Category Archives: Side Dish

Side Dish with author Geraldine Solon

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by Geraldine Solon

From Idea to Novel

Where do you get your ideas? This is a common question I get from people I know. Ideas come to me in ordinary situations like when I’m lining up at the grocery or lying in bed trying to sleep. An idea is like a bolt of lightning—powerful and vivid. Once it materializes in my head, the excitement takes over and I soon find myself scribbling down my notes.

The story of Love Letters came naturally to me. I wrote this novel mainly because most of us dream of marrying our true love but not everybody gets a second chance. Creating characters that are flawed, realistic and sympathetic allows the reader to relate to them. Having a theme that readers can resonate with only confirms that you’re story is meaningful.

In Love Letters, bridal shop manager Chloe Rogers will soon marry Richard Foster—so she thinks—until suddenly, she bumps into her childhood sweetheart, Josh Goldman, whom she hasn’t seen in thirteen years. The sparks between Chloe and Josh fly, but Richard provides safety, financial security. Should she follow her heart or her head? The answer comes in a surprise twist. While cleaning her attic, she stumbles upon love letters written to her estranged mother forty years ago from a man she loved. When Chloe secretly brings them together again and sees how much time they’ve lost, she is challenged not to make the same mistake her mother made. Will Chloe opt for security or will she risk her heart and marry her true love?

As a writer, it’s essential to be observant of your surroundings. Listen to the birds chirping. Is it a sunny day? Can you smell the flowers? When writing your scenes it’s vital to have the five senses stimulated so your readers can get a full grasp of your story. Reading books can help you identify your style and find your voice in developing your idea to a novel. The movies you watch and people you meet will help define your characters. Study their expressions and movement. How do they dress? Do they speak in a certain way? This will help you create unique and distinct characters. Making a note about the places you visit could be a potential setting for your story?
Ideas are always out there and having a broad imagination helps a lot. Dreams and fantasies can trigger an idea to write your next novel. You are the creator of your story that breathes life to your characters. Living in the character’s skin is like living a life you never had. What makes them tick? Why should they make this decision? How will they handle conflict? You know when your idea is bigger than you imagined when the plot of your story is the center of your attention and have a powerful message to share. Writing is an emotional experience and turning your ideas into a novel is indeed rewarding.

Everything starts with a seed that produces into a beautiful flower. The question I would ask aspiring writers is “What do you do with your ideas?”
_______________________

Browse or buy the e-book here.

Naked Fitness

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Are You an Emotional Overeater?
By Andrea Metcalf, Author of Naked Fitness: The Proven 28 Day Lifestyle Program for a Slimmer, Fitter, Pain Free Body

Take this short quiz to find out.
I turn to food when I’m sad, disappointed, or lonely. Yes ___ No ___
I often eat past the point of fullness. Yes ___ No ___
When I’m upset, I crave sweets or salty snack foods. Yes ___ No ___
When I go to parties or dine out with friends, I tend to overeat. Yes ___ No ___
If I eat too much, I feel guilty afterwards. Yes ___ No ___
I eat more than I should when I’m home alone or bored. Yes ___ No ___
My moods have the biggest influence on when and how I eat. Yes ___ No ___
I like to nurture family and friends with food. Yes ___ No ___
I think about food a lot. Yes ___ No ___
I am unhappy with my weight, but I overeat anyway. Yes ___ No ___
Eating is my favorite activity. Yes ___ No ___
I tend to clean my plate; I don’t like to waste food. Yes ___ No ___
I binge habitually. Yes ___ No ___
The large amount of food I eat embarrasses me. Yes ___ No ___
Sugary foods tend to calm me down. Yes ___ No ___
SCORING
Count up your yeses and your noes.

If you answered yes to eight or more questions:
Your feelings of anger, frustration, loneliness, sadness, boredom, or even happiness might be causing you to overeat. And you are probably an emotional overeater. You may be eating too much or eating chaotically, but what you are really feeding is something in your life: relationship problems, broken dreams, financial worries, or problems at work. Try the strategies in this chapter, but don’t be afraid to seek professional help.

If you answered yes to four to seven questions:
You may be struggling with some emotions from time to time. You are a borderline emotional overeater. At this point, it will be easier to get your eating habits under control by applying some of the strategies in this chapter.

If you circled three or fewer yeses:
You probably aren’t an emotional overeater. You may occasionally use food to cope, but for the most part, it doesn’t interfere with your ability to manage your weight.
The above is an excerpt from the book Naked Fitness: The Proven 28 Day Lifestyle Program for a Slimmer, Fitter, Pain Free Body by Andrea Metcalf. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

© 2010 Andrea Metcalf, author of Naked Fitness: The Proven 28 Days Lifestyle Program for a Slimmer, Fitter, Pain Free Body.

