Join WOW! For Some Fabulous Fall Blog Tours!
It’s hard to believe
that fall will soon be upon us ~ lucky for me; I live in Wisconsin so fall
means sweet corn, apple picking, and some fun jumping in leaves with the
kiddos! It also brings the arrival of our new baby (due September 30th)
and in the midst of all this, I have 4 WOW! Blog Tours I want to share with
you. Please let me know what dates work best for you and I’ll make sure you’re
included.
Hugs,
~Crystal
Date you prefer:
Book Title:
Hyperlink to your blog:
Type of involvement: (ie: review + give away or guest post +
give away)**if you choose a guest post, please let me know which title you
prefer:
And your choices are…
Book Title: The Goodbye Year
Author: Toni
Piccinini (Seal Press Pub. October 2013)
Genre: Health
& Well Being
WOW! Blog Tour Dates: 10/7/2013-11/7/2013
Book Hashtag: #TGYPiccinini
Book Details:
·
Paperback: 264 pages
·
Publisher: Seal Press (September 10, 2013)
·
Language: English
·
ISBN-10: 1580054862
·
ISBN-13: 978-1580054867
Book Summary: For many mothers, a child’s senior year brings about a serious
look back on the past eighteen. Every event—from Halloween to Mother’s
Day—becomes The Last Time.
Toni Piccinini knows exactly what that’s like, and
in The Goodbye Year, she
offers the loving support every soon-to-be Empty Nester needs. Think of Toni as
your bossy-but-loving Italian auntie, with modern sensibilities and a packed
pantry. With the wisdom she’s acquired from saying goodbye three times to her
own children, she reassuringly holds your hand while encouraging you through
the insanity of the college application process, the rejections and the
acceptances, and the teary dorm drop-offs. Even better, she reminds every
mother that the best is yet to come—freedom, creativity, flexibility, and the
Me Years.
Author Bio:
My
writing career started when I stapled my first "book" together and
launched it at a reading attended by my brother, Scotty, and our Boxer,
Lonesome. The title-less story was a mash-up of Hansel and Gretel, The Six
Swans, and a Box Car Children adventure, with the protagonists (sister,
brother, and dog) risking everything in their quest for a magical lump of coal
that would save the town. It was an immediate success. During the fifty years
between my first and second book, "The Goodbye Year: Wisdom and Culinary
Therapy to Survive Your Child's Senior Year of High School (and Reclaim the YOU
of You)" I have--in no order of importance or chronology--opened a
"Top 100" San Francisco restaurant, published scientific articles on
the efficacies of antibiotics, sang the National Anthem at high school football
games, published essays, recipes, and cookbook reviews, and sent three children
off to college. I live in Marin County California, which is a long way from my
Western Pennsylvania hometown, Heilwood. I am busy on my next book, which may
revisit the power found in a magical lump of coal. Thank you for checking in.
Finding Toni online:
List of Guest Post Topics:
-Mothering Teens
-How to Rediscover
Oneself Again after Your Kids Leave Home
-Cooking/Food/Recipes
to get through certain times in life
-How the Goodbye Year
came to be/ writing process
-Your Teens senior
year what to expect/how to cope, etc
Book Title: Swimming with Maya (Dream of Things Pub. March 2013)
Author: Eleanor
Vincent
Genre: Memoir/Parenting
WOW! Blog Tour Dates: 10/14/2013-11/15/2013
Book Hashtag: #SWMaya
Book Details:
·
Print Length: 340 pages
·
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0988439042
·
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
·
Publisher: Dream of Things
(March 26, 2013)
·
Sold by: Amazon Digital
Services, Inc.
·
Language: English
·
ASIN: B00BCMCUX0
Book Summary: In a memoir that has been
called "heartbreaking and heart-healing," Eleanor Vincent shares
an inspiring true story of courage, creativity, faith, and sheer
tenacity as she seeks to find balance after unthinkable tragedy.
Previously available only in hardcover, Swimming
with Maya demonstrates the remarkable process of
healing after the traumatic death of a loved one. Eleanor Vincent raised her
two daughters, Maya and Meghan, virtually as a single-parent. Maya, the eldest,
was a high-spirited and gifted young woman. As a toddler, Maya was an angelic
tow-head, full of life and curiosity. As a teenager, Maya was energetic and
independent - and often butted heads with her mother. But Eleanor and Maya were
always close and connected, like best friends or sisters, but always also
mother and daughter.
Then at age 19, Maya mounts a horse bareback as a
dare and, in a crushing cantilever fall, is left in a coma from which she will
never recover. Eleanor's life is turned upside down as she struggles to make
the painful decision about Maya's fate.
