As in years prior, Just Write Books will be sponsoring the Maine-Related Nonfiction Award for the Joy of the Pen Literary awards! First place in this category will win a $50 prize, and the runner up will net a $25 prize! And we’re asking all of our writers to consider entering this local contest in any category! ​

Maine has a storied history of being home to writing talent, from fiction writers to poets to historians. Hosted by the Topsham Public Library, The Joy of the Pen brings local writers together and provides a platform for a wide range of talent. ​

​Just Write Books LLC, offers publishing consulting and coaching for writers.  JWB uses its proprietary High Point Publishing System with state-of-the-art technology mixed with old-fashioned writing, editing, publishing, and marketing skills to help writers become authors and authors reach their publishing goals. ​

Wild Plants of Maine: A Useful Guide Third Edition, by Tom Seymour

For the outdoorsy dad that likes to forage, Wild Plants of Maine will prove an invaluable resource. In its third edition, Tom Seymour identifies Maine’s various flora, pointing out which can be used, which can be eaten, and which to avoid, with the same lively voice found in his other books, such as Wild Critters of Maine. Whether your dad wants to spice up a meal, pick his own food, or serve adventures for dinner, this book is a must-have gift! ​

Lessons From A Golfer: A Daughter's Story About Opening The Heart, by Susan Lebel Young

A story about one woman’s experience with her dad, Lessons From A Golfer is a collection of stories, journaling, and poetry. When Susan Lebel Young’s father had a cardiac scare resulting in seven-way bypass surgery, Susan began to write and compose poetry and correspond with friends, telling the story of a jazz horn player, an oral surgeon, a golf champion that won the Maine State Amateur six times, and a father who taught lessons of life through the lessons of golf. 

​Just Write Books LLC, offers publishing consulting and coaching for writers.  JWB uses its proprietary High Point Publishing System with state-of-the-art technology mixed with old-fashioned writing, editing, publishing, and marketing skills to help writers become authors and authors reach their publishing goals. 

Just Write Books LLC, offers publishing consulting and coaching for writers.  JWB uses its proprietary High Point Publishing System with state-of-the-art technology mixed with old-fashioned writing, editing, publishing, and marketing skills to help writers become authors and authors reach their publishing goals. ​

Nearly everyone in Maine recognizes cattails as they appear in autumn, but Tom Seymour wants you to start enjoying them this spring. Take some knowledge on your foraging expeditions with Tom Seymour's Wild Plants of Maine: A Useful Guide Third Edition! Here's an excerpt from the pages of Wild Plants of Maine detailing how to find what it takes to dig up "the supermarket of swamps."

"Cattails vie with evening primrose for the title of first wild edible of springtime. In fact, a determined forager could, with some risk of hypothermia, harvest cattail products in midwinter, by cutting holes in the ice and pulling up the rootstalks. But such chilly and potentially risky endeavors are not recommended. So the prudent forager waits until early spring when dried, brown cattail leaves and stalks from last season protrude from newly thawed ponds and waterholes," Tom Seymour writes about spring cattails. ​

"​For me, harvesting cattail sprouts entails putting on hip boots and, with long-handled spade in hand, walking out in the shallow section of a nearby pond. There, I work the point of my spade under a cattail root clump and, with one hand prying on the handle, grasp the plant with the other hand and apply steady pressure until the muck releases its grip on my plant, something often accompanied by a loud, slurping sound. It’s a muddy, cold business but in late March [and early April], a very worthwhile one."

And that's not all you'll find in Tom Seymour's Wild Plants of Maine. You'll learn about dandelions and their lookalikes coltsfoot, blunt-leaved dock, jewelweed, and evening primrose. And that's just what you'll find outside right now, in early spring! In Tom's book, you'll learn about stag horn sumac, find out when to harvest the ostrich fiddleheads that make for such good eats, and read why lamb's quarters are one of Tom's favorite wild edible plants! 
​
So when you go foraging this year, don't forget your tools: your knife, your weeding tool, your scissors, your basket, and of course, your copy of Wild Plants of Maine: A Useful Guide by Tom Seymour.

