October

• Adopt-a-Shelter-Dog Month
• American Cheese Month
• Animal Safety and Protection Month, Natl
• Antidepressant Death Awareness Month
• Arts and Humanities Month, Natl
• Audiology Awareness Month, Natl
• Bake and Decorate Month, Natl
• Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Natl
• Bullying Prevention Awareness Month, Natl
• Car Care Month
• Celebrating the Bilingual Child Month
• Celiac Disease Awareness Month
• Chiropractic Health Month, Natl
• Church Library Month
• Co-op Awareness Month
• Crime Prevention Month, Natl
• Critical Illness Awareness Month, Natl
• Cut Out Dissection Month
• Cyber Security Awareness Month, Natl
• Dental Hygiene Month, Natl
• Depression Education and Awareness Month, Natl
• Disability Employment Awareness Month, Natl
• Domestic Violence Awareness Month   
• Down Syndrome Awareness Month, Natl
• Dyslexia Awareness Month
• Emotional Intelligence Awareness Month
• Field Trip Month, Natl
• “Gain the Inside Advantage” Month, Natl
• Gay and Lesbian History Month
• German-American Heritage Month
• Global Diversity Awareness Month
• Go Hog Wild–Eat Country Ham Month
• Health Literacy Month
• Home Eye Safety Month
• Intergeneration Month
• Kitchen and Bath Month, Natl
• Liver Awareness Month, Natl
• Medical Librarians Month, Natl
• Menopause Month, World
• Month of Freethought
• Organize Your Medical Information Month
• Orthodontic Health Month, Natl
• Photographer Appreciation Month
• Physical Therapy Month, Natl
• Polish-American Heritage Month
• Popcorn Poppin’ Month, Natl
• Positive Attitude Month
• Reading Group Month, Natl
• Rett Syndrome Awareness Month
• Right-Brainers Rule Month
• Roller Skating Month, Natl
• Spina Bifida Awareness Month, Natl
• Spinach Lovers Month
• Squirrel Awareness and Appreciation Month
• Stamp Collecting Month, Natl
• Stop Bullying Month, Natl
• Talk About Prescriptions Month
• Vegetarian Month
• Women Walking in Their Own Shoes Month
• Work and Family Month, Natl
• Workplace Politics Awareness Month

The events highlighted in red font have personal associations to my literary works.

To find out more about how to use these dates to promote your books and events, do the exercises in my workbook Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days.

Click here for print edition. Click here for Kindle edition. “Reach out, not stress out.”

Fanbase-Building Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan says: “What does October mean to you?”

And, in 2003, the California State Assembly officially declared the third week in October each year as California Writers Week. Cheers to California Writers Club!

Sincerely,

Fanbase-building Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan - photo by Sasa Southard

Author and Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan

http://writingcoachTeresa.com

Fanbase-Building Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan helps writers transform email signature blocks, photos, website descriptions, and YouTube videos into platform statements . . . before and after publication.

Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW. Click here for print edition. Click here for Kindle edition. “Reach out, not stress out.”

Author Teresa LeYung-Ryan celebrates 12th anniversary of  Love Made of Heart – the novel she uses to encourage adult children of mentally ill parents to speak openly about the stigmas.

Subscribe to  “Coach Teresa’s blog” Click here to start.

Please click here for a short movie of:  Teresa LeYung-Ryan filmed by Elisa Sasa Southard filmed by Margie Yee Webb

This is the kind of fun we create for ourselves to continue building our platforms and fanbases.

Thank you, dear Margie and dear Sasa!

author Teresa LeYung-Ryan with Love Made of Heart Chinese word and her book - photo by author Margie Yee Webb - calligraphy by author MKWL

http://lovemadeofheart.com/

http://lovemadeofheart.com/blog/

Thank you, author MKWL, for creating the Chinese calligraphy “love” for yours truly author Teresa LeYung-Ryan’s trademark.

Sincerely,

Teresa LeYung-Ryan at FEMME movie screening orchestrated by FEMME producer Margie Yee Webb

**

Press release:   Video Contest for Mental Health Stigma – Entries Due December 21, 2012

Love Made of Heart (mother-daughter love story) by Teresa LeYung-Ryan

Shanghai Steam anthology, edited by Ace Jordyn, Calvin D. Jim and Renee Bennett; original artwork by James Ng; cover design by Janice Blaine

Laurel Anne tells me that Shanghai Steam Anthology will be launched November 1-4, 2012 at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto, Canada.  So exciting!

