MSI Press Blog

  (photo by Stacy Gentry) About Me and This Book I love Christmas! Who doesn’t? Everyone I know loves Christmas, but then they are all people. I am a cat, but I enjoy celebrating Christmas with my people friends and with my Boss.  Christmas is a special time for my Boss. He is the One and Only, you know, the One who brought His plan to life that first Christmas—except no one knew then it was Christmas.  As for me, if you have read either of my other books (if not, please do), you know as much about me as it is possible to know. For those who have not read them yet, I can tell you my tale in a nutshell. It is pretty simple, partly because the beginning is rather cloudy, and I only know what the people at the Mission Gift Shop remember about me some 12 years ago. Yes, I am getting to be quite a big girl now with my own set of life experiences.  It seems that I was always in San Juan Bautista, a beautiful Mission town in the Mexican tradition. Lots of Spanish spoken her...

Holidays   If you’re a newly bereaved parent of a deceased child and you haven’t encountered a major holiday yet—say Thanksgiving or Christmas, be prepared for a shock. The holidays can bring home the extent of your loss in a way that nothing else can. Having recently lost a child, you might not be thinking about the holiday or how it will affect you. This is a mistake. It is better to face it in advance and decide how you will handle the holiday. Will you decorate for Christmas as you’ve always done? Will you go to a relative’s house and try to get through the whole thing as quickly as possible? Or will you close up shop and absent yourself from the holiday completely, traveling to Cancun, Key West, or a neighborhood motel, with or without your spouse? Paulette Jarnagin lost her son Keith in a drowning accident six months before Christmas. Paulette, who admits to “always going overboard” at Christmas, didn’t want to celebrate the holiday that year, but her family and...

  Book Excerpt from  Since Sinai  by Shannon Gonyou (currently in Amazon Top 100 Jewish biographies) CHAPTER 1 “Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.” — John C. Maxwell I told my husband that I wanted to convert to Judaism on Christmas Eve. We were sitting in our Chevy Impala in a grocery store parking lot in Ann Arbor, Michigan when I broached the topic [BL1]   . We were living in Chicago at the time, but we had traveled back to Michigan for the holidays. Christmas gifts for our family members were toppling over in the back seat, and a tin box of snowman-shaped Christmas cookies from my mother-in-law rested heavily on my lap. We had just picked up some ingredient that my mom had forgotten to buy for Christmas Eve dinner, and we were supposed to be making a quick trip back to our hotel room to change clothes before heading to the celebration. I decided that during this quick ten-minute jaunt from a grocery store to the Extended Stay Br...

  The Christmas season has become a mixed set of emotions for us. My grandson was born Christmas Day 20 years ago -- extra annual joy! The brother of a young man we took for 6 years died Christmas eve this year of covid. This is the first year that our family is observing the holidays without our patriarch, Carl , and Murjan , our beloved cat. So, for sure, grief has wrapped itself around our holiday activities. Here, then, is an excerpt from Julie Potter's book, Harnessing the Power of Grief , that we have found insightful... Beginning to adjust You are not a stranger to this process. There are many times during your life when you have to adjust to and make your way in a new world: the first day of school, going away to college, getting a new job, marrying, moving to a new neighborhood, retiring and living in a new world with no colleagues and no 9-to-5 schedule, becoming ill or disabled at any age and living in a slower world with people surging on ahead of you, emigrating to a n...

  Click HERE  for previous Christmas even posts. Click HERE for posts about Christmas at the Mission, including excerpts, by the late Sula, Parish Cat at Old Mission -- in honor of Caturday. Click HERE for more Caturday pasts. 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. 

  Book Excerpt from  Since Sinai  by Shannon Gonyou (currently in Amazon Top 100 Jewish biographies) CHAPTER 1 (continued from May 14, 2025) Immediately after law school, I took part in a Holocaust studies trip to Germany and Poland with FASPE, or Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics. Through the program, I spent time studying Jewish history in Berlin and walking reverently through Auschwitz in Poland. Being at Auschwitz changed me, that much I’m sure of. Learning about the history of Judaism before, during, and after World War II was a moving experience. However, as much of an impact that the trip had, it wasn’t the one thing that made me want to become Jewish. In fact, it made me wonder if the realities of Jewish history would make it impossible to fit in as a brand-new member of the community.   I joined a sorority as an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan. Jewish students were heavily represented in the Greek Life popula...