Explore Many Channels by Lisa Lipkind Leibow

Today's guest blogger is debut author, Lisa Lipkind Leibow. Her mainstream novel, Double Out and Back, was recently released by Red Rose Publishing.


Not every woman who rides the fertility treatment roller coaster winds up like Octomom!

Who will find friends, family, and fertility?

Three women’s lives are intricately intertwined, as Amelia Schwartz and Summer Curtis struggle with the complex dynamics of intrafamily embryo adoption, and Chandy Markum strives to make her patients’ dreams a reality.

After more than a decade, of mourning her parents’ deaths, anal-retentive Amelia Schwartz decides to take control of her life, pursuing single motherhood via embryo adoption. While her fertility doctor, Chandy, is preoccupied with the destruction of the cosmopolitan Cape Town of her youth and her first love in apartheid-torn South Africa, believing all is lost, her niece, a young, married, overachieving attorney Summer Curtis, juggles zealous career ambitions, demanding bosses, and friction with her husband over family and fertility issues. They must confront the painful reality that, no matter what technology humans devise to manipulate reproduction, prolong life, and construct family units, they have not yet mastered control over their beginnings and endings.

Thrown all into this is one story that can make or break. Are you up to it?

Explore Many Channels by Lisa Lipkind Leibow

Across the globe, publishers, literary agents, authors, and bookstores are struggling to anticipate and manage the rapidly changing business of books. Emerging authors, like me, should explore many channels. I tackled the quest for publication with enthusiasm. I tracked industry developments by reading trade press, newspapers, and by joining the National Writer’s Union, and a local writers’ center where I found the best critique group ever. I attended writer’s workshops and retreats, reached out to a community of writers at my local public library, and made on-line friends with whom I traded draft manuscripts.

I embarked on my agent search-–often the first hurdle for a first-time, unknown author, and a slow process. As I waited, an on-line colleague encouraged me to submit to small presses, too. I hesitated, wondering if any publisher would look at me without an agent. However, after investigating small publishers’ submission requirements, I tried and was glad. Red Rose Publishing wanted to expand their mainstream fiction line, loved my writing, and wanted to publish my book! While large presses are busy trying to reinvent themselves, there are innovative, entrepreneurial, small presses out there, like Red Rose.

I have no problem that I’m initially published in e-book format. E-reader manufacturers like Kindle, Sony, and the soon-to-come Apple, show increasing market penetration, and the younger generation already reads on iPhones and other handheld devices.

To me, my publisher’s business plan makes complete sense. The world is going digital, and the distribution of e-books is much more cost-effective than printing books. Think about it. The cost of a ream of paper averages around $6.00. Now, add costs of ink, binding, cover, shipping, shelf space, etc. Red Rose is smart. It’s rolling out distribution of my book in phases. Once the revenue from the e-book sales recoup enough of its up-front investment, Red Rose will release the trade paperback, too.

I adore the complete, sensory experience of holding a print book–-the smell of the pages, the way the paper feels between my fingers, and the look of the ink on the page. I love to dog-ear and highlight favorite passages as I lose myself in the fictive dream a good book conjures. I savor, devour, and love print books. Nothing could replace that love.

But e-books offer new ways to love literature. I can adjust font size of print as large or small as I like. I can keep a file of “clippings” of favorite passages. I can perform keyword searches, and gain quick access to material when I’m on deadline. More than that, e-books are great for impatient people, like me. The ability to download a book within seconds of deciding I want to read it is fantastic.

I’m thrilled to make my publishing debut in the best of both worlds!

Born and raised in Leominster, Massachusetts, Lisa had a flare for drama. As a child, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she answered on any given day anything from airplane pilot to zookeeper. She left her home town in 1984 to attend George Washington University in Washington, DC. She studied radio-television communications where she loved writing, directing, and performing, as well as public policy and regulation of mass media and telecommunications. After college she sought a "practical" career by going to law school.

Prior to pursuing the literary dream of novel writing, Lisa practiced law for over a decade, drafting legal briefs and memoranda much like the young attorney in her debut novel. This professional environment was the inspiration for the characters and settings in Double Out and Back.

