VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

The Stories for Children show 10/24 by WorldOfInkNetwork | Blog Talk Radio Maha Huneidi is a wife, mother and now grandmother, who finally found out what she wants to be when she grows up…a writer of children’s book. When Monsters Get Lonely is the first step of her journey. Huneidi began writing this book and later found out her granddaughter was afraid of monsters. “It was not about my granddaughter at all, but when I heard that she was afraid of monsters, it quickly became all about her. I wanted to empower her to take charge of her fear,” states Huneidi. “I sent my son a copy of "When Monsters Get Lonely" in a word file, with illustrations, just before I submitted it for publishing in April. Hanaa’s parents immediately began reading it to her...Now, she sometimes tells her mother, ‘the monster touched my neck, but I made friends with him.” Huneidi wants to help children, like her granddaughter Hanaa, find the courage to deal with monsters and other fea

Children at different ages are afraid for different reasons. According to developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, kids aged two to seven are afraid of things not based on reality. Kids endow animals, as well as inanimate objects with feelings, which is why at this age, kids are usually afraid of monsters and ghosts. This is one reason why debut author Maha Huneidi wrote, When Monsters Get Lonely . Huneidi shares her experience: “My younger son had nightmares on and off when he was six. I didn’t make him go back to his bed, and my husband protested because he thought that our son would get used to sleeping in our bed, and for good reason, too. We had some friends whose kids didn’t outgrow that habit till they were nine or 10. I knew that that wouldn’t be the case with my son because kids get into this habit at a much younger age. I think that this problem arises from separation anxiety, and not from nightmares or fear of monsters.” Parents do tend to dismiss such fears a

Meeting Sisters Judy Snider and Joan Dickow, Authors of I Love You, Be Careful - Books - Blogcritics There are days you may want to put blinders on our eyes, so as you look around you are not suddenly filled with idea after idea. This is how author Judy Snider feels sometimes. “I love to write and it seems odd to me if a day goes by that I don’t write something. Yet, the ideas floating around me sometimes make it hard to select the one I want to use.” Judy lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia with her husband, Gil and two silly cats. She is the author of the CWA award-winning children’s picture book Goldy’s Baby Socks and one of a team of authors who wrote The Scared Purse . Okay, maybe you’re not like Judy, but I’m sure you understand having too many things going on at once. This is why I loved her recent book, co-authored with her sister Joan Dickow; I Love You, Be Careful . It is a picture book that is also designed to be a gift book for adults and children, which shar

Maha Huneidi is a wife, mother and now grandmother, who finally found out what she wants to be when she grows up. This book is the first step of her journey. She lives in Portland, Oregon.      Note from the Author: When I began writing this book, it was not about my granddaughter at all, but when I heard that she was afraid of monsters, it quickly became all about her. I wanted to empower her to take charge of her fear. I sent my son a copy of "When Monsters Get Lonely" in a word file, with illustrations, just before I submitted it for publishing in April. Hanaa's parents immediately began reading it to her... Now, she sometimes tells her mother, "the monster touched my neck, but I made friends with him." I think that Hanaa has found the courage to deal with her monster on her own now, and she still enjoys monster movies and monster stories! VS: What do you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Maha: At this time

For Immediate Release   Award-winning Author Camille Matthews on Blog Talk Radio’s World of Ink Network show: St ories for Children –October 10, 2011   Blog Talk Radio’s World of Ink Network Show: Stories for Children with hosts VS Grenier, Kris Quinn Christopherson and Irene Roth will be chatting with award-winning author Camille Matthews about her Quincy the Horse picture book series. The first book in the series, Quincy Finds A New Home is a 2010 Mom’s Choice Gold Award Winner and the sequel, Quincy Moves to the Desert was recently released in August 2011. Camille Matthews, MSW, LCSW is a clinical social worker and writer who specializes in the treatment of eating disorders, complex PTSD and attachment disorders. In 2002, she received her certification in the new field of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) from the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association and established the Pathfinder Program in Farmington, NM where she treated adolescents, children and women victi

