What’s on my iPod: “Friday I’m in Love” by The Cure
What I’m reading: Girl Unmoored by Jennifer Gooch Hummer (It’s great, trust us)
The last person I followed on Twitter: @anniegeorgia
1. Dr. Mark McKee on PregnancyandBaby.com
Dr. Mark McKee – author of RAISING THE SUCCESSFUL CHILD: A PARENTING MANUAL – stopped by the SheKnows Pregnancy & Baby site to share some enlightening questions soon-to-be parents should ask themselves before the stork arrives. Here is a small snippet of the the questions and a highlight of the article:
Consider how you want to raise your children. What do you do to provide a home that serves to promote security and independence? Dr. McKee says that without a clear plan, parents are at risk for unknowingly repeating the same unhealthy approaches to child rearing they may have experienced as children themselves.
Dr. McKee suggests sitting down and really thinking about the following questions and discussing with them with your partner.
- What does this child mean to me/us? (Multiple meanings are healthiest)
- What or how does having this child change my/our perception of myself/ourselves?
- How do you see yourself as a mother or father?
- How do you see your spouse as a mother or father?
More on RAISING A SUCCESSFUL CHILD: THE PARENTING MANUAL
The award-winning parenting book, Raising A Successful Child (The Manual), gets to the heart of what every parent needs to know to have a warm,loving relationship with their baby and raise a happy,healthy,secure child. Based on past successful parenting practices, and even more excitingly on recent research findings that point to new directions in parenting, this book provides in clear and simple language a roadmap and tools for raising successful children. “The Manual” introduces parents to the idea of a balanced life for a child–work and play are equally important at all stages of development.
Exploring all the things that can go wrong and what families should do to avoid these problems does little to build confidence in parents or children. Unlike other books which focus on specific diagnoses or “problems,” this book is centered around the theme of building a strong and healthy parent-child relationship.
2. Toby Neal on Barnes & Noble’s Unbashedly Bookish blog
Fabulous author Toby Neal – author of Hawaiian thriller BLOOD ORCHIDS – stopped by Lisa Steinke’s Barnes & Noble blog Unbashedly Bookish for a Q&A that gives readers insight to the creative process behind her novel. Here is a small excerpt of the interview:
LS: What was your highest point while writing your book? Your lowest?
TN: Highest point was when I knew Lei was going to fall in love. Lowest was… Hey, this is a spoiler! I’m not telling. I will say there were several very emotionally gripping scenes that made me cry.
LS: How did you come up with the title of your book?
TN: Lei raises orchids in her spare time, and I wanted something that conveyed the lushness and danger of the book. Three orchids on the cover is also meaningful, as there are three victims in the story.
LS: What is the last book you read? The next book you plan to read?
TN: I just finished a dark and twisty crime thriller called The Devil of Light by Texas writer Gae-Lynn Woods. Next to read is In In Memory of Greed , a suspense novel by Al Boudreau.
LS: What’s the best compliment you’ve received about your book?
TN: That it kept people up at night reading! I’ve been hearing it a lot, and I love it!
More on BLOOD ORCHIDS
“Blood Orchids is that rarity among debut crime novels, in that it satisfies on every level. A powerful new talent is on the scene.”
– Drew Cross, former police officer and author BiteMarks
Hawaii is palm trees, black sand and blue water— but for policewoman Lei Texeira, there’s a dark side to paradise.
Lei has overcome a scarred past to make a life for herself as a cop in the sleepy Big Island town of Hilo. On a routine patrol she finds two murdered teenagers—one of whom she’d recently busted. The girl’s harsh life and tragic death touches a chord with Lei, and she becomes obsessed with the case. The killer is drawn to her intensity and stalks her, feeding on her vulnerabilities and toying with her sanity.
Steaming volcanoes, black sand beaches and shrouded fern forests are the backdrop to Lei’s quest for answers. She finds herself falling in love for the first time—but the stalker is closer than she can imagine, and threads of the past are tangled in her future. Lei is determined to find the killer—but he already knows where she lives.
3. Meg Mitchell Moore is now on Facebook! More on Meg’s upcoming release SO FAR AWAY
Thirteen-year-old Natalie Gallagher is trying to escape: from her parents’ ugly divorce, and from the vicious cyber-bullying of her former best friend. She discovers a dusty old diary in her family’s basement and is inspired to unlock its secrets. Kathleen Lynch, an archivist at the Massachusetts State Archives, has her own painful secrets: she’s a widow estranged from her only daughter. Natalie’s research brings her to Kathleen, who in Natalie sees traces of the daughter she has lost. What could the life of an Irish immigrant domestic servant from the 1920s teach them both? In the pages of the diary, they will learn that their fears and frustrations are timeless.
4. Jon Reiner in Las Vegas Review Journal As Reiner deals with the pain of recovery and the agony of not being able to eat regular foods, he reminisces about his life as a self-professed “foodie” and how food had always been central in his life despite his disease.His memories of childhood revolve around food, and he based much of his adult identity on his Jewish culture and the ties to food that he has had throughout his life. Therefore, discovering that he has a disease that robs him of the ability to eat any food or drink that would aggravate his condition, is akin to saying that he wouldn’t be able to breathe again. It is as if his identity is taken away during the months in which he was prohibited from having anything other than the prescribed medical supplements that were taken intravenously.
Reiner describes savoring the smells of the foods his wife and sons were eating, how it would be overwhelming, and he would have to sit in another room while they had dinner. In one instance, he just wanted to lick a french fry — to remember the texture of the food — when his youngest son came into the kitchen and caught him as he lifted the potato to his lips.
More on THE MAN WHO COULDN’T EAT
Imagine not being able to eat or drink a single thing. No lobster roll on the beach in Maine; no hot dog at the ballpark; no cool drink on a hot summer day; no birthday cake; nothing. In The Man Who Couldn’t Eat (S&S/Gallery Books: September 6, 2011), Jon Reiner – a James Beard Foundation Award-winning writer –chronicles his three-month struggle to live without food. Based on Reiner’s acclaimed 2009 Esquire magazine article by the same name, the book reinvents the foodoir, telling what happens when a man obsessed with food is denied the taste of it. A beautifully written chronicle of one man’s journey from plenty to deprivation and back again,The Man Who Couldn’t Eat will change the way you think about more than just your next meal.
5. Marco Polo Design’s Sweetheart-inspired jewelry lineup on SheKnows.com and LovingYou.com
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