Spotlight: Ace Your Life by Michelle P. Maidenberg

It’s common for anyone to feel trapped or stuck by their inner commentator, habitual patterns of behavior, and the lessons they’ve learned throughout their lives. Everyone has regrets, with many trying to preserve strained relationships and other difficult parts of their lives. When faced with these hardships, it’s easy for self-worth and confidence to take a nosedive, causing many to wonder where they went wrong and to wish for a “do-over.” 

ACE Your Life: Unleash Your Best Self and the Life You Want to Be Living offers another way. Michelle P. Maidenberg, Ph.D., MPH, LCSW-R, explains how to create a life and legacy of love (both of self and others) and fulfillment. Predicated on acceptance, compassion, and empowerment skills, Maidenberg’s approach has transformative range, working for those who feel slightly “stuck” and are seeking personal growth and enhancement as well as those with more complex “stuckness” caused by trauma, cumulative stress, or other significant challenges. 

Each section of Ace Your Life walks the reader through definitions, benefits, barriers and includes curiosity-based mindfulness questions and exercises to promote growth, healing, and a path toward personal fulfillment. Individuals who want to enhance their life in a significant way and become their best self through the work and wisdom of personal growth will benefit from this encouraging, inspirational, and easily actionable guide. 

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About the Author

Michelle P. Maidenberg, Ph.D., MPH, LCSW-R maintains a private practice in Harrison, NY where she works with individuals, families, and couples. She works with children age 8 and above, adolescents, teens, and adults. Michelle is the Co-Founder and Clinical Director of “Thru My Eyes”, a nonprofit 501c3 organization that offers free clinically-guided videotaping to chronically medically ill individuals who want to leave video legacies for their children and loved ones. She is also adjunct faculty at New York University (NYU) teaching a graduate course in Mindfulness Practice.

Michelle is a Board of Directors member at The Boys & Girls in Mount Vernon. She is a member of the American Red Cross Crisis Team and serves on the Board of Directors of the Westchester Trauma Network (WTN) in Westchester NY. 

Michelle is a Certified Group Therapist through the American Group Psychotherapy Association and a Diplomate and certified member of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. Michelle has advanced training in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Structural Family Therapy, Mindfulness, Polyvagal Theory, and is a Level II trained Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) therapist.

Michelle is also the author of the book Free Your Child From Overeating: 53 Mind-Body Strategies For Lifelong Health. Her book guides practitioners, parents, and kids and teens through mind-body strategies that help kids and teens develop life-long healthful behaviors. Michelle writes the Psychology Today Blog: Being Your Best Self. She is a contributing editor of GROUP, the journal of the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society. She has also published in varied professional journals and was quoted in The New York Times, the Daily News, Fitness, Woman’s Day, Parents, and many other publications.

Michelle is a consultant and trainer on a variety of mental health and health related topics. She is dedicated and invested in health and mental health advocacy. Michelle is the proud mother of four children and values her time with her dogs, skiing, exercising and writing. 

Spotlight: Brand the Author (Not the Book): A Workbook for Writing & Launching Your Own Author Brand Plan by Karen A Chase

If you want to write books and publish long-term, you need a written author brand to get your books in front of the right readers. This is the only author branding workbook that uses proven steps to guide you through building your written author brand.

This easy-to-follow (and often fun) step-by-step workbook-developed by an author and branding professional-will help you structure your own written author brand plan.

This workbook will guide you through steps to:

• Structure realistic hours for writing versus marketing

• Craft your particular author message

• Outline how to connect with your targeted readers better

• Select your author platform tools (digital, social media, and more)

• Prioritize a plan to build your author platform tools

• Establish standards for your author logo, graphics, and materials

• Create a brand that is unique, consistent, and authentic

At the end of this comprehensive yet simple guide you will have a strategic written author brand plan.

Whether you're about to launch a debut novel, or you have a dozen published books, this workbook will help you stand strong and say, I Am the Boss of My Author Business! 

