Blow 'em away on April Fool's Day! Buy a Copy of Mama's Comfort Food by Rhett DeVane

The gang from Chattahoochee returns for another humorous,
heartfelt tale of love, courage and the love of family and friends.

When Joe and Evelyn Fletcher's deluded daughter returns home,
the family and community hunker down to help her through the fight for her life.

In the South, food equals love and comfort, and the cast of Mama's Comfort Food serve up heaping helpings of both.

A note from Rhett:

For some reason, this date has been pivotal in my life. I hope this year to make it as pivotal for women who are battling breast cancer.

My new novel Mama's Comfort Food is available online with Amazon as both a print and Kindle version.

This book holds a special place in my heart. It's about love, forgiveness, courage and the bond between a mother and daughter. It's also about overcoming breast cancer.

I have pledged a percentage of royalties to A Woman's Place, here in my city of Tallahassee. This amazing group of people provides support and encouragement for breast cancer patients in our area. First, local baby steps. Then, hopefully, to a more national outreach from one author to women (and men) everywhere.

If you were here, I'd invite you to the book launch. We could hug and share a few southern snacks, and I'd sign a book for you. Since you aren't, I invite you to help me blow Amazon away on April 1st. You will get a funny and touching southern story--one I have worked very hard on--and I will turn around and shift money to help breast cancer patients. How many times can you honestly say you know for certain that what you touch goes out to do good for others? Here's your chance. I will make it happen.

Please, do share this with your friends. If you are like me, you have loved ones who have received the shocking diagnosis, and sadly, many of us have lost friends and relatives to the dreaded disease. Help me strike back. I am one small southern voice (actually, I do have a pretty big mouth, in person) and I don't have the push of a huge New York publisher. My small independent publisher is wonderful, though, so I am fortunate.

I believe in the power of people. I see how networks of friends can change the world.

Mama's Comfort Food by Rhett DeVane

Blow 'em away on April Fool's Day!

Here are the links to the Amazon pages. See, wasn't that easy?

Mama's Comfort Food (Kindle version)

Mama's Comfort Food (print version)

My best to all of you.

Rhett DeVane

http://www.rhettdevane.com/

Rhett is a friend of mine. I've loved everything by her that I've read, and the two previous books featuring the gang from Chattahoochee have a special place on my bookshelf. I hope you'll consider purchasing a copy of Mama's Comfort Food on Friday, April 1st. I plan to purchase a copy in memory of my mother, Dorothy Jean (Fontaine) Gevry, who lost her battle with cancer on December 18, 1982. She was only 47. I also hope to honor my friend Lorrie, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She is on the road to recovery, and I hope and pray she remains cancer free for many years to come.

Healing with Words by Diana M. Raab -- Book Review

Beautifully written, powerful, and inspiring, Healing With Words: A writer's cancer journey by Diana M. Raab will touch your heart and encourage you to use your writing to ease your suffering and improve your overall health.

In this emotional memoir, author Diana M. Raab shares the story of how her life was shattered by her first cancer diagnosis. Raab would face her mortality again, five years later, when she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma; a battle she continues to wage and is determined to win.

I had selfish reasons for requesting this book. For those of you who might not know, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 45. Cancer returned a year later, and she died a week before Christmas at the age of 47. I found the first lump in my breast when I was 25.

Writing helped me cope with the grief of losing my mother when I was a young teen. I still keep a journal, though since I began blogging, it hasn't seen as much time as it used to.

Healing with Words made me cry, it made me sympathize with what the author had to--and still has to--endure. The majority of patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma will die from it. Perhaps this is why Raab can share her story with such grace and compassion. Whatever the reason, I admire her for it.

When she spoke of the anxiety over waiting for test results, I understood her. The three weeks I waited for the results of my genetic testing to see if I had a mutated gene that would highly increase my risk for breast cancer, were the most difficult weeks of my life. Not knowing how my life would change if the test came back positive seemed unbearable at times. And then when Raab discussed the sense of loss before and after her mastectomy, I thought of my mother, and also what might have been in my future--could still be.

What ties all this together nicely, is that in Healing with Words, the author shows how journaling can impact your overall health. Included are some poems Raab wrote since her original diagnosis and on through her continuing journey. In addition, each chapter ends with thought-provoking questions and plenty of blank space for the reader to write. On Page 7 it says, "Write about the day you first thought you had cancer." While I have been fortunate never to actually have been diagnosed, let me tell you, that first lump scared me as if it was already a forgone conclusion that I was going to lose a breast.

Healing with Words is a phenomenal book. Not only will you read one woman's story, you will be changed by it.


Title: Healing with Words: A Writer's Cancer Journey
Author: Diana M. Raab
Publisher: Loving Healing Press (May 12, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1615990100
ISBN-13: 978-1615990108
SRP: $19.95

Author Spotlight: Healing with Words by Diana M. Raab

Healing With Words: A Writer's Cancer Journey is a compassionate and wry self-help memoir written by an award-winning prolific author, nurse and poet, who at the age of forty-seven found her life shattered first by a DCIS (early breast cancer) diagnosis and five years later by another, seemingly unrelated and incurable multiple myeloma. This book includes the author’s experiences, reflections, poetry and journal entries, in addition to writing prompts for readers to express their own personal story.

Raab’s journals have provided a safe haven and platform to validate and express her feelings. Raab views journaling to be like a daily vitamin – in that it heals, detoxifies and is essential for optimal health.

