Cats I Have Known

 

This latest Heritage Press project has a special place in my editor's/publisher's heart as it involves two of my favorite Heritage Press writers, Lisa & Lori Minneti, the authors of HAZEL MOON and the soon to be released sequel, HAWTHORN MOON. 

 

 With Mother's Day approaching, the two daughters of Gail Arden Minneti, honored their mother's memory with two book signings of a memoir written over the past 30 years by their mother who had passed in 2022.

Their mother and their grandmother nurtured the Twins love of literature, instilling in them the passion to both read and write. After their mother died, in going through her things they found several notebooks filled with her essays describing her abiding love for the many cats she shared her life with. 

Lisa, Lori, and I got busy carefully transcribing her notes, adding special details like Gail's love of sunflowers, and shaping her story, readable for all ages, into a book in which Gail shares the wisdom she acquired by carefully observing the many cats that came to share her life from the age of 50 until her passing in  2022.

https://meredithfuneralhome.com/obituaries/gail-arden-minneti.140913

We added pictures and when the book was published we realized that we'd been given a precious gift and that gift was meant to be shared with the world. Heritage Press, through LULU.com offers both soft and hard cover editions of CATS I HAVE KNOWN.

Petra's Passage

 

Writing as a calling can lead to storytelling adventure after storytelling adventure and take you places you could never imagine ending up. This project began 20 years ago when I became aquainted with someone, Petra Palmerova, who had come to America from the Czech Republic, overstayed a visitor's visa, and ended up on a gentleman's club stage to make ends meet. We connected, I began interviewing her, and produced the original Petra's Passage, telling her story, struggling to find work, being exploited, and eventually ending up as an exotic entertainer. Unfortunately, Petra left the area and did not promote her book. So, it was sitting on the shelf waiting to be resurrected.

At that same club, On The Border, I met another dancer, Amy Ford, we connected and worked together to produce her memoir, Shave Slowly, an inspirational and revealing read chronicalling a year in the life of an exotic entertainer. Despite the fact that it had outstanding market potential, again, Amy burned out on the life and escaped to another state so she was not able to promote it. 

As a publisher, I knew I had gold just lingering on the shelf and it came to me to modify Shave Slowly and add the copy to the original Petra's Passage, now fiction, with what happened to Amy now part of Petra's manuscript. The result, the updated Petra's Passage, is a remarkable read if I do say so myself.

Since neither author is available, my marketing plan is to offer the books to a literary agent and let them find a publisher with distribution connections.

More Magical Synchronicity...

 

Last night the writing team supporting Hawthorn Moon author Lisa Minneti, her Heritage Press editor, RL Morton, and her coauthor and twin sister, Lori Minneti, got together to polish and shape Chapter 3 of her sequel to Hazel Moon, Hawthorn Moon.

In the past, when actively working on the manuscript for Hazel Moon any number of remarkable, magical events of Synchronicity made it clear that some forces beyond our comprehension were seemingly rewarding the storytelling team for their efforts to share a moving tale with the Universe. For that reason I refer to them as the...Storytelling Fairies.

If you look through the early Hazel Moon blog posts you'll find many examples of the Synchronicity I'm referring to, the most notable example is the day I edited a scene involving $20 bills, and hours later I was walking up the driveway of the home of one of the authors, looked down, and there was a $20 bill!

So, again, only hours after working on Hawthorn Moon I was watching an online walking tour of the Isle of Capri and saw the sign above for Hotel Luna. For any of you who've read Hazel Moon you'll immediately recognize one of the most lovable characters in the book, Lady Luna!

I'm quite sure there will be more of these remarkable Synchronicity events and when they arrive I'll post them as well!

Find Chapter 3 of Hawthorn Moon below.

3

DINNER PLATE DAHLIAS

So I made a big mistake,

Try to see it once my way…

                                  Alice in Chains

Sonny was breathing heavy…in a reggae sort of riff. Being indoors on a sweet-smelling May day was not his stick to fetch. Marcus, who was looking back at Sonny with a puppy-love face, began to breathe to a similar Bob-Marley-and-the-Wailer’s Jamaican beat. Sonny had seen that look before—his master was never one to be once bitten twice shy. He was more like the pooches at the park, sniffing on the possible prospect of being smitten—that was his drug of choice.

Marcus started humming to the Bob Marley tune, "No Woman, No Cry," and knew he was drifting from his romance addiction rehab promise. He had come so far, but once an addict, always an addict. Had he come here with a pure heart, or had he pushed the envelope just a little too far?

Marcus got off his rad Buell Roadster right as Sonny jumped out of the sidecar, in a display with the choreographed split-second synchronicity of the Supremes. Marcus had been training Sonny with unusual Kung Fu poses along with exaggerated verbal phrasings instead of the typical commands like heel and come.

