Barbara M Webb
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Nonfiction author Ann Richardson

3/26/2018

 
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This month let's see how Ann Richardson finds inspiration to write in Stories from the Heart.
Ann Richardson has been a researcher and writer for many years. She is fascinated by other people's thoughts, experiences and emotions and loves to write books where they can express their views in their own words. American by birth, she lives in London as do her two children and two grandsons.


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                                         Stories from the Heart


Some writers like writing crime novels. And some readers search them out. Others are more interested in romance. There is even a thriving literature on zombies, so I am told.
My interest lies elsewhere. I like trying to understand the inner heart -- the deeper feelings that arise as new joys are discovered or new challenges faced. And I like to hear the voices of people talking about their experiences -- real voices, talking honestly, in their own words. These are the books I write.

                      Wise Before their Time: People with AIDS and HIV talk about their lives

It started over twenty-five years ago. I had a gay friend with AIDS who was very active in that community. He was organising an international conference of people with HIV and AIDS to be held in London where I live. In a moment of inspiration, he had asked people applying for places at the conference to send 'their story' along with other information about themselves.
I was very excited to learn this because I knew such stories would make a fascinating book. But I also thought that there would be a benefit in supplementing them with interviews, as people will often tell an interviewer much more than they  will write. (My working life was spent doing interviews for social research, so I was very familiar with the process).
And that is how my book, Wise Before their Time, was born. We interviewed over twenty people from all over the world, all attending the conference, used the writings of over twenty others, and put their stories into this book. The stories are staggering. All from young people experiencing stigma in many forms and facing death.
They talk about the difficulties of telling their parents, partners and friends of their diagnosis, their work to help others in the same situation, all while facing mounting health problems. Sir Ian McKellen wrote a Foreword saying 'these stories are as powerful as any great classic of fiction'  What more can I say?
My friend and co-author died before the book came out.
This book sold very well when first published in 1992, but went out of print. In late 2017, I relaunched it with a new cover. It tells the human stories behind that dark period. See
http://myBook.to/Wise
                        
                                 Life in a Hospice: reflections on caring for the dying

Not long after, another man involved with HIV took me to a hospice because he had an errand to do. I was immediately captivated by the tranquil atmosphere and felt this was a place I wanted to be. I applied to work as a volunteer in a local hospice and ended up doing so for four years.
And this was the seed for Life in a Hospice, based on interviews with over thirty workers -- nurses, doctors, chaplains, managers and even a very reflective chef -- in two hospices. They talk about why they do such work and its impact on their own lives at home. Many said, whatever the difficulties, it was a 'privilege' to be with people and their families at this important time.
From their stories, one learns a lot about humanity at its very best. They gave enormous thought to how to make people's last days and hours meaningful. And to meeting people's last requests -- to give one example, one tells of a man who wanted to die under a tree and they were able to do this for him.
This book was first published in 2007 to considerable acclaim (it was Highly Commended by the British Medical Association). But I took the rights back, gave it a new cover and relaunched it in 2017. It is selling well. See http://myBook.to/Hospice


                          Celebrating Grandmothers: grandmothers talk about their lives

Time passed and I periodically wondered what to focus on next -- and then I became a grandmother of two little boys. Much to my surprise, I found this to be a fascinating role. And yes, I decided to write a book about it.
I interviewed nearly thirty grandmothers from all different walks of life and put these together into Celebrating Grandmothers. There are, of course, happy stories of the pleasures of small children in the house again. But there are also stories of difficult family relationships and sheer distance affecting the role. Being a grandmother is shown to affect women's sense of themselves and their place in the family.
This book was published in 2014, although republished in 2017. It seems to be frequently bought by young parents as a thank-you present for their mother. See http://myBook.to/Grandmothers





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Links:
website:  www.annrichardson.co.uk   
twitter:   @CelebratingGran   and  @LifeinaHospice
Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/CelebratingGran/  and  https://www.facebook.com/LifeinaHospice/



Meet nonfiction author Linda Brendle

3/3/2018

 

