MSI Press Blog

Mary Ann is producing my first short film and just launched the crowdfunding campaign today.  It is a female led horror short film about abandonment, familial resentment and a tentacle monster.  Take a look, and if you feel like you could help Mary Ann just a little, she -- and we -- would be grateful.  https://seedandspark.com/fund/ heartthrobmovie#story For more posts that include Mary Ann, 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@ms...

MSI Press staff is on the move -- south to San Diego for a conference. So, we stopped in Burbank, at Tallyrand Restaurant, for lunch with copyeditor Mary Ann Raemisch and author Andrwe Harvey (Tucker and Me). From left to right: Carl Leaver, typesetter & designer Betty Lou Leaver, managing editor Mary Ann Raemisch, copyeditor Andrew Harvey, author

  Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie. -15-   When Native American medicine men talk to the sick, they usually ask three questions: When was the last time you sang? When was the last time you danced? When was the last time you told your story?   Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat   I grew up with loving parents who were passionate about music and whose tastes were… proper. My mother had been a professional opera singer in her younger years and played quite respectable classical piano into her seventies. My dad’s piano proficiency was quite a bit south of his wife’s, but he enjoyed playing and found his own niche and joy in performing choral music. When the radio was tuned to the Beatles and Monkees in my friend’s homes, in my home, it was the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in B ♭ minor. When I was in seventh or eighth grade, my parents signed me up for after-school d...

  This week's blog post is the next in the series of book back stories and is the story behind Passing On: Preparing for the Afterlife  by Joanna Romer. From the publisher -  Joanna Romer, an author who had already written seven books for us and was, at the time, working on two others, Helping the Disabled Veteran and Life after Losing a Child (with Pat Young ), which were ultimately finished and published, came to me with a book proposal for a book on preparing for death. As a popular MSI Press author and retired professor of journalism, her books were well researched, and I was intrigued by how she might go about researching this one. But go about it she did, resulting in another popular book. Little did I know that she might have a very personal reason for writing this book. She passed away not longer after it was released, and her two final books were released posthumously, one with the help of one our copyeditors, who is already a developmental editor, Mary Ann Rae...

  This week's blog post is the next in the series of book back stories and is the story behind Helping the Disabled Veteran (Romer). From the editor -  Little did Joanna know that this would be the last full book she ever wrote. (She published ten books with MSI Press.) In fact, the final chapter was written by Mary Ann Raemisch, one of our copyeditors who had edited Joanna's previous books. Joanna was in the process of revising the book (originally written on the broader topic of all veterans, then deliberately targeted toward one of the more forgotten groups of vets -- those who ended up disabled from their war experiences) when she died unexpectedly. The revision was complete except for the final chapter. A colleague of Joanna was able to find and download the book from Joanna's computer files. I approached Mary Ann, knowing that she was familiar with Joanna's style, given her extensive experience copyediting Joanna's work, and asked if she thought she could emu...

  Excerpt from Chapter 6 I didn’t convert for marriage, but I think my husband’s soul was meant to convert with mine. The day that I met Travis, I was 16 years old and had just been elected all-school treasurer of our public high school. I was wearing khakis and a white short-sleeved blouse from Hollister to look “professional,” and my hair—which my Conair straightener pulverized every morning—laid totally flat against my head. He was a year older than I and had been elected school president. I never saw boys my age wearing suits and ties, so I was enamored with his sharp outfit. He had choppy, light brown hair and nerdy glasses. He reached out and shook my hand. I decided on the spot that I was in love with him.   Alas, Travis had a girlfriend already, so I spent the rest of high school being hopelessly in love with him (as in, the “crying while listening to Taylor Swift” kind of love). Sometimes, I pretended that I needed a lift to various student government events even thou...