VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

  Tim Myers is a writer, songwriter, storyteller, and university lecturer in English. His Glad to Be Dad:  A Call to Fatherhood (Familius) is in both e-book and print form; it was featured on Parents Magazine’s website, Disney’s BabyZone, and won the Ben Franklin Digital Award.  His full-length Dear Beast Loveliness:  Poems of the Body (BlazeVox) earned an excellent review from poet Grace Cavalieri.  He's placed numerous pieces in top children's magazines ( Cricket , AppleSeeds , Storyworks , New Moon ), and has 11 children's books out (and three in press), which have won a number of awards and honors.  These include excellent reviews from Kirkus , SLJ , Booklist , and The New York Times , a short stint on The New York Times bestseller list for children's books, and adaptations of his works for drama and dance; in addition, Basho and the Fox was read aloud on NPR and Basho and the River Stones was one of three nominees for a California Young Readers medal.

Come join host Virginia S Grenier on BTR’s Featured World of Ink Network Monday January 27th at 2pm Eastern - 1pm Central - 12noon Moutain - 11am Pacific The topic this Monday on The Writing Mama Show - Gluten Free Kids. This week come meet author Christy E. Bykowski and learn about her kid friendly celiac disease awareness picture book, Gluten-Free Me: Beckmin Goes to School January 2014. “Beckmin Goes to School” is Bykowski’s first children’s book and was inspired by her middle son Beckmin, who was diagnosed with celiac disease at 18 months, after extensive sickness and a series of hospital visits. Since then, Christy has worked with Beckmin through the everyday challenges of being a kid with this disease, dealing with his frustrations and his own learning curve as to what celiac disease is, how to explain it and what it means in his day-to-day life. Beckmin’s stories, written to help children define, understand and explain celiac disease, are meant to be both empowering an

Alicia Lloyd is a senior at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and is working towards her Bachelor’s Degree in Early Grades Preparation (PK-4) and Special Education. She has a strong passion for working with children and loves to write! Alicia lives in Oxford, Pennsylvania surrounded by her wonderful friends and family.  VS: Thank you Alicia for being here today. Can you tell us about your current book. Give a short summary. You can follow this up with any points you hope readers will take away with them. Alicia: This book is a friendly way for children to ease their bedtime fears. All children at one point in their lives hear unfamiliar and scary noises while trying to drift off into sleep. As soon as they get scared, they start thinking of all these scary things that can happen. The main message is just to remember that noises can just be familiar noises, like in this case, your mom going to bed. Being afraid of monsters is common however; I am hoping my

  World Wide Web—Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s newest book, is, yep, a rehash (second edition!) of the multi award-winning   The Frugal Editor: Do-it-yourself editing secrets for authors: From your query letter to final manuscript to the marketing of your new bestseller. The first edition was winner of USA Book News’ pick for Best Professional Book, a Reader Views winner, and received nods from the New Generation awards and the Military Writers Society of America, but the new version is Expanded (more than 100 pages)! Updated! And reformatted for e-books that have changed considerably since it was published in 2007. It also has a a new subtitle, a new cover by   Chaz DeSimone   with a new three-dimensional look by   Gene Cartwright . The second edition covers new editing tricks the author has come to appreciate since the first was published, including how to spot the overuse of helping verbs when simple past tense would work just as well; a reminder that politically correct usa

Christy E. Bykowski is an award-winning public relations and marketing practitioner, as well as a wife and mother. She lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband, Benjamin, raising their three boys and spreading awareness about celiac disease and the need for a gluten-free environment for individuals diagnosed with celiac disease. VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today. To get this started, Christy can you share what do you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Christy: I wrote this book when my children were sleeping.   I do most of work after-hours, so I can spend most of my personal time with them. VS: How long have you been writing? Christy: I’ve always enjoyed writing, since high school.   But this is the first children’s book I’ve published. VS: What inspired you to write your book (if this is a personal story about you, please share about the decision to open up about your life)?