Dr. Joan Steidinger decided to write her book, Sisterhood in Sports" How Female Athletes Collaborate and Compete, twenty years ago. She's a psychologist by profession. Understanding women has been one of the major difficulties for men and even for some female coaches. She noticed that women were "getting short shrift for their focus on relationships from an emotional perspective." She wanted to write a book that would honor female athletes instead of penalizing them for showing their emotions. 

The result was Sisterhood in Sports. Here (as described on the official Amazon page) she tells the stories of all kinds of female athletes in a variety of sports. Their natural tendency to use talking as a primary form of communication is essential to their experiences and successes in sports. Women and girls tend to have BFFs, collaborate during periods of stress, express empathy for one another, worry about themselves and others, and desire to have fun in sports, which makes their experiences of sports and competition different from their male counterparts. Female strengths are grounded in both mind and body, and they take these strengths onto the court, field, and track. 

BUY FROM AMAZON:  Sisterhood in Sports by Dr. Joan Steidinger

Every business owner wants to have more control over how to earn revenue. With control, you can have peace of mind. Control gives you the means to steer your business to where you want it to be, profit-wise. This is so true in this age of the Internet and one book can help you gain control you need. It's Steve Daar's book, Profit Hacking. His book all about maximizing profits and it's where Daar reveals his 3 part formula for web entrepreneurs to maximize success. 

Just two months out, Profit Hacking was already selling 1-5 Kindle version copies a day! "I had no idea that was good, until now," Steve told me, revealing that he didn't have connections in publishing or book sales. It shows how Steve Daar "walks the talk."

Steve Daar wasn't always interested in marketing. He didn't take it seriously, but that soon changed when he started a business at 23. His vision of improving the lives of teachers was a great and noble one, but there was a problem. He didn't know hot to get the word out which was crucial to success. "It took me a full year to understand that," he admitted. So he did his research and connected with marketing experts and gurus. Soon enough, he was hooked. 

With all the knowledge he had gained, he realized that all he needed to do was to move and make everything work for him. Now Steve Daar shares all the secrets in marketing he'd learned in his book. 

ON AMAZON: Steve Daar's Profit Hacking: The Web Entrepreneur's 3 Part Formula for Marketing Success

Steve Daar would like your feedback on his book Profit Hacking. After you read it, you can answer these questions in the Comments Section below.

1. What parts of the book did you like most and why? 
2. What parts of the book did you like least and why?
   
3. Was there anything that confused you, frustrated you, or 'turned you off'?
   
4. Did you feel any sections were too rushed or moved too slowly?
   
5. Were chapter titles & openings compelling? Did they make you want to read whole chapter? 
   
6. Thoughts on structure, flow, and 'voice' of the book?
7. If the content of the book was published as is, would you recommend it to others? What could be changed, added, or removed to make you more likely to share it? 

Listen to Steve Daar on Dr. Angela Lauria's Book Journeys Radio

"The best thing about getting published is seeing my book get a life of its own which I can observe and learn from." 
                                                                                ~Maria Isabel Garcia

In this post, we feature Science Solitaire: Essays on science, nature and becoming human by Maria Isabel Garcia, curator of The Mind Museum, an educational facility in Taguig City in the Philippines. Garcia also wrote for De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things), a science column of The Philippine Star, before moving on to writing for Rappler, an online newspaper.

Science Solitaire is Garcia’s first book. It is all about science and how it relates to life. It is based on her own observations and experiences which she translates to her writing. Her goal is to show how science relates to life and explore the nature of things, which is second nature to her.

Garcia revealed that her approach to writing content is visual. This is what she follows until a project is done. She describes how an idea takes on a form in her head which can be fluid or in motion. She simply writes about whatever sticks to her mind from what she has read or watched, although she admits that new ideas that come later sometimes makes her wish that she could have known about them when she was still writing her book as they could have served as better examples to illustrate a point.

Garcia says she doesn’t experience writer’s block. “What I experience is more like ‘writer's chase’ since I am trying to chase after my own understanding of a topic and am trying all sorts of ways to share it clearly and hopefully, beautifully, too.” This method of writing had apparently worked wonders for Garcia after the review board of the Ateneo De Manila University Press gave her work a thumbs up. This was something that she had wanted for her book and it pleased her very much. Marketing unfortunately wasn't covered. 

Garcia did not have an agent to handle promotions but a quick search online brings up several links pointing her book which can be readily found on book sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Godreads. She admits that sales have been modest, but it still gives her great satisfaction. 

Garcia’s aspiration for Science Solitaire is for it to create interest in young people for them to also start writing about science. “I still get email from readers and it has been eight years since it was first launched,” Garcia says. “Oddly enough, my book is not even shelved with the science books abroad but under the ‘Filipiniana’ section, which even my own friends, who are also science writers in the US, find very strange.”

