Category: local fun

The BRAVE Interview #8 March 2017: Jennifer Greiner

by Karen, posted in friends, Interviews, local fun, Metaphysical healing, The BRAVE Interviews

Here is #8 in The BRAVE Interview series! It’s the Who, What, When, Where, How, (and sometimes Why) of YOUR ‘one brave thing’! December’s interview is with Jennifer Greiner. 🙂

jen-greinerWHO are you? I am Jennifer Greiner, a strong, individual woman who knows what she wants and works hard to get it.  I am passionate, caring and considerate.  I am professionally a therapist but also an essential oil and hula hooping enthusiast! Part of my identity has become being a significant other to a first year Med Student.

WHAT is your One Brave Thing (so far!!)? My One Brave Thing was starting my essential oil business, Green Thinking.  It is something I have never done, nor have ever particularly wanted to do.  It was very scary for me to jump into selling products to others that I, myself, love.  Not only did I just start Green Thinking, I was also adjusting to a big transition: moving to a new state and vicariously beginning medical school.  Thank goodness I was brave enough to launch into this wonderful endeavor as it helped keep me busy, adjust and gain a wonderful new community!

WHEN did you do it? I officially started Green Thinking at the Saco River Market on October 29th, 2016.

WHERE did it occur?  The Saco River Market had just changed locations from Saco Island to a church in Biddeford, ME.  It was an adjustment for the whole Market and was crushing after that first market day, to learn that we would be moving to another new place, 40 Main St., Biddeford.  I could easily empathize with other vendors as it was normal for me to move around and wait a while to get used to a place.  I have been able to easily settle into our new space, as I believe, so has the rest of the market.


HOW did you make it happen?   Pretty easily, looking back on the year.  I had been making my own products for myself for months.  I had tested them out and shared with friends.  When I learned of the Saco River Market, I went down there to speak with them about becoming a vendor.  I printed out the application, sent it in and discussed that I would start at the end of October.  Then it was the scramble to get products made, labels on and purchase a table!  I was able to make it all happen and be ready for that first market.


WHY did you do it? One of my many passions is essential oils.  I want to share them with everyone and teach how you can incorporate them into your lifestyle, to help elevate your life and live naturally, chemical free.  I’ve always admired market vendors and was eager for the opportunity to become one myself.  I consider myself a people-person and looked forward to talking with and meeting new people to immerse myself in my new community.  I am so happy to have persevered through my One Brave Thing to feel successful and accomplished!

If you’d like to read the other interviews in the series, click here for the list: https://kwrites.com/?s=the+BRAVE+interview

If you’d like to be interviewed for this series about your own ‘one brave thing’, email me at kmcwrites@gmail.com.

 

Spotlight on: The Shops at Cape Neddick

by Karen, posted in author, books, local fun, shopping

Have you been to The Shops at Cape Neddick recently? If it’s been awhile, you’re in for a treat. It’s expanded and still expanding, so give yourself enough time to look around and take it all in.

When you walk in, you will feel the lovely energy of this shop right away. It feels like you are being wrapped big, warm hug. Everywhere you look you’ll see something beautiful, fun, and unique. There are several different shops under this one roof, so there truly is something for everyone.

Today, I want to tell you about (you guessed it) the book section! Currently called Book Ends, there is a special section to highlight local authors. I am proud to tell you that I am represented here!

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Every time I come here, I find just exactly the thing I want. Today, I found this ‘Be Brave’ bracelet, the perfect compliment to my first novel, One Brave Thing, which is available at The Shops.capeneddick1

On Friday, March 17th, I will be at The Shops at Cape Neddick, signing my book from 5:00pm-7pm. I will also be giving one card oracle readings as a bonus gift to anyone who purchases my book. When you come, ask me about my second novel, What if Bebe Stays with Steven? So save the date and tell your friends!

The Shops at Cape Neddick is at 1300 Route 1, Cape Neddick, ME 03902. For more information, call 207-363-2500, or check out the Facebook page here.

