My inbox is alive with the links of aweeeesommmmmmee!
There, now that's in your head along with mine, right? Good.
First up: another way to remember Linda Lael Miller's name. Many people see Lael Miller's name and think, “Cowboys.” I see her name and think “pet food,” because awhile back I ended up with a plastic lid for pet food cans with her name on it. But here's another: Linda Lael Miller's Scholarship Fund. I had no idea Linda Lael Miller did this, but here are the details from Meara:
I don't know if you are aware of this, but Linda Lael Miller has a scholarship for “non-traditional” female student. It's amazing. As a student with few monetary resources and even fewer scholarships and bursaries I can apply to (I'm in a professional program so why would I need money?), this type of grant is worth it's weight in gold. (And it's open to Canadians too, so yes I love love love Ms. Miller). I was too late to apply (it's closed now) but I think more people should know about it!
I wish more female-dominated, or even female-friendly professions and leaders would take the time to set up grants like this. It doesn't need to be a lot, for women struggling to finish their degrees and make a life for themselves even $100 is welcome. We've all been there – trying to make ends meet while slogging towards our dream.
Just wanted to share the joy!
The page about the scholarship says that Linda “donates all the honoraria from her engagements to her scholarship fund.”
That is BAD ASS AWESOME.
Graceful curtsey to Meara for the link and information!
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Several readers have forwarded me this link, which I find fascinating. A young boy's prosthetic leg fell apart during a triathlon, and he couldn't fix it. Pfc. Matthew Morgan put 11 year old Ben Baltz on his back and ran the rest of the race with him.
The pictures of the finish went viral in a hurry, but what I find most interesting is that while Pfc. Morgan gets all kinds of mad props for helping Baltz, but Baltz himself was a bit nonplussed about the whole thing:
After the screws in his prosthetic leg came loose Ben sat there wondering whether he should crawl or hop the rest of the way there, and in the middle of doing so a marine by the name of Matthew Morgan who was volunteering at the youth event stepped in and asked young Ben Baltz if he needed some help. For the next half mile, Ben held onto Pfc. Morgan with one arm and his prosthetic leg with the other. Ben said he and Morgan didn’t really speak after their first exchange, but more Marines gathered around and sang a cadence.
Ben Baltz was grateful to the marine for all his help, but he says he is a little frustrated and embarrassed that he couldn’t complete the course on his own.
Not all of the news stories carried Baltz's reaction, but I love the addition of his perspective, especially since he's an athlete and has been since before his leg was amputated at age 6. That's a lot of conflict and admiration in one story.
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Jennifer Estep forwarded me some cool news: an anthology she's part of, Entangled, which features paranormal short stories from Cynthia Eden, Jennifer Estep, Edie Ramer, Lori Brighton, Michelle Diener, Misty Evans, Nancy Haddock, Liz Kreger, Dale Mayer, and Michelle Miles, plus a novella by Allison Brennan, went on sale in Septemeber.
Since then it has raised more than $11,000 for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
The anthology has good reviews, including a 3.92 average on Goodreads. If you'd like to check it out, the digital collection is available on Amazon, BN, Sony, Kobo, iBooks.
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Stephanie Laurens is asking for reader input for the cover of her next book. The covers are all very different looks for a Laurens novel, with the exceptions of the woman in the yellow and the close up of her face. Which do you like best?
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The Lawrence Public Library in Kansas has created Banned Books Trading Cards, with featured graphics created by local artists.
That is SO COOL. You can buy your own set, and all proceeds go to the artists and the library. Or, you can travel to Lawrence and get a set in person and high five the librarians, which is a very tempting option, I must say.
Thanks to Twitter and GalleyCat for the link.
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More fun from Sarah D., who found HistoryPin and emailed it to me, whereupon I lost about 2 hours looking at everyone's pictures. It's like Ancestry.com crossed with Pinterest. To quote Sarah, “It is a crowdsourced database of historical information: you “pin” your story, photo, etc to a particular geographic location and date in time.”
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Via a link from the Under the Covers book blog, here are more books on sale – including some from Kensington, which is Greek for “ALL YOUR COUPONS WORK WITH US!”
I love the Aiken Dragon books, especially the first three. They are like uber-campy, ultra-violent, female-centric fairy tales. Like, you might want to go sword shopping after you finish one. I loved reading them.
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Dragon Actually by G. A. Aiken * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
- Blood of the Wicked by Karina Cooper * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
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Seduction and Snacks by Tara Sevic * $0.99 * A | BN | K | S
- Hot Stuff by Carly Phillips * $1.00 * A | BN | K | S | iBooks
I've had The Gift of Fear recommended to me twice now. Would you recommend reading it? What did you think?
I like the Gift of Fear. As a mother, I actually like de Becker’s other book, “Protecting the Gift” even better.
I would definitely recommend The Gift of Fear. It’s been a while since I read it, but a friend gave it to me when I first moved to New York. I grew up in the suburbs, and had had a close enough brush with a mugging in Brasil to realize I had no street sense at all, and was therefore very anxious about being in a big city on my own. The Gift of Fear gave me a way to think about personal safety—not just to listen to your instincts when you are afraid, but, when you are not afraid, to listen to that as well. I still think about things brought up in it.