Marcus had a certain air about him when he was with Sonny—that superior feeling twins sometimes have sensing that together there are few obstacles they can’t overcome. When Sonny was with November he acted one way, like the good dog he was, willing to please and partake of the falafel and sarma, but with Marcus a Charles-Bronson alter ego emerged.

Back at the hipster indie mall, a young Japanese girl, sporting stylish pigtails and tube socks laced with citron stripes, was in an animated back-and-forth with fragrance girl, Angela Gonzales, grasping a bottle of Eternity while soulfully acting out a very sad story about a baby who died, was on the verge of a crying jag and it looked like Angela was right there with her.

"Oh my god, you wait here sweet one, I need to get you something…flowers...right now…lots of flowers. I am so sorry to hear about the baby!" lamented Angela, empathetically shaking her Bridget Fonda locks. When things like this went down Angela would forget anything she was supposed to be doing, like even working, and find a way to somehow make things right—that’s just how she rolled. At that moment nothing else mattered, she let go of her own issues, her marriage mess, and her four children, ran out of the store, Fragrance and Flannel, to the mall's sky-lighted innovative open market slamming full frontal into Marcus Dupree.

"Ohhhhh girl…you cool, I mean you okay?"

"Not really, I am a grieving mess," wiping her eyes, smearing her Great Lash mascara, "a lovely girl I just met said her sweet baby has died and my heart shatters...again," shared Angela, running backwards to keep talking to him, "it glues back together you know, but then it changes, like deciding at a rummage sale, and right now all that matters are flowers and that sweet mother."

"Don't feel bad about your patch-worked heart, I think mine is dyslexic, always switching, on and off like a stoplight...anyway I like the way you reveal yourself—you put it right out there," Marcus revealed.

“Sometimes I feel like a tadpole…back legs growing out, changing who I am, and it’s almost time to leave behind my safe world and I’m thinking how much I would rather just stay in the water…know what I mean?”

Angela started twirling her hair around her finger while staring at her fingers.

He knew it was happening again, his problem, giving his heart away, too much, too often, maybe his mom and Auntie Blueberry shouldn't have adored him so much. Right then and there Marcus Dupree fell a little bit in love, once again, in another romantic instant that would not be denied.

Angela put her hand over her mouth, hiding a smile, blushing from a compliment directed at her from this handsome stranger, but her eyes were misty.

"You gotta name…so me and my partner here can be your friend and help you if and when you break?" Marcus asked, looking at Sonny who nodded like the loyal wing man that he was.

"Angela, like the word angel, only with a little something extra added, “so, anyway, your dog looks crazy familiar?”

"Everyone says that…Sonny is all dog, he looks and lives like the lovable mongrel everyone would want to have. Okay Miss Angel with an, A, then...you’re looking at Marcus, like Aurelius."

Sonny's ears pinned up and his whole face became larger as he went into a wolf man like howl of pure gleeful joy.

"Right on…right on, let’s keep it together," said Marcus, watching Angela skip towards the mall's trendsetting, skylight lit marketplace  in break-dance fashion 

Driftwood beams and hemp-wrapped bushel baskets gave the market a woodsy vibe, but the real celebrities were the natural ripe vegetables—the golden rod squash and huge burpless cucumbers. 

Marcus watched this girl he’d just met, selecting dinner plate-sized dahlias in ripe colors like heirloom-tomato red and butternut-squash yellow, holding them like a magic wand and then positioning huge, billowy white hydrangeas around the outside of the arrangement.

Angela was flushed with a face full of love—the white flowers reminding her of the sweetness of diapers and cotton balls. She was always a primary-color girl but all that white circling around the intense colors seemed so full of soul. She wiped her eyes as the sales girl, wearing a knitted rainbow skull cap, asked her, “What color ribbon?”

“Do you have Bahama Blue?"

Angela, remembering her wedding color, and forgetting she was in a public place, bent her head down, madly shaking it to fluff her hair before returning with a smile to the sales girl who said, "We have Superman Blue…will that work?"

Sonny got a whiff of something fun and ran in the direction of the sparkly flagship store at the mall, Fragrance and Flannel.

Marcus had been staring starry-eyed at Angela, not sure if she was going to be his next love-nester—November’s longtime best friend no less. Another gift he was blessed with, Marcus could compartmentalize and rationalize, and still somehow keep it all together for himself and everyone concerned—maybe he would just worry about that little romantic glitch ruminating inside his head tomorrow, and like Scarlet tomorrow is another day.

Snapping back to the moment, Marcus heard old Sonny's yelps of pleasure while sprinting gleefully free down the mall hall—you know, like the ice water at McDonald's.

"Sonny…where you goin’ brother?"