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Being BRAVE is catchy!

by Karen, posted in Interviews, local fun, my one word, The BRAVE Interviews, TV series, writing

I was trolling Facebook recently, after working on the next “The BRAVE Interview” for my blog (coming in March, 2017). I must be primed to see the word ‘brave’. You know, like when you’re pregnant and suddenly you see pregnant women everywhere?

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So I couldn’t help but notice this page with Being Brave with Abbie McG emblazoned across the top.

Since I chose BRAVE as ‘my one word‘ in 2015, I’ve been all about the brave.

I created the “One Brave Thing” group on Facebook, a private group for anyone who has read my book (One Brave Thing), where we support one another’s efforts to do brave things.

I launched The BRAVE Interview Series on my blog at kwrites.com, where once a month I invite a reader of my book to discuss ‘one brave thing’ they have done in their own lives.

I acquire ‘brave’ jewelry wherever I find it. This ‘brave’ bracelet is from The Shops at Cape Neddick in Maine.

🙂

I also try not to hide from any chances I get to be brave in my own life now.

So, coming full circle, of course I will be watching Abby McGilvery’s Being Brave TV episode!

Mary Ann and me

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, author, books, italian, Karen's Kitchen, local fun

Mary mary-ann-espositoAnn Esposito and I go way back. Okay, sort of.

I met her in real life at a Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School event in 2008. (Also, once I saw her at the Market Basket, but I didn’t actually talk to her. Does that count?)

I really met her for the first time in my younger years, watching her on TV. She hosted  Ciao Italia on PBS. Years later, I watched all the reruns, too.

She is a skilled, wonderful cook, as anyone who has ever watched Ciao Italia knows. She was as warm and funny and caring in person as she was on TV.

I’m Italian, as anyone who knows me knows. I learned so much not only about cooking, but about life and how to live it from my Italian nana, Mary. Meeting Mary Ann, watching her cook in the Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School’s cucina, gave me back that feeling of being with my grandmother in her kitchen again for a few hours.
Being with your people: Priceless.

Anyway, Mary Ann Esposito is also an author. The Stonewall event was a cooking class and a book signing. She was kind enough to sign my book, and gracious enough to pose for a photo with me. Here’s how much it meant to me: I was able to put my hand on this photo of us from 2008 literally in seconds. I knew exactly where it was.

I am beyond excited to tell you that she will be at the New England Authors Expo March 31st event: 2017 Authors Night by the Sea, in Portsmouth, NH, signing her books. I will be there, too, signing my novel, One Brave Thing.

And visiting with Mary Ann. Maybe I’ll even get another photo with her.

Life’s funny, isn’t it?

me-and-mary-ann-on-the-authors-list

Click here for the information, if you want to come!

 

The power of one

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, author, book reviews, books, family, friends, Holidays, local fun, writing

I have been giving a lot of talks at local libraries. For my most recent one, I personally invited and Facebook invited a lot of people.

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A lot.

Plus, it was a full moon in Gemini (my sign)! At 7:05pm! And my talk started at 7:00PM!

I know this is a busy time of year for us all, but I was expecting at least 10 people or so.

When it 6:59pm and still no one had come, I began to consider that maybe I had saturated my geographic location.

If no one came (as I have heard sometimes happens, but thankfully had never happened to me), my Plan B was to have my husband make a video of me reading so I could post it on my YouTube Channel (still evolving–don’t judge it). At least this would be time well spent, right?

What I learned: Don’t accept a time slot that starts when the library is CLOSED. Duh. I’m not sure why they even did that… oh, wait. Yes, I do. I took the slot because I was hoping to sell a lot of books before Christmas, and this was the only December slot they had. They had one slot available in January, but I thought people might not come out in the cold when they weren’t possibly out already, shopping for the holidays (books make great gifts!). Note: the temperature was in the 20’s last night.

And then, at 7:05pm, one person came into the room.

My audience had arrived. She probably didn’t really feel like going out, but she wanted to support a fellow writer/author, and guess what?

SHE DID.

