BRIO Publishing Blog for Independent Authors

kept

by Sonpri Gray

kept is the story of Savannah May Lovely, a precocious young lady who escapes poverty to become a glamorous kept woman. Inspired by the author’s life, this debut novel traces the psychological and emotional damages, and dramas, that she must overcome to rise above her circumstances. Beginning with her difficult childhood, readers follow Savannah as she embarks on her kept relationships, analyzing every man she encounters and using them to her advantage. Though she often questions the moral implications of her lifestyle, Savannah’s honesty with herself and her grasp of the human condition makes her a narrator readers will not soon forget.

Sonpri Gray lives in anonymity as she recovers from life as a kept woman. She spends most of her time traveling with her daughter. This is her first novel.

Available May 15, 2012

Touch the Moon

by Laulie Powell

Touch the Moon tells the story of Julia Walker, a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps, who leaves behind her family to accept a temporary assignment to Bahrain. Acting as the Deputy Staff Judge Advocate, Julia is thrown into preparations for Operation Iraqi Freedom and must balance her duties with her growing attraction to Colonel Alex Brousseau. At the center of this story is Julia’s struggle to decide to embark on an affair with a higher ranking official, which could not only ruin her marriage and her career, but break her heart in the process.

Laulie Powell retired from the Marine Corps in 2008 after 20 years of service. Since her retirement, Powell began jotting down notes about her deployment to Bahrain and found an entertaining story within her memories. With some help, she shaped these notes into the novel that would become Touch the Moon. This is her first novel. She is currently working on her second book which is loosely based on her first tour of duty in Okinawa, Japan.

Available May 1, 2012

Job Description:

BRIO is a small publisher working directly with authors in partnership to bring quality books to a national market. We are currently looking for an intern to assist us in our book promotions and marketing department. The ideal candidate will be highly motivated, self-disciplined, and ready to be a part of the team.

Intern will be researching potential contacts and venues for book promotions, assisting with creation of marketing materials, and working closely on book campaigns. Intern will also be involved with maintaining social media and updating company blog. Intern interfaces directly with marketing team and authors, as well as other departments within the company.

This internship is open to juniors and seniors seeking undergraduate credit; post-grads looking for work experience are also encouraged to apply. This position is unpaid. Hours are determined by availability, 15-20 hours/week M-F 9am-5pm. Our office is located in downtown Minneapolis, MN.

Qualifications:

Essential: More than excellent command of marketing copy principles and standards of English – Capability to compose and execute creative marketing strategies – Familiarity with many social media platforms -Able to take direction and guidance - Remain accurate and cool under deadlines - Highly motivated to learn - Excellent and succinct communication skills

Preferred: Experience blogging – Motivated to gain experience in many aspects of book publishing – Interest in publishing and author public relations – Interest in book and book culture

Application Instructions:
Send résumé, cover letter, and two writing samples to anething@briobooks.com

The Piccolo Chef Cookbook

by Tina Fanelli Moraccini and Lilian Palmieri

The Piccolo Chef Cookbook delivers kid-friendly, culinary school tested recipes with easy to follow instructions that will draw the family back into the kitchen to prepare and enjoy a meal together. Loaded with tips ranging from cooking safety to ingredient history and chemistry, to knowing which foods are in season, Piccolo Chef is the ultimate tool for teaching children how to safely prepare delicious and healthy food. At the heart of this cookbook is the belief that learning how to cook can lead to independence and self-confidence, as well as improved eating habits.

Tina Fanelli Moraccini and Lilian Palmieri began working together in 1996 at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura (Cultural Office of the Italian Government). They later discovered the need for an institute to satisfy the culinary pursuits of youngsters outside the adult or children cooking classes. Together, they opened Piccolo Chef to teach children and their parents the art of healthy cooking, while taking into account the abilities of children of different ages. Now, they bring their recipes and experience to the table in The Piccolo Chef Cookbook.

Available July 1, 2012

Nature’s Paradise: Costa Rica

by Douglas Goodell and Marco Sabrío

Forward by Archie Carr III

Nature’s Paradise celebrates the boundless natural wonders of Costa Rica, spanning many different parts of the country in different seasons. This photo essay showcases the photographers’ favorite examples of flora, fauna, and special locations, and strives to highlight the variety of scenic viewing opportunities available to travelers. The majority of the photographs were taken in wild, natural settings; only select, rare subjects, such as the big cats, were photographed in captivity. Included are a few tips on photography, as well as information on where the subjects are located.