Writers On The Move: Writing the Second Book: Is it Easier? : Ten years ago, if someone had told me I would have two books published by now, I would’ve laughed—longingly of course. My first novel, Cowgirl Dreams , was released in December 2008, almost ten years after I started writing it. The sequel, Follow the Dream , came out two years later. People say to me, “The second book must be a lot easier than the first one, right?” Well, yes and no. I guess I could say that I cheated, in a way. I wrote the two books as one long book to begin with. But when I began researching publishers, I found that the word count for the “western” genre was generally shorter. It just happened that I found a place in about the middle where I thought it could be easily divided. But then I had to make sure the second book could stand alone and fill in some of the back story without resorting to the old “telling” versus “showing.” Read more here http://www.writersonthemove.com/2011/10/writing-second

Camille Matthews, MSW, LCSW is a clinical social worker and writer who  specializes in the treatment of eating disorders, complex PTSD and attachment disorders. In 2002 she received her certification in the new field of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) from the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association and established the Pathfinder Program in Farmington, NM where she treated adolescents, children and women victims of domestic violence using EAP.  Ms. Matthews is also the author of the Quincy the Horse Books for children ages 5-10. She teamed with illustrator, Michelle Black to create the series. Their first book, Quincy Finds A New Home was published in 2009 and awarded a Mom’s Choice Gold in 2010. The sequel, Quincy Moves to the Desert   was released in August  2011. Ms. Matthews has been an advocate for access to mental health treatment, an op ed contributor on the importance of psychotherapy and served on the Healthcare Task Force of Representative Louise Slau

More than a dozen authors, mentors, and nationally known book marketers will offer thousand in bonus gifts focused on the needs of authors when novelist, poet, and book marketer Carolyn Howard-Johnson releases the second edition of the first book in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter . Among those supporting Howard-Johnson’s book are self publishing gurus Dan Poynter and Shelley Hitz, book marketers Dana Lynn Smith, Patricia Fry, D’vorah Lansky, and Aggie Villaneuva and even some fun stuff like a full book of poetry from Magdalena Ball and advice on feng shui from Anna Maria Prezio, Ph.D. Leading the charge is Amazon and book launch expert Denise Cassino. Collectively, they offer an inestimable value in career boosting bonus gifts to anyone who pays a mere $9.95 for The Frugal Book Promoter in its Kindle iteration ( www.budurl.com/FrugalBkProKindle ) or $12.82 (discounted from $17.95) for the paperback on Amazon ( www.budurl.co

Whether you have lived a rough life or had a silver spoon in your mouth, it is normal to want to write your memoirs. This is especially true if you are getting up into middle age or beyond. Otherwise, it could be a pretty short story. Assuming you are ready to put 40 years or more down on paper, here are some tips for maximizing the effect of your finished work. First of all, give yourself plenty of time for a project like this. You are going to remember things as you work through the memories that are freshest in your mind. For this reason, it makes sense to give yourself lots of time, even as much as a year or more. Hopefully, you have a supply of old photographs you will be going through at the same time. But even if you don't, you can dig out those memories that are buried within. A good place to start is with a general time line of your life. You may find that you need to make more than one draft of this line, because you are likely to remember important

Writers On The Move: Creating, Promoting, and Selling in the Writing World : I recently attended a teleconference presented by David Riklan, a well-known marketing expert and the founder of SelfGrowth.com. The focus of the topic was creating a successful online business from scratch. According to Riklan, the first two ‘core’ ways to establish a successful online business, one that generates income is to: 1.Create your own product to sell. 2.Create a service to sell. Please understand that when you create a product or service, it should be a quality product or service. It needs to address the potential customer’s problem, need, or want. Read more at http://www.writersonthemove.com/2011/10/creating-promoting-and-selling-in.html