PLUS: You'll also learn:

• Why branding the author (not the book) will help sell more books

• Who handles marketing for authors in order to grow your career

• Why becoming an Author Entrepreneur will help you feel empowered

• Publishing-related marketing and branding terms to make marketing easier

• How and where authors make money... so you can earn more and do less

Grow your writing career beyond one book. Connect with your unique readers. Develop your author brand, by ORDERING THE BOOK today.

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About the Author

Karen A. Chase is an author, speaker, ad rand designer. Karen writes both fiction and nonfiction and shares behind-the-scenes details about #ChasingHistories. Order autograph copies via KarenAChase.com & follow her via @KarenAChase. 

Her latest, BRAND THE AUTHOR (NOT THE BOOK) is a workbook for authors to build their own brand. Her debut Revolutionary War novel, CARRYING INDEPENDENCE, was No. 12 of the Top 100 Indie Books of 2019, a 2020 Library of Virginia Award Nominee. She has spoken with nearly one hundred historical, corporate, and trade audiences in the US and Canada—both virtually and in-person—about history, branding, and entrepreneurship.

Chase is a member of James River Writers, the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Historical Novelist Society, and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Originally from Calgary, Canada, she resides in Richmond, Virginia.

Spotlight: My Ticket to Ride: How I Ran Away to England to Meet the Beatles and Got Rock and Roll Banned in Cleveland (A True Story from 1964) by Janice Mitchell

A true-adventure, coming-of-age tale set in the exhilarating first wave of Beatlemania …

It’s 1964, and 16-year-old Janice is struggling in an unhappy home in Cleveland when she falls suddenly, deeply in love … with the Beatles. They and their music stir in her an ecstatic new sense of freedom. With a friend, she hatches a bold plan to escape their dreary lives and run away to London to meet the Fab Four.

On their own for the first time—in “Beatleland”—they explore a new city, a new culture, and a new life, visiting the hippest clubs of Soho, meeting some nice English boys, hitchhiking to Liverpool …

But unbeknownst to them, the runaways have become international news—and a hunt is on.

Adventure and newfound freedom end abruptly when Janice is apprehended by London police and hauled home to Cleveland and an unforgiving juvenile justice system. Warned by responsible adults to put it all behind her, she doesn’t speak of her extraordinary adventure for more than fifty years.

In this memoir, she looks back with fresh insight on the heady early days of Beatlemania and an era in America when young women exercising some control over their lives presented a serious threat to adult society.

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About the Author

Janice Mitchell is a nationally recognized, award-winning investigator who has worked on high-media capital, criminal, and civil cases in New York City, including the Wendy’s Massacre and the Carnegie Deli Murders. She has also worked on international investigations for Hard Rock Café, Planet Hollywood, Warner Bros., Rolex, Gucci, Levi Strauss, and other trademarks. After uncovering new evidence in a criminal case that led to a wrongfully convicted man’s conviction being overturned, Hawkins-Mitchell was interviewed on Court TV by Rikki Klieman, who dubbed her “a modern-day Nancy Drew.” 

After 9/11, Hawkins-Mitchell moved from New York City back to her hometown of Cleveland. She is a retired Federal investigator, a private investigator, and an adjunct professor in the Criminal Justice Department of Tiffin University. She has written about some of her investigations for a local quarterly magazine in a column called “From the Case Files of Jan Mitchell, Private Investigator.”

She has been a lover of the Beatles since age 15 and became internationally known as a Beatlemaniac when she ran away from home at age 16 to find the Beatles in London and Liverpool. The adventure led to rock and roll and the Beatles being banned from performing in Cleveland from 1964 to 1966. Cleveland is now the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Hawkins-Mitchell is the author of a forthcoming memoir about her adventure.

Hawkins-Mitchell received a bachelor’s degree from State University of New York and a master’s degree in criminal justice from Tiffin University. She currently lives in Bratenahl, Ohio, with her Yorkshire Terrier, Dashiell Hammett. A horse lover, she maintains an interest in the thoroughbred horse world and is a supporter of animal rescue organizations.

Spotlight: Take Your Lunch Break: Helpful Tips for Relieving Work-Related Stress by Massoma Alam Chohan

If you are tired of stress and anxiety impacting your work performance and even your health, you've chosen the right book.