After being stuck at her office on 9/11, a month-long siege on metro Washington, DC by a sniper, and discovering that the other parents at her twins’ preschool thought her au pair was her sons’ mom, Lisa could hear these words echoing in her ears. "If I knew this was what it was going to be like to have it all, I would have settled for less." (Lily Tomlin: The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe)

Lisa didn't really settle for less. She settled for different, and traded the billable hour lifestyle for fiction writing. Making up stories is much more fun than negotiating contracts, attending hearings, and deciphering statutes and regulations for clients. More than that, it has given her an excuse to pretend to be anyone from airplane pilot to zookeeper!

Lisa's work can be seen in the Pisgah Review. Her debut novel was released in 2009 by Red Rose Publishing (mainstream fiction).

Lisa lives and writes in Northern Virginia with her husband, three children, a couch potato of a dog, and two red-eared slider turtles.

You can visit Lisa Lipkind Leibow at www.LLLeibow.com and www.LisaLeibow.blogspot.com.

DOUBLE OUT AND BACK VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on September 1 and ends on September 25th. You can visit Lisa's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com in September to find out more about this great book and talented author!

As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.

In Pursuit of an Idea by Kim Smith, Author of A Will to Love

We welcome Kim Smith back to The Book Connection today. Her new book is a romance novel titled, A Will to Love.



Benton Jessup wants his bed and breakfast to be successful. He will go to no lengths to insure that it does. But when Kitty Beebe, a famous romance author, arrives at The Inn, his desire for success becomes a struggle of wills with love.






In the Pursuit of an Idea by Kim Smith

Recently, I was out of town on a business trip. No great thing but for the fact that I had horrible trouble with the airlines that was supposed to move me from point A to point B. The long wait times (two different days!) gave me plenty of opportunities to think about situations and writing and what worked and what didn’t.


For most beginning writers, the pursuit of an idea wide enough to carry an entire book is a big deal because many agents and publishers say “make the story universal, make it something that is timeless”. Most beginners (some who are not as well) take this advice seriously. They want to do everything right straight out of the gate.

I know many established, multi-published authors who take the idea that flashes through their mind and keep building on it “off the paper” for extended periods of time. Some have even developed their characters, their settings, or their plot for years in their pre-planning. But, for some of us, this simply won’t work. I happen to be one of these other writers, the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants sorts. This post is not for the writer who can create for extended periods before writing their first word, but rather the ones who cannot.

As I sat in the airport contemplating writing something (anything!) because my heart felt that I had put it off too long trying to make it into something useful not wasted, I remembered William Faulkner.

He is quoted as saying, "Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him"

So I am here to tout the news that it is okay to write out the idea on paper, not carry it around in our heads, go forward, dive right into the story by writing a few thousand words. It is okay to turn those few thousand into a few thousand more in an attempt to see if it will go anywhere, only to discover that you do not have a story. Yes, I am an advocate of broken beginnings, saggy middles, and books with no hope.

Why, you ask, would I do such a thing? Why would I encourage writers to write anything less than their best, and most well-thought out work? Waste paper, muddle a mind?

Because writers write. That’s what we do, that’s who we are!

Beginning writers (especially) need to keep poking the muse to see what she has to offer up. When we censor our writing mind, and toss out ideas before they have a chance to be developed (because someone says “that won’t work” or “that’s been done before”), we get into a mind-set that hobbles our creativity.

Let that weak idea flow! You may have a short story, not a novel. You may have a character sketch, or a mood piece, not necessarily a short story, but that is perfectly fine. You still have something to write. Something that moves your writing life forward a little bit more than yesterday. Along the way, you will know when it is right, when it is something that can be stretched, or developed, when it will go into a bigger piece of the puzzle, and who better to know such as that? It is your story to tell, your character to develop, your plot to pursue.

After returning from my business trip, I walked the grounds of Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Mississippi. I smiled when I felt the urge to write hit me. I didn’t tarry either. Maybe ole Will was standing somewhere under one of those huge, old trees in the avenue, waving at me—(laughing, probably) telling me to go, go, go at my fierce determination to wrestle something out in the name of writing. Telling me to be free in my methods, my failures. I had a small amount of success, churning out one small story. Thanks, Will.

Kim Smith is the hostess for the popular radio show, Introducing WRITERS! radio show on Blog Talk Radio. She is also the author of the zany, Shannon Wallace mystery series available now from Red Rose Publishing and also the new romance novel, A Will to Love. You can visit Kim’s website at www.mkimsmith.com.