BRIO Publishing Blog for Independent Authors

From BRIO’s Fall 2011 catalog, The Intuition Guidebook: How to Safely and Wisely Use Your Sixth Sense, by Cyndi Dale was recently awarded the Silver Medal in the New Age (Body-Mind-Spirit) category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Fans of Cyndi Dale, and of the other IPPY winners, can browse these literary gems at the Independent Publisher Book Awards Store, which now lists the 2012 winners. Awards for the 16th Annual IPPY Awards, sponsored by Jenkins Group, will be presented at a big bash in New York City on June 4th to kick off BookExpo America 2012. Don’t forget to visit the BRIO booth at BEA, where we’ll be featuring Cyndi Dale’s forthcoming title, Togetherness: Creating and Deepening Sustainable Love, coauthored with renowned psychologist Andrew Wald.

BRIO is pleased to announce that For Every Season, There is an Hors D’oeuvre, by chef Linda Steidel, has won the Midwest Book Award in the Cookbooks category! Her most recent title, this cookbook is the fourth installment in the For Every Season cookbook series. The winners were announced and the awards were distributed on Wednesday, May 9th, at the annual gala held in Bloomington, MN.

BRIO is delighted to announce that The Intuition Guidebook: How to Safely and Wisely Use Your Sixth Sense, by Cyndi Dale (Deeper Well Publishing and BRIO Press) has been awarded the Silver Medal in the New Age (Body-Mind-Spirit) category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards! Awards for the 16th Annual IPPY Awards, sponsored by Jenkins Group, will be presented at a big bash in New York City on June 4th to kick off BookExpo America 2012. Don’t forget to visit the BRIO booth at BEA, where we’ll be featuring Cyndi Dale’s forthcoming title, Togetherness: Creating and Deepening Sustainable Love, coauthored with renowned psychologist Andrew Wald.

The Huffington Post asks and explores the question: “Is Handwriting Dead?” as it pertains to the modern classroom here.

It’s simply absurd, unthinkable, preposterous, and laughable for anyone not living in a bubble to muse that handwriting—that timeless motion of moving a pen across paper and seeing your words appear—might be outdated by the plethora of gadgets that happily duplicate, email, file, save, and publish our words in fonts as universally legible as this one, for everyone and their grandma to contemplate.  Such techie tools seem to be fast becoming the crutch of a society who can’t tell “foreword” from “forward” and considers spelling and grammar the business of word-processing programs, rather than their own brains.

I can confirm handwriting’s wellness with a smugly assured confidence that is reinforced not only by my endless shopping lists, journal doodles, and sticky notes slapped on coworkers’ monitors, but by the swirly cursive of the handwritten notes I send and receive between close friends and family members (okay, it’s weird that we snail-mail instead of Skype, but not everyone can work a webcam) and the three calligraphy-adorned wedding invitations I received in the past six months (thankfully, I’m not a bridesmaid—yet—knock on wood).

Hmm. Microsoft Word thinks that last sentence was totally flawless, while I can see its essentially aesthetic issues plain as day.

While these justifications are all vastly personal—I’m a bit old-fashioned in being more comfortable taking notes by hand than typing (despite my coziness with a keyboard’s home row)—I have to insist that “old-fashioned” handwriting is alive and well, even for those who HAVE converted their personal calendar to a palm pilot or smart phone.
If you’re anything like an English major, like yours truly, you probably relished the blue essay-style tests on which you could ramble ‘til the cows came home, and dreaded the red and white bubble sheets of black-and-white right and wrongness. There’s something to be said for arguing your answer, rather than picking one of the four options and hoping for the best.

Anyway, ever see someone give their John Hancock on a store’s receipt? Why can’t we write “milk, bread, tuna” all looping and artfully like that? Oh, because no one—probably not even the writer—could read it.

Thinking about releasing a biography or autobiography? Or, like me, you just like to read ‘em? It’s no secret: biographies that loudly reveal the secrets (true or false) of celebrities and public figures have higher book sales than their non-juicy counterparts. As for us average Joes, our society-relevant (aka relatable, inspiring, and/or simply entertaining—and properly marketed) literary confessions have been known to fly off the shelves like gossip-slathered hotcakes. Check out the Huffington Post’s collection of “9 of the Most Scandalous Biographies Ever Printed” here.

From BRIO’s shelf, available now for scandal-starved, current issue enthusiasts:

Guilty by Association by Rudi Dekkers

From the Dutch ghetto to Florida’s airfields, Guilty by Association navigates the trials and successes that led to Rudi Dekkers becoming the owner of Huffman Aviation School. Huffman Aviation was where terrorists Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, the two men responsible for the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, obtained their flight licenses.

Prior to 9/11, Dekkers had been a successful entrepreneur with two flight training schools and an impending airline. After the attacks, he fell under media suspicion as a potentially complicit and culpable character in the incident. In this shockingly honest autobiography, Dekkers candidly narrates his life, his passion for flying, and his memories of the terrorists. Dekkers’s first book written in English, Guilty by Association also includes never-before-seen documents from the terrorists’ time at Huffman.

BRIO presents the much-anticipated exposé of one man’s entrepreneurial journey that would lead him to unknowingly encounter the two men responsible for the destruction of the Twin Towers. Dekkers’s revealing narrative and recounts of his conversations with the terrorists—his flight students at the time—will shock readers as Dekkers unveils his story.

