Monthly Archives: April 2012

Heaven on My Mind

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I mentioned earlier in the week about Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Messages from Heaven being a national best-seller.

I’ve been thinking about that all week…I mean, there have been a ton of Chicken Soup books, and they all follow a similar format. They’re feel good books, nice little stories to ease what ails you. And yes, it’s always been a fairly lucrative franchise. But still. National best-seller? What’s so special about Messages from Heaven?

I’ve decided that it has to be the subject matter. Perhaps we hunger for more than material comforts; we want to know that there’s spiritually more, more than mortgage payments and careers and cars and closets of shoes.

Or maybe it’s as simple as reassurance. Maybe we just want to know that love carries on.

If you happen to be awake late tonight, you can hear Amy Newmark, coauthor of the book and publisher of Chicken Soup for the Soul. She’s the featured guest on George Noory’s Coast to Coast AM show, and starting at 10 PM Pacific Time (1 AM Eastern Time) to midnight, she’ll be discussing Messages from Heaven.

(You can click on this link to find the radio station in your market that carries the show.)

And now, maybe you’re wondering, too. What is so special about Messages from Heaven? So I’m going to give you a chance to win a copy. Just leave a comment and let’s see…I’ll draw a random name on Friday week. I’m limiting it to US residents only since I’m mailing one of my copies, but you know it’s available just about anywhere, right?

It’s a national best-seller after all. Which kinda gives me a hopeful feeling about this old world and the people in it.

Flush Fiction For the Reader on the Go

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So, finally, I can come clean. I’ve been sitting on this news for quite some time, and I refuse to waste another minute– I have a story in the just released Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction!

Whew. That felt good. It’s been so hard, keeping that in! But there’s more. The amazing folks at Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader have agreed to give away a copy of Flush Fiction to one of my lucky commenters! Isn’t that swell?

But of course, you want to know more about this quick fiction on the go! This collection of 88 short-short stories covers just about everything: mystery, horror, sci-fi, humor, romance, and adventure. The editors scoured the country for some of the best fiction writers around and stuffed them all into this one BIG book. Um…the stories, not the writers.

It’s a mystery what I’m doing in this book with such a group of esteemed writers.  But just like that eternal unanswerable question, “Who forgot to flush?” I suppose we’ll never know. We will, however, know who will win the copy of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction in exactly seven days. That’s when I’ll pluck a winner from the mess of names floating around in the comments. (Sorry, folks, you must be in the United States in order to win.)

And you might want to follow Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader on Twitter or Facebook for more info dumps.

(Okay, that went too far, didn’t it? But I seem to be on a roll and can’t stop.)

(Oops.)