MSI Press Blog

  Now is a good time to take a few minutes away from running errands and other busyness and become reacquainted with MSI Press author, Joanna Charnas, who just updated her author page with new information, new photo, and nifty links. Joanna's four books ( Living Well with Chronic Illness , 100 Tips and Tools to Manage Chronic Illness , A Movie Lover's Search for Romance , and Tips, Tools, and Anecdotes to Help during a Pandemic ) have won a number of awards. You can link up with each of them on Joanna's updated page. For more posts about Joanna and her books, 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 th

Joanna J. Charnas is a social worker with over thirty years of experience as a licensed mental health provider. She received her master’s degree from Boston University School of Social Work in 1988 and has earned the highest level of social work licensure in California (Licensed Clinical Social Worker, 2001.) She has worked in numerous service sectors, all of which placed fragile people in her care and enhanced her clinical acumen and skills. Since 1995, she has worked specifically with people with mental and physical illnesses. She published on HuffPost Blog for two and a half years, and her writing has appeared in PopSugar, The San Francisco Review of Books, and SteadyHealth. More about her writing can be found at  www.joannacharnas.com Her first book ,   Living Well with Chronic Illness ,  was released August 25, 2015. Her second book,  1 00 Tips and Tools for Managing Chronic Illness , was released in April 2018. Her third book, A Movie Lover's Search for Romance

  During the 1970s, many of the girls in my high school had feathered blond hair, like Farrah Fawcett, who starred in the television show  Charlie's Angels   and was a huge celebrity at the time. Short, curvy, and dark haired, I couldn’t relate to her at all. I spent much of my free time in adolescence obsessively watching classic movies in art houses, among them the 1955 film  The Rose Tattoo , starring Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster. The day I saw that movie, I discovered a star I could relate to. She was dark and curvy, just like me. This year while lunching with my stepmother and aunt, I told them I’d always wanted to look like Anna Magnani. They both immediately exclaimed, “You do!” I was deeply gratified. I finally fulfilled my ideal of female beauty. We can spend our lives wanting to be something we’re not, or we can set our own standards. We don’t have to fit into what’s popular. I found a movie star I could relate to, and she provided the imag

My brother, Charles, visited Paris a few weeks earlier than I did in the spring of 1988. Before my trip, he instructed me three or four times to buy a French phrase book. I didn’t understand his insistence on this matter. He spoke fluent French, so his advice wasn’t based on his own needs. After being told for the umpteenth time to buy the book, I went to a bookstore and purchased one. This was two decades before smart phones were available, which can now translate for travelers. My brother must have been psychic, because my host in Paris, a friend from high school, had a family emergency and had to return home to the U.S. after the first day of my six-day visit. My trip to Paris would have been much more challenging without the little phrase book. Eight years later, I worked for a large AIDS Service Agency full of young people with extra cash. My colleagues were always darting off to Europe on vacation. I lent my little phrase book out several times, and it was always recei

Part of a series on the coronavirus pandemic written by MSI Press authors to share expertise, help, and hope,  Tips, Techniques, and Anecdotes to Help during a Pandemic  focuses on physical and mental well being during any time of crisis. Topics include meditation and mindfulness; positivity; managing setbacks; laughing at oneself; overcoming chal lenges; friends, family, and others; managing daily tasks; adaptive solutions; tricks and tools; and miscellaneous musings. Joanna is also author of: Living Well with Chronic Illness 100 Tips and Tools for Managing Chronic Illness and A Movie Lover's Search for Romance . More posts about and by Joanna Charnas may be found HERE .

  Excerpt from A Movie Lover's Search for Romance (Joanna Charnas) THE NEW GUY   You don’t always know when you’re experiencing burnout until you’re hip deep in its muck. You also don’t comprehend how completely addicting Internet dating is until you’re hooked. So if you find yourself burned out from Internet dating, as I did, the prudent thing is to give it a rest. Although I planned to take a break from Internet dating, I’d become too addicted to stop. It didn’t matter that I was emotionally exhausted from too many blind dates. Which is when Simon entered my life.  I met Simon on an Internet dating site. When we first spoke on the phone, he asked if I’d meet him that evening at a party given in honor of a couple of his friends. Simon explained that his schedule was booked for the rest of the week, but he wanted to meet me right away. The party started in mid-afternoon, and assuming I wouldn’t be enslaved and forced into the sex trade, I agreed to rendezvous at his friends’ house

Joanna Charnas, author of Living Well with Chronic Illness and 100 Tips and Tools for Managing Chronic Illbess, talks in this post about the common everyday things that can become really serious issues for those who are ill. Read her article in yoursnews here . Read more articles from Joanna here , along with her an interview with her.

Available as of today, on pre-order, at sale price!  Release date: June 15, 2020 Other books by Joanna: Living Well with Chronic Illness 100 Tips and Tools for Managing Chronic Illness Read posts by and about Joanna and her books on this blog: click HERE .

Making Artists: The National Theater Institute’s Influence on a Writer   If art moves us, the impact never departs. It strikes an emotional chord that resonates into the recesses of our psyche forever. That’s how fourteen weeks at the National Theater Institute (NTI) affected me.   In the fall of 1980, I was twenty years old, badly dressed, clumsy, and thirty pounds overweight. I took what I was certain would be a permanent leave of absence from my college, with little optimism about my future or myself. I felt lost. I had trained as a stage manager in high school and college, and I loved theater, but enrolling in The National Theater Institute, more than anything else, was a means to buy time while I struggled to figure out what to do with the next phase of my life.     The National Theater Institute, located at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, offered a comprehensive, semester long theater training program for college-age students. Our instructors we

Still on the move, MSI Press staff has reached San Diego -- attending a conference this weekend. San Diego is home to MSI Press author, Joanna Charnas. So, we met for lunch and fun at Tandoori House, and we talked about Joanna's forthcoming book, A Movie Lover's Search for Romance . And also about her wnning previous books:  Living Well with Chornic Illness   and  1 00 Tips and Tools for Managing Chronic Illness . And we made THREE podcasts! Check Joanna's book pages in a couple of weeks. We will place them there -- and on this blog (so do keep following our blog)! And if you want more than inside information, sign up for our newslettert!