If you had a role in creating this anthology, or, if you know any of the contributing authors, editors, art designers, please tell us by submitting a comment to this post.  Click on the blue header of this post, scroll down to get the boxes, fill in the boxes and press [submit comment] button.  Consider keeping a copy of your comment (before pressing submit-comment button) and use it in your own email signature-block and on other blogs.  Thank you!

Here’s Laurel Anne Hill’s blog post:

Steampunk, Wuxia and the Immigrant Experience
by Laurel Anne Hill

I stare at the crimson printing on my computer screen.  Crisp black lines frame electronic words of caution.  What is this, anyway?  The 1877 U.S. Senatorial report on Chinese immigration I Googled?  Or the “boxed warning” for a toxic drug?

The red letters form an introductory disclaimer of sorts, an alert regarding nineteenth-century political incorrectness.  The Senatorial report’s contents will reflect the attitudes of yesteryear’s Americans.  In other words, readers with sensitive ears, beware.  Still, I need to study sections of this 1,281-page document to blog about railroad workers from China.  My finger tabs through the report’s opening pages.

“There is a vast hive from which Chinese immigrants may swarm…,” the report indicates.  “They are cruel and indifferent to their sick…inferior in mental and moral qualities…”

Anger warms my face.  The historical report I prepare to read in depth is a verbal cesspool of toxic prejudice.  Worse than I expected.  Even the testimony of Charles Crocker–-the infamous railroad executive who respected the tremendous contribution of Chinese laborers in building the U.S. Transcontinental Railway–oozes stereotypes.  I just began this morning’s immigrant-experience research project and already my blood pressure soars.

Now please don’t consider me naïve.  Years ago, I learned about the anti-Chinese legislation passed in nineteenth-century America: The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (to keep “them” out) and various anti-miscegenation laws (to prevent interracial marriages).  U.S. immigration policy muddle-ups are not confined to the twenty-first century.  That’s one of several reasons why I wrote my new short story, “Moon-Flame Woman.”  I hope “Moon-Flame Woman” will help readers picture all immigrants as distinct individuals with gifts, fears, hopes and dreams.

The setting for “Moon-Flame Woman” is a North American railroad construction camp in 1866.  In my story, Cho Ting-Lam has lost self-respect.  She, a slave, has neither a husband nor sons.  Disguised as a man, Cho Ting-Lam uses explosives, crystal technology and Qi to bore railroad tunnels through the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Then a prejudiced railroad superintendent endangers her and her people.

“Moon-Flame Woman,” is scheduled for publication in the upcoming Shanghai Steam Anthology (Absolute XPress, November 2012).  Shanghai Steam is a unique mashup of steampunk (advanced technology through steam-age mechanical devices) and the Chinese literary genre known as Wuxia (loosely translated as martial hero).

I invite you to visit the worlds within Shanghai Steam.  From ancient China to a future Mars, from the British Empire to the Old West, nineteen authors will show you worlds with alcohol-fueled dragons, philosophical automatons, and Qi-powered machines both wondrous and strange in tales of vengeance, paper lantern revolutions and flying monks.  I also wish to thank Teresa LeYung-Ryan for her pre-submission review of my “Moon-Flame Woman” manuscript.  Teresa provided valuable advice which strengthened my story.

Below, I list the Shanghai Steam table of contents.  For more information about the anthology and its authors, visit the Shanghai Steam Facebook page.

Warm wishes,

Laurel Anne Hill
Author of Heroes Arise, an award-winning novel about breaking the cycle of vengeance.
http://www.laurelannehill.com

Shanghai Steam Anthology  edited by Ace Jordyn, Calvin D. Jim and Renee Bennett

Table of Contents

The Fivefold Proverbs of Zhen Xiaquan
Tim Ford

Qin Yun’s Mechanical Dragon and the Cricket Spies
Amanda Clark

Moon-Flame Woman
Laurel Anne Hill

Love and Rockets at the Siege of Peking
K. H. Vaughan

The Master and the Guest
Crystal Koo

Ming Jie and the Coffee Maker of Doom
Brent Nichols

A Hero Faces the Celestial Empire; A Death by Fire is Avenged by Water
Julia A. Rosenthal

Riding the Wind
William H. Keith

Mistress of the Pearl Dragon
Shen Braun

Song of My Heart
Jennifer Rahn

Last Flight of the Lóng Qíshì
Emily Mah

Protection from Assassins
Frances Pauli

Seeds of the Lotus
Camille Alexa

The Ability of Lightness
Tim Reynolds

Fire in the Sky
Ray Dean

The Legend of Wong Heng Li
Frank Larnerd

Flying Devils
Derwin Mak

Legend of the Secret Masterpiece
Nick Tramdack

Jing Ke Before the Principle of Order
Minsoo Kang

Hearty congratulations to my friend Laurel Anne Hill and all the contributing authors, editors, artwork designer, cover designer, and their advisors!