This month meet Linda Brendle. Her book, A Long and Winding Road: A Caregiver's Tale of Life, Love and Chaos caught my eye as I myself had been a carer and I was interested in Alzheimer's and dementia. Linda describes the book as a work of creative nonfiction. It charts the seven-week journey taken by herself, a recovering co-dependent, the Kids, her ageing parents (her mother diagnosed with Alzheimer's and her father with dementia) and her husband, David. All of them share an RV as they travel through 16 US states. Quite a challenge for non-debilitated people!
The poignant  account of Linda's role as carer expresses the sadness of her growing awareness of her parents' deteriorating health. She also becomes conscious of how the growing responsibilities for her parents change her relationship with her husband, David. Her love for her parents is supported by her unswerving faith which emerges as 'God's Words' at the beginning of every chapter. She lightens the serious nature of the book with flashes of humour to keep herself and those around her buoyant. And of course humour can diffuse difficult situations.. 


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rom left to right: Linda, David and 'the Kids. And read Linda's blog about inspiration...

My Inspiration Comes from Others

Inspiration comes in many ways and from countless sources. My desire to write was stifled early in my life by a personality that avoided criticism at all costs and by a writing teacher who was super critical. That desire appeared briefly from time to time when I was asked to write an article for a club magazine or some catchy ad copy for a company brochure, but it resurfaced for real when I became a caregiver. When I shared my fears and frustrations with my aunt, who was a caregiver herself for many years, she advised me to keep a journal. I followed her advice occasionally, especially after a particularly trying incident, but when we embarked on our epic RV journey, I felt inspired to keep a daily record. That spiral notebook filled with handwritten scribbles became the basis of my first memoir.

The inspiration for my second memoir, which is due out in July, came from the readers of the first one. A Long and Winding Road: A Caregiver's Tale of Life, Love and Chaos ends when our RV trip ended in 2007. Many readers asked, 'What happened next?' They had come to care about my family through the sharing of our challenges, and they wanted to know what had occurred after the trip. I had shared some of the intervening events in my blog, but since there seemed to be some interest in the rest of the story, I wrote Mom's Long Good-bye: A Caregiver's Tale of Life,  Alzheimer's, Grief , and Comfort.

After my time of caring for my parents came to an end, my writing took a different direction-sometimes a lot of directions. In fact, the name of my blog is Life after Caregiving, On Caregivers, Faith, Family and Writing. However, three years ago I found a new source of inspiration. A couple came to my church one Sunday evening to tell us about their ministry which focuses  on rescuing children who have become victims of sex trafficking. They told the story of a 13-year-old girl who had been targeted, groomed, and trafficked, not in the back streets of a foreign country or a big metropolitan area, but in the run-down motels on the outskirts of a small city about fifty miles east of our tiny town in East Texas. Her story touched my heart, and Tatia's Tattoo, a novel about sex trafficking in small- town America is due out later this year.

While inspirations and ideas for books are a challenge, I face an even bigger challenge each week. Several years ago, I wrote a letter to the editor of our local weekly newspaper, and after a few offerings about the trials and tribulations of learning to live in the country for the first time, I was given a weekly column called City Girl. My deadline is Monday at 11:00 am, and on Sunday evenings, I can often be found sitting in front of a blank computer screen wondering  what to write about. My inspirations  come from interesting people and situations- in fact, no one in my immediate area is safe. My friends often warn each other to be careful around me because they might end up in my column.

My favorite source of inspiration, though, is the response I receive from readers. I enjoy seeing my numbers go up, whether it's Amazon reviews and sales, blog hits or Twitter followers. But my main purpose in writing is to amuse, encourage and inspire my readers. I love it when I receive an email, Facebook comment, or face-to-face interaction in which someone says: I laughed out loud, I thought I was the only one, or That's a good idea. I'll try it. That's when I feel inspired to go back to the keyboard.


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                                            The outside and inside of the RV
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NOTE FREE PROMOTION ON AMAZON: from Monday, 12th March through to March 16th. Click:  http://amzn.to/2FpgMSN 

Thank you, Linda and here are her links:

https://lifeaftercaregiving.wordpress.com/     (Blog)
https://twitter.com/LindaBrendle
https://www.facebook.com/linda.brendle






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    Barbara M Webb  graduated in English at Queensland University, St Lucia. She has lived in 7 of the 52 countries she has visited. and now lives in Cornwall in the UK.

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