Marcus did a Tai Chi Elvis-Presley pose and sure enough Sonny stopped dead in his tracks, tail wagging, waiting for Marcus right on the threshold of a store entrance wafting an intoxicating mall smell heaven, dense with luscious aromas like honeysuckle and hawthorn and skullcap, so much so that Sonny was having a hard time staying steady, staying swell—the composed kind of canine he usually always was.

Meanwhile Mall Maven hostess with the mostest, Rosa, had taken Angela’s place and was exchanging consoling words with the mother whose baby had died. Regal and proud, her free fingers armed with her signature collection of chunky men's watches, always worn on her left wrist. She used the Armenian pinky-roll hand gesture to greet Marcus and Sonny as they approached.

Marcus did a double-take and said, "I have to say, has anyone ever told you that you…”

“I hear it all the time," interrupted Rosa, “Liza, Liza, Liza, and when I had long hair, it was Cher. If you were thinking Cher, thanks for the complement, I wish I had her money, but she can keep her current husband—seems like he’s just using her.”

Letting go of the lady’s hand, Rosa gave her a little reassuring tap on the head. Spraying a customer scent card, in her blackberry rayon blouse and her frosty caramel lipstick, Rosa was as shiny and classy as her famous fragrance products.

"Experience the magic of Eternity," she declared, handing Marcus the card while smiling her smoky eyes at him before going behind the counter to get her knock-‘em-dead Sharpie-black fedora—one she’d borrowed from her husband long ago, so long ago she now had forgotten that trifle detail and instead told people it was a gift from an admirer.

"Hey thanks," said Marcus accepting the card while giving her a wink, then, giving it a sniff before passing it on to Sonny who proceeded to, what else, eat it.

"I actually thought you might be the sister of a woman I just met...Angela with an A," Marcus shrewdly suggested.

"Oh, you met my little girl? Well I am her proud Mama, and her name fits her doesn't it. The moment I first saw her sweet face I knew she had some angel in her. Let me tell you, I pray this world lets her keep her childish soul—that’s her gift. Mine was feeding people I love. A spoonful of lasagna is almost as good as…well it’s been a while since I’ve cooked anything." 

Rosa paused and put her ring finger to her lips very lightly, not smudging anything, before adding, "My lovely daughter rushed off to get this young girl flowers. She has a thing about babies, with four beautiful children of her own, but they are not babies any more and she misses that. My girl could hold a crying baby like it was a china doll for hours and feel as if she was in maternity seventh heaven!" tilting her fedora while getting out the last word.

Meanwhile, Angela took a deep breath, trying to smell the flowers she was about to buy, but not really sensing anything special. Sometimes from working fragrance real odors were hard to distinguish from the powerful perfumes. She put her teeth over her lower lip, an old girlish habit—something she did before turning eighteen. At times Angela wished she was seventeen again, before all the marriages and the children, and she could just be herself again. 

Meandering along the mall hall in a daze, she fantasized about marrying the man she’d just met, Marcus, erasing the past and starting a new life—with him.

"OH CHEMISTRY," Angela shouted in dismay, “why can’t I resist its magic? I know…November…maybe she can come up with a tonic or spell or something to help me with my imagination—she always has in the past."

Lost in her childish dreams while navigating the mall hall, arriving back at the fragrance area, opening her eyes, there he was…there was Marcus—perfect, like Richard Roundtree.

"There's a full moon tonight, are you a moon girl?" he asked.

"Oh no…I’m a sun worshiper, yes…we have a great relationship and some day I would like to live on the equator so we could be even closer—not much sun here in Seattle, you know."

Marcus wasn't listening. It was her mouth that had captured his full attention—all ruffled and looking heart-shaped like on one of those poker playing cards from the 1880s—a queen of hearts to be exact.

Intern at Heritage Press

Hello, my name is Carolina Cuevas MS Global Health , BS Nutritional Sciences. 

It was a dark, stormy night when I arrived to the USA at the age of 12. I had nothing in my pocket but a bag of dreams, primarily the hope to achieve the American Dream.

The only way to cope with the stabbing and gruesome changes of my life and attempting to heal from generational trauma…was and is…writing. 

Words are powerful, words are medicinal, words are seductive, they ignite adrenaline, ecstasy, and even melancholy. The melancholy that brought me peace and understanding of the complexity of being a brown, porcelain-like symbol in the land of the “opportunity." 

The universe was exhausted of my pain, the Milky Way heard my screams and tears, and she has responded. Her answer is to liberate suffering through words. 

She knows where I have always belong. “You cannot lie anymore, I will take you back to where you come from and spit you out, even if you confront. Words are yours, and words will only be the way for you to return."

 

 

Well, there are times when the drama surrounding the writing and publication and marketing of a book involves more emotion and plot twists than what's in the actual story.

