Today our friend Nicole, from Tribute Books is stopping by to introduce us to a very distinguished author and gentleman.  So I ask you in helping give today’s visitors a warm welcome.    Greetings Mr. Haskell G. Edwards!!

HASKELL G. EDWARDS, D. Min.

Haskell G. Edwards, D. Min. has vast professional experience for more than forty years as pastor, administrator, family therapist, and director of a family therapy center. His extensive experience gained from working with immigrant families in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic setting, as well as his own personal journey and genuinely encouraging approach, positions him not only to help immigrant families adapt to new surroundings, but grow stronger together in their journey.

He has successfully held immigrant seminars, workshops, and lectures throughout North America. Now a retired pastor, he continues to help immigrant families of a wide cultural heritage transition into their new homeland.
You can connect with Mr. Edwards at the blog tour website here.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Adaptation is a must. But how does one go about doing this? It takes great planning, finances, and courage to leave one’s homeland; but then finding support and comfort or anything of familiarity in a new land presents a whole new set of challenges. The stress is overwhelming. How do you gain the happiness and success you dreamed of attaining in the new land?

Immigration and Adaptation is here to help you navigate through these challenges. With the information herein, immigrants coming to North America will be prepared to identify and resolve social, family, and personal challenges with confidence. Mr. Edwards’ vast professional experience with diverse immigrant families, as well as his own personal journey and genuinely encouraging approach, not only help immigrant families adapt to new surroundings, but grow stronger together in their journey.

This book includes:
– A family wellness test
– Step-by-step guidelines
– Real-life examples
– Inspirational stories
– Family, parenting, and spousal exercises
– Illustrations
– Single-parenting advice

Immigration and Adaptation also includes tips on: building self-confidence, resolving conflicts, tuning communication skills, networking and building social supports, budgeting, parenting, enhancing spousal relationships, helping teenagers adjust, communicating effectively, and more.

Book Details:
Paperback
Publisher: Langdon Street Press
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 9781936782239
Pages: 272
Release: September 15, 2011
Purchase Links:   Amazon    B&N      Books-A-Million     IndieBound

THANKS TO AUTHOR, HASKELL G. EDWARDS, D.MIN,
I HAVE ONE (1) PB COPY OF HIS BOOK TO GIVE
AWAY. U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE.

DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.
ADDENDUM
I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or
Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affliate.
I am providing link(s) solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

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YOUR FAMILY TREE, WHO WAS AN IMMIGRANT

TO  THE U.S. AND FROM WHERE?*

*U.S.  RESIDENTS ONLY*
*NO P.O. BOXES*

**HONOR SYSTEM**
ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
PLEASE NOTIFY ME IF YOU HAVE
WON THIS BOOK FROM ANOTHER
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This is the first time in my life that we haven’t had a dog as part of our family.  And if you do have pets, you know, that they do become a family member.  Plus having been in the medical field, I have seen the amazing effect dogs have with patients.  So when Nicole from Tribute Books contacted me, it was an instant yes for me to host the author of this book.  So please help me welcome Barbara Lampert and Charlie to our group.

BARBARA LAMPERT and CHARLIE

Barbara Lampert is a Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in relationships. She’s been in private practice in Brentwood, California for over twenty years. She considers her work a calling and loves what she does. She has a doctorate in medical sociology and two master’s degrees – one in psychology and one in sociology.

Barbara has adored dogs her whole life. They’re her passion! She considers them the magic on the planet. Barbara has had dogs most of her life and hopes to have at least one by her side always. She notes that for a lot of people, their dogs are their best friends. She loves helping people know that’s ok – that a soul-satisfying relationship may be found with any being and needs to be treasured.

Besides her love of dogs, Barbara is an avid gardener and finds herself gardening in much of her spare time. She sees her garden as a work of art. She loves being in nature – the miracle of growth, the ever-changing landscape, its beauty.

Today Barbara lives happily in Malibu, California with her husband David (married twenty-eight years!) and their six-year-old Golden Retriever, Harry.
The blog tour site is:
Barbara hopes that Charlie: A Love Story will be a tribute not only to a magnificent dog but to all dogs everywhere.
The blog tour site is:   http://charlie-a-love-story.blogspot.com/

GUEST POST

CMash:  I have seen where dogs are brought to nursing homes. So a post either about and/or the premise of “How, why, and what animals can provide and what the effects are when used in that type of setting.”