For Garcia, the best thing about being published is not about the sales or her legacy as an author; it is more about the book getting a life of its own which she can observe and learn from.

AS DESCRIBED ON AMAZON: 

"Science Solitaire" is a mind dance with nature's cards, in a style and lens that could help us see that science is alive - as it inhabits not just classrooms and textbooks but also our everyday lives. It consists of pieces of discovery that try to reveal the possible connections between the snippets of understanding we gain from science and our journey toward becoming human. What happens to our brains when we are happy, when we delight in music or food or other pleasurable pursuits? What lurks behind the awesome powers of some creatures with whom we inhabit this planet? What is E=mc2 and why is it the most popular icon for scientific ideas?

BUY ON AMAZON: 
Science Solitaire: Essays on science, nature and becoming human

Maria Isabel Garcia is also the author of Twenty-One Grams of Spirit and Seven Ounces of Desire which is also available on Amazon.

Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

AS DESCRIBED ON AMAZON:

By the author of the acclaimed bestsellers Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs, this is the definitive biography of Albert Einstein. 

How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson’s biography shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom.

Based on newly released personal letters of Einstein, this book explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk—a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn’t get a teaching job or a doctorate—became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom, and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals.

These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.


BUY ON AMAZON: Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson 

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

AS DESCRIBED ON AMAZON:

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.  

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

BUY ON AMAZON: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

AS DESCRIBED ON AMAZON:

In this authoritative and engrossing full-scale biography, Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Einstein and Steve Jobs, shows how the most fascinating of America's founders helped define our national character.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us, the one who seems made of flesh rather than marble. In a sweeping narrative that follows Franklin’s life from Boston to Philadelphia to London and Paris and back, Walter Isaacson chronicles the adventures of the runaway apprentice who became, over the course of his eighty-four-year life, America’s best writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, and business strategist, as well as one of its most practical and ingenious political leaders. He explores the wit behind Poor Richard’s Almanac and the wisdom behind the Declaration of Independence, the new nation’s alliance with France, the treaty that ended the Revolution, and the compromises that created a near-perfect Constitution.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin’s amazing life, showing how he helped to forge the American national identity and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.


BUY ON AMAZON: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

Ceiba's Grace - Elemental Myths Series Prequel by Nicole Pouchet

AS DESCRIBED ON AMAZON:

In an ancient civilized society, Ceiba is the living vessel of the Mother Earth goddess. Duty dictates her coming marriage to god of the dead’s living vessel. An irresistible love draws her to the guard sworn to protect her. Will she choose true love with her guard, or the destiny she was born to fulfill? 

Ceiba’s Grace is the prequel to the soon-to-be-released, four-book, paranormal romance / urban fantasy ELEMENTAL MYTHS romance series. Similar in subject matter, it is a lighter, more carefree read than Deborah Harness’ All Souls Trilogy. This paranormal romance series is sure to entice readers of Karen Marie Moning's Fever series and Marjorie M. Liu's Dirk and Steele series. ELEMENTAL MYTHS follows four couples as they bond together in steamy romance, supernatural powers, and predestined battle to save modern mankind from the mysterious demise of the vanished Incan Empire. 

Publishers Weekly says Nicole Pouchet “provides an intriguing blend of the earthly and supernatural worlds with emotional telepathy, reincarnation, superhero-like powers, and explosive carnal energy…. Lively, flirtatious characters make this an appealing romance.” 

Visit the author’s website at www.NicolePouchet.com to read the first five pages of Ceiba’s Grace, A Paranormal Romance, Prequel to the Elemental Myths Series for free before you buy the book! 

BUY ON AMAZON: The first book of the Elemental Myths Series, Layla's Gale

Layla's Gale: A Paranormal Romance (Elemental Myths Series) by Nicole Pouchet

AS DESCRIBED ON AMAZON:

Life is finally on track for fledgling stage actress Layla Cohen until she realizes her gorgeous new director, Sebastian, is the star of the erotic dreams which she's been having for months. She could handle the uncomfortable work situation if not for the further evidence she's losing her mind: The wind suddenly whooshes at her command; memories of a past life emerge; and she's sure someone is trying to kill her. 

Meanwhile, director Sebastian Tawanti is steering his small D.C. theater company into the big-time with his Incan mythology-based play. The culmination of his life's work, he won't let anything stand in the way of his play's success--not his mother's objections, not the inappropriate heat he feels for Layla, and not even the mysterious, empathic symptoms he's experienced since meeting her. 

As Layla and Sebastian struggle with new love and burgeoning power, a sinister force unravels to fulfill an ancient prophecy. Will they learn the truth behind the Incan script in time to save their lives, the love they're destined to share, and the future of humanity?


BUY ON AMAZON: 

Book 1 of the Elemental Myths Series, Layla's Gale

The Elemental Myths Series Prequel, Ceiba's Grace