Tom Seymour, Maine writer and naturalist, has written over a dozen titles including: Getting Your Big Fish: Trolling Maine Waters, Wild Plants of Maine: A Useful Guide, Forager’s Notebook, Wild Critters of Maine: Everyday Encounters, and Hidden World Revealed: Musings of a Maine Naturalist from Just Write Books LLC, Topsham, Maine. Seymour has also written a multitude of monthly features including his popular “Maine Wildlife” for The Maine Sportsman Magazine.

Just Write Books is pleased to bring you the latest collection of poetry from the pen of poet Diane H. Schetky, Looking Back: New and Selected Poems.

A collection of new poems and selected favorites, Schetky's poems will take readers exploring far-off places, like the Arctic and Antarctica, contemplating subjects like the environment and climate change. Others muse on life, memory, and the inevitability of age, all in free verse. As she notes, ​“nature bestows daily gifts upon those whose eye and ears
are ready to receive them.”

Diane Schetky has channeled much of her feeling into a deeply personal work. Having lived for more than eighty years and struggling with early Alzheimer's, she feels concern over her losses, and has assembled some of her older poems to save memories of the past and reflect and share them with friends and readers. The result is an intimate look into her life through a flow of eclectic compositions, where old is followed by new, ending on a selection of poems focusing on finding serendipity in a changing world. ​

Here's some praise for Looking Back: 

​"Perceptive, poignant, and lyrical, Diane Schetky’s wordplay combines the wisdom of aging, wonder at the natural world, and sensitivity to a changing world. Reading her poems is an experiential process, inviting empathic “Looking Back.” or recognition of “Right Whales Wrong Climate”. Schetky’s verse captures the reader with eloquence and insight"
—Ellen Rothchild, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Emerita, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine

"I love experiencing the world through Diane Schetky’s poetry. Her reverence for Mother Earth, her knowledge and love of music and the natural world are deftly braided throughout this collection. But, Unfolding is more than that. In this collection, perhaps her most personal yet, the poet also includes poems about significant people from her childhood, loss, a failing memory, and aging."
—Maggie Butler, MSW, Certified Amherst Writers & Artist Facilitator

Nancy E. Randolph operates Just Write Books LLC offering consulting and coaching to writers.  With over 50 years of writing experience and two decades in the publishing industry working with dozens of writers, Randolph has learned how to produce a manuscript that is ready for publication. Randolph uses that knowledge to help writers and authors reach their publishing goals. An active community member along with two others she founded and serves as a member of the board of Save Our Swinging Bridge.Org to ensure the maintenance of the historic Roebling-designed and -built bridge connecting Topsham and Brunswick.  ​

​A student of the University of Connecticut with a Ph.D in English, a teacher at Bowdoin College, Clemson University, Ohio University, and the University of Maine at Augusta, a fighter pilot during the 1950s and one of the original members of Maine Veterans for Peace, H.R. Coursen was a man of many talents. According to Nancy E Randolph, publisher with Just Write Books, wrote this in a front-page obituary for The Times Record, “Herbert Randolph (H.R.) Coursen- a talented, brilliant, witty and sometimes irascible man- was passionate about Shakespeare, poetry, sports, music and politics. They enlivened his conversation and defined his life.”

​​Robert Chute of Poland Springs, with whom H.R. Coursen shared numerous poetry readings, had this to say of his friend- “I knew Herb as a fellow U.S. Air Force veteran in Veterans for Peace — his war Korea, mine, World War II. I knew him as a fellow poet, exchanging, without offense or favor, suggestions, edits, corrections. He was an insightful scholar and a writer of astounding diversity. His life, as are all lives, was many things, but much of it was Literature, with a capital L.”

One of Herb’s particular talents was the recontextualization of works by writers of the past. He rewrote in modern verse the works of Ovid, Euripides, and Virgil, with works like The Iliad, The Aeneid and The Golden Fleece transformed by his pen. One that speaks to the strengths of his writing and his strengths as a person was Longfellow’s Evangeline: An Adaptation in Modern Verse. 