What am I talking about, Heritage Press set up a publication contract with Kathryn Bencriscutto, who just happens to be related to me, to write a memoir about her illustrious father, Mike Bencriscutto, a legendary golf instructor, course manager, and successful player, beloved father, and cherished husband.

 So, Kathy was supposed to send me 40,000 words on August 1st, 2023, when it didn't arrive, and I did not hear from her, I knew something was terribly wrong. Feeling it was imperative to get this done, I pulled the materials we had been working with together, got to work, and four months later Our Life in Golf was produced and published.

 

As things turned out, she had gotten terribly sick, and struggling to simply survive everything else had to be put on the back burner. The days went by, I'd completed her memoir, Our Life in Golf, and sent her some copies of the book not knowing if she was alive or had passed. 

 

From what I learned from Kathy, she was all but on her deathbed when the books arrive, refreshed her Spirit, she sent me an email, and not only is she on the mend but Kathy had a contact with a mover and shaker in Hollywood who knew about her father, had already made a film about golf, and told Kathy that he wanted to read the book and adapt it into a film!

What can I say...why do the best things seem to happen when you least expect them!!

 

 

As the editor and manager of local publishing concern, Heritage Press, I am winding down operations after 30 years of providing regional authors with a path to publication. As a compliment to a lifelong career in education, though local publishing is typically never a lucrative business, helping to shape stories and produce books has been most satisfying. As a result much of my adult life has been spent in the serene environment of various coffee shops working on these projects. I wanted to share some of the details of my last three books because I feel they can inspire others to pursue their dreams to tell their stories, no matter their age. Currently, I have either finished or am in the process of completing the editing and production of three books written by authors still sharing stories in their 90s. 

 

The first book, Journeying Toward Justice, was written by Sister Lois Aceto, her first edition came out when she returned from missionary service as a Dominican Nun from Bolivia in 2008. Last summer she was honored in a Journal Times article on her 91st birthday for her service to the Racine Criminal Justice Community. When I noticed that the book mentioned in the article was out of print I contacted her for permission to edit and produce a Second Edition for her, which I did. Oh, by the way Sister Lois I first knew as Sister Giovanni, my beloved 4th Grade teacher at St. Mary's Catholic School in downtown Racine. 

 

Next, Dolores Foster Williams, formerly a Milwaukee Catholic boarding school student at St. Benedict the Moor, now living in Chicago, contacted me in her 80s to produce her first book. Now, 94, we are completing her sequel, both books encouraging the Catholic Church to organize more diverse parishes. She is currently attending a model diverse Catholic parish, St. Benedict the African, and credits her pastor priest, Father David Alan Jones, for working well with their diverse parishioners. 

 

Finally, John C. Ellis is an inventor who has written a memoir, The Faraday Twins, telling the story of how he came to develop a new form of water with remarkable healing and other physical properties. I am in the final stages of completing the editing and production of his Second Edition. Now 93, John continues to spread the good life-saving news of his groundbreaking accomplishment in print.

 

And so, as I wind down Heritage Press operations after many years of service to our community, let me encourage anyone reading this who has a story to tell and a message to share...no matter your age get out there...It's Not Over Till It's Over!

Sister Lois Aceto was...Sister Giovanni

 

 10/26/22 Update...Just completed editing the Second Edition, finalized the new cover, and ordered a proof! For all you writers out there, a second pair of editorial eyes is always a good idea. In my case, I sent a proof copy to one of Sister Aceto's friends at her residence, the Siena Center, and asked her to send me any typos she finds. So, in a few weeks her memoir should be authorized to be published!

I'd settled into my usual spot at Mocha Lisa, about to resume my current most pressing Heritage Press project, author, Ron Kranig, was about to break a case open connected to the book I published for him, A JUDAS KISS FOR JUSTICE, when I looked on the deck and saw a familiar face.

Sister Lois Aceto had just turned 91 and was celebrated in her hometown, Racine, and in our greater Southeastern Wisconsin area for her selfless volunteering. I first met her back in the late '50s when she was Sister Giovanni, my beloved 4th Grade teacher at St. Mary's Catholic School.

 

https://journaltimes.com/news/local/watch-now-youthful-offender-facility-honors-sister-lois-acetos-91st-birthday/article_17cca736-bf59-11ec-857f-071c5ff368b4.html

When I saw her picture and story in our local Journal Times newspaper, and learned she'd written a book, I went online to buy one, saw that it was $83 new and $30 used, I knew it was out of print, and so, being a publisher I contacted her and offered to resurrect her book, putting it back in print.

 

So, that was the background when I looked out on the Mocha Lisa deck and saw Sister sitting there! Hopefully, within a month her book, the chronicle of her legacy as a Force for the Greater Good...a lifelong Servant of God's Glory, will be back in print!