Douglas Goodell has been photographing wildlife for many years. At the urging of friends and family, he first traveled to Costa Rica in 2004, and has made frequent return trips to the country. Doug met Marco Sabrío, a resident of Costa Rica, on one of these early trips. The two photographers found much in common and have been working together ever since. Marco has been photographing Costa Rica all his life, sometimes while guiding other photographers and biologists.

Available April 1, 2012

We’re positively swooning to announce these two new releases on relationships, available this spring from BRIO! Celebrate every form of love in your life this Valentine’s Day—and we do mean all the love. Savor traditions, like the family who shares a heart-shaped pepperoni pizza, and the faraway grandmother who snail-mails a $5 check with “Have a sundae on me!” written in the memo. And do have some chocolate—it’s good for the heart.

Togetherness: Opening Your Heart to Extraordinary Love

by Cyndi Dale and Andrew Wald

Togetherness: Opening Your Heart to Extraordinary Love is a revelatory guidebook for discovering that the love you want is achievable. While love, in all its grandeur, can seem out of reach, togetherness is in your hands at every moment. It is the intimate expression of love’s immensity, experienced each time you reach beyond the trivial to embrace the miraculous in yourself and others. Based on the four cornerstones of togetherness, renowned author Cyndi Dale and acclaimed psychotherapist Andrew Wald offer a blueprint for building a bridge to profound intimacy—a depth of closeness that can transform every relationship in your life.

Cyndi Dale is an internationally respected author and spiritual scholar whose 14 books include the award-winning The Subtle Body and The Intuition Guidebook. President of Essential Energy, Cyndi has conducted over 35,000 client sessions and led trainings across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Andrew Wald has been a psychotherapist (LCSW-C) since 1974, logging over 50,000 therapy hours with individuals, couples, families, and groups. With a master’s in social work, Andy also holds advanced certifications in Imago Relationship Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Available June 1, 2012

Buddha and Love: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Relationships

by Lama Ole Nydahl

Buddha and Love, published in over half a dozen languages, explores all aspects of love and partnership from a Buddhist perspective. Covering a broad spectrum of topics such as sexuality, infidelity, parenting, and divorce, Lama Ole Nydahl, a Buddhist Lama in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, explains how a Buddhist approach to relationships can help us to relax our minds, break bad habits, and use relationships to grow ourselves and benefit everyone around us. Unafraid of taboo topics, and free from sappy clichés and political correctness, Nydahl provides modern people with practical advice on how to love better.

Lama Ole Nydahl and his wife Hannah studied Buddhism under H.H., the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, and at their teacher’s wishes, traversed the globe spreading Buddhism to the West. For more than three decades, until her untimely death from cancer in 2007, the Nydahls introduced thousands of students to meditation and a new way of seeing the world.  Nydahl continues to travel and teach in over 600 Diamond Way Buddhist centers around the world.

Available May 15, 2012

Smiles, of course. I’m grinning because two of my favorite comedy writers just released new books this week, much to my delight. Holding their two new releases side by side, I must confess my arguably absurd contradictions in taste.

One writer, a thirty-something man’s man who chronicles his drunken escapades as a twenty-something, clearly intends his collections of essays to appeal to dudes who appreciate the classic opener “So this one night—you wouldn’t believe it…” and end with an aptly epic version of one (or more) of the following: hookup, fight, or bodily discharge (usually vomiting). I admit, his stories aren’t the stuff of legends, classics, or eloquence, but his writing style gets me every time. Tucker Max is a writer I can’t read in public, or while eating, because I render myself helpless with guffaws. (Real lady-like, I know.)

Now for the yin to this yang: the new release in my other hand was penned by a British comedienne whose understatedly funny novels are dropped into the YA section. While her protagonists are, in fact, teenage girls bashing around either London or the Scottish Moors, the jokes and general mayhem weaved into the relatively simple plots has me in hysterics. My infatuation with Louise Rennison’s work is not so much a “I was once a teenage girl, therefore I appreciate” thing, but rather like “Life as an ‘adult’ is still just as chaotic, my relationships with other human beings still confound me, but the best thing to do when life hands you lunacy is to laugh your bum off.”