Thank you again, Katherine. ❤

For some reason, this song was in my head on my way home from the event, so I am including it here for your listening pleasure:

Humble

by Karen, posted in books, Grace, local fun, writing

Today I was so excited to get a copy of the York Weekly newspaper that my husband and I braved the ice and snow and rode down to the York Hannaford to pick it up before work. After I ascertained that the article did, in fact, run this week (there was a photo of me and of my book cover right there on page B3 of the Living Section!), I folded the paper back up. I didn’t read it on the way home.

york-weekly-article

This was a do-over chance. The first article that was written in the newspaper about me publishing my first novel had many errors (including the name of the main character! Her name is NOT Bebe Kristen Davis!) and so was very disappointing.
I had high hopes for this time around.

When we got home, I had to go right to work, so my husband started reading it. “I found something that you’re not going to be happy about,” he began.

Seriously?
Here is the line: “…she is a registered nurse, a health coach, weight gain teacher and author. 

Guess which part is wrong? Was it that stupid autocorrect?

Now the irony here is that I was just commiserating with a friend yesterday about how I had lost 30 lbs on Weight Watchers several years ago and then gained some of it back–talk about adding insult to injury!

Also, lesson learned. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I should have asked if I could give it a once over before the story ran.

And then I remembered myoneword for 2016: GRACE. I could just accept this with grace. I have made plenty of errors in my own writing, and have always felt terrible when I noticed them (or they were gracefully pointed out to me by others) after the fact.

Here is the article (it has since been corrected): Wells Author will Speak at York Library

This came to mind after the events of this morning, so I’m sharing it with you all:

Top 10 tips (I think!) for having successful author reading

by Karen, posted in author, books, local fun

As I mentioned in my prior blog post, there is a definite learning curve to this whole ‘promoting your book’ thing. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is this: assume nothing! (Remember Felix Unger’s lesson on what happens when you ASSUME?!).

Anyway, here are what I think are the top 10 tips (in no particular order) for having a successful (eg: well attended) author reading.

  1. Create a Facebook event (you can figure it out; it’s not hard) and then share it on your own page, your author page, and the pages of any friends that will have you.
  2. Make an author page on Facebook, if you haven’t done that yet.
  3. Design some flyers (this can be as simple as a photo of your book, the date, time, and place of your event) and put them up around the town where you’ll be speaking (grocery stores, hairdressers, health food stores…any place that has a community bulletin board).
  4. Ask the person with whom you book your event to send out a press release to any and every newspaper that they can.
  5. Write a press release, so it will be ready when you need it. This can be as simple as your (short) bio, your book title and a little about it, and again the date, time, and place of your talk.
  6. Word of mouth is your friend: tell people and ask them to tell people: their friends, their families.
  7. Make sure you bring business cards, book marks, and any other promotional materials you’ve got to every talk and/or signing you do.
  8. Consider offering a ‘free gift with purchase’ to your book buyers. This doesn’t need to cost  you much at all. In my book, there is an Italian grandmother who makes the best gravy in the entire world, so I gave out a recipe for it (from my own Italian Nana, whose recipe really IS the best in the entire world) as a bonus gift.
  9. It doesn’t ever hurt to have chocolate spread out around your book. As people reach for the chocolate, you are also drawing their eyes (and hands!) toward your book!
  10. If you are doing a library talk, they usually will have a sidewalk easel to put out to alert people about your event. Make sure they use it for you!

That’s all I have for you today. Please comment below if you have any additional tips that have worked for you!

BOOK REVIEW: The Alchemist’s Daughter by Mary Lawrence

by Karen, posted in author, book reviews, books, local fun, Metaphysical healing

I just finished reading The Alchemist’s Daughter by Mary Lawrence. All I can say is, YAY!

the-alchemists-daughterMary’s book is a work of historical fiction, so if you’re into that, you’ll love it. Not a historical fiction fan? Don’t limit yourself! Read it anyway. You’ll still love it! Right from the beginning, you will feel like you’re in London in the 1500’s. The language itself helps to immerse you in the story.