Readers will learn to:

Understand the importance of early cancer detection and how to take control of their health

Discover the power of writing to release bottled-up emotions

Learn how the process of journaling can facilitate healing

See how a cancer diagnosis can be a riveting event which can renew and change a person in a unique way.

Watch the Trailer!




Read the Reviews!

“Though I am a professional writer, it's hard to find words for the admiration I feel for Diana Raab and her inspiring true story: Healing With Words. Time after time, Diana articulates incisively the thoughts and feelings that convey hoped-for meaning and encouragement. She is a woman who knows what it is to live fully in the face of mortality. She will add value to the life of every person who reads this book. That she includes the creative impulse to write and the solace offered by contemplating the beautiful as a vital part of human existence resonates at a spiritual level for me.”

~ Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife and Abundance, a Novel of Marie Antoinette

“One woman's story, beautifully told and inspiring to those for whom journaling will ease a breast cancer diagnosis.”

~ Barbara Delinsky, New York Times bestselling author of
Uplift: Secrets From the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors


“Healing With Words: A Writer's Cancer Journey by Diana Raab offers unique therapy for cancer patients. Raab is a registered nurse, author, mother of three and happily married woman. Her compelling and inspirational book reflects her two episodes with cancer over several years. She expertly tells her story and captures the reader with her feelings, frustrations and fears that overwhelmed her from diagnosis of breast cancer through reconstruction and recovery through her subsequent bout with multiple myeloma.

Descriptions of her personal journey are accompanied with powerful poetry and journal entries she wrote at various stages. What is unique about this book is that its messages are universal. Any cancer patient or survivor can relate to and learn from what she experienced.

Included in the masterfully written book are writing prompts to encourage the readers to write about what is happening or has occurred in their lives.

As a college writing professor, I give Diana Raab an A+ for her writing. As a twotime cancer survivor who has taught Writing for Wellness classes for patients at City of Hope Cancer Center for eight years, I congratulate her for her significant contribution to the field of writing-to-heal techniques.

Her book is a must-read for any woman diagnosed with breast cancer.”

~ Julie Davey, author of Writing for Wellness: A Prescription for Healing

You'll find more reviews posted on Diana's website.



Diana M. Raab is an essayist, memoirist, poet and author blogger who teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and at various conferences around the country.
She’s editor of the anthology, Writers and Their Notebooks (University of South Carolina Press, January 2010).

Her memoir, Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal (Beaufort Books, 2007) won the 2008 National Indie Excellence Award for Memoir and the 2009 Mom’s Choice Award for Adult Nonfiction.

She has three poetry collections, My Muse Undresses Me (2007), Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You (2008), winner of The Reader Views Award and Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice, and The Guilt Gene (2009).

She’s the recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Book Award for best health and wellness book for Getting Pregnant and Staying Pregnant: Overcoming Infertility and High Risk Pregnancy which has been translated into French and Spanish. In 2009 the book was released in its 20th anniversary edition, under the title, Your High Risk Pregnancy: A Practical and Supportive Guide updated in collaboration with Dr. Errol Norwitz of Yale School of Medicine.

For more information about Diana and her work, please visit her online at www.dianaraab.com and at her blog: www.dianaraab.com/blog.

Look for our review of Healing With Words coming on August 24th!

Linda Merlino and Belly of the Whale

When I read the synopsis of Belly of the Whale, I couldn't help but be intrigued.

"Hudson Catalina has given up. Having lost both breasts to cancer, she is emotionally and physically exhausted, no longer willing to endure the nausea and crushing weakness that chemotherapy causes, until the wrecked-by-life young Buddy Baker arrives, bent on murder. A touching story of despair, abuse, murder and survival takes you on a journey through the darkest places of the human mind and spirit, and in the end leads you back out of “the belly of the whale” enriched by the experience."

This story idea touched me personally. My mother died of cancer when I was only 14, and I've often wondered if the two years she suffered after her mastectomy left her hoping it would soon end. My mind wandered to what kind of research Linda would have to do to portray Hudson's experiences as a woman battling cancer. This is what I've asked her to write about for you today.



My research for Belly of the Whale took place over the span of about a year. It was the first year of "writing" the story. That year I collected information more than I wrote. The idea was in my head and not so much on paper. I was concerned for authentic emotions and correct therapies. I did not want to write a book about cancer, but I had to be accurate nonetheless.

I resourced through magazine articles, newspapers, online articles and "talking" to doctors and breast cancer victims. I was focused on how a young woman with a family history of breast cancer would handle a diagnosis and subsequent treatment. I wanted to find out about caregivers and especially spouses. From all I garnered it was repeated over and over that the compassionate, supportive spouse was a key factor in recovery and in acceptance of what might happen.

Lastly I took myself into her head, after all, I created Hudson Catalina, I could get into her mind. The story is very emotional...that was deliberate. I was very careful of mis-speaking on a subject that I had not experienced; other than being a "driver" for friends to chemotherapy and my mother's surviving breast cancer, I had no brushes with the beast. I tried to use the emotional thread that is in all of us,which is that hope binds us to the planet, that hope connects us to life, hope is the lifeline; the umbilical cord.

You can find Linda on the web at http://www.lindamerlino.com/ and at MySpace.

Belly of the Whale is available at Amazon.com and from Kunati Book Publishers.

The BELLY OF THE WHALE VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '08 will officially begin on June 1, 2008 and continue all month long. If you would like to follow Linda's tour in progress, visit http://www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/ in June. Leave a comment at any of her blog stops and become eligible to win a free copy of her book! One lucky winner will be announced on her tour page at June 30!

This virtual book tour has been brought to you by: