Today, AuthorHouse is pleased to welcome self-published writer Myra F. Levick, PhD, ATR-BC, to The Author’s Digest. That second set of credentials stands for “Art Therapist, Board Certified;” in addition, Myra is the director of the South Florida Art Psychotherapy Institute, and the author of Levick Emotional and Cognitive Art Therapy Assessment.

In the first of a three-part blog post, Myra discusses her education and how she entered the fascinating field of art therapy.

When A Picture Really Means More Than A Thousand Words (Part One)

This old, well-known clichérings very true in the field of art therapy. I am an art psychotherapist and suspect that many readers have never heard of art therapy and if per chance they have, know very little about it. So I take this opportunity to share information about this unique therapeutic process and the book that culminated years of practice and research.

In 1963, I had never heard of art therapy either. After a 17 year hiatus from school to marry and have 3 daughters, I was finally graduating from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. I had been accepted in the graduate art history program at Bryn Mawr College and considered my future as an educator all set.

Then, serendipitously, fate intervened. I saw a note on the senior bulletin board from a psychiatrist inviting graduating artists to apply for a position as an “art therapist,” working with mentally ill patients in an open unit. I was intrigued, applied and got the job.

The director of the 29-bed unit, the late Morris Goldman, was a young, creative, ambitious psychoanalyst. He shared with me his knowledge of the importance of art-making with the mentally ill; he had read of how successful this therapeutic intervention had been in European institutions for many years and how there were approximately 100 artists working in hospitals with the mentally ill in the United States. They were known as art therapists. That is what he wanted on his unit.

(To be continued)

Thank you very much, Myra!

AuthorHouse Author’s Digest hopes this has been informative to our readers. Click here to read the second part of Myra’s guest blog. Also, check out Levick Emotional and Cognitive Art Therapy Assessment at the AuthorHouse Bookstore!

Read more about AuthorHouse author Dr. Myra F. Levick and her research at the links below:

Children at Risk – the homepage of Myra F. Levick, Phd, ATR-BC

The Boca Raton branch of the National League of American Pen Women

Myra’s Facebook page

Myra on LinkedIn

The post AuthorHouse presents Art Therapist Myra F. Levick, PhD, ATR-BC (Part One) appeared first on AuthorHouse.

If you haven’t read the first two parts of this feature (available here and here), we encourage you to do so. Otherwise, continue on to read more about The Painter, Lois’ third novel, as well as her upcoming plans and advice to other writers.

What inspired you to write The Painter? How long did it take you to finish it?

The man now my husband, Nicholas Eden, told me a few broad facts about a man he once knew; that he painted apartment hallways, had an  insane a wife, worked for a Spanish prince, created a masterpiece in seclusion, and became his patron’s heir. I seized on this material and completed the work over the course of five eventful years.

What’s the one message you’d like to convey to readers about your book?

Excellence and honesty lead one through fire to peace.

What was your favorite part of self-publishing?

Autonomy.

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Work harder than everyone else connected with your project.

What’s your next writing project?

The third book of The Dowland Trilogy, a myth of the American Northeast.

Are there any events or promotions planned for your book?

Acquisition by libraries, embassies, and an approach to literary agents.

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Thank you very much for your time, Lois, and best of luck with your next book! The Painter is available in the AuthorHouse Bookstore, along with a lot of other great reads–perfect for crossing some items off your Christmas gift list.

The post AuthorHouse presents Some Final Thoughts from Lois Swann appeared first on AuthorHouse.

In addition to three novels (the first of which, The Mists of Manittoo, won the Ohioana Library Association Award for First Novels), Lois’ poetry has received the Bohem Memorial Prize and been published by The Great American Poetry Show. The Painter is her most recent novel.

Lois, do you have any literary influences that helped you develop your style or choice of genre?

My literary influences in the traditional sense were, principally, Robert Frost, Eugene O’Neal, Sean O’Casey, Somerset Maugham, Arthur Miller, clearly masters of dialogue and layered meaning. A different sort of encounter mandated that I write at all.  While living in Woodbridge, Connecticut a vision of a young woman in plain eighteenth century garb being observed by a tall, quiet, native man incited the work of my adult life, a trilogy of the Northeast.  This woodland apparition of forty years ago impelled me to follow that image to a myth of national origin.  I was young and not cowed by the Olympian scope of the project only now concluding.  I can say that ghosts influenced my literary career but did not prevent my entry into contemporary fiction with The Painter.

Please tell us a little about your book.

The Painter is my most recent novel.  Inspired by the life of an artist who emigrated from Italy in the closing days of World War II, it delves artistic formation, cruelty, madness, selfless love, and the stuff of masterworks.

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We’ll present the conclusion of our interview with Lois Swann this weekend. Her third novel, The Painter is available in the AuthorHouse Bookstore.

Have a great week, and thanks for visiting Author’s Digest!

The post More with AuthorHouse’s Lois Swann appeared first on AuthorHouse.

Lois Swann is an award-winning poet and three-time novelist. In addition to receiving the Bohem Memorial Prize for her early poetry, excerpts from her current collection (Perfect Lover) were recently published by The Great American Poetry Show.

Her first book, The Mists of Manittoo, won the Ohioana Library Association Award for First Novels. A sequel, Torn Covenants, followed. Her most recent novel, The Painter, was self-published last year by AuthorHouse.

Lois, a mother of two, currently lives on Cape Cod with her husband, and we’re thrilled that she could talk with us. Today, she shares a bit about her background.

Lois, please tell us about yourself.

I am a native New Yorker which explains in part my world view at once open and closed. I am open to varied rhythms, themes, personalities, possibilities, settings,  techniques:  I am closed to technical laxity and constricted interpretations of events, circumstances, and history. I feel deeply a commitment to reveal the complexity of facts, to sink into the red heart of a story.  My self-expression was early nourished by reading and writing  poetry. The writing of letters proved to be my school for description of the familiar and the unfamiliar when I was far from home caught in pleasant exile as a college student and young bride. Having lived on the East Coast, the West Coast, in the Mid-West, and in New England blasts any possibility of my being a regional author. I am happily unbound by geography.

My progress has been graced by encouragement from my father and a father-in-law both of them inventors in their own right. My lifelong devotion to creating a Northeastern myth of Native Americans and Colonials must be rooted in the garden of my childhood, my father reverently explaining the presence of arrowheads in the soil. In his last days, ever unselfish, my father would urge me to leave his side to complete the work saying, “Don’t you have a book to write?” My father-in-law  relishing my descriptions of the California coast urged me to publish rather than write for his private enjoyment.

Taking his advice I sought an editor from a similar locale to the main characters of my first novel.  The research yielded me an association with Burroughs Mitchell, one of the greats, and an author’s life fostered by iconic personalities, a tutelage in amity, loyalty, and business hard to come by today.  Luck also played a major role in my publishing drama.  An invitation to have my papers and a manuscripts archived in Howard Gotllieb’s Twentieth Century Collection at Boston University was caught in a hedge at my home in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Neighborhood children brought that letter to my door months later when the snows melted. There have been other strokes of good fortune that make my life and my life in literature breathe.

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We’ll be back with the continuation of our chat with Lois Swann later this week. In the meantime, we encourage our readers to check out Lois’ work. The Painter is available in the AuthorHouse Bookstore.

Have a great week, and thanks for stopping by Author’s Digest!

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The first part of our interview can be read here. And now, more from Dr. Mary Beth Gaertner.

Dr. Gaertner, what is the one message you would like to convey to readers about your book?

I would love it if readers would take the book, implement the strategy, and see for themselves what a difference positive communication can make. It takes work (and can generate more work) but it’s worth it! Our data proves that when parents are satisfied with the communication with their teacher, they’re satisfied with the school in general.

What was your favorite part of self-publishing?

My favorite part of the self-publishing experience was seeing my book cover for the first time! I was reduced to tears to see it actually come to a reality.

What advice would you give to an aspiring author?

You will never be an author if you never write a book–so get writing!

What’s your next writing project?

My next writing project will most likely be the second edition of the book, with updates and new data–things we have learned and honed to become even better at what we do as educational professionals.

Are there any marketing events or promotions planned for your book?

I’ve been so blessed the first round–with radio talk shows, television coverage and writing magazine articles, I don’t know what more I could be doing (other than a second round of the same with the next edition.)

Is there anything you’d like to add?

I would definitely recommend taking advantage of the marketing services–the professionals at AuthorHouse did a fantastic, top-of-the-line promotion of the book. To our knowledge, we have schools all over the country (and, thanks to online books, all over the world) implementing the strategies from the book. Hooray for teachers who go the extra mile and to parents who care enough to share their hearts!!!!

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Thank you for your work and time, Dr. Gaertner, and best of luck with the next edition of your book. In the meantime, Way to Go is available in the AuthorHouse Bookstore. Check it out!

Have a great weekend, and stop by Author’s Digest again soon!

The post More with AuthorHouse’s Mary Beth Gaertner and “Way to Go” appeared first on AuthorHouse.

From the book’s overview: “The book details the ‘tell the teacher more’ strategy, the training of school personnel, the research, and the comments from the teachers themselves how one strategy at the beginning of the school year can have major impact on the positive communication that happens all year long!”

Welcome to Author’s Digest, Dr. Gaertner. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I’ve always loved school, and reading books for learning was wonderful. Reading for enjoyment didn’t really happen for me, unless it was a magazine or something with lots of pictures or recipes! I still read voraciously to learn something, not for enjoyment. People laugh at me because I love professional journals. So, when it came to the best way for sharing what we have learned as a school over the years by focusing on building relationships with parents, it was an easy decision to write the book! When I would present to schools and workshops, it would be like presenting a book anyway – from the research to the implementation to the outcome.

Do you have any literary influences that helped you develop your style?

I had no other influences that particularly influenced me, other than the fact that I feel teachers stand to gain so much when they have a pure theory to implement and a clear how-to method from which to learn.

If I had to name an influence, I would say that Master Teacher author, Richard DeBruyn, was a great influence in the way he shares information: short and concise but full of wonderful professional advice.

Please tell us a little about Way to Go.

The book was written to help other educators and schools achieve positive communication between parents and teachers using a simple research-based method that really works, based on our research as to what parents really want. Other books provide advice, but this one shares the “way to go” along with authentic comments from the teachers and parents themselves as to how much the process helped them throughout the rest of the year to continue great communication.

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Thanks, Mary Beth! We’ll be back again later this week, when Dr. Gaertner tells us more about her book and her self-publishing experience. Way to Go is available in the AuthorHouse Bookstore.

Thanks for stopping by Author’s Digest!

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In part one (available here), Nancy told us a little about her background and literary influences. Today, Nancy tells us about the nightmarish series of events that led to her writing her book, Hannah Was Here: D.R.E.S.S. an alarm that must be heard.

Nancy, please tell us about your book.

Hannah Was Here: D.R.E.S.S. an alarm that must be heard, is a true horrific family love story.  The Szakacsys ( Sa Ka Chee) family found themselves in an inconceivable fight to save their 16-year-old daughter Hannah’s life, after an extreme adverse reaction to a widely prescribed antibiotic acne drug called Minocycline.  Hannah’s experience was described as biblical, as she endured a 102-day struggle on life support.

The Hannah Was Here Foundation began the day no other option presented itself. It is said that 90 percent of what we worry about never happens. I’ll vouch for that. On April 19, 2011, my daughter Hannah’s heart failed while she was sitting in a doctor’s office. After 48 minutes of reviving her at the hospital next door, the team got a pulse and inserted an impella device. She was flown by medicopter to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. When she arrived at Cedars, she had no heart beat or pulse–it had ceased upon entering the helicopter.

Hannah eventually had fasciotomies, flaying open both her legs; two open heart surgeries; and the loss of all her major organs. She had a BiVAD artificial heart implanted and later removed due to her own heart’s striving for life. She endured hundreds of x-rays, scans, severe starvation, and lost her colon and part of her pancreas. I could add more. Hannah was in and out of consciousness until she died 102 days later, two weeks after her seventeenth birthday.

This mission is for love and the countless other (unknown but not nameless) sons, daughters and adults who passed or lay silently afflicted. None, I pray, are suffering or enduring what Hannah did.

The truth is, at least half of all Americans take one prescription drug. One in six takes three or more. I can hardly keep up. I’m trying to take what I’ve learned and do something good with it, to offer up having been there as a small gift to someone in pain. In some cases, it’s as good as it gets for the giver, that the pain wasn’t for nothing.

