Continue reading »]]> Today Solace in So Many Words is one year old. In addition to commemorating that milestone, we also have a new reason to celebrate.

Earlier this week we received the news that Solace in So Many Words is the Winner in the Anthology category of the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

Yippee!

The final announcements about the winning books and grand prize winner will be published at the Next Generation Indie Awards website in the next few weeks. I will keep you posted.

Solace in So Many Words will be listed as a Winner in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards catalog which will be distributed at Book Expo America (BEA) in New York. All finalists and winners are invited to attend an awards reception at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on Monday, June 4th (during BEA).

Who knows? Maybe I’ll go to NYC to receive the award medal in person.

I also have high hopes because SISMW is a finalist (in the anthology category) for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award (BOYA). ForeWord will formally announce the 2011 Gold, Silver, and Bronze Award Winners, as well as the Editor’s Choice Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction, and the Independent Publisher of the Year Award at American Library Association’s (ALA) annual conference in Anaheim, CA, June 23.  (So it may be a West Coast trip will be in order too.)

Thank you for making this a great year!

Since birthdays are a time to reminisce, I will look back in the year in the next blog post. Today I will celebrate (and maybe make a birthday wish for the coming year).

Thank you again for your readership and support of Solace in So Many Words (I cannot say it enough.)

Continue reading »]]> I woke up this morning thinking it was time for me to post. I have been struck with something like spring fever. Only instead of making me feel energetic and spring-y, I have been ready to cocoon with a book.  How cool it is that this morning I discovered my garden, the bridal wreath bushes and flowering lilac in particular, is attracting lots of butterflies. So I got my camera and began shooting.  I took as many photos as they do at fashion shoots, and I swear a couple of these beauties were playing up to the camera. All the pics are posted in as Glimpses of Solace.

It occurred to me that maybe these aren’t butterflies but some kind of moth, and I did a little research on the subject, not enough to yield the scientific name, but enough to give you info on a great source: The Chicago Botanic Gardens. I also found out through the local news that the warm temperatures in March fueled a butterfly boom in the Chicago area so the yellow-tipped mourning cloak and red admiral are already sipping nectar from lilac bushes and apple trees, which bloomed ahead of schedule this year.  As to the exact Lepidoptera that posed for me, I am not going to venture a guess. Butterfly or moth by any name, all I know is it is beauty in bounty.

I have had a few professional disappointments lately and so have my writer friends, so I could easily find a lesson in this butterfly story but I’ll spare you (and me) any stale epiphanies and tell you what I have been reading. It is a varied lot.  I have been a Russell Simmons fan for quite some time.  As far as I am concerned he puts his money where his mouth is, and he has built a successful business empire while trying to be a good and generous citizen. So I decided to buy his book Super Rich. When I experienced professional disappointment (first through a friend’s experience and then through my own rejections), I thought of what Uncle RUSH has to say: “Through constantly  wanting things to be different–our careers, our loves lives, our finances, our bodies, and our relationships with the world–we unintentionally impede our own progress. In fact, it could be said that needing things to be different is the cause of all suffering.”

Another book I recently finished is Jane Gardam’s Old Filth.  Dickensian is a word used in describing this book.Once I got into it, I enjoyed reading about Old Filth and his life as a Raj orphan and witness to many historic events.  BTW, FILTH stands for “Failed in London, Try Hong Kong.” The book has all kinds of clever inside jokes and insights into the lives of Brits during the last century. Both the writing and the story are rich.

Currently I am reading A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava.  The book has made the news because it was self published and received so many accolades that it was picked up by The University of Chicago Press.  The book is 678 pages long, and they are dense pages. So far I am only on page 94, and I cannot say exactly what the book is about, but I can tell you I am along for the ride.

Continue reading »]]> I come by this Slice of Solace through my sister who got it in an email from a friend who received it as a “WORD OF THE DAY” posting from Gratefulness.Org on Thursday, April 19, 2012.

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.

Thomas Merton

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ForeWord Reviews is pleased to announce the 2011 Book of the Year Awards list of finalists. Representing more than 700 publishers, the finalists were selected from 1200 entries in 60 genre categories. These books are examples of independent publishing at its finest.

Solace in So Many Words is a finalist for the 2011 Book of the Year Awards in the anthology category.