Take Your Lunch Break: Helpful Tips for Relieving Work-Related Stress contains author Massoma Alam Chohan’s personal story of how anxiety almost cost her job and mental health, plus tons of research and original interviews with mental health professionals and high-performing leaders.

You’ll find twelve chapters packed with insights on:

· Workplace stressors: how they create or trigger feelings of anxiety, so you can act on them

· The root causes of anxiety and their effects on your well-being in the workplace

· Holistic stress management habits you can cultivate to be unshakable

· Ways to navigate performance anxiety, co-worker tension, and burnout to build resilience

· Practical strategies for work, that actually work to create a better work-life balance and how to ask for it

Take Your Lunch Break is for anyone who wants to ignite their passion, create a less stressful workplace, and clear their mind with renewed focus at work and home. Pack your lunch and get ready to embark on a transformational journey!

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About the Author

Massoma Alam Chohan is an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist, speaker, and author. Her TEDx Talk, “Go Spaghetti: Overcoming Anxiety” focuses on her advocacy for those experiencing anxiety. She holds a bachelor's in biology and psychology from the State University of Buffalo and a master’s degree from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, as well as two years of medical school.

During her two-year internship with the United Nations at the International Council of Psychologists and the Department of Public Information, she was a panelist at two conferences focused on economic empowerment of women in the workplace and psychological effects on refugees. Massoma has lived in many countries and now resides in Buffalo, NY with her husband and two children.

Spotlight: The Gift of Failure: Turn My Missteps Into Your Epic Success by Ari Rastegar

If you haven’t failed, then you aren’t trying hard enough.

Not just the little failures either—the big ones.

The failures that push you to the edge of insanity and potentially put your entire career in jeopardy. The failures that knock you to the ground and won’t let you back up without fighting for your life. The failures that force you to ask better questions, to learn from your mistakes, and to commit to becoming a better person.

These are the failures that plant the seeds of greatness.

Everything Ari Rastegar has achieved was forged through failure. From delivering pizzas at DoubleDave’s to his rise as real estate’s “Oracle of Austin” (Forbes)—and every step (and misstep) in between—Ari owes his success not to what he did right but to what he did wrong.

In The Gift of Failure, Ari pulls back the curtain on his darkest moments—revealing the hard-earned lessons from his struggles, showing why prosperity in any enterprise is linked to prosperity in life. Full of Ari’s trademark wit, energy, compassion, and candor, this book will help you see failure in an entirely new way.

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About the Author

Ari Rastegar, a licensed attorney, founded Rastegar in 2015 with one mission: to build the future of real estate. A true renaissance man, Ari is a larger-than-life personality who is also an artist, technologist, screenwriter, health enthusiast, and entrepreneurial visionary with the ambition to change the world. He lives in his hometown of Austin, Texas, with his wife and their three children.

Spotlight: Through Her Eyes by Maheen Mazhar

Born into a Pakistani family and moved to America at the age of three, Through Her Eyes is a story of an American girl who finds her Pakistani roots constantly clashing with her American identity.

At times she feels like she belongs to both cultures and at times to none. Later, she finds out about the struggles her family had to face when she was born in Lahore, Pakistan: a country that fires gunshots in midair celebrating the birth of a boy while in certain areas of the country girls are flushed down the hospital toilet drains as soon as they are born. When Maheen enters her teens, her Pakistani roots constantly come into conflict with the teenage American culture around her. At times, she finds herself belonging to both her identities and at times she finds her Pakistani roots battling with her American identity.

Through Her Eyes is a story of a Pakistani American who has to face many hardships after being born in a country like Pakistan and how her struggles completely changed her life as she grows up and becomes the woman no one ever thought she could become.

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About the Author

Maheen Mazhar was born in Lahore, Pakistan and moved to New York with her parents at the age of three. Growing up as Pakistani-American there was always a clash between both of her identities. She graduated from New York University in 2019 and currently works in the Fashion PR Industry as a publicist. She writes about culture clashes, identity and societal norms and is extremely passionate about such topics. She doesn't believe in norms and standards and wants to see a world where more people are concerned about being their true selves rather than fitting into cultural/ societal norms of the world we live in.