MSI Press Blog

  Jim Ostdick is a retired Earth Science teacher who lives on the ancestral lands of the Amah Mutsun Ohlone near the central California coast. In Walks Far Man: In Step with History on the Pacific Crest Trail , Ostdick recounts his Pacific Crest Trail hiking experiences in the context of a larger, more vibrant story, thousands of years in the making. His intentions are threefold: to identify and honor the indigenous tribes who occupied and traveled the lands traversed by today’s Pacific Crest Trail; to draw appreciation and respect for the cultural traditions of these tribes, and to describe, with humor and humility, his 2,650-mile walk from Mexico to Canada. Ostdick began hiking the Pacific Crest Trail at Campo, California in 2001 and crossed the Canadian border in 2009. Along the trail, he became increasingly introspective. He gradually began to feel empowered by the synthesis of self, the Earth, the Sun and wind and stars, the raging rivers, the trickling creeks, and the effects...

  Book description: It's not easy to know what to do with yourself when you're grieving, anxious, angry, ashamed, or just feeling stuck. This little book offers a simple practice for releasing and relieving negative emotions, to help bring about a more compassionate, centered way of being with whatever is happening. Written by a psychotherapist and Jewish interfaith minister during pandemic times, The Little Book That Listens is like a series of Oracle cards with messages that comfort, encourage, uplift, and redirect. The power of self-healing is here for you. Book Review from Amazon - view more reviews there: I love this book of insight and tenderness towards Self. It felt like the language composed a maternal embrace, each page a reassurance from a high source, that I was loved. The book has received 10 reviews, all 5-stars. You can read the reviews and purchase the book from  AMAZON .   Julia Aziz has also published a book with MSI Press, Lessons of Labor .  To re...

Book description: Posing for a picture at the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail, a long-eared jackrabbit hop from Mexico and 2,650-some miles from Canada, your stomach churns and your mind reels. The air is dusty. A morning desert wind feels oddly cold. No amount of preparation is sufficient for the starkness of your decision. In this beginning, something has ended. Something practiced and old and broken-in has faded. In its place enters immediacy and relevance and sharp possibility. Plans and spreadsheets become paper prayer flags fluttering in a past mind, useless tributes to linear pretense. You catch yourself thinking that it feels like the first day of school. But there are no teachers, no classmates, no classrooms, no halls, and no walls. There is only one choice that yields results: to turn and to walk, to follow the well-worn trail North. With each step, you lose a little more of the other-world, the un-PCT. All you have is what you need. All you need is what you hav...

  I am going to deviate a bit from the normal format for the publisher's conversation because what I have to say is short and simple -- and there is a longer, typical post HERE that describes the affiliate program. This is simply an addendum, providing another option for authors unknown to MSI Press to become affiliates and have their books listed in the MSI Press webstore catalogue with links to the author's own sales source (Amazon, author website, etc.) If your book has received at least 25 5-star reviews, we will consider your book, any genre, for including. The reviews may be cumulative: 10 on Amazon, 10 on Barnes & Noble, 7 on Goodreads, 1 on Readers' Favorite, 1 on Kirkus, etc., as long as they total 25 or more.) To be considered, send a link to the reviews to editor@msipress.com , as well as to a description of your book on Amazon with the LookInside feature. (If there is no look inside feature, we may need to receive an actual copy of the book.) The cost is $...

  Book description: The delicate bitterroot flower brings color and warmth to all who see it. By surviving freezing winters, it attests to the great enduring strength of gentleness. Metaphorically, in this book, the bitterroot is a "warm fuzzy" that can be shared with friends and strangers alike. Let the pages of this book bring warmth and color and the strength of gentleness to your world. Learn how to get what you want and need and make others and yourself happy as you do so. Book Review from Louis Slovinsky, founder of People Magazine :' Until I read the manuscript of Betty Lou Leaver's "Bouquets of Bitterroots," I thought Bitterroots was just an odd name pinned to a mountain range in Montana. The conflagration that scorched those mountains a few years ago raised my consciousness about their stunning, irreplaceable beauty, just as Ms. Leaver's pithy book elevates the eponymous flower to a superb metaphor for learning from adversity and cultivating emp...

  It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic deviates from our usual "conversation" topics of pragmatic and technical advice for authors and would-be authors, as well as those trying to be their own publishers. Instead, we want to bring to you information about a new MSI Press program that has the potential to help authors directly in significant ways: MSI Affiliates.  An MSI affiliate is an author whose book(s) the MSI Press editorial staff has accepted for inclusion in its webstore as a "friend" of the press. The high quality books of affiliates benefit in a number of ways: They are listed in the MSI Press webstore. While MSI ...