Author Bio
Andrea Metcalf, author of Naked Fitness: The Proven 28 Day Lifestyle Program for a Slimmer, Fitter, Pain Free Body, has been teaching fitness, training clients, and coaching on subjects of nutrition and health for the past 27 years. Her inspiring and approachable personality has helped build her reputation as a nationally known fitness expert. Andrea is a regular contributor of MORE, Self, and Women’s World, among other magazines, and a regular blogger on Oprah.com. She frequently appears on Today, Good Morning America Health, NBC5 in Chicago, and the nationally syndicated Better TV.

Andrea holds a BS in Exercise Science and has grown her career by creating unique programs of her own including Paws-ilates, Sil-ilites, and Live-ilates, featured on Oprah.com. Over the years, Andrea has written numerous articles on health and fitness. She is a national fitness presenter, motivational speaker, and has a series of fitness DVDs.

She also counsels and trains individuals, leads “Naked Fitness” groups, and speaks to companies across the country, and is a national spokesperson for Sketchers Shape-Ups, Elations, Sears, The American Heart Association and others. Andrea has three children and lives in Chicago.

For more information please visit: http://www.andreametcalf.com and follow the author of Facebook and Twitter. Learn more about Naked Fitness at http://www.nakedfitness.com

Browse or buy the book here or at your favorite retailer.

Side Dish with author Frances Lefkowitz

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A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: I’m thrilled to welcome Frances here in the kingdom of book babedom today to discuss how her writing for love and money finally melded into one. I’m reading her memoir, TO HAVE NOT, right now and I fell in love with her voice immediately. She paints a vivid picture of growing up poor and how that shaped who she became. I’m honored to make it a Top Pick for January. (see sidebar). Now, enjoy France’s guest post. -Malena

By Frances Lefkowitz, author of TO HAVE NOT: A MEMOIR

For Love & Money
A Writer’s Revelation

For many years, I have divided my writing into two folders on my computer’s hard drive, one called “Writing For Money,” and one called “Writing For Love.” Lately, however, it’s become harder to tell where to file my stories. In other words, the writing for money and the writing for love are increasingly becoming one and the same.
The files from the “Writing for Money” folder contain mostly upbeat practical articles about health, books, food, and travel. Ever since leaving my position as Senior Editor at Body+Soul, I have made my living as a freelance writer, selling these helpful articles to magazines such as Whole Living (formerly Body+Soul), Natural Health, and Good Housekeeping. The “Love” folder has my fiction and personal essays, both made-up and true stories about deep and difficult emotional truths. These tend to get published in artsy literary journals such as The Sun and Glimmer Train. And they don’t tend to pay the rent.
But a few years ago, while on assignment for one of the practical articles, the boundaries between love and money started to merge. I was writing about the local food and wine movement in Northern California’s wine country, and had flown out from the magazine’s Boston offices in the middle of snowy February. The lush greenness that greeted me in California was by no means foreign to me; I’d grown up there, though I’d lived on the East Coast for more than a decade. And as I drove through the hills and valleys of this familiar landscape visiting winemakers, cheesemakers, bread bakers, and chefs, the childhood memories kept surfacing.
My childhood, as I describe in my new memoir To Have Not, did not include many visits with chefs and vintners, tasting expensive wines and cheeses. I grew up poor, feeling like those kinds of people and those kind of things were out of my reach. So to return as something of a “Have” instead of a “Have Not” stirred up unsettling questions about who I was at my core, and which place was my real home. When composing my article, I tried to write only about why the coastal climate created the perfect Pinot Noirs, and how the salt air affected the artisanal cheeses. But the unsettling questions kept intruding. So eventually I let them in. I wrote about food and home; about the land of plenty in which I had been reared and the way I never felt entitled to indulge in it; I wrote an informative guide that was also full of personal revelation.
The article, “Savoring the Landscape” ended up as a finalist for a prestigious James Beard Award for Food Writing. It also became a turning point for me as a writer. The article’s popularity made me realize that readers crave emotional candor and depth, no matter what they are reading. And soon I was incorporating myself into much of what I wrote, including plenty of love into my writing for money.

Frances Lefkowitz is an award-winning writer and author of the new memoir To Have Not, Meet up with her at www.FrancesLefkowitz.net, @MeetFrances on Twitter, and the Frances Lefkowitz Author page on Facebook.

BUY THE BOOK here or at your favorite retailer.

Black Friday Specials

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On behalf of all the Book End Babes, I’d like to thank you for being an avid reader, book lover and supporter of our blog and book club. Thanks for being a great girlfriend to your friends and for all that you do to make the world a bit shinier.

