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Monthly Archives: March 2014
Follow Meryl and Charlie on DWTS
How did our author/reporter Jean Marie Stanberry get the awesome assignment of interviewing Meryl Davis and Charlie White on the set of “Dancing With the Stars”? Well it’s all about who you know and what you know. Luckily, Jean had both. First, she got a little bit of inside scoop from a friend who is a producer on DWTS. She knew two days before the official announcement that Charlie and Meryl would be facing off against each other so she begin doing her homework. The key to getting the assignment is coming up with a unique angle for your article and pitching it to the right people. Jean has already done work for those people, so when she hit up the editors of “Skating” and “Fire on Ice” magazine with the idea that she wanted to do an article and photo shoot, how could they tell her no? Who else could possibly bring the experience to their magazine like Jean could?
Like Meryl and Charlie, Jean has some dance experience, but for the last 20 years she has been almost exclusively doing ice choreography. In fact, Jean is a nine time IAIC award winner. If anyone could empathize with Meryl and Charlie’s difficulty making the transition to dancing in a ballroom over an ice rink, it would be her.
Jean was excited to spend some time with Meryl and Charlie, she has met them several times, but has never had the opportunity to work with them. She was also excited to meet and work with Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Sharna Burgess. You can read Jean’s articles and get the whole scoop in the April issues of “Skating” and “Fire on Ice”.
Worried about what’s in your food?
It seems like everywhere you look nowadays something new is being declared bad for us. As a working mom I always try to feed my family healthy and nutritious foods, but that can be time consuming. Two years ago my family made a move to eliminate processed foods from our diet and as a result we are healthier than ever. I have learned how to make just about everything we need and I have found I enjoy it and it really doesn’t consume that much of my time. I still buy organic bread, butter and yoghurt but I have began making just about everything else myself and I find that everything I make is tastier and we have saved tons of money.
How can you save money and buy organic you ask? You pay more for processed foods, so with some creative menu planning you can feed your family organic, and for even less money than you usually spend. I buy whole chickens and break them down myself which equates to several meals, stir fry, pastas, soups. I buy organic bread from a bakery and stale bread gets tossed with garlic and olive oil to make croutons for my salad. Left over meat goes great in soup, stir fry or as a pizza topping. We don’t eat meat every night either, sometimes a nice vegetarian pizza or vegetable ravioli is enough.
Crock pot cooking is a huge time saver. I like to put a pork loin in the crock pot for super tender pulled pork, add your own homemade Carolina Bar B Q sauce and you’ve got an instant family favorite. There are tons of recipes available to you on the internet, use them! Many things you can make with ingredients you have on hand right now.
Processed foods are full of chemicals and preservatives that may or may not be harmful to you and your family, why take the chance when it’s cheaper and better for you to make your own? We even make tea and put into individual bottles for the kids and we sweeten with real sugar or stevia, no aspartame in our house!
Start out small and make a few key changes around your house and soon you will be ready to eliminate all processed foods from your home. I once suffered from debilitating migraines and took a variety of medicines to keep them at bay. At this time I haven’t had a migraine in more than a year and I am taking no medication to control them. I have to credit my new additive free diet with my newfound health. If you or someone in your family suffers from health problems maybe it’s time to try a healthy, additive free diet. It can’t really hurt can it?
Take time to be kind
It’s Friday, the weekend is here. Everybody is in a hurry, everybody is ready to get this day over with. Snapping at people and treating other people rudely just has a terrible snowball effect. You have the opportunity to be the light in someone’s day, don’t let obnoxious people drag you down. A smile or a kind word can be enough to brighten up someone’s day, let your positive energy flow! 🙂
Olympic Gold Medalists on DWTS
Excitement is building for the “Dancing With the Stars” premiere on Monday. Olympic gold Medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White will be competing against each other in the most compelling showdown in the show’s history. Meryl will be teamed up with returning cast member Maksim Chmerkovskiy while Charlie has been paired with Sharna Burgess. Our author and reporter Jean Marie Stanberry will be getting the inside scoop for us, so stay tuned for exclusive insight and photos.
