was named the 2018 Foreward INDIES Book of the Year Gold Winner – Romance Category.

Her newest work, “On with The Butter: Spread More Living onto Everyday Life” was inspired when Heidi worked to complete her mother’s final work, “Never Too Late.” Íeda Jónasdóttir Herman (1925-2019) was 94 years old and had completed a year of new experiences to prove a person is never too old to enjoy life. That message, along with her mother’s example, led Heidi to write this new motivational book with ideas and encouragement on how anyone can find those activities and experiences.

Heidi currently lives in South Dakota but snowbirds south in the winter to Arizona. In addition to writing, she loves Scandinavian festivals, cooking, photography, travel, and exploring the outdoors. She is a member of the Women Fiction Writers Association and Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.

Author Interview With Heidi Herman

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Finding Ruth: A Daughter’s Quest to Discover Her Mother’s Past by Cynthia Hamilton

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Finding Ruth: A Daughter’s Quest to Discover Her Mother’s Past by Cynthia Hamilton

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Genre – Biography, Memoir, Fictionalized biography

Page Count – 255 Pages

Cover Designer – Six Penny Graphics

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32055542-finding-ruth

As fiercely independent Ruth struggles to stay self-reliant at the age of 86, each day brings her closer to an event that will alter her life forever. While her author daughter shifts through Ruth’s possessions prior to her move into a skilled nursing facility, she discovers a previously unseen photo from 1949 and realizes how little she knows of her mother’s life.

As Alzheimer’s continues to warp Ruth’s once sharp mind, she can no longer shed any light on the past. Yearning to know who her mother was as a person in her own right, the author painstakingly reconstructs Ruth’s life from photos, letters, public records and firsthand memories.

What emerges is a portrait of a bright, beautiful woman who is propelled through decades of broken promises and heartache, bouncing from one ill-fated relationship to the next, but always staying strong, always surviving. Through a timeline going back sixty years, the author gleans a much better understanding of the woman she had known only as Mom.

~ AMAZON ~

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Though I was always an ardent reader, I was convinced I couldn’t string sentences together if my life depended on it. Fortunately for me, when I was looking for something creative I could do from bed—if my mystery illness progressed to that point—I decided to try my hand at it. No pressure, no expectations. I didn’t tell anyone what I was up to. I just wanted to see if I could string sentences together and tell an interesting story.

 

I remembered a quote by Hemingway, “Write about what you know.” With this mandate, I chose the time spent living with my husband in the French Quarter of New Orleans as the backdrop for my story. I typed out my first two paragraphs on my forty-third birthday. I finished that book on my next birthday, and started my second the same day. I now consider those my “practice books”.

 

As my still-nameless illness progressed, I continued running the family business and continued to write. Nine years after my symptoms began, I finally received a correct diagnosis: Lyme disease, and more specifically, late-stage Lyme, because it had been allowed to progress untreated for so long.

 

Though the pain was almost unendurable, I clung to my writing like a life preserver. It allowed me to crawl up inside my head, out of my body, giving me brief respites from the vast array of pains.

 

Though I would never wish this disease on anyone, I can honestly say I am grateful for the path my life took, for it gave me the gift of writing. I now have nine published books, all of which have special significance for me. I write general fiction, mysteries and some nonfiction.

 

Once Upon a Lyme: The Tale of Two Journeys, is the detailed account of the path my mystery illness led me down as I sought help from over two-dozen doctors, and the gift of writing that was the unexpected upside of being so hopeless ill.

 

Finding Ruth was inspired by a previously unseen photograph of my mother taken when she was nineteen. I found it as I was going through her things prior to her move into a skilled nursing hospital. That gorgeous photograph of her looking so happy and full of promise made me realize how little I knew about her life before I came along. Because Alzheimer’s has taken away all her memories, I painstakingly reconstructed her life from public records, thousands of photographs, and what my brother, sister and I could remember. The message in the tribute to my mom is Ask while you have the chance.

 

As of this writing, I have just completed the fourth book in the Madeline Dawkins mystery series. I’m still in love with writing and I still squeal with joy to think that I’ve written eleven books and self-published nine of them. If there is a message in this, it’s Never discount what you are capable of achieving.

Author Interview With Cynthia Hamilton

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