MSI Press Blog

  Today's back story is about the book, Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest  by Shenan (CB) Leaver with Betty Lou Leaver. From the co-author: CB Leaver , the author, is a mentally challenged CHARGE Syndrome adult who never learned to read or write. His mother, Betty Lou Leaver, a highly published author, who wanted her son to understand the purpose of the written word: sharing thoughts and/or information with others. It took a full year of working together to put CB's remembered stories on paper, to check that they had been accurately transcribed. CB learned a lot about the written word both in the process of writing and in getting feedback from pre-publication readers of the manuscript. CB subsequently did a book signing at the Los Angeles Book Fair. He had a great time learning about reader reactions to his book. He was also adept at using his people skills and humor to draw readers to his booth.  Book available at 25% discount with code FF25 at msipress.com/shop. Read exce...

  Excerpt from Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest (CB Leaver) - The Man in Our Dumpster When I was growing up, Daddy, Mommy, and all of us kids (sometimes we were four, sometimes we were six or seven) lived in a big house with 13 rooms in Salinas, California. When we finished growing up, Daddy got a hankering for the forest and Mommy got a hankering to give up cleaning 13 rooms all the time. So, they decided to buy an RV, travel when they could, and park it in the riverside woods of Arroyo Seco at other times where they lived comfortably and Mommy enjoyed a daily dip in the river. Moving out of 13 rooms was big business. Daddy and Mommy had quite a list of things to do: cleaning, giving away or selling stuff that would not fit in the RV, packing things to take with them, throwing away trash, and lots of other things (like changing addresses with businesses and the post office). One day when Daddy was out doing the lots of other things, Mommy held a yard sale. One of the people w...

  Today's fortune cookie is associated with Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest (Leaver).  Read more about the Shenan Leaver and his book HERE . Currently on sale for $5 at MSI Press webstore .cookie, Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest, Shenan Leaver Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.  Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our  Authors' Pages .    

  It is Tuesday. 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 digresses -- into the absurd, perhaps. Today, I sent for the third time, ARC labels to wone of our authors. The first time the labels disappeared. The second time, they were inexplicably directed to an IRS office in another state. Totally insane! Fingers crossed for a safe arrival this time. Today's experience reminded me of other unexpected, funny, and heartwarming experiences that have occurred over the 20 years MSI Press has been publishing. Here are some of my favorite, somewhat inexplicable stories. When You're Shoved from the Right, Look to Your Left: Metaphors of Islamic Humanism is a great little book, trul...

excerpt from Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest The Babysitter When I was smaller, Mommy sent me to church every Sun­day morning. The church van always came at 9:15 to pick me up, and Mommy was always rushing to get me ready on time. One Sunday morning a man came to the door at 9:10. Mommy could not believe that the van was five minutes early. She always counted on those five minutes to get me ready. Usu­ally, no one came to the door, so she figured that they must have been sitting there for a while. She started to hurry. “Just a minute,” she said, leaving the door open. She quickly grabbed my suit coat and put it on me. “I just have to comb his hair; it will just be a second,” she called to the man at the door as she darted into the bathroom after a comb. A few seconds later, I looked mighty spiffy. “Almost ready,” she called out again, as she rushed upstairs to get my Bible and offering. Whew! She had never got me ready so fast. “Here he is,” she said, out of breath, as she pushed me out...

  Shenan (CB) Leaver, author of Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest , was recently interviewed by the Mission Village Voice , where his book is being serialized. From the MVV introduction to the column: "Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest is collection of anecdotes about a 'detail-oblivious' homemaker and traveler, told from the point of view of CB, her mentally challenged son. The simplicity of language has made this book a favorite with ESL students, and the humorous 'conclusion' about life from a child's point of view endears it to anyone with a sense of humor. The reason CB's mother worked with him to write the book was to teach him the impact of literacy -- why people write and why people read. Even though it has been impossible for him to learn to read and write very much, through the joint preparation of the book he did learn a lot about literacy. CB is a 42-year-old CHARGE Syndrome, on of about 4-5 worldwide his age. He was given 0% chance of living, dispro...

  Rare Disease Day is an observance held on the last day of February to raise awareness for rare diseases and improve access to treatment and medical representation for individuals with rare disease. Rare Disease Day is meaningful for MSI Press since one of its authors, Shenan (CB) Leaver suffers from CHARGE Syndrome. CHARGE is so rare that he is one of only a handful of survivors in his age group worldwide -- he has personally found four besides himself! CHARGE Syndrome is a disorder that affects many areas of the body. CHARGE is an abbreviation for several of the features common in the disorder: coloboma, heart defects, atresia choanae (also known as choanal atresia), growth retardation, genital abnormalities, and ear abnormalities. The pattern of malformations varies among individuals with this disorder, and the multiple health problems can be life-threatening in infancy. When CB was born 42 years ago, CHARGE was not even known! Now, 70% of children born with CHARGE make it to ...