Meet the Authors
This is our second post about our wonderfully talented authors. Our newest Author Lyoness Bradley, grew up a mere 5 miles from our first featured author Jean Marie Stanberry, but remarkably, the two didn’t know each other.
Lyoness contacted Jean after reading her Bio on Amazon’s website, after she read Jean’s book “Laying Low In Hollywood”. “It was weird, says Lyoness, our lives were so similar, we may have even crossed paths in the past, but fate never truly brought us together.”
Lyoness Bradley grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri. She admits she had a very privileged upbringing, in fact, her father was the principal of at her private high school, which Lyoness says, pretty much ruined her high school years.
Lyoness wanted to write a book to help young girls to spread their wings. Lyoness said her own parents were very controlling, she didn’t get much of a chance to think with her own mind until she went away to college.
“An Imperfect World” is the story of her journey from a blatantly manipulated teenager, to a woman who finally feels free to follow her heart. In high school in 1979, Lyoness fell in love with another student, who was black. Her parents forbid her to see him at all and even threatened his life. Lyoness, fearing for his life, broke off the relationship and eventually married a family friend. Though she grew to love her husband, she never forgot about her first love. “An Imperfect World” is a fictitious account of her love affair.
Today Lyoness is an accomplished lawyer and enjoys writing and traveling. She penned her most recent novel while on a transatlantic cruise to Portugal. Lyoness will soon release her newest novel “One Small Bite” it is in the final editing stages and is due for release in late April or May.
Meet the Authors
At Kingsmuir Press we are very fortunate to have some of the greatest talents in the world working for us. Today we would like you to meet one of our newest authors Jean Marie Stanberry, author of “Laying Low in Hollywood”, “One World United”, “The Illusion of Order” and coming soon, “Blood, Sweat and Fears. First, how about a little quiz?
Before she started writing for us she:
A. Owned her own Old Time photo Studio
B. Was a professional figure skater
C. Was engaged to a British nobleman
D. All of the above
If you guessed all of the above, you are absolutely correct! Jean is definitely one of those people who has tried just about everything, at least once. As a child she loved reading, writing, dance and gymnastics, but she was a natural figure skater. Jean skated both competitively and professionally as a pairs skater with her longtime partner Jack Adams, most notably with Europe’s “Holiday on Ice”.
When her skating career was cut short by a life altering car accident that took the life of her fiancee Marc and left Jean fighting for her own life, she was told she would never skate again. Jean struggled to overcome her multiple injuries and start over. Jean traveled to Scotland and took classes at St. Andrews University, writing short stories and articles for their quarterly review. After a much publicized, failed engagement to English nobel Christian Arthur Hadringham, she returned to the states and graduated with her Bachelors Degree in Business from Southern Illinois University.
After working a number of years in Finance, she returned to college to pursue a degree in nursing, eventually getting her BSN from Webster University in St. Louis. After working in a wide variety of nursing positions Jean has settled in the surgery department where she has been working the last nine years.
Jean never got to return to competitive skating but did go on to function as a coach, judge and choreographer for multiple venues including “Holiday on Ice” and “Disney on Ice”. Jean has been married to her husband Gary for nearly twenty four years and they have two grown children, Ryan and Lauren. Jean’s entire family is as adventure orientated as she is, the entire family worked at their old time photo business in historic Kimmswick, Missouri and they have traveled extensively. Their biggest adventure by far was moving the entire family cross country from Missouri to Montana.
Since they moved to Montana the family has been enjoying the benefits of a slower paced life. They have also made strides to become more self sufficient and lead healthier lifestyles. Jean is proud that both her grown children have embraced the healthy lifestyle, staying active, avoiding processed foods and eating more fruits and vegetables. Jean is also proud of her garden and orchard which fills her pantry and freezer for the winter months. She is also planning a new project this spring which will hopefully only improve her garden, bee keeping. We will keep you up to date how this works out. You can find out more about Jean and all her projects past and present at jeanstanberry.com or follow her on twitter @jeanstanberry
Blood, Sweat and Fears
Coming soon, the book that was originally intended to be the first in the “Heart of a Phoenix” series. This book was so controversial, it made our lawyers very nervous. Luckily, they are over it, so once the editors have given their final blessing, it will be available in paperback and on all major e-readers. This book is the prequel to “The Illusion of Order”, so if you haven’t read it yet, this is your chance to read them in their logical order.