Thank you so much for having me on your site and giving me an opportunity to discuss bringing dogs into nursing homes and the benefit of dogs in that setting. Nursing homes were the first to make use of therapy dogs. To the best of my knowledge, that practice began about thirty years ago.

Have you ever visited a nursing home? For the most part, they are not happy places, so anything that can be done to bring joy and love into them and to the people who inhabit them is wonderful. To bring dogs into this setting is extraordinarily intelligent. But it has to be the right kind of dog – not every dog will be able to handle this type of setting.

Commonly known as therapy dogs, dogs who visit nursing homes must first have passed the Canine Good Citizen test, which means that they have to be well-mannered and comfortable in a variety of situations and with a variety of people.

The most essential attribute of a therapy dog is a good temperament – being friendly, patient, confident, gentle, and at ease in all situations. When a dog lacking a good temperament is put under stress, poor behavior will surface. Most people believe that a therapy dog is born and not made, though it is not impossible to teach some better behaviors. But I tend to agree with the “born and not made” theory. I am a psychotherapist, licensed twenty-two years, and have been curious about people all my life. As near as I can tell, temperament doesn’t change. Behaviors can, but temperament no.

Having had dogs most of my life, I can think of only two of them who would have made good therapy dogs. Their temperaments were perfect for the role. Both were Golden Retrievers, were calm in the face of chaos, loved all kinds of people, were fine in and actually looked forward to new situations, had a calming effect on people, and made people feel better just by their presence. The effect that both of these dogs had on people was a sight to behold. People they encountered would within a few seconds of meeting them have big smiles on their faces. These two would have been perfect therapy dogs in nursing homes.

Another characteristic of good therapy dogs, I’ve heard, is that they should not be too attached to their owners but instead should be more interested in exploring the world and the people in it. Again thinking of those two dogs of mine, that makes sense to me.

While in one respect Charlie, my Golden Retriever who is the subject of my book Charlie: A Love Story, would have made a good therapy dog, because he was so emotionally wise and intuitive and loved to make people laugh, he was much too attached to me. Far more interested in being with me than being out in the world meeting people and exploring new situations. Lucky me! How blessed I was to have had this magnificent being bonded with me! My very own therapy dog!

A good therapy dog offers comfort and companionship, soothes the agitated and fearful, engages with the isolated, and may even bring laughter to the sad and lonely. A good therapy dog does not discriminate against someone in a wheelchair, or the really old or disheveled but rather gives abundant, unconditional love and acceptance to such people, which in turn can not only calm but heal. It can be very soul-satisfying for a disabled or elderly person to pet the fur of one of these dogs and experience at least a connection, to express affection to some living being who in turn gives this person unconditional love. For a brief moment, this individual may be transported to a happier place, the day-to-day sadness and loneliness temporarily interrupted. Healing? I’d say so.

Again, thank you! It’s been a pleasure discussing this very good topic about man’s (and woman’s) truly best friend.

CMash:  First, Thank you for visiting.  Very interesting post, which I enjoyed and hope my readers do as well.  Being a former RN and my last job was working in geriatrics, I did see, on many occasions, the Big Smile that you mentioned.  The Nursing Home where I worked did utilize Pet Therapy on a routine basis.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Charlie: A Love Story tells of the beautiful love between Charlie, a Golden Retriever, and the author, Barbara Lampert. It takes place in Malibu, California. When Charlie turned eleven years old and started having some health problems, a journal Barbara was keeping about her garden quickly became mostly about Charlie. Charlie: A Love Story is an intimate look at an incredible connection between a canine and a human. And as a psychotherapist who specializes in relationships, Barbara brings that sensibility and understanding to Charlie’s story as well. Charlie was Barbara’s loyal confidante and best friend. He was indomitable, had a zest for life and an uncanny emotional intelligence. Charlie: A Love Story is about devotion, joy, loss, and renewal, about never giving up or giving in. But mostly it’s about an extraordinary dog and an extraordinary relationship.

THANKS TO AUTHOR, BARBARA LAMPERT, AND
TRIBUTE BOOKS, I HAVE ONE (1) COPY OF THIS
BOOK TO GIVEAWAY. U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY.

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE.

DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.

Hi everyone!!  Do I have a treat for you!!  Nicole from Tribute Books is taking time out of her busy schedule to stop by and introduce us to today’s guest author.  And if I know my followers, I am sure a lot of you will be very interested in her book.  So please help me welcome Nicole and Kathy Leonard Czepiel.

