MSI Press Blog

  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...

  Drawing by Uliana We recently learned that Sula, who is the parish cat at Old Mission (and listed as such on the Sunday Bulletins), is once again struggling with cancer. Sula, for those who follow her on Face Book and in person, has had quite a history of cancer. She was diagnosed with skin cancer a number of years ago, and beat it -- for a couple of years -- thanks to the tips of her ears being clipped. Then, it came back, and her ears had to be removed. Sula wrote a book her experience with cancer at that time.  For a few years, Sula continued cancer-free. Then, bang!, her vet found sarcoma in her hip. It was caused by a vaccination she had received earlier. He removed the sarcoma surgically. And Sula was fine for a while, but it came back, bigger and more scary. Sula was referred to Animal Cancer Center in Monterey, where Dr. Arteaga came up with a new treatment, using sonar to break up the tumor. And that worked -- for nearly a year. Then, bang!, the sarcoma reappeared...

Reaching near-native proficiency in a foreign language is considered the grail by some and impossible by others in the foreign language education field. The bottom line is that regularly, though rarely compared with the total number of individuals studying a foreign language, language learners do reach that level. Consider presidential-level interpreters (from any country), United Nations interpreters and translators, and graduate professors (especially those known as professors of the practice) -- without near-native proficiency, these individuals could not adequately do their jobs on a regular basis. Very few books have been published on the topic of achieving near native proficiency, labeled distinguished language proficiency by the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages. The majority of them have been published by MSI Press LLC.  To see posts about these books, click HERE . The Journal for Distinguished Language Studies, shown here, accepts submissions on a rolling basi...

  Congratulations to Nanette Hucknall, whose book, How to Live from Your Heart , earned an honorable mention in the New York Book Festival.

  Beginning today and continuing through July 31, we will be offering a discount on Lamentations of the Heart through the Kindle Countdown program.  Find it HERE . Read more about Marti Wells-Smith and Lamentations of the Heart HERE .

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 focuses on what to do if a publisher tells you that your book needs work. Editors will rarely tell you this. It takes time for them to write back to you, and it takes time for them to give you specifics about your book's lack of merit for publication. How should you interpret their words when they actually communicate with you? If a publisher says that your book needs work (and nothing more), there are a few responses and interpretations: Generally, this is a kind (though it may not seem so) comment, helping you to understand why the book is being rejected rather than the typical "does not meet ou...

  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...