“Blood, Sweat and Fears is a gripping drama about an Olympic gold medalist from the Soviet Union who is desperate to defect to the US and begin a new life. When he lands a position skating in Europe’s most famous ice show, he thinks he’s just gotten his lucky break.
Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned, and as his plans crumble, he becomes involved in a desperate battle of wills with a fellow cast member. Will his manipulation tactics work, or will his desperation lead to his own destruction?
To learn more about this book you can go to our author’s website at jeanstanberry.com and check out her coming soon page. This is book is a wild ride, can you handle it?
Like Vampires?
Coming soon, Lyoness Bradley’s newest book “One Small Bite” will be hitting shelves and e-readers hopefully in early April. Pemberthy Parker has a legacy to fulfill, a legacy as Queen. Bitten by her betrothed as a child and marked for greatness, Pem can barely wait for her big day. When she shows up in the castle two years ahead of schedule, not everyone is happy. Nobody does vampires like Lyoness Bradley, especially when the vampires are lustful, jealous and vengeful.
Bad Drivers That Don’t Know They’re Bad Drivers
As a kid in the sixties my mother didn’t drive and my dad worked during the day, so as a result, my Grandfather drove us everywhere. I loved my Grandfather, he was a really great guy, unfortunately, driving wasn’t one of his better skills. It was also the only time he cursed, which by today’s standards would be relatively tame. He’d yell, “Look at that damn Jackass!” As he ran the poor fellow off the road. My Grandma would try to cover my ears, but it was always too late, so Jackass became a word in my early vocabulary that I used pretty indiscriminately, much to my family’s dismay. But that’s another story completely.
I really don’t think my Grandfather knew he was a bad driver, he just was a little confused as to who had the right of way. It was usually him, at least in his mind. Since it was the sixties only the busiest intersections had traffic lights and most railroad crossing just had a flashing light to warn you of an approaching train, the merest suggestion to stop in my grandfather’s eyes. He also hated any suggestions from non drivers, like my grandmother or my mother.
“John don’t go, the train is right there!” was often met with. “Don’t be a damn backseat driver.” Then he’d go, with all us in the car praying frantically for our lives. Yep, too many close calls to even count. I’m just saying, I lived through many cringe worthy moments as a child, and as a result, I’ve never really cared for railroad crossings.
Things were different in the sixties. I imagine he had car insurance, I was too young to worry about those sorts of things. I just don’t remember hearing any mention of it. He probably hit someone at least every other week, but it was never a big deal. The two parties would get out, inspect the damage, (usually it was very minimal) they would both offer the other apologies and go on their way. Cars were built like tanks back then, so my grandfather would go home, buff the other guy’s paint off his bumper and pretend it never happened. Sometimes he would grumble for a couple of days about how stupid the other guy was, for not paying attention or something like that. It seems like a totally different world now.
My Grandfather died in the mid 1970’s and I have missed him ever since. I don’t know how he would feel about what our world has become. I feel safe in saying that he probably wouldn’t have set foot on a modern day interstate where the speed limit can be over 70 miles an hour. Though he had grown up in the country, he had lived his entire adult life in the city and he was used to city driving. I don’t think I ever saw him drive over 55 miles an hour. He usually drove under the speed limit, which was good, since he tended to not yield to the person who had the right of way.
In this day and age I fear my Grandfather would not be able to afford the insurance premiums of his accident prone lifestyle. I hope that on the roads there in heaven, my Grandpa always has the green light.
By guest blogger Jean Marie Stanberry, author of “Laying Low in Hollywood”, “One World United” and her newest book, “The Illusion of Order”.
Kingsmuir Press-Great Novels, great authors 