Hannah Was Here  should leave you thinking and aware. I hope her story makes you feel everything and wonder if you could have lived it. You certainly could be asked to. These haunting events didn’t have to happen. That is what makes it so hard.

I want to memorialize Hannah truthfully. The contractors gave me the same granite samples for my new kitchen that I’d received for her gravestone. I feel violent. Memorials aren’t just benches or scholarships in someone’s name. Hannah would want more. She would have hoped we learned something, especially if it meant uncovering a hidden bully.

“Big Pharma” is fueled by greed, hiding behind white coat-wearing puppets.I thought you should know what happened to Hannah. I’m trying to keep the light on. All we ever had was love. I’m carrying that with me while I’m still here. The gift to feel is free with every human, even when it hurts… especially then.

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We’ll present the conclusion of our interview with Nancy this weekend. Hannah Was Here is available in the AuthorHouse Bookstore.

For more information about Nancy Szakacsy, her book, and DRESS (Drug Reaction with Eosinophilia and Systemic Symptoms), please visit her website at dresssyndrome.org

Thank you for visiting Author’s Digest.

The post AuthorHouse’s Nancy Szakacsy and “Hannah Was Here,” Part Two appeared first on AuthorHouse.

An exquisite collection of short stories that reflect on human longing and the power of the familiar … a magnetic, emotive offering.

Those were the words used by Foreword Reviews to describe self-published author Janet Killeen’s book of short stories, There is a Season. The book, released by AuthorHouse last year, has also received rave reviews from Kirkus and Blueink Reviews (which called it “a profound understanding of how to convey tentative interpersonal connection … highly recommended.”)

We’re thrilled to welcome Janet to our community of featured authors. Today, she tells us a little about her background and her literary influences.

Janet, please tell us about yourself.

I am a retired teacher: for more than thirty-five years, I taught English and English Literature and had the great privilege of teaching students of 17 and 18 years old some of the most significant works of English and American literature. Before that, I studied at the University of Kent at Canterbury, and much of my earlier life was spent in Yorkshire. There is no more exciting way to explore literature than to teach it – to exchange ideas, to learn from your students, and to equip them with the skills to analyze and appreciate the details of the text while exploring the richness of meaning that lies at the heart of great literature.

Having retired, I have the opportunity to write, travel, and enjoy the relationships built up over a lifetime.

Were there any particular literary influences that helped you develop your style?

My reading has been eclectic (much to prepare for teaching, much for pleasure.) It would be impossible to disentangle the influences and models of excellence that have influenced me – too many and for too long! However, I do have distinct personal favourites in fiction: for example, the classics of Dickens, Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Golding and Orwell. I also enjoy crime fiction, such as the writers of the “golden age,” like Sayers and Tey, and most especially the novels of P. D. James and Susan Hill – whose detective fiction goes far beyond the “whodunnit’ genre.

I read poetry: Chaucer, Keats, Wordsworth, Arnold, Dickinson, Hopkins, the First World War poets, Eliot, Auden, R. S. Thomas, and Larkin. I hugely enjoy and am challenged by the poetry of C. A. Duffy. I have been, as surely every reader and theatre-goer has been, most profoundly influenced and shaped by the continual miracle of Shakespeare. So the answer is yes – but not in a conscious way. These things are “in the blood!”

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We’ll have more from Janet Killeen later this week, so check back at Author’s Digest soon!

Janet has also published Recognition and two illustrated books for children (The Barking Cat and The Moonlight Foxes.) For more information, check out her homepage. There is a Season is available in the AuthorHouse Bookstore.

The post AuthorHouse Spotlight on Janet Killeen appeared first on AuthorHouse.

Solomon, tell us a little about yourself.

I was born on April 5, 1977 in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe. I attended Mutsvangwa, Ratelshoek and Chikore High Schools between 1992 and 1999 before attending the University of Zimbabwe, where I studied Literature and Theatre Arts. I’m currently studying for an MA in African and Diasporan Literature in English with Midlands State University. I teach Literature at Dangamvura High School in Mutare, Zimbabwe.

Do you have any particular literary influences that helped you develop your style, subject and genre?