Kathy Leonard Czepiel

Kathy Leonard Czepiel is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and teaches writing at Quinnipiac University. Her short fiction has been published in numerous journals including Cimarron Review, Indiana Review, Calyx, Confrontation, and The Pinch. A native of New York State’s mid-Hudson Valley, she now lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children.
You can visit Kathy at her website, Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, and Tribute Books Blog Tours.

GUEST POST

            Like many twentysomethings today, I moved back to my home town shortly after college graduation. I had spent my whole life in this little Hudson River Valley town, a farming community with two traffic lights and three schools. But when I began working as a reporter for the local weekly newspaper, I met people and learned things I had never known before. One was that the area had once been known as The Violet Capital of the World.  How could I have spent my entire childhood there and never heard this? Though I didn’t know it then, my first novel had been born with that question. However, it was fifteen years before I was ready to write it. Writing a novel is a big commitment, and I knew its subject would have to hold my interest for a long time. The violets were the perfect starting place.

I began my research for A Violet Season at a local history museum with a file of newspaper clippings and photocopied pages from old books, but eventually I had to leave the library and get out in the “field”—in my case, a greenhouse. It’s one thing to read about something; it’s quite another to experience it firsthand. Leaving the library marked a turning point in my research—the point at which I had to proclaim myself a writer and ask someone else to take my research seriously. That someone was a local farmer named Fred Battenfeld, who graciously showed me around his greenhouses one cold March day. Earlier generations of Battenfelds had been violet growers, and though the family switched to growing hybrid anemones and Christmas trees decades ago, Fred still grows one small bed of violets, the only one in the Northeast as far as I know. He showed me around his greenhouses, even down into the “stokehouse” or furnace room. He demonstrated how to pick and bunch the flowers. He answered all of my questions.

Most of my writing days are pretty dull. I sit at my desk, next to my study window which looks out on my neighbors’ houses, and I plug away at my desktop computer. Sometimes I get up to make a cup of coffee or switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer. But research days are something else entirely—exciting not only because I’m away from my desk but because I never know what new information I’ll discover. On a trip to the New York Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I got the feel for the tenement apartment in my own novel and borrowed a few particular details, including the “short clothesline of socks hung over the stove.” Sometimes the “research” is closer to home—a neighborhood walk, for example, on which I was struck by a squirrel with “afternoon sunlight casting a halo at the edges of its tail.” I love getting lost in the written world at my desk, but perhaps my favorite writing days aren’t about writing at all. They’re about the real-world discovery of these little details that bring my story to life.

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ABOUT THE BOOK
A mother’s choices in a time of crisis threaten the one person she means to protect—her only daughter—and force her to make the boldest move of her life.

The violet industry is booming in 1898, and a Hudson Valley farm owned by the Fletcher family is turning a generous profit for its two oldest brothers. But Ida Fletcher, married to the black sheep youngest brother, has taken up wet nursing to help pay the bills, and her daughter, Alice, has left school to work. As they risk losing their share of the farm, the two women make increasingly great sacrifices for their family’s survival, sacrifices that will set them against one another in a lifelong struggle for honesty and forgiveness. Vivid and compelling, A Violet Season is the story of an unforgettable mother-daughter journey in a time when women were just waking to their own power and independence.
Book Details:
Price: $15.00 paperback, $9.99 ebook
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9781451655063
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release: July 10, 2012
Purchase links: Amazon, B&N, Simon & Schuster, iBookstore.

THANKS TO THE KINDNESS OF AUTHOR, KATHY LEONARD CZEPIEL,
I HAVE ONE (1) PB COPY TO GIVE AWAY. U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY.

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE

*USE THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM BELOW
IN ORDER TO BE INCLUDED IN THE GIVEAWAY*
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SO THAT I CAN CONTACT YOU IF YOU WIN
*LEAVE COMMENT: FROM READING THE SYNOPSIS,
WHAT DO YOU THINK  IS THE REASON  THAT

PUTS MOTHER/DAUGHTER AGAINST EACH OTHER ?*

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**HONOR SYSTEM**
ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
PLEASE NOTIFY ME IF YOU HAVE
WON THIS BOOK FROM ANOTHER
SITE, SO THAT SOMEONE ELSE MAY
HAVE THE CHANCE TO WIN
AND READ THIS BOOK.
THANK YOU.

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Nicole from Tribute Books is stopping by today to introduce us to a new author that she is touring with, Ms Kathleen Toomey Jabs.  I am looking forward to hearing about her book as it sounds like a great summer read!!  So please help me welcome them to the CMash blog!!

