MSI Press Blog

  In observance of poetry month, MSI Press would like to share with its readers and fans books from two authors worth reading: One will bring a comforting smile to an unbidden tear. The other will bring an outright laugh page after page. Time spent with comforting and/or happy thoughts is time well spent indeed. Marti Wells-Smith's  Lamentations of the Heart Mingled with Peace and Joy  combines prose and poetry in a comforting missive for bereaved parents. Through its pages, one finds not only the resilience of the author but sources for anyone to develop needed resilience in the face of devastating life circumstances. When it came out, it quickly became one of Amazon's "hot, new releases." Lamentations of the Heart soulfully combines contemporary free verse poetry and nonfictional prose to tell the story of one mother's grief following the death of her only child. The author interweaves scriptural passages with the inevitable struggles to accept and make sense of...

New Year is that magical time of year when we get to look backward and forward at the same time. So, it was both a pleasant surprise and yet not completely unexpected when I found a video about  How My Cat Made Me a Better Man , Jeremy Feig's award-winning cat book ( Book of the Year finalist and Kops-Fetherling Legacy Award in humor ). It is indeed a great book - funny and yet insightful, humorously illustrated by the talented and respected late Russian artist Zhenya Yanovich . Watch Edify , which hosts the video had this to say: On July 1st, MSI Press published How My Cat Made Me a Better Man , the first book written by local comedy screenwriter and filmmaker Jeremy Feig. How My Cat Made Me a Better Man is a humorous self-help guide geared towards men, but with advice relevant to any demographic of reader. Shelly has also inspired Feig to appreciate having his basic needs met and to sometimes prioritize his own happiness, amongst other feline-centric behaviors. For posts about ...

  Excerpt from  A Movie Lover's Search for Romance  - HENRY, OR PATHETIC CRUSH #2 Just as my crush on Adrien Brody began to wane, I began crushing on Henry. Henry, as in Henry Cooper, direct descendent of James Fennimore Cooper, who wrote the well-known classic, The Last of the Mohicans. Henry Cooper, of the Coopers of Cooperstown. Until I met Henry, I’d never actually heard anyone who sounded like George Plimpton. I thought that high, guttural, WASP accent was an anachronism, like hula-hoops and the Ed Sullivan Show. If Henry was not the highest of high WASP, he would be a parody of rich Americans. But Henry is the real deal. He has piles of the Social Register stacked casually around his living room, along with old copies of The New Yorker , for which he once wrote. Henry is my father’s friend. They went to Andover together in the late ’40s and early ’50s. My father is not high WASP. Dad is the product of four Eastern European Jewish grandparents, each of whom travele...