MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from The Widower's Guide to a New Life   by Joanna Romer - INTRODUCTION Learning to Be Alone When we lose a loved one—a friend or relative—our first reaction after the pain is usually atavistic: how will this affect me ? When we lose a spouse, however, no such reaction is possible. The grieving widower or widow soon becomes aware that this loss is catastrophic in a different way: it’s more like losing a part of oneself, one’s arms or legs. We keep waiting for that dear one to reappear, we want to claim her or him—until we realize this isn’t going to happen. We’re alone. Not only are we in pain but also we’re alone. For the widower, in particular, this can be quite a shock. Accustomed to having a “right hand” or equal partner always around, the newly bereaved man can be thrown into confusion. He has not realized his level of co-dependency. Suddenly, he’s facing life without his spouse in a thousand different ways, and he is devastated. What can you do when your be

  excerpt from A Widower's Guide to a New Life (Romer) -  Self-Esteem What gives you self-esteem? Is it wearing a clean shirt and well-polished shoes when you’re heading out to dinner with a friend, whether male or female? Is it the knowledge that you can still be useful as you fix your neighbor’s lawn mower, or maybe even her computer?  Is it the fact that the woman in the grocery store smiled at you when you let her go ahead of you in line, or the realization that you can still beat your old pal Phil on the tennis court after 31 years? All of these things (and more) can contribute to self-esteem, a very useful commodity for a widower to have. Chances are, if you’ve lost your wife recently, your self-esteem has taken a beating. When our typical routine is drastically altered and we find ourselves struggling with everyday events, one of the first things to plummet is our opinion of ourselves. That good opinion, that high self-regard, is very important in the process of healing. Mo

Extracted from photo by M. Katherine Shear, M.D. See original photo with words and blog article at aspire.com .   Whether they die in war, from illness, by suicide, or as a result end-of-life issues, their loss affects relatives, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and colleagues in  devastating ways. The following books are gentle but helpful treatments of the issues of bereavement and grief. Damascus amid the War by Muna Imady Written by popular author, Muna Imady, whose book, Syrian Folktales, has delighted an uncountable number of readers outside of Syria, Damascus amid the War tells the very human story of the devolution of a society. The book containts 29 pre-war poins, vibrant with imagery of daily life in a robust Damascus. The 100 war poems that follow show the devastating affect on the people who navigate a daily existence after war came. This is a posthumous publication, containing Muna’s very last works and an introduction by her mother, Elaine Imady, author of Road to Dama

What better gift for a widowed father on Father's Day than a book leading to a new way of being, a way of moving past the trauma of losing a spouse? The Widower's Guide to a New Life by Joanna Romer, which relates the experience of ten bereaved men, has been praised by Library Journal , US Review of Books , MidWest Book Review , and Foreword Reviews . Selected as a finalist for the Book of the Year Award. Available from online bookstores, retail stores, kindle, and the MSI Press webstore. Read more about The Widower's Guide to a New Life HERE and blogposts/excerpts about widowers from this book and other MSI Press publications  HERE . Read posts about Joanna and her other books HERE .

  What better gift for a widowed father on Father's Day than a book leading to a new way of being, a way of moving past the trauma of losing a spouse? The Widower's Guide to a New Life  by Joanna Romer, which relates the experience of ten bereaved men, has been praised by  Library Journal ,  US Review of Books ,  MidWest Book Review , and  Foreword Reviews . Selected as a finalist for the  Book of the Year Award. Available from online bookstores, retail stores, kindle, and the MSI Press webstore. Read more about  The Widower's Guide to a New Life  HERE  and blogposts/excerpts about widowers from this book and other MSI Press publications  HERE . Read posts about Joanna and her other books  HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC monthly newsletter (recent releases, sales/discounts, awards, reviews, Amazon top 100 list, author advice, and more -- stay up to date) Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check ou

  With cancer, it does happen. Many stories do not have happy endings, and some endings come sooner than we would like. MSI Press has published several books on bereavement. Broader in scope than the experiences of those who have lost loved ones to cancer, they share many, if not most, of the emotions of those who have grieve for those medical science could not save -- and they give hope and a wide range of options of how to go on and LIVE.  Harnessing the Power of Grief (Julie Potter) get the book or ebook In this book, Julie Potter traces back decades the research on understanding and coping with grief, which she describes as a natural human response to loss. Pulling from the work of Worden, the author prescribes four tasks for those in grief to use in managing their grief. She also walks the reader through special situations like tragic loss without warning. A book for those who are grieving and those who are walking with grievers. Read more posts about Julie and her book HERE . Lif

Marty: Mr. Nice Guy  This chapter about Marty will be short, mainly because although he was a very nice man, he didn’t challenge me intellectually. Even though we dated for 2 1/2 years I really don’t remember any life-changing events or conversations that we had together. Perhaps the excitement that Tony brought to my life kept me from giving Marty a fair chance, but I just couldn’t picture myself with Marty for the long haul. I met Marty when a friend of mine, 80-something-yearold Barbara, begged me to go to her daughter’s high school reunion with her daughter Susan. Susan wanted to go, but since she lived out of state and hadn’t kept in contact with anyone in her high school class, she didn’t know anyone to ask so that she wouldn’t have to walk in alone. I didn’t even know Barbara’s daughter and felt very squeamish about attending a reunion like that with another woman for fear everyone there would think we were a lesbian couple. Remember, this was in the early 90’s. Things

  Just released -- the audiobook for The Widower's Guide to a New Life by Joanna Romer. This book was a finalist for the Book of the Year Award. 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 . Planning on self-publishing and don't know where to start? Our  author au pair  services will mentor you through the process. 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. Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our  Authors' Pages .

  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, we step away from our weekly format to tell a couple of stories that might be revealing and helpful to authors who think that the only ways to get a book published are through the help of a literary agent, direct contact with a publisher, or self-publishing. Likely, very few authors think they might be contacted by a publisher and asked to write a book. But it does happen. How it happens, though, tends to be an "oh, by the way" that comes up as a publisher's need or as a publisher's insight about opportunity. Thre examples come from our publishing house.  When the pandemic broke out, there seemed