Sincerely,

Teresa LeYung-Ryan

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan

Please visit Coach Teresa’s Events Page

http://WritingCoachTeresa.com  Click on “Coach Teresa’s Blog”

http://www.facebook.com/Teresa.LeYung.Ryan
http://www.youtube.com/teresaleyung

Coach Teresa on CBS Bay Sunday with Host Frank Mallicoat

at California Writers Club, Santa Rosa, California

Katherine Ellison--from investigative reporting to memoir

December 11, 2011 will be Katherine Ellison:
“From the global to the personal: one writer’s journey from investigative reporting to memoir.”

Journalist Katherine Ellison will talk about her career as an investigative journalist covering international events as Central American wars and figures such as Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos to shifting gears and writing nonfiction books including a memoir about her son’s ADHD.

Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist, former foreign correspondent, writing consultant, author of four books, and mother of two sons.

http://redwoodwriters.org/

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan helps fiction & nonfiction authors "Writing-Career MakeOver"--photo by MKWL

January 8, 2012 “Writing Career Make Over with Coach Teresa LeYung Ryan”

Learn how to:

• reveal  your  “picture-of-success” to create your model
• understand your unique motivators & modus operandi
• blend the “who, what, when, where”  your way, fun way

Coach Teresa will choose 3 writers from the audience—representing the 3 umbrella genres (fiction, narrative non-fiction, and prescriptive non-fiction a.k.a. how-to books)—and guide them in this interactive session. Everyone will receive Coach Teresa’s “Writing-Career-Make-Over” template.  Q&A to please all.

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan wears 3 hats and has helped over 1,000 writers take steps to further their careers.  http://writingcoachTeresa.com

• She’s the author of Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW (a workbook for anyone who has anything to promote—available in print edition and as E-book).

• Coach Teresa edits manuscripts for authors who want to attract agents  & publishers  OR  want to be their own publishers.

• Her using her novel Love Made of Heart (to inspire adult children of mentally ill parents to speak openly about the stigmas and find resources for their families) demonstrates the power of making one’s name synonymous with the themes/subject matters/issues one writes about.

http://redwoodwriters.org/meetings/

Sometimes the author is asked by the publisher to write the jacket copy/marketing piece. Sometimes the publisher has staff to write them or they hire freelancers.

Years ago Libba Bray freelanced for publishers; her job was to read manuscripts/galleys/advance reading copies and write  jacket copy.  I remember when Editor-in-Chief at Kensington Publishing Corp. NY John Scognamiglio sent me the jacket copy that Libba had written for my novel Love Made of Heart, I cried and cried thankful tears.  Thank you, Libba!

Love Made of Heart – Twenty-seven-year-old Ruby Lin has what many women envy: a beautiful apartment in one of San Francisco’s best neighborhoods, a busy social life, and a coveted position as manager of special events for the tony St. Mark’s Hotel. But it’s Ruby’s personal life that’s become unmanageable ever since the day her mother’s emotional breakdown forced Ruby to hospitalize her, shaming the family. Now, Ruby is caught in the crossroads between two vastly different cultures—one in which she is the American girl, raised on kitschy television shows and black-and-white movies, and one in which she is known only as Daughter, the eldest, fulfiller of responsibilities.

In putting together the pieces of her mother’s life, Ruby finds herself exploring the wounds of her own past. Starting with a forbidden locked tin box and the yellowing photograph inside, Ruby embarks on a startling journey of self-discovery that takes her through a family history rife with violence, betrayal and loss that reaches back through generations, from China to America, and finally to the secret pain of a mother’s sacrifice. Like the Chinese calligraphy that adorns her walls, Ruby comes to see that “life is not a straight road,” but a language drawn with many brush strokes, where every misunderstanding must yield to the simple message of the heart.

Filled with warmth and wisdom, this luminous debut novel heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in fiction as it explores the complex bonds between mothers and daughters, the choices that divide us, and the love that brings us home.

Libba Bray has become a beloved author of novels for young adults/teens. Her literary works include:

A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle, #1)
Rebel Angels (Gemma Doyle, #2)
The Sweet Far Thing (Gemma Doyle, #3)
Going Bovine
Beauty Queens

I am so happy for Libba!

I encourage everyone to write a book jacket for your manuscript.  The piece will help you answer the questions: “Is my story as enticing as the book jacket?” and “Does the jacket copy follow the plotline of my story?”

