MSI Press Blog

  Mainiac (J Ladd Zorn Jr) is now available for pre-order, e-book format. Stand by for paperback announcement. Book Description: An aimless alcoholic leaves his father’s home in Los Angeles to follow the one woman who has shown him kindness after she relocates to Maine. His cross‑country trip includes encounters with old friends, fleeting romances, and culturally revealing detours that force him to confront his own failures. In the coastal town of Camden, he finds work on a lobster boat and becomes part of a small community of locals. As he struggles with addiction and self‑doubt, he tries to find the courage to tell the woman he loves how he feels, uncertain whether he deserves her or a better life. CONTACT editor@msipress.com FOR A REVIEW COPY MSI Press, a veteran-owned publishing house based in California , United States best known for turning new writers into award-winning authors, has gained mass recognition for releasing highly acclaimed books of varying genres that are di...

  CANADA I grew up in Maine, which meant that Canada was just always there. Although things have changed a bit, or perhaps more than a bit, over the years, when I was a kid, Canadian and American coins were interchangeable. A Canadian nickel and a US nickel, penny, or dime were treated the same by merchants. Radio shows might come from Maine or from Canada and might be in French or English. Cereal boxes might be in French or English and might come from Canada or the US. So, as I said, Canada was just there, like another state. No one truly thought of it as another country. Actually, though, I did travel to Canada three times, all of them either by accident or “along the way.” And it was an “on the way” stopover for NASA flights I was on (when NASA had its own commercial airplanes) from Houston to Moscow. Labrador NASA planes enroute from Houston to Moscow stopped over in Labrador (and Iceland) to refuel. We all had to get off the plane and crowd into the small airport. Typically, o...

During the Great Depression, education for children in migrant labor camps was as fragile as the tents they slept in. Families moved constantly, chasing harvests across California’s valleys and plains. Schools were fixed places; these children were not. Yet, somehow, learning still found them. In the early years, most migrant children had no formal schooling at all. They worked beside their parents in the fields, picking cotton, beans, or fruit from dawn until dusk. But as the crisis deepened, reformers and teachers began to see that ignorance was another kind of poverty — one that could last generations. The federal government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) stepped in, building makeshift schools near camps and hiring teachers willing to teach under canvas roofs or in converted barracks. Lessons were often improvised. A single teacher might teach reading, arithmetic, and hygiene to forty children of mixed ages. Supplies were scarce — chalkb...

  Tucker, Georgia is the kind of place that doesn’t try to impress you. It simply is —steady, neighborly, and quietly proud of its own rhythms. Spend an afternoon there and you start to understand why people stay, why they show up for one another, and why the city’s motto, “Where families flourish and businesses prosper,” feels less like branding and more like a lived truth. The Heartbeat of Main Street Main Street Tucker is the city’s front porch. On any given day, you’ll see retirees lingering over coffee at the Corner Cup, teenagers drifting between shops, and families stopping to chat with the kind of ease that suggests they’ve known each other for years. There’s a gentle hum to the place—cars rolling slowly past, the occasional dog tugging its owner toward the smell of fresh biscuits, and the unmistakable sound of someone greeting someone else by name. The charm isn’t curated; it’s inherited. Tucker grew up as a railroad town, and you can still feel that sense of connection a...

  Pre-order sales of Kindle ebook available on Amazon . Release date: June 30. Pre-order sales of paperback book available on Barnes & Noble and Amazon . Release date: June 30. Pre-order sales of paperback book available at 25 percent discount available at MSI Press webstore . Release date June 30. Book Description: They sold the farm, packed up seven children, and chased a promise called California. Based on Hazel’s journal, this true story follows a family that leaves Wisconsin hoping for relief from brutal winters—only to run out of money with hundreds of miles still to go. Stranded and desperate, they enter a world of labor camps, endless fieldwork, hunger, and exhaustion, where families are worked hard, paid little, and treated as disposable. Once respected and secure, they find themselves suddenly labeled vagrants. Pride becomes a liability. Dignity must be defended daily. And survival depends on grit, faith, and refusing to give up—especially for Hazel, who will not all...