KATHLEEN TOOMEY JABS

Kathleen Toomey Jabs is a 1988 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. She served on active duty for six years and is currently a Captain in the Navy Reserve. She holds an MA from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Her stories have been published in a number of literary journals and received several prizes, including selection in the National Public Radio Selected Shorts program. She lives with her husband and two children in Virginia.
Connect with Kathleen on Facebook and Goodreads.

GUEST POST

How did you draw from personal experience in writing your book?

I entered the Naval Academy in 1984, a member of the eighth class to accept women. I had no idea what I was getting into or what military life entailed. In Black Wings, Bridget Donovan experiences some of the same disorientation I did. I drew some of Bridget Donovan’s early adventures from my real life experiences. For example, Bridget is originally from Boston and she is not a particularly squared away plebe when she arrives at the Academy. I’m also from Boston and I certainly had my share of culture shocks, especially during the first summer.

I used some of the my own remembrances to inform those critical early scenes—unpacking the myriad of uniforms and issued equipment, trying to race to morning formation, sitting erect and attempting to eat and answer questions in King Hall (the dining hall), struggling to march and conduct rifle maneuvers as well as the sheer physical exertion of constant physical training (PT). There was a danger with drawing on my own experience though. Bridget’s character is different from mine. I needed to experience the scenes through her.

At one point, as I read over an early draft of a PT scene in Black Wings, I counted 8 pages for Bridget to do 2 push-ups. Every drop of sweat was (literally) a sentence! I had to ask myself: was I recreating memory or did I really believe this description of Bridget’s ordeal somehow furthered the plot? I eventually cut the push-ups to a paragraph. Plebe summer scenes with uniforms and rifles underwent similar revision as I separated my memories from Bridget’s world. I’m not as brave or as mouthy as Bridget nor as resolute as Audrey, but through their experiences I was able to do and say things I wished I had. It was incredibly freeing.

When I moved into the post-Academy worlds of Audrey and Bridget I relied less on personal experience. As an officer, Bridget is part of the public affairs community. I’m also a public affairs officer or PAO in the Navy reserve. I know that world so I could draw on it, but I wasn’t constrained by it.

It was helpful to be familiar with so many different settings. I visited the Naval Academy several times to refresh my senses and took notes while I was on duty in the Pentagon. I’d walked onto an aircraft carrier, spent time in Quantico and Pensacola, and lived in the Arlington/Alexandria metro area so I felt confident writing about them. I did research on things I wasn’t familiar with like flying a jet and attending flight school. Even so, with all the research and memories, I took a lot of liberties.

Writing Black Wings, I approached the keyboard with a sense of wonder rather than a list of memories or specifics. I walked the Naval Academy cemetery to capture the mood and some of the landmarks, but when I sat down I wrote about mausoleums that didn’t exist, honor boards that weren’t held. I continued on that way, blending real-life places and bits of memory with fabrications to create what I hoped was a true depiction of Naval Academy life in the early years of female integration. I did the same with Bridget; I set her free to experience and react to the world on her own terms.

ABOUT THE BOOK

LT Bridget Donovan suspects the worst when her former Naval Academy roommate, Audrey Richards, perishes in a botched take-off from an aircraft carrier. The Navy says it’s an accident, but facts don’t add up. Could it be suicide, or murder? Donovan’s unofficial investigation into what really happened, both during their past Academy days and in Richards’ final hours, forces her to examine the concepts of honor, justice and the role of loyalty in pursuit of those ideals.

Watch the trailer:

Book Details:
Price: $19.95 paperback, $9.99 ebook
ISBN: 9780984141272
Pages: 314
Release: December 2011
Purchase links: Amazon   B&N

THANKS TO AUTHOR, KATHLEEN TOOMEY JABS, I
HAVE ONE (1) EBOOK EDITION TO GIVE AWAY.

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
THE GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE.

DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.
ADDENDUM
I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com,
Barnes & Noble and/or any other retail/wholesale
outlets either online and/or elsewhere.
I am providing this link solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.
I do not receive any monetary compensation from any parties

*USE THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM BELOW
IN ORDER TO BE INCLUDED IN THE GIVEAWAY*
BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL

ADDRESS IN THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM
SO THAT I CAN CONTACT YOU IF YOU WIN
*LEAVE COMMENT: IF YOU HAD THE CHANCE,
WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE THE EXPERIENCE OF

FLYING FROM AND LANDING ON AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER?*

*INTERNATIONAL–EBOOK EDITION*

**HONOR SYSTEM**
ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
PLEASE NOTIFY ME IF YOU HAVE
WON THIS BOOK FROM ANOTHER
SITE, SO THAT SOMEONE ELSE MAY
HAVE THE CHANCE TO WIN
AND READ THIS BOOK.
THANK YOU.