Sincerely,

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan

Author of Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW (print edition $12.96  & eBook edition $9.81)

and the novel Love Made of Heart (inspires adult children of mentally ill parents to speak openly about the stigmas and find resources for their families)

I love helping writers identify themes and archetypes in their manuscripts and make their names synonymous with the subject matters/issues they write about to a attract agents, editors, publishers, readers, and media attention before and after publication. Reach out, not stress out, when pursuing your dreams!

Please visit my website http://writingcoachteresa.com

If you wish to email me, I’m writingcoachTeresa at gmail.com

Coach Teresa, how much vernacular / dialect is appropriate in a manuscript?

Manuscript Consultant/Coach Teresa here . . .
“Letting readers hear each character’s distinctive style of speech is writing with authentic details. Sprinkling (not pouring) vernacular grounds us/helps answer the question ‘where are we?’ You do have to be clever and write dialogue in such a way so that we can decipher what is said.

“Show character “adjusting” dialect or accent when she/he enters a new world (examples:  going to college; moving to another part of the country; or in the case of the pal I just visited… an Australian who worked in California and having to adjust her speech, even though Australians speak English, because her boss complained ‘I can’t understand you.’)  Good tension in story-telling.”

I love helping writers polish their manuscripts by identifying their themes and archetypes and build their platforms and fanbases by making their names synonymous with the themes/subject matters/issues they write about.

Reach out, not stress out, when pursuing your dreams!

Cheers!

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan

Please visit my website http://writingcoachteresa.com

If you wish to email me, I’m writingcoachTeresa at gmail.com

Author of Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW (print edition & eBook edition)
******

Author of the novel Love Made of Heart (inspires adult children of mentally ill parents to speak openly about the stigmas and find resources for their families)

Manuscript Consultant/Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan here, visiting dear pal Karyn in Australia . . .

I wish to remind all writers to please reward your work with authentic details. Your story deserves thorough research (yes, even for memoirs).

Example: The first time I stepped off the sidewalk to cross a street in Sydney, I was “reminded” by a moving-vehicle where I was (my setting). You see . . . folks here in Australia drive on the left side of the road (What does that mean for pedestrians? What does that mean for other drivers?).

What else about “left” ?  Walk on the left side when possible; on escalators, stand to the left and pass to the right.

Utensils:  fork in the left hand and knife in the right while eating.

What’s the big deal?  It’s a big deal if you have your protagonist as a stranger in Australia or if you set your story in the U.S.A. but your character is Australian (then the U.S.A. would be foreign territory for her/him).

I encourage everyone to conduct research and get proofreaders for your manuscript (yes, even for memoirs). Authentic details hook readers.

* * * * * * *

06 November, 2011 I’m back in California. As I think about the messages in this post,  I remember when Luisa, Martha and I conducted:

“Write Your Compelling Story—the Power of Authentic Details”

with Luisa Adams, Martha Alderson, Teresa LeYung-Ryan

Luisa’s memoir Woven of Water is a beautiful example of employing authentic details and plotting nonfiction.

By the way, please check out Martha’s new book The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master

Sincerely,

Teresa LeYung-Ryan says: “Reach out, not stress out, when pursuing your dreams!”

Writing Career Coach/Manuscript Consultant

Author of Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW (print edition & eBook edition)
Author of the novel Love Made of Heart (inspires adult children of mentally ill parents to speak openly about the stigmas and find resources for their families)

Hi, Writing Mentor Mary,
As an author and manuscript consultant I get sparks ( for scenes, plot points, metaphors, foreshadows)  by rereading a favorite book, re-watching a favorite movie, observing and taking notes while riding public transit. My dream world also provides sparks. Martha Alderson’s new book The Plot Whisperer gives me sparks.

I love helping my clients identify the archetypes and themes in their stories. Speaking of themes, your helping job-seekers create their “success story & collage/vision boards” gives folks “sparks” to go after what they really want. I tagged you in these 2 posts: Coach Teresa, what’s happening for business owners on November 5, 2011 in Gilroy, CA? and  Coach Teresa, what happened when you hosted Plot Whisperer Martha Alderson on your blog?

Mentor Mary Knippel helps job-seekers create their success stories--cheers from Writing Career Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan--photo by Anne Campagnet-Reed

Sincerely,

Teresa LeYung-Ryan says: “Reach out, not stress out, when pursuing your dreams!”

Writing Career Coach/Manuscript Consultant

author of Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW (print edition & eBook edition)
Author of Love Made of Heart (inspires adult children of mentally ill parents to speak openly about the stigmas and find resources for their families)