Initially resistant to the idea of a modern recontextualization of Longfellow’s Evangeline, he wrote in his introduction to the work, “I remembered the narrative as a sentimental story that explained why Longfellow’s longer poems had faded into obscurity. The poem might appeal to Victorian sensibility, but the skeptical and epigrammatic Emily Dickinson seemed much more appealing to current tastes- or at least to mine.” 

​However, when convinced by publisher Nancy E Randolph to give Evangeline another try, he described how his opinion pivoted. “But when I reread Evangeline, I realized that, while the sentimentality was there- a cloying idealization and conventional piety- the story also captured something of the 20th century, and beyond. It is a story of loss, and of searching for people trampled in the shuffle of tyrannies and their wars, of the disruption of cultures, of the shattering of expectations, of the punishment of those who have done no wrong.” Seeing Evangeline in this new light, he took to his modern retelling, and in many ways, both the work itself and the story behind how he came to write it encapsulates the man of Herbert Randolph Coursen himself. 

Just in time for the holidays, Just Write Books reveals Grandkids as Gurus: Lessons for Grownups by Susan Lebel Young.

Grandkids as Gurus shows how children can be our greatest teachers. In this charming collection of stories, remembrances, and anecdotes, as well as a collection of artwork from the gurus themselves, Lebel shares the unexpected lessons learned from her own grandchildren, and shows that sometimes the youngest can teach us the most important things in life.

“I knew how to be a grandparent, I had four great ones, fine role models. Being grandma would be simple, like my certain truth that we succeed best when we cooperate,” Lebel writes. “Being one generation removed from worrying about memorizing times-tables and flashcard homework, about not-throwing food and table manners is bigger than giving them back to their parents.”

“It takes a wise and attentive grandparent to move beyond delight in her grandchildren’s sayings to seeing their inherent wisdom, wisdom even for guiding adults. Sue Lebel Young is that singular grandparent, and the result of her careful listening and disarming insights is Grandkids as Gurus. It should prove thought-provoking for her readers of all ages.”
    —Peter Monro, former journalist & blogger at DesignForWalking.com

    Just Write Books is pleased to be sponsoring the Maine-Related Nonfiction Award within the Joy of the Pen Literary Awards again this year! While we are not currently accepting submissions for publication, our specialty is Maine books by Maine authors telling Maine stories since 2005. What could be more appropriate than that we sponsor this non-fiction literary award for Maine-related nonfiction?

​    The global pandemic of COVID-19 has brought our world to a screeching halt. Even as states start making tenuous steps to reopen, stores remain closed, events remain cancelled, and many of our day-to-day activities remain frustratingly out of reach. In such a situation, the newly minted author might find themselves frustrated, unable to do book launches or book signings, and not able to get their works out into bookstores because all the bookstores have shuttered their doors to events and gatherings. With this in mind, we have compiled a list of things you can do while we await a return to normal.

     4. Make a social media plan. Plan out what social media you use for what purposes and plan accordingly. 
          -Facebook
          -Twitter
          -LinkedIn
          -Tumblr
          -Pinterest
          -Instagram
          -Blog
​

​​Nancy E. Randolph operates Just Write Books LLC offering consulting and coaching to writers.  With over 50 years of writing experience and two decades in the publishing industry working with dozens of writers, Randolph has learned how to produce a manuscript that is ready for publication. Randolph uses that knowledge to help writers and authors reach their publishing goals. An active community member along with two others she founded and serves as a member of the board of Save Our Swinging Bridge.Org to ensure the maintenance of the historic Roebling-designed and -built bridge connecting Topsham and Brunswick.  

    So, you've done your research, cited your sources, made sure your information is accurate and up-to-date, sent your manuscript off to your editor, and finally, you've written your nonfiction​​ book. But if you think you're done and ready to get it published, not so fast--your work isn't done until it's got an index. 

    What's an index, and why does it matter? An index is an alphabetized list, at the back of the book, of all the subjects covered in your nonfiction book. Just about every nonfiction work that sells itself on being informational needs one so that your reader will be able to quickly find what they're looking for. Luckily, we're here to help with ten steps to help you get your book indexed.