Patricia Sands

Author

Patricia Sands

Terry Fallis, Lisa Genova – what a week!

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I have been so fortunate this week to meet and speak with two outstanding authors, both of whom were very inspirational to me when I was writing The Bridge Club. I have followed the careers of these two novelists with great interest.

Today I attended Podcamp at Ryerson University with my friend and fellow author Patricia Caviglia. Walking out of the building, we had the lovely surprise of meeting Canada Reads winner, Terry Fallis, on his way in. With absolutely no one else around we introduced ourselves, congratulated him, and chatted for ten minutes about the wonderful success of his novel, The Best Laid Plans, and the writing world in general. He is as charming and friendly in person as he appears in the media and it was a thrill to have that time with him.

Last Thursday I attended an author event at the Chapters/Indigo flagship store at Bay and Bloor. There I had an opportunity to speak with Lisa Genova who wrote the amazing Still Alice and has just published Left Neglected. Also speaking at the event were Jeannette Walls and Elena Gorokhova It was interesting to hear them compare their experiences and habits as writers and discuss their motivations for writing these best-selling novels. This event was presented by Chapters/Indigo and hosted by CEO Heather Reisman who has probably done more for encouraging reading over the past few years than any other Canadian with her “Heather’s Picks” and support of literacy programs in schools.

Girlfriends are good for your health …

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A friend just sent this to me and I want to share it with you.

They Teach It at Stanford

As reported by a woman who had just finished taking  an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was on the mind-body connection – the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head  of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a  woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.

At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and  provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult  life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time” helps us to create more serotonin – a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being.  Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf?

Yes.  But their feelings? Rarely.

Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health.  He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising” we  are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged—not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking!

So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very, very lucky. Sooooo let’s toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it’s very good for our health.”

 

Me And My 1000 Girlfriends, That’s Who!

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Kathy Scott, the founder of this popular website has chosen The Bridge Club as their Book Club Choice this month. I’m so honoured to be featured here. As well as sharing information about books, products, women’s history and issues, the website encourages service to community and active participation in events that affect all of us. Click here to read what she says about The Bridge Club. Go girlfriends!

EXCITING NEWS!

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iUniverse announced this week that The Bridge Club has received the Reader’s Choice Recognition Award which is based on sales figures. I’m delighted and thank you! Onward to the Star program!

I’m so grateful to all the readers who are sending me their comments about the story. That’s the part of writing I enjoy the most. It’s incredibly rewarding for a writer to hear that his or her story resonates with others! Book Clubs are telling me the final chapter sparked lively debate. I do confirm if they correctly identify the protagonist in that chapter but do not reveal the answer if they are incorrect. Back to the drawing board! I also find it interesting to see how many don’t want to know because they cared about all of the women too much. So good!

If you purchased The Bridge Club through one of the booksellers online, please post a review on their website. If you purchased the book at a book store but have an Amazon or other online account, you can also pull up The Bridge Club and post a review. These reviews are very important and can dramatically affect the sale of the book. Click here for the right page on Barnes and Noble and also Chapters/Indigo  (although they still don’t have my cover art displayed, which is very annoying!).

Here are two other simple things you can do that are incredibly helpful:
1. When you go to the book listing on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, if you keep scrolling down the page (below reviews and other stuff), you will come to a section marked “Tags”. If you see boxes already checked, just click where it asks if you agree with the tags. If the boxes aren’t check, please check them. Feel free to add any other tags you feel are applicable.
2. Amazon.com now has a “like” button beside every book they have listed. Please click here to go to it.

It may not seem like much but doing these little tasks is extremely helpful to building the profile of a book. I told you I was learning a lot! These are things you can do for every author when you purchase a book but most of us don’t know about it. So for myself and every other author you help, I thank you!