My imagination was captured by the Romantic novel, and I grew up in a continent that is struggling to shake off vestiges of colonialism, and whose literature largely represents that struggle. I suppose Rebel Soldier is a hybrid between the Romantic novel and the African novel, though I did not consciously make it so. My wife, Linda, once remarked that the book reflects its author’s identity crisis!

Tell us a little about your book.

Rebel Soldier is a story about a young, strong-willed woman, Lizzy Chiwara, who grows up in a highly oppressive patriarchal society in which she witnesses gross abuses against women. As a child, she witnesses her mother being physically and emotionally abused by her father. Her beloved Aunt Rizi dies frustrated and bitter because “they” rejected and murdered her fiancé. Lizzy’s twin, Lucy, refuses to marry the man to whom she is given to appease the avenging spirit of Aunt Rizi’s boyfriend, and she commits suicide instead.

After Lucy’s death, Lizzy must now be married off to that same man for the same purpose, but she too refuses. She vows to never get married or fall in love, in solidarity with her twin and aunt. She pledges loyalty and love to them, vowing to take her revenge on men. But that loyalty is severely tested when it turns out that the man she is being forced to marry is the same man she has always secretly loved.

In a society where belief in the influence of the dead over the living runs deep, Lizzy faces a serious dilemma: to accept this man is to betray her deceased twin and aunt (incurring their wrath,) but to decline the offer is to betray her own heart. What happens to a yearning repressed, a longing sacrificed to principle and loyalty? That is the heart of the story.

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We’ll present the conclusion of our interview with Solomon Mwapangidza later this week. His debut, award-winning novel, Rebel Soldier, is available in the AuthorHouse Bookstore.

Thanks for visiting Author’s Digest!

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His wife, Helen Armstrong, was the inspiration for The Shadow of Her Smile, his first novel:

From her, he received the gift of an exceptional, selfless, and loving personality who breathed music and shared it with everyone she met.

Helen, an international virtuoso violinist, was also the founder of Armstrong Chamber Concerts, Inc. (ACC,) a non-profit organization with the goal of broadening public knowledge and appreciation of chamber music through education and performances. She passed away in 2006, but her vision lives on through ACC and its more than 100,000 students.

And now, we present Ajit Hutheesing:

Who is the author behind the book?

I’m a financial professional of 40 years experience with a compulsion for writing short essays, political/economic critiques in newspapers, and poetry.  I come from a family of writers: my mother wrote eight books and dozens of articles, which were published in the U.K., USA and India; my father was a journalist and the author of one of the earliest books on Mao Tse Tung’s China; my uncle was first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, who also wrote prolifically; my aunt was Mrs. V.L. Pandit, the first woman President of the United Nations General Assembly. She wrote her biography, which I assisted in getting published in the USA. There are many more authors in the family.

Do you have any particular literary influences that helped you develop your writing style?

Not any one, but a collection–see above

Please tell us a little about your book.

It’s a loving dedication to my wife, the famous violinist Helen Armstrong. I reveal Helen’s remarkable life as a childhood prodigy transformed into a virtuoso violinist. Tragedy diverted her career to charitable contributions of concert performances and music education for children.  Political and economic circumstances following India’s independence are revealed briefly, and are the reasons I arrived in the USA and eventually met Helen Armstrong.

What inspired you to write your book and how long did it take you to finish it?

My wife was a “living inspiration.”  Her untimely death while in the midst of a concert drove me to great grief and solitude during which I wrote and wrote.  I completed 90% of the book in six months, but shelved it for seven years seeking privacy–until now.

What is the one message you would like to convey to your readers about your book?

Paying great attention to the ones you love while they/you are still alive is the most important thing one can do in one’s lifetime.

What was your favorite part of your self-publishing experience?

An education in what it takes to publish a book.

What advice would you give to an aspiring author?

Write, write, write and publish, publish, publish.

Are you working on a sequel to your book, or another subject matter?

Yes–a sequel is not possible.  I’m writing an insider’s perspective of great members of the Nehru family.

Are there any events, marketing or promotions planned for your book?

Yes – mainly in the music community, and among friends and family in the USA and India.

Is there anything else you’d like to say about writing or publishing?

Too much to say – too little time!

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Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Hutheesing, and for sharing your wife’s story with Author’s Digest and the world. We look forward to your next book!

The Shadow of Her Smile is available in the AuthorHouse Bookstore.

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