Ultimately Eleanor chooses to donate Maya's
organs. Years later, in one of the most poignant moments you will ever read
about, Eleanor has the opportunity to hear her daughter's heart
beat in the chest of the heart recipient. Along the way, Eleanor re-examines
her relationship with her daughter, as well as the experiences that shaped
Eleanor as a woman and as a mother to Maya.
An inspirational/motivational true
story recommended for anyone who has experienced tragedy, who is grappling
with traumatic experiences of the past, or who wants to better understand the
strength and healing power of the human spirit.
Author Bio:
Eleanor Vincent is an award-winning writer whose debut memoir, Swimming with Maya: A Mother’s Story, was
nominated for the Independent Publisher Book Award and was reissued by Dream of
Things press early in 2013. She writes about love, loss, and grief recovery
with a special focus on the challenges and joys of raising children at any age.
Called “engaging” by Booklist, Swimming
with Mayachronicles the life and death of Eleanor’s nineteen-year-old
daughter, Maya, who was thrown from a horse and pronounced brain-dead at the
hospital. Eleanor donated her daughter’s organs to critically ill patients and
poignantly describes her friendship with a middle-aged man who was the
recipient of Maya’s heart.
Since the initial
publication of Swimming with Maya in 2004, Eleanor has
been a national spokesperson on grief recovery and organ donation, appearing on
CNN and San Francisco’s Evening Magazine. She has been featured in
the San Francisco Chronicle, and been interviewed on radio and
television programs around the country.
She was born in
Cleveland, Ohio and attended the University of Minnesota School of Journalism
and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, where she
occasionally teaches writing workshops on creative nonfiction and memoir.
Her essays appear in the anthologies At the End of Life:
True Stories about How we Die(edited by Lee Gutkind); This I
Believe: On Motherhood; and Impact: An Anthology of Short Memoirs. They celebrate the unique and complicated bonds
between mothers and daughters, making hard decisions as a parent – whether your
child is 14 or 40 – and navigating midlife transitions with grace and
authenticity.
She lives in Oakland,
California.
Finding Eleanor online:
List of Guest Post Topics:
-Surviving the
Unthinkable Loss of a Child
-Why Writing Swimming
with Maya Helped Me Heal
-Thoughts on Organ
Donation
-Tips on Writing
Creative Non Fiction
-What Every Memoir
Writer Should Know
-Motherhood Then and
Now
Book Title: Bringing in Finn
Author: Sara
Connell (Seal Press Pub. October 2013)
Genre: Memoir
/ Family
WOW! Blog Tour Dates: 10/21/2013-11/21/2013
Book Hashtag: #BIFinn
Book Details:
·
Hardcover: 336 pages
·
Publisher: Seal Press (August 28, 2012)
·
Language: English
·
ISBN-10: 1580054102
·
ASIN: B00BJYM6IU
Book Summary: Bringing in Finn is an incredibly moving story of surrogacy and how it
created a bond like no other between a mother and daughter
In February 2011, 61-year-old Kristine Casey delivered the
greatest gift of all to her daughter, Sara Connell: Sara’s son, Finnean. At
that moment, Kristine—the gestational carrier of Sara and her husband Bill’s
child—became the oldest woman ever to give birth in Chicago. Bringing
in Finn: An Extraordinary Surrogacy Story tells this modern family’s
remarkable surrogacy story.
After trying to conceive naturally without success, Sara and her
husband Bill dedicated years to a variety of fertility treatments—but after
Sara lost a third pregnancy (including the loss of twins at twenty-two weeks),
they started to give up their hope. When Kristine offered to be their
surrogate, they were shocked; but Kristine was clear that helping Sara become a
mother felt like a calling, something she felt inspired to do.
In this achingly honest memoir, Connell recounts the tragedy and
heartbreak of losing pregnancies; the process of opening her heart and mind to
the idea of her sixty-one-year-old mother carrying her child for her; and the
profound bond that blossomed between mother and daughter as a result of their
unique experience together.