There are some disturbing true things related in it, but the overall point is that the only way to prevent violent crime is to understand it, and the only way to do that is to look at the truth of it.
In any case, recommended.
Will chime in with a third recommendation for the Gift of Fear. I felt really empowered after reading that to trust my evaluation of situations.
Fourth recommendation. I read it eons ago—probably a decade at least—but the advice sticks with me. I thought about it just the other day because I was reading a romance where the heroine didn’t make a no stick and I felt as if she got lucky that the guy who refused to listen was a romance novel character, not real world. In the real world, the guy who pushes like that—not sexually, just insisting on seeing her to her door and then upstairs to her apartment, etc.—is probably as likely to be a psychopath as not, but definitely is someone you would be wary of after reading The Gift of Fear. It isn’t a book that teaches you to be afraid though; it teaches you to say no firmly and mean it and to trust your instincts rather than override them with logic.
Agreed on the Gift of Fear. Read it (from the library), recommended it to a bunch of friends, and now jumped on a chance to get a copy for myself in the sale. I think the “trust your gut” message there is the really powerful one, and reading it helped me validate my ability to trust my instincts (which saved me from pretty bad decisions on occasion), and sort it out from the general anxiety I sometimes suffer from.
I haven’t read The Gift of Fear (though now I’m intrigued), but I sure can agree that I’ve thought more than once that a heroine was lucky she was safely residing in Romancelandia, or that asshole she married would probably kill her one day. Let’s try to stay away from that line where “He’s persistently wooing her” turns into “Girl, get a restraining order.” Persistently wooing can be great, even in real life. I have a friend who refused to go out with a man for several months because she was all caught up in their age difference—he’s about five years younger (And yeah, the gap between 22 and 27 can seem pretty huge, though the older you get, the less it matters, in my experience). But he didn’t give up and now they’ve been happy together for some time now. Smiles, puppy dogs, and rainbows all around! This is different from the man who crosses boundaries and ignores “No” because your boundaries don’t matter.
After saying I was intrigued, I went over to Amazon to check out The Gift of Fear, and one reviewer pointed out that the author uses a lot of examples and goes into great detail, and that this might be a trigger for some readers. If you can read with clinical detachment, great, but if details about violent crimes might be triggering for you, you should maybe skip it. Just a word of warning.
Didn’t readers get to name Stephanie Laurens’ latest books, too? Will the next thing be a Choose Your Own Adventure poll in which we get to write the stupid things as well?
Also endorsing “Gift of Fear”. So many people push away their instinct – the fear, the sense that something isn’t right – in favor of not seeming rude.
Um, it doesn’t look like Seduction and Snacks is available for the Kobo or Sony. And it’s showing as $3.99 on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Is it showing up this way for anyone else? I’m super disappointed! I was like, seduction and snacks?! Those are my two favourite things! My husband nearly keeled over laughing when I said that 🙂
If you’re outside the US, some things don’t show for us and we don’t get the same prices. 🙁
THANK YOU!
I wanted to pick up 3 of these books and none of the sale prices were showing up for me, either. And talk about a generous lover! He brings snacks?!
The Gift of Fear is one of the best “help yourself out girl” books I’ve ever read. It teaches how to override those manners and behaviors that were drilled into many of us. I wish I’d read it as a 15 year old, it would have saved me a lot of trouble. It’s empowering and something every woman should at least think about if not put into practice.
Alas, I bought and started “Seduction and Snacks” last night and couldn’t get past the first chapter. It’s long paragraphs of first person kvetching, and it didn’t make me laugh.
Also: despite not enjoying descriptions of violent episodes, I’m totally going to buy myself “Gift of Fear.” Thank you for the recommendations!
I recommend “Gift of Fear” to my families, have given hard copies to some of the social workers/mental health people I refer to, and, thanks to the sale, have loaded it onto the Kindles of my daughters.
Back and forth in my head about saying this—does anyone read comments this late in a thread anyway?—but the failed therapist in me is pushing hard. If you are someone who is triggered by reading stories of violence, then The Gift of Fear is highly likely to be useful for you. If you avoid it because simply reading about other people’s experiences makes you uncomfortable—even gives you flashbacks or throws you into depression and anxiety—then you should get therapy and also read the book. It’s not a book that glorifies violence, it’s a book that teaches you how to feel safer and stronger in the world by learning how to trust yourself. Living in fear sucks. If you have so much fear that you have to be afraid of reading, you need to look for help, not simply avoid anything that will make you uncomfortable. I’m all for avoiding pointless triggers—I stay away from some things as if they were written with dirty socks—but the goal of this book is to teach you to be safe and if you have to avoid learning about how to be safer in the world because it might trigger you, it’s time to look for professional help. Not to be preachy. And I did drop out of therapy school before I finished my degree. But the idea that you should avoid learning how to protect yourself because it might have emotional costs just feels really, really dangerous.