Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Women at the Top

Women at The Top: Powerful Leaders Tell us How To Combine Work and Family
Where to buy: www.amazon.com
If you are a working mother and always trying to keep too many balls in the air, you know what I am talking about. Finding the right work-family balance is a constant struggle. We suffer from guilty feelings of not spending enough time with our children/family and not enough time pursuing our career. To strike the right balance takes commitment, passion, flexibility and support from your loved ones and also knowing that we can’t be “perfect”.
The book Women at The Top is a real eye opener. In it, women from different cultural backgrounds and in high powered share their real life stories. The ups and downs of how they managed to get to where they are, overcoming many challenges along the way. It includes a lot of well written personal advice from these top women leaders. How do you get to be successful in your career but also live a happy family-committed life? This book offers strategies and food for thought for every woman who wants “it all” and wants to succeed in having a successful and rewarding job but also be a happy wife and mother.
I think this book should be read by any working mother who is trying to manage a career and a family. With the right techniques and strategies, you too can enjoy a well-balanced life.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Putting it on Paper

Dawn Josephson, author of 14 books, has composed a marvelous author resource with her newest book Putting it on Paper – The base rules for making promotional pieces that sell books. This book talks about the development and use of contents within a media kit, and other selling materials. From cover letters, press releases, book reviews, bios, sell and catalog sheets to articles – Dawn addresses it all.

Each chapter closes with two brief, but very helpful segments. ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ is an crucial ingredient to this comprehensive book because it touches on creativity and exclusions to the rule. Her section ‘Key Points’ acts as a summery to the primary ideas within the chapter.

There are many superior samples of real promotional bits, which give writers a assortment of options and ideas to use in producing the subject matter for their own selling materials. The samples are also closed out with notes on the structure of the piece so that the reader can fully interpret the intention of each opening, paragraph or by-line. Dawn shows numerous methods to fine-tune text for each piece and then ends with how to lay out promotional materials to various markets.

I genuinely loved the thought provoking quotations she used throughout the book and felt Putting it on Paper was rather inspirational. As a writer who has spent a year of intensive market research and hands on application, I can say that a lot of of Dawn’s tips are unique and I cannot wait to attempt them. The information on multiple press releases, mock book reviews and catalog sheets were especially helpful for my own applications.
I highly recommend this valuable book to any author who is facing book promotion. Putting it on Paper will for certain help writers get noticed.

ISBN#: 0974496618
Publisher: Ground Rules Press
Author: Dawn Josephson

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Prince Caspian

If you lately viewed the really popular Disney film "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", you may be aware that C. S. Lewis composed a total of seven books about Narnia. These are, in order of the inner chronology of events:
1 - The Magician's Nephew
2 - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
3- The Horse and His Boy
4 - Prince Caspian
5 - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6 - The Silver Chair
7 - The Last Battle
The novel "Prince Caspian" starts one year after the events said in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" on a railway platform where Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy are expecting  trains that will take them to their boarding schools. All of a sudden they feel themselves carried into another world, and after a few hours of meandering about they recognize that it is Narnia, where many centuries have surpassed meanwhile.
The second storyline involves young Prince Caspian, heir to the throne of Narnia, who has to flee from his seizing uncle Miraz. Deep in a forest he finds some of the "Old Narnians" - talking creatures and midgets - and later chooses to challenge his uncle for the kingship.
Before long, though, the armed forces state of affairs drops for Caspian and his modest army, and they end up enclosed on Aslan's How, a hill established over the site of the rock table that acted as an essential role in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe". When things appear utterly desolate, Caspian uses his most cherished object, Queen Susan's Horn, to rally help.

Lewis does an effective job of depicting the bit-by-bit re-transformation of the four children, who once more turn from being English pupils to becoming Kings and Queens of Narnia.

To me, "Prince Caspian" is among the three best books in the Narnia series, together with "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and "The Magician's Nephew". In many ways, it duplicates themes from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", but adds an intriguing view by having the events of the earlier book become the stuff of legend.