Welcome to the Internet Book Fair Blogfest

I'm excited to participate in today's Internet Blogfest. Please click on the link and join in. Scroll down a bit to find a list of all the participants. I have three books to present today.

First, a little something about 

my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On

Leaving the Hall Light On is a mother's memoir of living with my son's bipolar disorder and surviving his suicide. Published by Lucky Press LLC, a small independent and wonderful press, it was released last May. so appropriately on Mother's Day.


I write about finding peace and balance after feeling so helpless and out of control during my son Paul's seven-year struggle with bipolar disorder and after his suicide in September 1999 and about the steps I took in living with the loss of my son, including making use of diversions to help ease my grief. 


Leaving the Hall Light On is also about the milestones I met toward living a full life without him: packing and giving away his clothes, demolishing and redoing the scene of his death, cataloging and packing away all his records and books, copying all of his original music compositions onto CDs, digitizing all of our family photos, and gutting his room and turning it into my office and sanctuary with a bay window that looks out toward a lush garden and a bubbling water fountain.
Please go to Amazon to read some of the amazing reviews the book has received and to purchase a copy. 

Second, White Elephants by Chynna Laird

I reviewed Chynna Laird's White Elephants for 100 Memoirs in August. It is a horendous story of growing up with an abusive, alcoholic and bipolar mother. There are many similarities in White Elephants to my story in  Leaving the Hall Light On, most notably, the author survives and moves on. Chynna now works toward erasing the stigma of mental illness by communicating and educating people about what mental illness is and how it affects individuals stricken by it and their families. Please go to 100 Memoirs to read my full review and to Amazon to purchase this wonderful memoir.

Third, String Bridge by Jessica Bell (just a peek)

Since I just started reading String Bridge I can't really review it yet. I just wanted you to know about it and how much I like it already. Jessica is a talented poet and novelist, plus she is a musician. She has produced a CD of her music that goes along with the release of her book. The book, also published by Lucky Press LLC, will be available on November 1. Look for my full review and an interview with Jessica on November 18. And, please visit Jessica's String Bridge website for more information.


Hopefully, I'll get to browse around the other websites that are displaying their books at today's Blogfest. Maybe some of us will even sell a few books. Good Luck, everyone.

Catching up

On Saturday we took our great niece to the Hollywood Museum housed in the old Max Factor building on Highland and Hollywood boulevards. This was the first stop on our last day of touring with her that also included the Hardrock Cafe, seeing "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes" at the Sunset Boulevard Cinerama Dome theater, and dinner at Musso and Frank's Grill - the oldest Hollywood restaurant. (The menu is very much in keeping with the age of the restaurant.) She was indeed ready to go home yesterday and rest up.


My favorite exhibits at the museum were of Lucille Ball's 100th birthday and Jean Harlow. We were there on August 6 - the day Lucy was born and the day Jean died. But,those displays were a very small portion of the museum's many thousands of items. It would take days to see everything there. 

Beautiful Art Deco Lobby of the Hollywood Museum,  located in the historic Max Factor Building, originally built as the Hollywood Fire and Safe building in 1913. Today, the building is 

a recognized historic landmark.

http://www.thehollywoodmuseum.com/

And now it's time for me to catch up. My assignment for this week is to write an article for Naturally Savvy - I'm the "over sixty" expert for that website, write an article for the Huffington Post/AOL column called Aging Gracefully, and write a review of Chynna Laird's book White Elephants. I've started all three pieces, but I'm far from completing any one of them. But, it was well worth going off schedule for a few days while showing my darling niece around the Los Angeles area. 

http://search.huffingtonpost.com/search?q=aging+gracefully&s_it=header_form_v1

http://www.naturallysavvy.com/