Months, not years. Those are the words you never want to hear associated with your best friend’s life, your precious pet.
The moment you realize the time you have left together may soon come to an end, your heart shatters. The news feels shocking, jarring, tragic, almost surreal. And decisions must be made—painful, scary choices about your pet’s health.
You may be desperate to do everything in your power to beat the odds. Confronting reality with a hopeful heart while also wanting to know what to expect, you scour the internet, obsess over your options, and lay awake at night second guessing, believing there has to be a better way.
Alli and her husband faced many of these struggles and fears when their dog Kingsley was diagnosed with cancer. Understanding what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and alone as you search for answers to aid your pet, she aims to shed light on the human element of what it means to walk this path with your best friend—including the difficult decisions, the small wins along the way, and the unconditional love that makes it all worth it.
Read Caring for Kingsley, Believing in a Better Way When Canine Cancer Comes Crashing Into Your World, to learn from Alli’s experience as you navigate critical decisions surrounding your pet’s care.
Alli is passionate about achieving the extraordinary. Having spent years developing her own resilience through overcoming obstacles, Alli aims to help others navigate challenging circumstances by openly sharing her personal experiences. Her vivid storytelling easily captures the hearts and minds of those seeking to be understood or simply looking for information, a result of working as a professional communicator for over a decade. Alli believes in the power of taking ownership to achieve all of your life’s aspirations, while enjoying the journey alongside family and friends. With her husband, Dustin, and their beloved pup, Boone, by her side, she’s excited to begin the next chapter in her life, including authorship and motherhood.
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/caring-for-kingsley-front-cover-choice-5-5-22.jpg1200800itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2022-06-16 00:01:252022-06-28 11:03:04Caring for Kingsley, Believing in a Better Way When Canine Cancer Comes Crashing Into Your World by Alli Eldridge
Megan Mackie is a Chicago writer. She started her writing career as an indie author and had such smashing success in her first year with her inaugural book The Finder of the Lucky Devil, that she made the transition to traditional publishing. She has become a personality at many cons, recognizable by her iconic leather hat and engaging smile. She has written five novels including: The Finder of the Lucky Devil, The Saint of Liars, The Devil’s Day, Death and the Crone, and Saint Code: The Lost through eSpec Books. Her short fiction collections includes Horns and Haloes and Changing Breeds, an anthology of short stories from the Werewolf RPG game.
She is also a contributing writer in the role-playing game Legendlore and Legendlore: Legacies by Onyx Path Publishing. Outside of writing, she likes to play games: board games, RPGs, and video games. She has a regular Pathfinder group who is working their way through Rapanthuk. She lives in Chicago with her husband and children, dog, three cats, and her mother in the apartment upstairs.
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Con-Quest-eCover.jpg1200800itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2021-12-30 00:03:532022-04-11 19:41:37ConQuest: The Art of Selling at Cons by Megan Mackie
This guide is full of proverbial spells, daily conjurings, and mystical insights designed to help those in search of a little more magic in their day to day life, no complicated spells, expensive accessories, or experience required.
That’s the thing about everyday magic: it’s always within reach, within the self, and in the world. Only not in the way readers might normally think. It’s a less mumbling ‘double double toil and trouble’ over a cauldron and a more cooking a delicious soup in a beloved cast iron pot. It’s simple. It’s mundane. It’s magic!
This book offers grounded mystical practices, including how to turn routines into healing rituals, to teach readers how to connect to themselves, the Universe, and the magic of everyday life. Journey into the realm of pleasure magic, radical self-care, synchronicity, and the profound joy of living a life beyond the expected with this alternative guide to daily mystic practices.
Dr. Maria DeBlassie is a native New Mexican mestiza and award-winning writer and educator living in the Land of Enchantment. She writes about everyday magic, ordinary gothic, and all things witchy. When she is not practicing brujeria, she’s teaching classes about bodice rippers, modern mystics, and things that go bump in the night. 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.
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/pracpag-magical.jpeg1157750itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2021-11-02 00:01:532022-05-07 13:27:27Practically Pagan – An Alternative Guide to Magical Living by Maria DeBlassie
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.
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.
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Lighting-the-Path-Cover-copy-1.jpg1200777itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2021-06-01 00:02:582021-11-06 05:10:48Lighting the Path: Leaning into a Hopeful Future as a Special Needs Parent by Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon
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.
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.
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/daisly-book-cover.jpg649435itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2020-12-20 00:03:192021-10-30 05:37:04I Once Was Lost but Now I’m Found: Daisy and the Olympic Animal Sanctuary Rescue by Laura Koerber
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.
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 LastPlaylist: 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.
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/The-Last-2.jpg1200752itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2020-11-21 00:03:352020-12-26 15:12:07The Last Playlist: A Sonic Epitaph by P.A. Kane
“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.”
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.”
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/dog-thief.jpg652434itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2020-11-13 00:01:162020-12-17 08:37:42The Dog Thief and Other Stories by Jill Kearney
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.
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!
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/cover.jpg1200750itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2020-10-03 09:07:342021-02-17 11:25:19CAFE CONFIDENTIAL: An unfiltered and intimate memoir by Lynda Filler
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.
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.
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/PinnacleBkCover.png1102735itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2020-09-11 12:05:392020-10-12 08:48:30Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings by Maria DeBlassie
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.
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
https://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/John-the-Baptist-Cover-Art.jpg1200764itsybitsybookbitshttps://itsybitsybookbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/IBBB_2020_logo_sq.pngitsybitsybookbits2020-09-09 07:12:442021-04-23 10:30:59John the Baptist: As His Soul Remembers by Stuart Ledwith
We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.
Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.
Essential Website Cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refuseing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.
We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.
Google Analytics Cookies
These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us understand how our website is being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our website and application for you in order to enhance your experience.
If you do not want that we track your visit to our site you can disable tracking in your browser here:
Other external services
We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.
Google Webfont Settings:
Google Map Settings:
Google reCaptcha Settings:
Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:
Other cookies
The following cookies are also needed - You can choose if you want to allow them:
Privacy Policy
You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.