Now I feel as though I need to justify these childish lapses in my comedic taste with proof that intelligent satires and dry, brilliant essays are not lost on me. David Sedaris doesn’t have a new book coming out soon, does he? Anyway, like all quality comedic works, genuinely good jokes are rarely lost on people outside the comic’s target audience. If you’re a writer who can recount an entertaining anecdote, real or fictional, never worry about who might or might not appreciate it, or whether someone will take offense. While the masses can be overly sensitive (we even invented a term for it—“politically correct”), we’ve also just about seen it all. So if a funny story brings you joy, it might make someone else smile, too. We could all use a little more comedy, if only to banish these winter blues.

Not that toasting a marshmallow over my apartment’s gas stovetop flame was a first, but I thought I could get pretty wily in the kitchen. I’m reasonably good at casting a gourmet light on the ordinary (mostly with food—but don’t get me started on cocktail innovations). Adding seasoned Kalamata olive brine to tuna salad, dabbing wasabi on cold leftover fish fillets to pretend it’s sashimi, and my crowning jewel of broke-college-grad creative cuisine: poor man’s tikka masala—tomato soup, curry powder, and shreds of deli chicken over rice. Don’t worry, I didn’t forget the essential coconut—the coconut-flavored Bacardi and mango cocktail beside my plate is nearly passably Indian.

But all this was done with regular access to a grocery store; the only hindrance was my bank account (and admittedly limited cooking skills). Six women inmates in a Texas prison, however, had to be craftier when preparing meals. Not that the inmates aren’t fed already, but if all you’ve got is time on your hands, devising new uses for Fritos and distilling “wine” from fruit are arguably more productive ways of spending time in the slammer. It’s nice to learn that plastic ID badges are being used as ingredient-chopping tools behind bars, rather than shanks. Their collective culinary wisdom is available in their new cookbook titled: From the Big House to Your House.

This inspiring display of resourcefulness got me wondering about my own relatively lazy approaches to cooking. Since anything frozen in a “microwave-ready” plastic tray freaks me out, and I’d rather turn to culinary inventions using combined or separate canned and fresh goods (with limited actual cooking time—I’m impatient), maybe I’m not so lazy. But if prison inmates fashioned a stove out of a toilet bowl full of burning toilet paper—then published a cookbook about it—maybe I can learn how to use my oven for more than just storage. Rumor has it even renowned jailbird homemaker Martha Stewart found a way to whip up some crab apple jelly when she was locked up.

Why do we hold writers to a higher standard than visual artists and musicians? It’s probably because we’ve been spoiled rotten for centuries, since quality literature dates back before the dark ages of Beowulf. But wait—humans began painting masterpieces on cave walls and piping folk tunes out of primitive, carved lutes for much longer than the written word has been a skill at our collective command. Oral storytelling used to be the valued art form, but has fallen by the wayside of mass media, or morphed into audio books and special radio broadcasts. (Garrison Keillor’s monologue on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion particularly honors this timeless tradition.)

But back to writers: why are indie wordsmiths blanketed with an assumptive stigma NOT draped around the shoulders of starving artists and garage bands? We romanticize the novelists and poets, scribbling alone in drafty attics, or downing espressos at a café terrace, as much as the folk, rock, and punk singers strumming guitars since adolescence, and the painters and photographers who choose between food and art supplies. Did this stigma (that’s being slowly shaken off by success stories like Amanda Hocking and her overnight millions) stem from the simple fact that any twit can plop down in front of a computer and access a word processing program? Anyone with a shred of literacy can don the guise of “writer”? Wear the “writer’s hat,” as my college professors used to say.

The simple truth is that the product—the art—can speak for itself. When impressionists painted what they felt, even when Duchamp signed that urinal, the arts world eventually accepted them with open, albeit cautious arms. Society will happily gobble down whatever’s been deemed the latest rage, but is slow to accept genuine newness, originality: what we later refer to as breakthroughs. Persevere, writers—humanity will recognize quality work, even if it takes a generation to become the new standard.