MSI Press Blog

  Today's book back story provides inside information about  One Simple Text.. . (Shaw & Brown).  From the publisher -  Betty Shaw and Dave Brown brought to the press a great story. One of tragedy that through patient fortitude, medical skill, and great faith turned into triumph. Of a life almost lost because of one simple text while driving. The what and who of that text I will leave readers to discover. A story that had propelled the author and the protagonist of the story, her daughter, to Oprah Winfrey's TV show. They had, however, not yet written a book. (Advice here: if you have the opportunity for world-class publicity, get your book done in advance; it is so  helpful for book promotion to have the publicity come after the book and not afterward.) They needed some help in refining the story into a book that works. That is where MSI Press came in. We do this all the time with first-time authors. We help turn their wonderful but seemingly unmanageable s...

Saturday, April 7, 2012 The morning before Easter I stood in front of the kitchen window in my pajamas with a cup of hot coffee in my hand, gazing at the cloudless sky and watching the pesky squirrels in the backyard eat all of the birdseed out of the birdfeeder. No matter how many times I chased them off, they came back. I loved watching the birds so I put up with the thieves. Such a perfect day—except for one thing: my daughter Elizabeth still wasn’t home. She had spent the night at a friend’s house, and I had expected her to return before now. She knew the rules—she had to check in with us in person the next morning after staying the night away from home—but she hated to follow them. A typical teenager, rebellious and stubborn, she thought her parents didn’t understand her, that we had no idea what it was like to be a teenager. Lord knows, I was well aware of the trouble a teenager could get into by spending the night away from home, not only from her older half-brother ...

Released today! It was every parent’s worst nightmare.  On a sun-drenched morning in April 2012, a Maryland state trooper knocked on Betty Shaw’s front door and delivered the grim news that her 17-year-old daughter, Liz, had been involved in a horrible car accident and was clinging to life.   Liz recovered from her life-threatening injuries but suffered severe and permanent effects from the accident. Texting while driving caused Liz’s crash, and she and her mother went on a mission to educate people about the perils of distracted driving. The pair began to speak before various groups, and as their popularity grew, they launched a video about Liz’s story which went viral, spawning magazine and online articles, as well as several TV appearances, including one on Oprah Winfrey’s  Where Are They Now?  show.  In  One Simple Text , Betty Shaw recounts her daughter’s frightening and arduous but ultimately uplifting and inspirational journey. Betty chronicl...