  (photo from last year, in anticipation of changing that number this evening from 41 to 42) November 13 today is CB Leaver's birthday. CB is the MSI Press author of the popular Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest and one of the oldest CHARGE Syndrome adults in the world. He knows only three others world-wide (Ohio, Massachusetts, and Netherlands) who have reached his age of 42 years (one is actually 45, the others are 42, as well) but thinks there may be another one or two somewhere. It is no mere feat, then, that he has survived, and robustly so, after a very tenuous start in life in which he as given 0% chance of survival by well respected doctors at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and rescued by doctors at Children's Hospital in Boston, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Children's National Medical Center, Georgetown University Hospital, and Stanford Children's Medical Center -- it took a countrywide network to turn that 0% into 100%) and no mere feat also that ...

  excerpt from Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest There's a Stranger in Mommy's Bed Sometimes Mommy gets really tired. She says that working mothers reach proportions of exhaustion that exceed the imagi­nation. In such cases, what they say and do has little resem­blance to commonsense. I guess that must be right if I judge by my mommy. For example, let me tell you what happened to her one week­end. Friday evening after a long and frustrating, to say nothing of exhausting, week at work, she fell asleep on the living room sofa. (She does that a lot. She says she is going to watch television, but she never does. She just stares at the screen for a few minutes and then topples over. I have never seen her watch a whole tele­vision show like my siblings and I do.) Anyway, she did her frequent act of screen staring and top­pling over on the Friday evening I am talking about. My daddy, of course, could not wake her up; he never can when she topples over asleep. So, my sister found her asle...

  The Power of Observation Once my sister, Echo, had learned to drive, she was much more observant than my mommy was. She belongs to that group of people that Mommy calls detail-observant, so she pays very close attention to all kinds of things that Mommy does not notice at all. One night after work, my mommy and Echo were driving home together. Well, Mommy, the grande dame of detail-obliviousness, was doing the driving, and clearly, it was Echo, the de­tail-observant, who was doing the watching. That is pretty typi­cal of how they usually drive together. At the light where Mommy had to make a turn to get onto the highway coming to our town—she and Echo worked in the next town over—there was a long line of cars. That was no sur­prise. There often was a long line at this particular light, espe­cially right after work, so Mommy was sort of expecting a line, anyway. Mommy could see all the way to the intersection, and the light there was red. So, she got into line behind the cars. Sh...

  Raindrops Keep Falling on Her Head Once upon a time Mommy worked at NASA in Houston, Texas for a year. She liked her work, but she did not like the Houston climate. It rained a lot. In fact, it rained off and on nearly every day in the spring. Being from California, Mommy was not used to that much rain. She figured out how to cope, however. She bought a small umbrella that folded up to fit inside her backpack. That way, if it rained, she could quickly pull out the umbrella, and if it did not rain, the umbrella would be out of the way in her backpack. This was especially helpful because Mommy walked back and forth from work. She liked walking, but she often got caught in sur­prise rainstorms. One day it was not raining when Mommy left her house. In fact, it was pretty hot. Mommy had a long walk. She lived more than two miles from NASA. When she walked, she thought a lot. She thought about work, about her family, about lots of things. So, she did not pay a lot of attention to what ...

  Shenan (CB) Leaver's book, Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest, was translated into Russia and published in Russia, with excerpts in the Socionics Journal . For those who can read Russian, hear is some fun reading!! Мама отравила нашего гостя! (фрагменты из книги) Авторы: Си Би ЛИВЕР и Бетти Лу ЛИВЕР В своей книге Си Би Ливер, один из семи детей Бетти Ливер, решил рассказать о своей Маме, которая помогла ему с редактированием текста. К сожалению, хорошей фотографии Си Би не нашлось, поэтому помещаем только фотографию героини книги. Соционический тип: как нам кажется, хорошо виден из текста Эл. адреса: CBLeaver @ aol . com и Leaver @ aol . com Хаос на кухне. Моя Мама – очень хорошая Мама, но очень плохой повар. Однажды моей сестрёнке понадобилось принести на праздник девочек-скаутов "дьявольские яйца" (обычно их фаршируют майонезом и сладким красным перцем, но Мама, вид...