​Summer is here again, and that means it’s time for day trips to the beach and thunderstorms in the afternoon. No matter the weather or the place, a book is the perfect thing to bring to have a good time anywhere. Check out the updated list of books from Just Write Books to bring with you wherever you go.

“Grandma shared with me her age-old knowledge in my quest to learn more about the useful wild plants that grow all around us.” Tom Seymour
 
Just Write Books announces the release of the third edition of Wild Plants of Maine by Tom Seymour. Wild plants, mushrooms, and new recipes have been added to the information already present in the pages, making a more complete guide to identifying, harvesting and using or eating wild plants. The book contains 80 wild plants, some found on hiking trails, some found in garden plots and backyards. Many are edible, with recipes that detail cooking methods to make them safe and enhance flavor.
 
From teas to medicines, any person wandering the Maine wilderness would benefit from having this book with them. Reading it beforehand and knowing how to identify and even taking the book with you, can result in a good and safe harvest for wilds and a delicious Maine dinner afterwards.
 
The information contained in the book is highlighted by anecdotes by the author, as with the “warning” of the death trumpet mushroom from Seymour’s grandmother, or the note that Joe-Pye Weed is a “precursor to fall.” These quips bring the plants to life on the page as much as they are in the woods.
 
Tom Seymour has been writing professionally since 1973, for local newspapers. He has since published multiple volumes on Maine: its natural bounties, outdoor pursuits, living in Maine and enjoying all the state has to offer. 

(Topsham, Maine)  Shauna Holland of Durham, Maine, has joined the publishing company Just Write Books for the summer as an intern. Holland is a Creative Writing Major at the University of Maine, Farmington, and is set to receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the spring of 2020. Currently, she plans to get literary works published and eventually working as a full-time author. In the short term, she wants to find a job as an editor for a publishing company, gaining the experience needed by working with Nancy E. Randolph publisher at Just Write Books.
 
“So far, there isn’t a part of this job that I don’t like—even if it’s only been a few days. I had a feeling that this sort of thing is my calling,” enthused Holland. Holland will spend her days at the small publishing house assisting Randolph in tasks such as social media copywriting and posting, minor proofing, light editing and a myriad of everyday administrative jobs to help Just Write Books further its marketing efforts over the summer according to Randolph.
 
Just Write Books publishes: a few books each year, several websites and social media posts for authors, business owners and others. Using a collaborative process to publish tweets, blogs and books, Just Write Books helps authors/clients, or the author of any publication achieve his/her goals. 

The Attic & Me by Norma K. Salway
A passion for attics and anything old cultivated a love of collecting family artifacts in Norma Salway. She tells inspirational stories connecting to her roots and experiences that reveal who she is today. Readers will enjoy hearing of joys of collecting, agonies of trials, fears, and interactions with creatures on a farm.

Nancy E. Randolph operates Just Write Books, publishing Maine books by Maine authors telling Maine stories. Randolph quickly developed a reputation as a publisher of quality Maine books. 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. ​​

​More about the panelist:

Folger Library’s Special Collections Department was established in 1970 as a repository for Maine-related material. Virtually all available printed bibliographical, historical, and descriptive works on the state as well as literary titles by Maine authors are housed in this department. Books, pamphlets, state documents, and other forms of printed material provide extensive coverage of Maine’s cities, towns, counties, people, and institutions.

The Death of Maine Yankee: Antinuclear Activists’ Adventures can be purchased for $19.95 at Gulf of Maine Books, other local Maine booksellers, jstwrite.com and at amazon.com. ​

​(Brunswick) Diane Schetky will read poems and tell of her travels from the Arctic to Antarctica on  Wednesday, July 26 at 3 p.m. at Sunnybrook Senior Living, 340 Bath Road, Brunswick.  Author, poet, retired psychiatrist, world traveler and now Topsham resident, Schetky will read from her latest poetry book, Taking Flight: New Poems and Others illustrated by the poet and published by Just Write Books of Topsham. The talk is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.
​
​Taking Flight is a selection of poetry that will provoke a thoughtful journey companioned by a mindful guide according to publisher Nancy E Randolph of Just Write Books. Randolph invites you to enjoy Schetky’s poems and sketches from her travels. ​

Young Schetky dreamed of becoming a doctor. Her education began at Sarah Lawrence College where her focus was art. At a time when few women entered the medical profession, she was welcomed by Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She completed post-graduate training in pediatrics, child and adult psychiatry. From 1986 until her retirement in 2000, she practiced child, adolescent and forensic psychiatry in Rockport, Maine.  She lives in Topsham, Maine, and summers in Phippsburg, Maine. She volunteers with CHANS Hospice and facilitates bereavement groups. She leads tours for children as a docent at The Bowdoin College Arctic Peary Museum. She also facilitates a writers’ group at the retirement community where she resides. 

Schetky previously wrote five books on forensic child psychiatry, two books of poetry, Poems on Loss, Hope and Healing (2009) and Dancing Bear and other New Poems (2012). Her poems have been published in Off the Coast, Goose River Anthology, The Puckerbrush Review, The Maine Review, The Northern New England Review, The Aurorean and several psychiatric journals. 

​Schetky says, “My poems reflect my love of adventure. I’ve traveled to seven continents and fifty countries. My writing also shows my deep concern for our endangered earth.”

​This free event is open to the public and co-sponsored by Sunnybrook Senior Living and Just Write Books.  

The writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau was born 200 years ago on July 12, 1817.

Ralph Waldo Emerson remembered him thus:
​
His poetry might be bad or good; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility and technical skill; but he had the source of poetry in his spiritual perception. He was a good reader and critic, and his judgment on poetry was to the ground of it. He could not be deceived as to the presence or absence of the poetic element in any composition, and his thirst for this made him negligent and perhaps scornful of superficial graces. … He was so enamored of the spiritual beauty that he held all actual written poems in very light esteem in the comparison. …
Such was the wealth of his truth that it was not worth his while to use words in vain. … His biography is in his verses. His habitual thought makes all his poetry a hymn to the Cause of causes, the Spirit which vivifies and controls his own.