MSI Press Blog

  (photo by Frank Perez) 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's topic is about preparing a book for submission. We are talking here about the final version that gets sent to the publisher (after the inquiry and proposal, after the acceptance and contract). There are reasons that you would want to take the extra time to make sure that the book is just as ship-shape as possible: Most publishers have a clause in the contract that allows them to turn down a book after submission if it is not of good enough quality. The cleaner the book, the less expensive for the publisher to copyedit -- should you want to submit another book later, you will be remembere

  Dr. Frederic Craigie, author of Weekly Soul , gave an interview on the topic of Spirituality, Resilience, and Well-Being on the Five to Thrive podcast . Click on the link to listen. For more posts on Dr. Craigie and his book, click HERE .                

  INTRODUCTION  On a balmy afternoon in July, the weather turned ugly shards of lightning, booming thunder, roiling green and black clouds, and an angry wind that shook our trailer unmercifully. Forecasted tornado warnings in the Edmonton area had me peering through rain streaked windows at a darkening sky, scanning for dreaded vortexes that would prompt a hasty retreat to our campground’s washroom.  A little brown head bunted my leg, chimpanzee-esque eyes expressing concern. “Don’t worry,” I said, “The odds of dying in a tornado are 20 million to one.” It’s the ONE I’m worried about, she replied, continuing her frantic pacing.  An hour later, sanity returned with mottled gray skies and peaceful prairie breezes. Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, said it best: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” That’s good—being stronger may have helped us survive even worse weather yet to come, Canada’s “Storm of the Century.”  In 1960, John Steinbeck traveled across th

  Rescuing cats can be take skill and patience in large quantity. For the skill part, we refer you to our earlier post, Rescuing/Adopting Street Cats . Intrepid, shown here, was rescued when his street mother died and he was still a very tiny kitten; his young age made adjustment easier for him than for an older cat. One of the older cats in our house adopted him and raised him, and they remained father and son until Intrepid met an early death as an 11-year-old from cancer three years ago. To this day, his "father" Murjan mourns him. For more posts on cats, cat books, and things feline, click HERE .

The US Review of Books is offering a series of articles on how to improve writing skills. The columns are very practical and pragmatic, highly recommended for first-time authors. Take a look at one of the columns  HERE . For more posts about US Review of Books and USR reviews of MSI Press books, click HERE .

  Envisioning and Working for Our Future The point of this brief concluding chapter is not to attempt to provide answers. Rather, things are so intense and so difficult right now that it can be hard even to think of the future. Yet with everything so upside down, I believe we have an important opportunity to consider what we want to see in the future. A “new normal” is going to come out of this. How do we want that to look? It’s, of course, very human for us to shrug and say, “This just isn’t the time for that.” But as Hillel would remind us, “If not now, when?” There will be a new normal. There’s no disputing that. Do we simply want to stumble into it? Or do our children and their children deserve better? I have no children. But I care about yours. And I deeply believe they deserve a healthy “new normal”.             So, what I’d ask of us now is for us to begin pondering some questions. Below are just a few that occur to me. What’s important are not these questions to the exclusi

  (Fred Craigie and his wife/Catching Health podcast/website) " Living a Meaningful, Joyful and Peaceful Life " is the name of an interview by Dr. Fred Craigie, conducted by Diane Atwood on her podcast, Catching Health . Dr. Craigie is the author of Weekly Soul . For more posts about Dr. Craigie and his book, click HERE .