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Health & Fitness

Next Stop on the Blog Hop

Meet 3 fabulous female authors, and find out how and why I do what I do.

 

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I love to try new things, especially the kinds that have the potential to make me laugh. So when my hilarious author pal, Lori Brudner Duff, invited me to participate in a female writers Blog Hop I jumped right on board without hesitation. Or details.  Impulsive? Maybe. But sitting by myself in front of a keyboard most days makes collaborating with other writers really appealing! Especially ones whose work I admire.

 

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I’ll be honest. I was green with envy the day I read Lori’s newly released Mismatched Shoes and Upside Down Pizza. It’s so funny and really hard to put down. And it was beating out well-known humor authors by the 2nd day of its release. It didn’t feel fair! Here Lori is a full-time and dang good attorney, a part-time judge, and she’d found time to create a top-selling book to boot. (Pun intended, poor though it may be.) When she’s not lawyering and judging, Lori is, in her own words, “the mother of the two most perfect children in the world, except when they annoy the bejeebers out of me,” and “married to a retired police helicopter pilot (I know, cool, right?)” She loves to squeeze every little bit of joy and laughter out of life by making herself laugh, and she thrives on sweeping others up in her mirth, too.

 

Find Lori’s delightful book, Mismatched Shoes and Upside Down Pizza here. Be sure to check out her laugh-a-minute posts on the Loganville Patch and Monroe Local News.

 

I have the pleasure of introducing three other fabulous female authors, Adrienne LaCava, Jerilyn Willin, and Brenda Stockdale.

 

Adrienne grew up in central Texas during the sixties when Nancy Drew mysteries turned her into an aspiring novelist. She used her Business/Journalism degree from UNT to forge a long career writing corporate PR and training pieces in healthcare and banking. But her yen for creating stories never faded, and ten years ago she began to study fiction at night through SMU.

 

Anyone who can answer the question “Where were you when JFK was shot?” will immediately see how well Adrienne captured the time leading up to and after our 35th President’s assassination in her coming of age thriller No One Can Know.  It’s a good read with well-developed characters and a plot that zings right along. Adrienne researched her subject well. Her fictional events match up to known facts and many of the bizarre and unexplained “crazier than fiction” actual occurrences in and around Dallas, and in and including our government servants and agencies. I met Adrienne at a writer’s conference when she was in the process of writing her masterpiece, and waited with great eagerness to read the finished product. It didn’t disappoint! Pick up a copy via her website, and stop by her blog.

 

Adrienne lives in Dallas Texas with her husband and two highly amusing rescued mutts. She relishes regular visits from her children and grandson. While she’s always writing or reading, she remains available for jetting away on adventures at the drop of a hat.

 

Jerilyn Willin has a successful performance consulting and coaching business located in metro Chicago, and is the author of two completely different books.

She’s an extremely competent and accomplished business professional. I know because I’ve known Jerilyn since we earned our masters degrees in Industrial Relations together at Loyola University of Chicago. We also worked together in Human Resources in the banking industry. I won’t specify the years, but suffice it to say the shoulder pads on our business suits would have fit an NFL linebacker. I highly recommend her wonderful journaling book, Deep, Deeper, Deeper Still. It’s a great guide to awareness, loaded with thought provoking prompts that will help you in your professional and personal life. You can pick up a copy on her website. I recommend signing up for her excellent newsletter while you’re there. And be sure to check out Jerilyn's blog..

 

Since I’ve worked with Jerilyn and count her among my favorite friends I also know her to be wildly creative and witty. So I wasn’t surprised by how much I enjoyed her swash-buckling romantic adventure novel, Unless a Love Be Free. It’s not your usual set-in-England-man-of-noble-birth-meets-poor-but-spunky-heroine story.  It is the tale of two people, prisoners of their pasts, who share a dream of freedom.  When they meet, each believes freedom is to be found somewhere other than where they are. This book is a real page-turner that will have you rooting for a happy outcome. Pick up a copy here and lose yourself in this marvelous story.

 

Brenda Stockdale is amazing! And so is her book, You Can Beat the Odds. She is the Director of Behavioral Medicine at Radiotherapy Clinics of Georgia, a Vantage Oncology affiliate and a nationally recognized pioneer in the practical application of psychoneuroimmunology. If you’re thinking, “Huh?” keep reading.

 

When I met Brenda I was helping a loved one with a debilitating illness. Her book gave me the skills to help my loved one and myself through to recovery. I can’t recommend it highly enough for anyone who wants to reduce stress in a healthy and natural way. Pick up a copy here. And visit her website for lots of great health information and free stress-reduction tools.

 

In addition to her private practice, Brenda is a consultant for corporate and health care organizations. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Behavioral Science and Health Psychology from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, completed a clinical training program in Mind/Body Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and is the recipient of a Hambidge Fellowship.

 

Got all four books? Great! Then you’re ready to read the spell-binding answers I’ve crafted to the official blog-hop questions:

 

 

1. What am I working on?  Tons of things, as usual, and mostly centered around helping busy people to lighten their loads. I’m actively growing my freelance writing business through which I help entrepreneurs and small business owners gain visibility to promote their businesses. I’ve got a new touchscreen cookbook in the works, focusing on some fabulous salads, and continuing to add to my A-La-Carte Recipe Ensembles. But I have a huge exciting goal of finishing the tweaks to my novel about a baby-boomer middle child caught in mid-life struggles.

 

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre? My cookbooks are unique because they’re smart. They’re touchscreen books and all linked up to useful resources that help busy people cook healthy, delicious and healthy food. And they do all of the work for you—almost! Ditto with my A-La-Carte recipes.

 

My freelance writing services free busy people from the drudgery of producing a constant stream of relatable content, and get it in front of a large and relevant audience.

 

And my novel is poignant and touching. It deals with heartbreaking issues, but finds believable ways to leave readers laughing.

 

3. Why do I write what I do?  I love to write. I love to help. I love to share. And I love to have fun. I do that in everything I write, including my novel. I hope that particular project will help people dealing with parenting and reverse parenting to know that they are not alone on their journeys and that laughing about it helps.

 

4. How does my writing process work? I’m pretty organized. I schedule out my work 2-3 months in advance so I know what articles I need to write each week. I use one day each month for my Eve Women’s Interest blog, one week to write articles for my food blogs, and some time each day to work on client projects. I schedule time for marketing, networking and working on my novel. It sounds pretty anal, but it reduces my stress.

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