ForeWord Reviews‘ Book of the Year Awards program was established to help publishers shine an additional spotlight on their best titles and bring increased attention to librarians and booksellers of the literary and graphic achievements of independent publishers and their authors. Award winners are chosen by librarians and booksellers who are on the front lines, working everyday with patrons and customers.

Please keep your fingers (and toes) crossed for Solace in So Many Words — winners will be announced at the American Library Association Conference in Anaheim, Ca, June 23.

View the entire list of 2011 Book of the Year Finalists Awards.

Continue reading »]]> I feel obligated to post since I haven’t done so in a week. I don’t have too much to report. Not a lot of writing news. Not a lot of Solace in So Many Words news. The week has escaped me and I haven’t gotten a lot accomplished. What has me excited is a poker game (nickel, dime, quarter) today with my grade-school friends. Two of the players (they are twins), I have known for almost all my life since our older sisters played together and would bring us along. We went to a parish grade school in the city along with the hostess of the game. The two other players at the table I haven’t known as long–maybe twenty five years or so.

I quickly looked around the web (BrainyQuotes in particular) to find a quote on friendship, and most of the poems and quotes are too corny.  After all we’re going to play cards, and we don’t  get all mushy at the poker table (well, at least not until the end of the night).  So I will quote the words of Elbert Hubbard, a poet born in the early 1900s in Bloomgton, IL, when he said, “A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.” And I will temper that sentiment with a little sharpness when I quote Oscar Wilde who said, “True friends stab you in the front.” Then I will round out the quotes with this addition by Mark Twain: “Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

Today when we play poker, I know that no matter who takes the pot, I have been dealt a very good hand.

Hope you have fun with friends this weekend too.

Continue reading »]]> Many thanks to The Book Stall for hosting our celebration of Poetry Month—to Roberta Rubin for inviting us to read and especially to Amy and Gordon who worked late to accommodate us.  The Book Stall has been named Publishers Weekly Bookstore of the Year and it is obvious why. The Book Stall is supportive of readers and writers alike.

Our attentive audience -- thanks for listening!

Joan Corwin

We had a pretty large crowd and they were a very attentive audience. We changed up our usual reading event in that we also featured poems from Solace in So Many Words. Joan Corwin started us off with her condensed excerpt from “Details” and then she read two poems: “Nature’s Balancing Act” by S. Minanel and “They Call Me Grumpy” by Susan O’Donnell Mahan.

D. J. Lachance

D. J. Lachance read his short fiction “Nagasaki Shadows” and the poem “Fighting Inertia” by Susan O’Donnell Mahan.

Carol Kanter

Carol Kanter has three poems in SISMW but she read only two, “Her Best Medicine” and “The Advanced Course” as well as her daughter Jodi Kanter’s “High-End Grocery Solace” and Donna Hilbert’s “Flowers.”

Kathleene Donahoo

Kathleene Donahoo read the beginning paragraphs of  ”Stops and Starts” and also Noel Sloboda’s poem “Backyard Burial.”

Pamela Miller

Pamela Miller read poems by Patti Wojcik Wahlberg (“Breathe”) and Elizabeth Kerlikowske (“The Industry of Sleep”) and her own poem “What It’s All About.”

J. Scott Smith read from her story “Heartbeat” and Constance Vogel Adamkiewicz’s “Library Tours Invites You to Spend A Day With Islam” and Patti Wojcik Wahlberg’s “Breathe.”

J. Scott Smith

Ellen Wade Beals

I read Laurence Snydal’s “The Captive” and Ann McNeal’s “Faith.”

My thanks to everyone!

Continue reading »]]> It has come to my attention that I gave out the incorrect address for our reading — The Book Stall’s address is 811 Elm Street.  Here is the corrected announcment:

Celebrate Poetry Month with Solace!

April 10, 2012, Tuesday at 7:30

The Book Stall at Chestnut Court, 811 Elm Street, Winnetka 847-446-8880

There are more than 50 poems in Solace in So Many Words by poets like Antler, Philip Levine, Ellen Bass . . .so,  please join editor Ellen Wade Beals and contributorsJoan Corwin, Carol Kanter, Pamela Miller, J. Scott Smith, Kathleene Donahoo, and  D. J. Lachance and others as they read their own work and celebrate the outstanding poems in this inspired anthology.