We’re pleased as punch to be joining the party at BookExpo America 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City! Publishers, authors, and new books, oh my! Rumor has it we’ll bestow a gift bag containing fabulous prizes (including a free BRIO book!) to the first 100 visitors at our booth (that’s #3158) on each day of the conference. That’s 300 chances to get your hands on hot new titles and other fun BRIO gear! All of our visitors will have the opportunity to meet BRIO staff, learn about our refreshing mission in the world of publishing, and find out what’s up with our goldfish. In the mean time, take a peek at the exciting new titles we will be featuring at BEA:

Togetherness by Cyndi Dale and Andrew Wald

Buddha & Love by Lama Ole Nydahl

kept by Sonpri Gray

Dropping Acid: The Reflux Diet Cookbook & Cure by Dr. Jamie Koufman

The Piccolo Chef Cookbook by Tina Fanelli Moraccini and Lilian Palmieri

BRIO is thrilled to announce that two of our titles have been nominated for the 22nd annual Midwest Book Awards! Congratulations to Jeffrey Burkart, author of The Hidden Prince, and Linda Steidel, author of For Every Season There Is an Hors D’oeuvre! These lushly illustrated books have been nominated for the Children’s Fiction and Cookbooks award categories, respectively. Winners will be announced on May 9th at the annual gala, held at the Bloomington Center for the Arts in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Changes can often be good, although usually our first instinct is to dig in our heels and resist them.

Springtime brings about a welcome wave of changes: the obvious warmer weather, flowers blooming, birds chirping up a storm, actual storms (like last night’s window-rattling thunder), and an unshakable urge to fling open windows and burst into song. Well, perhaps not that last bit. But the improved mood in the fresh air (for downtown Minneapolis, anyway) is undeniably more cheerful and friendly than that of winter. It helps that now, everyone’s face isn’t covered and we’re not scurrying for our lives through subzero wind tunnels. But that’s enough reminiscing about Christmas past (we’ll save that for Dickens).

Many writers fear the red pen-wielding hand of the dreaded editor because they “don’t want any changes made” to what has essentially become their baby. Writers, we editors appreciate this. Many of us began (and still moonlight) as writers—how else can we be so in touch with the craft? We understand that you’re not necessarily seeking a writing partner—someone to help compose more elegant sentences and dictate logical flow out of the facts you’ve carefully assembled. We also understand that you don’t want your work to lose its unique voice, or your message to lose its vital integrity. Your work might just need a little tidying up—some proofreading, so your words are printed at their very best. (This means no misspellings, punctuation errors, or grammatical mishaps. We can even restrain ourselves and leave potentially awkward phrasing alone, if you’d prefer.)

Writers, remember that your work is your own. You do have final say over your words before we print them, and we want you to be more than happy to send your baby out into the world. But if you’re ready for a little change (the good kind, of course), it might be time to see an editor. Think of them as a custom tailor who can fit your creation with whatever style you choose.

Spring certainly came early this year (in Minnesota, anyway), and with it, a flurry of, shall we say, “twitterpated” activity. (We all remember that scene in Disney’s classic Bambi, right?) The action even reached my office windowsill; this morning, twelve stories up, pigeons were apparently having a pigeon party. A stern glance from yours truly broke up the feathery mayhem, but a person can’t expect to get much done with all that cooing and rustling.

Wistful romance is bubbling up among more savory company than city pigeons. This month’s (more like this season’s) most anticipated book-to-film release has inspired an idea for Suzanne Collins’ most hardcore fans: a Hunger Games-styled wedding. (View the lovely photos here and here, and read fans’ reactions here.) Given the books’ fight-or-die element, naturally, fans have voiced mixed emotions. But as an occasional sappy romantic (especially in springtime), I can appreciate the bottom line of the theme: selfless, I-would-die-for-you (literally) love. From an artistic perspective, the rugged woodsy backdrop adds some pleasing tension and contrast to the usually-spotless affair of an indoor wedding. The protagonist’s bow and arrows even reminisce of Cupid in this setting, losing their tools-of-survival edge.

Now, I can name at least half a dozen couples planning to tie the knot in the coming months (mercifully, I will not be attending every event, as some are just friends of friends, and I’m happily not invited to their intimate and/or destination gatherings). Will any of them masquerade as Katniss and Peeta? It doesn’t seem likely, but I’ll keep my eyes (and ears) peeled for such fantastical inclusions in their nuptial stories. Once upon a time, I attended a friend’s pirate-themed wedding—speaking from experience, walking the plank, dining on turkey legs, and swilling mead and rum (all while wearing a corset) sure made for a memorable and outrageously fun evening.

Okay, writers. You know the difference here; one of these is a motion-related verb or an option pertaining to your email inbox, while the other is meant to introduce a written work. The first smarty-pants to distinguish which witch is which, as they say, will get a sandwich. (Not really, but you can definitely pat yourself on your grammar police back.)

We witness little slip-ups of word use, misuse, and abuse almost daily. I don’t mean to cast a somber shadow of dread and doubt on the English-speaking world, but I was recently assaulted with an improper “their” situation…at the hand of an English teacher. In this age of technology and communication at light speed, writers become reckless and lazy—a lethal combination regarding clarity.

From personal experience, this issue is especially crucial when corresponding professionally (or trying to) via email. First off, I do not consider my first name to be particularly uncommon. And I understand that folks—including myself—can be in a mighty urgent rush when clicking “send.” But it’s shameful, the number of times my name has been grossly misspelled in emails addressed to me. (Potential future interns take note here—never should three “N”s appear in a row in someone’s name.) Such misdemeanors of carelessness, while probably purely accidental, unfortunately tend to exude a lack of respect. That’s not what anyone wants, whether they’re above or beneath you in the office pecking order.

Tragedies such as these can be avoided if everyone buckles up and—wait, don’t write and drive (and always buckle up, that’s beside the point). Just take that extra moment to re-read your draft, be it a cover letter for a job you really want, a casual email to a pal, or a postcard to your grandmother. Hey, there’s always white-out.