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Today Nicole from Tribute Books is stopping by to introduce us to an amazing, busy and talented author as she talks about her new memoir.  So please help me welcome Ms. Molly Best!

ABOUT MOLLY BEST TINSLEY

Air Force brat Molly Best Tinsley taught on the civilian faculty at the United States Naval Academy for twenty years and is the institution’s first professor emerita. Author of My Life with Darwin (Houghton Mifflin) and Throwing Knives (Ohio State University Press), she also co-authored Satan’s Chamber (Fuze Publishing) and the textbook, The Creative Process (St. Martin’s). Her fiction has earned two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sandstone Prize, and the Oregon Book Award. Her plays have been read and produced nationwide. She lives in Oregon, where she divides her time between Ashland and Portland.
Connect with the author at:  Fuze Publishing’s Facebook, Fuze Publishing’s Twitter, Fuze Publishing’s Website, Fuze Publishing’s Blog, Entering the Blue Stone Blog Tour Site, Tribute Books Blog Tours Facebook

GUEST POST

Entering the Blue Stone is a memoir of my parents’ final years, when my father was afflicted with Parkinson’s, my mother with Alzheimers.  My siblings and I had to move them from their home to an independent living apartment in a continuing care facility, then to the assisted living wing, and finally to the nursing home on the bottom floor.  It’s a fairly common experience nowadays, but it feels extraordinary when it happens to you, a cross between a comedy of errors, a crusade for humane treatment, and, of course, a prolonged funeral.  In order to maintain my sanity, I transcribed events almost as they were happening, including conversations verbatim.  I was coping with the chaos by keeping notes—trying to contain it in words.

As the months passed, and their situation plummeted from difficult to impossible, the writing began to serve a purpose beyond my own mental health.  I wanted to tell a cautionary tale so that other families might begin this end-of-life process with more information.  Because our experience became so surreal, however, I chose an almost documentary tone recount it.  No hysteria, no exclamatory outrage–just the facts.  We felt as if the administrators in the continuing care facility had lost their minds while those with diagnosed dementia exemplified grace and a certain common sense.  I had to make sure I didn’t sound like a crazy person myself—even if I felt that way sometimes!

At the same time, if the story was going to make an impact, it would have to bring the experience to life in a nuanced, three-dimensional world, creating our parents and their care-givers as characters, conveying the sensory texture of our struggle, and its ineluctable arc.  The real information is in the concrete details, not in some sort of abstract power point presentation.  So I didn’t spare them.  Based on my notes, I painted the fullest picture I could of our search for a care facility and then our adaptation to one frustration after the next–the scenes, the dialogue, the unexpected sweet times, the inevitable bad.  My book is an account of what-not-to-do, but maybe its portrayal of the challenges and struggles that come with being human will assure others in similar circumstances that they aren’t alone.

Entering the Blue Stone Summary

What happens when one’s larger-than-life military parents–disciplined, distinguished, exacting–begin sliding out of control? The General struggles to maintain his invulnerable façade against Parkinson’s disease; his lovely wife manifests a bizarre dementia. Their three grown children, desperate to save the situation, convince themselves of the perfect solution: an upscale retirement community. But as soon as their parents have been resettled within its walls, the many imperfections of its system of care begin to appear.

Charting the line between comedy and pathos, Molly Best Tinsley’s memoir, Entering the Blue Stone dissects the chaos at the end of life and discovers what shines beneath: family bonds, the dignity of even an unsound mind, and the endurance of the heart.

BOOK DETAILS
Price: $14.95 paperback, $9.99 ebook
ISBN: 9780984990818
Pages: 195
Release: May 2012

THANKS TO THE KINDNESS OF AUTHOR, MOLLY BEST TINSLEY,
I HAVE ONE (1) EBOOK EDITION OF HER MEMOIR TO GIVE AWAY.

CLICK HERE TO BRING YOU TO
GIVEAWAY ENTRY PAGE.

DISCLAIMER
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.
ADDENDUM
I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com,
Barnes & Noble and/or any other retail/wholesale
outlets either online and/or elsewhere.
I am providing this link solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.
I do not receive any monetary compensation from any parties