MSI Press Blog

  The second edition of the award-winning book,  Good Blood  by Irit Schaffer, will be released soon. Hollywood Book Festival finalist Paris Book Festival finalist Book Excellence Award For more posts about Irit and her book, click  HERE . 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. 

This book itself contains excerpts from the best of MSI Press's publications on triumphing over difficulties. Want to brighten your day? Find out how others did! From Good Blood by Irit Schaffer -- As soon as I looked into his blue eyes, every cell in my body bubbled with joy. Yes, this must be love. I am in love for the first time. His are the bluest eyes I have ever seen. They are like the deep blue of the ocean on a clear and sunny day. My mom is sitting to my left, my sister, Edna, to my right, and I am falling in love. Ari Ben Canaan is his name. He is in charge of taking a boatload of people to Palestine. The boat, Exodus, is filled with Jewish Europeans planning to make their home in the soon to be independent State of Israel. Unfortunately, the British authorities have detained the boat in Cyprus. They are not allowing Exodus to complete its voyage to Palestine, and Ari has to take charge. His confidence is portrayed in his thin and muscular 5’9” frame. “We can g

  Chapter 2: Get Straight As This one has come out of the mouth of almost every parent ever. I’m sure cave parents back in the stone ages groused to their kids about how little Ugg in the next cave over brought down a bigger bison than they did and why can’t they practice hunting more. Once your kid enters school, the obvious goal on everyone’s mind is getting good grades. However, just like all of these sayings, the way you deliver the message can make all the difference. Why We Say It In 2011, Amy Chua came out with her extremely popular book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. [1] If for some reason you spent that year hiding under a rock (or in the North Korea style media blackout that accompanies the attempt to parent any child under four), it’s basically a love letter to the strict discipline the author accredits to a traditional Chinese upbringing. It includes rules such as kids aren’t allowed to play any instruments other than the piano or the violin, they aren’t allowed

  Excerpt from Good Blood: A Journey of Healing (Irit Schaffer): From: 1978 (Chapter 3) At 5:30 a.m., I wake up, and my head is pounding. A shooting wave of pain goes through my abdomen. Within thirty seconds of waking, I rush to the bathroom. I make it just in time.  Did I upset my stomach? Did anyone else get sick? I wonder. Ok, go back to sleep, Irit, I tell myself.   No sooner do I crawl under the down comforter than the shooting pain sears through my gut again. Almost instantly, I start to feel nauseous, and my hands get clammy. I bolt for the toilet once again, and this time I throw up.  What is going on? I wonder. It can’t be the food I ate because Barna and Jofie ate everything I did, and they’re ok. I would know if they were getting up.  One hour passes, and my back and belly are on fire. As I head to the bathroom for the umpteenth time, I hear footsteps. Barna’s kind Hungarian voice comes through the bathroom door, “Are you alright?”  I’m having trouble thinking of

Introduction: My Story When women with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) get pregnant, their RA goes into remission. At least, that’s what my doctor told my husband, Robert, and me when we went in to discuss the possibility of having a baby. At that time, we both were professors with busy careers. I was 28, and, according to my doctors, my RA was on “cruise control.” Thus, we were given a big “thumbs up” from the medical community to get pregnant. I would not trade our son for the world, but, boy, were they wrong! There was no remission for me, not unless remission means running head first into kidney failure and an abrupt pause in my career. After many months of discussions with baffled doctors, biopsies, and blood tests, I was diagnosed with Essential Mixed Cryoglobulinemia Type II—a complication of my RA that was causing kidney failure. I was officially the complicated, rare case “only found in medical journals.” In other words, my bewildered doctors and nurses all but labeled

  It is Tuesday. 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 digresses -- into the absurd, perhaps. Today, I sent for the third time, ARC labels to wone of our authors. The first time the labels disappeared. The second time, they were inexplicably directed to an IRS office in another state. Totally insane! Fingers crossed for a safe arrival this time. Today's experience reminded me of other unexpected, funny, and heartwarming experiences that have occurred over the 20 years MSI Press has been publishing. Here are some of my favorite, somewhat inexplicable stories. When You're Shoved from the Right, Look to Your Left: Metaphors of Islamic Humanism is a great little book, trul

Excerpt: First Pain Through the years, Binta often told people I was her “first pain.” I assumed it was because I was her first born, but the more I thought about it, I was not her primal pain. She was in pain long before I came along. As a child, I recall her telling me many times that she was the “black sheep” of her family. By my observation, she was a copper-colored, smooth-skinned beauty with dark, inquisitive eyes and long, thick hair. Knowing her siblings as I do, she may have seemed like a prickly-know-it-all in her conversations with them.       Binta also made statements to me, questioning her parentage, saying, “My aunt I got named after is really my birth mother.” She never said why she thought that. Other times, she’d say about her mother, my Nana, Dia Mae Black, “She didn’t love me; in fact, I think she hated me. That’s the reason my family and me seemed like a poor fit.” How awful! What a mindset to have about your own mother and family members!       Throug