One thing I love is when I’m reading a book and I have to–no, wait; I get to–go grab a dictionary because I’ve stumbled upon an unfamiliar word. Wherry? Kirtle? Bring it! I know these words now!

Bianca, the main character, is fascinated by the metaphysical, and so am I, so I fell in love with her right away. She is also brave, which is something I aspire to be in my own life, and this kept me rooting for her in her bleaker moments. Bianca always wants to know the truth in any situation, even it if will make her own life more difficult.

My favorite part of the book (page 123): I love when Bianca is in her rent (another cool word!) by the fire, reviewing and assimilating all her thoughts, feelings, and impressions from recent events, allowing her intuition to fuse them all together and distill them into an explanation for what has happened.

Best quote from the book (page 126): “The only thing that could possess such a man to be out on a night like this was money. Though sometimes love could. But mostly money.”

If you are squeamish like me, and rats are the stuff your nightmares are made of, here’s a helpful hint: read the rat parts quickly.

Fun fact: one of the characters in the book, Meddybemps, is named after a town in Maine!  See what you can learn at an author talk?
If you are local: Mary Lawrence will be signing her books at Books-a-Million in South Portland, Maine tomorrow at 2pm. Maybe you should go!bam-mary-lawrence

Jodi Picoult at the Music Hall

by Karen, posted in author, books, friends, Life's too short to read bad books, local fun, writing

My friend Deb and I went to see Jodi Picoult read from her new book, Small Great Things. After picoult4she read, she was interviewed by Virginia from New Hampshire Public Radio.

What was good: Jodi’s reading of an excerpt of her book was dramatic and entertaining. It was definitely a performance worth hearing. Being able to ask her questions was also nice.

I liked the venue. The Portsmouth Music Hall is an older theater with loads of character and charm.

I also got the idea of selling tickets to my own author talks from this, and including the cost of the book in the ticket price. Smart, right? So you dont’ have to worry about investing a lot of time and money in an event and not selling books. I might try this someday, you know, when I’m famous.

What wasn’t so good: The price! Not only did you have to buy a ticket to hear the talk, you also had to buy a book. Hardcover fiction is not generally something I spend money on. This made for a pretty pricey evening. Also, the books were pre-signed. Not for nothing, but we had to take it on faith that she actually signed them herself. Just sayin’.

Also, while I did like that she took audience questions, I did not like that she only took some of our questions, and the ones she did take were pre-screened. There was really zero contact with her whatsoever, other than watching and listening. Not interactive.

It was more of an author show than an author talk, more formal than casual. I suppose in the future I should keep the difference in mind. I prefer the latter over the former.

All in all, the book sounds great. The protagonist is a nurse, and (as some of you know) so am I, so if I had to buy a hardcover fiction book by Jodi, I guess this was the one (NOTE: It better not end like My Sister’s Keeper).

 

Meet the Author: ANN BEATTIE

by Karen, posted in author, books, local fun, no fear, writing
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Ann Beattie

I had the opportunity to hear writer and novelist Ann Beattie read one of her wonderful short stories at the York County Community College Visiting Artists Series last week.

Ann explained that her husband helped her choose what to read at the event. “Read something funny!” he suggested.

She took his advice and read a short story called The Gypsy, I think, something like that–sorry I didn’t get the title exactly– about women in a coffee shop that gets held up. After that, she opened it up for questions.

Someone in the audience asked her what she thought of blogs and I understood her to say she didn’t really read them.
I decided to be bold! Before I could talk myself out of it!
I raised my hand and commented that I was a blogger and a writer and an author. I told her that I had only recently made the connection between blog posts being like short stories. I was talking to a person at my book sale who said they didn’t read novels but they did like to read short stories and a lightbulb went off for me! I explained how blog posts might fit that bill for them. I told Anne that a lot of people liked reading my blog. then I said…wait for it…maybe YOU (Ann) would like reading my blog, too!
And guess what! She said, “Maybe I would.” 😀
After she finished her talk, I went up to shake her hand, meet her officially, and give her my card.  Isn’t it wonderful that she took it? Who knows? Maybe Ann will become a blogger herself!
It could happen.