Bringing in Finn is the true story of a couple who wanted
nothing more than to have a family and a mother who would do anything for her
daughter. After unsuccessfully trying to conceive naturally, years of fertility
treatments, miscarriage and a late term loss of twins, Sara and Bill Connell
were emotionally and financially depleted and at a loss as to how they could
have a family. When Sara’s mother Kristine offered to be their surrogate, the
three embark on the journey that would culminate in Finnean’s miraculous birth
and complete a transformation of their at-one-time strained mother-daughter
relationship. - See more at: http://www.saraconnell.com/books/#sthash.2dbPO5eJ.dpuf
Bringing in Finn is the true story of a couple who wanted
nothing more than to have a family and a mother who would do anything for her
daughter. After unsuccessfully trying to conceive naturally, years of fertility
treatments, miscarriage and a late term loss of twins, Sara and Bill Connell
were emotionally and financially depleted and at a loss as to how they could
have a family. When Sara’s mother Kristine offered to be their surrogate, the
three embark on the journey that would culminate in Finnean’s miraculous birth
and complete a transformation of their at-one-time strained mother-daughter
relationship. - See more at: http://www.saraconnell.com/books/#sthash.2dbPO5eJ.dpuf
Author Bio:
Sara
Connell is an author, speaker and life coach with a private practice in
Chicago. She is a frequent contributor in the media and has appeared on Oprah,
NPR, WGN, FOX News Chicago- upcoming: Good Morning America, Nightline an The
View. Sara's writing has been featured in: Elle Magazine, Good Housekeeping,
Parenting, Psychobabble, Evolving Your Spirit and Mindful Metropolis magazines.
Her first book- Bringing in Finn; an Extraordinary Surrogacy story- nominated
for Book of the Year 2012 by Elle Magazine- is Sara's first book. (Sept 4, 2012
Seal Press)
Finding Sara online:
List of Guest Post Topics:
-Her son, Finn's,
extraordinary birth story.
-How to cope with
grief/loss related to loosing her twins late-term and having
miscarriages.
-Their fertility
journey though IVF & surrogacy
-Her unique
Mother/Daughter relationship with her mom
-Her coaching/writing
life
Book Title: Home World
Author: Bonnie
Milani
Genre: Science
Fiction / Fantasy
WOW! Blog Tour Dates: 11/18/2013-12/23/2013
Book Hashtag: #HWorld
Book Summary:
Amid the ruins of a post-apocalyptic Waikiki, Jezekiah Van Buren
thinks he’s found a way to restore Earth – Home World to the other worlds of
the human Commonwealth – to her lost glory.
Ingenious even by the standards of the genetically enhanced
Great Family Van Buren, Jezekiah has achieved the impossible: he has
arranged a treaty that will convert Earth's ancient enemies, the Lupans, to her
most powerful allies. Not only will the treaty terms
make Earth rich again, it will let him escape the Ring that condemns
him to be Earth's next ruler. Best of all, the treaty leaves him
free to marry Keiko Yakamoto, the Samuari-trained woman he
loves. Everything’s set. All Jezekiah has to do is convince
his xenophobic sister to accept the Lupan's alpha warlord in marriage. Before,
that is, the assassin she's put on his tail succeeds in killing
him. Or the interstellar crime ring called Ho Tong succeed in
raising another rebellion. Or before his ruling relatives
on competing worlds manage to execute him for treason.
But Jezekiah was bred for politics and trained to
rule. He’s got it all under control. Until his Lupan warlord-partner
reaches Earth. And suddenly these two most powerful men find
themselves in love with the same woman. A woman who just may
be the most deadly assassin of them all.
Author Bio:
I
still remember the book that made me decide I could out-write another writer:
it was a junior reader's biography of Sir William Harvey, the 17th century
English physician credited (in the West) with discovering how blood circulates.
After about 30 pages of telling myself "I can write better than
that!" So I grabbed a crayon that just happened to be blue and started
editing. I was maybe 7 at the time. And unfortunately for my juvenile bottom it
was a library book. I followed the dream through college and after grad school,
freelancing feature articles for newpapers along the East Coast. Even wrote a
cover story for Science Digest! Only life and grown up responsibilities caught
up with me by my late twenties and I put writing away with too many of my other
dreams while I followed a career track. Wasn't until I lost my whole family
that I realized story telling wasn't something i just wanted to do - it's the
gift God gave me to do. So here I am: a middle-aged pudge working on getting
back into a writer's kind of real life.
Finding Bonnie online:
bonnie.milani@yahoo.com
List of Guest Post Topics:
1. So who ARE
you, anyway?
2. Finding Writing
Time
3. Juggling a
Writing Career & Self Employment
4. Writing your way to health: Finding an Emotional Happy Ground in a
Health Crisis
5. The
Importance of Networking for Authors
6. Where do you
get your ideas?
7. How do you
deal with rejection?
8. Do you
believe in writer or critiquing groups?
9. What makes a
good critique?
10. Story-telling:
structure vs seat-of-the-pants