Our sister site, Bookgasm, put together a handy Black Friday specials list, so we’re reposting here. Good luck in finding that special something-somethin’ for the loved ones on your list. I LOVE a good deal and it’s all the sweeter to see that look of joy on the recipients’ faces as they open their gifts.

This weekend we’ll have our second annual HoLITday gift guide ready to share for your book shoppin’ pleasure.

Gobble-gobble,
Malena

Current great entertainment sales on Amazon for the holidays:

GENERAL
Black Friday deals, starting Nov. 22
Cyber Monday deals, Nov. 28-29
Top holiday deals, Nov. 30-Dec. 23

KINDLE
Wi-Fi Wireless Kindle for just $139
Free 3G+Wi-Fi Wireless Kindle for just $189

ELECTRONICS
HDTVs, Blu-ray players heavily discounted
3D TVs from top brands heavily discounted

TOYS
Holiday Toy List items at 25% off or more

BOOKS
Top 100 books of the year heavily discounted

MOVIES
More than 3,000 DVDs and Blu-rays at Black Friday prices, from Nov. 22-29
77 DVD and Blu-ray Lightning Deals at up to 70% off, from Nov. 22-29

MUSIC
Hundreds of deluxe-edition CD and DVDs starting at $8.99
Hundreds of CD box sets starting at $12.99
Greatest-hits CDs starting at $6.49

Support BOOKGASM and buy it at Amazon.

Side Dish with Author Alice Cohen

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From the editor: I read Cohen’s memoir, WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW, with a rock in my throat. It deals with an unexpected pregnancy at an “advanced” age and has more conflict than most folks would care to deal with in a lifetime, let alone in five months of a pregnancy. (Why not nine months, you ask? Must read to find out.) No two pregnancies are alike, just as no two lives are alike, yet I guarantee Cohen’s pregnancy is by far one of the most unique for the record books. Yet I’m not just recommending it for the Ripley’s Believe It or Not plotline (yes, it’s all true), but because Cohen is so heartbreakingly honest, and like with all great reads, you will leave it with a fresh sense of gratitude for your own blessings. Every reader will find some authentic truth in her own life as she reads it. – Malena Lott

THREE SHORT WOMEN: A Writing Friendship

By Alice Eve Cohen

Writing is a solitary act. We spend countless hours in our writing caves. And because reading is also a solitary act, we can’t even observe readers experiencing our books. Frankly, we don’t get out much, and when we do, chances are that our fellow writers are still hunkered down in their caves. It’s hard to meet kindred spirits.

So it was a thrill when memoirists Julie Metz, Nancy Bachrach and I met last year at the Empire State Book Festival, where we were on a memoir panel together. We quickly discovered that we—and our books (Julie’s Perfection, Nancy’s The Center of the Universe, and my What I Thought I Knew)—had a lot in common.

For one thing, we’re all short. At 5’3 ½”, I am the tallest, a veritable giantess! I tower over my Lilliputian colleagues…by an inch or two.

Each of our memoirs is about a different, critical time in a woman’s life, with plotlines so unbelievable that they have to be true.

Our three books are each about a central relationship in a woman’s life— daughter, lover, and mother; and about our respective relationships: with a lunatic parent, a lying spouse, an unexpected baby.

All three of us write about finding humor in the unimaginable, and meaning in chaos.

After the book festival, Julie, Nancy, and I staged a reading at a bookstore in Brooklyn. It went so well that we decided to take our show on the road. We call it THREE SHORT WOMEN, THREE TALL (TRUE) TALES. Nancy, Julie and I are about to embark on our world tour! …Okay, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. We have a few bookings at theatres and libraries in Long Island and upstate New York, which we’re wildly excited about.

The three of us have been brainstorming at Nancy’s apartment, often over delicious food and wine. Last week, Nancy’s talented brother serenaded us with Chopin piano Etudes. Our rehearsals are interrupted by sidebar conversations about the new books we’re writing, by unexpected tangents about triumphs and disappointments, and by laughter. In the process of collaborating on ways to bring our books to life for an audience, Nancy, Julie and I have become friends.

We’re so busy with our writing, our jobs, and our families that it takes a gazillion emails to schedule time when we three short women can get together. When we finally do, I find it a rare pleasure to come out of my writing cave, to share wine, wisdom, work, and friendship.

Alice Eve Cohen is a memoirist, solo theater artist, and playwright. Her memoir, What I Thought I Knew (Penguin), won Elle Magazine’s Grand Prix for Nonfiction, Oprah Magazine’s 25 Best Books of Summer, and Salon.com Best Books of the Year. She teaches at The New School in New York City. www.AliceEveCohen.com
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