Patricia Sands

Author

honesty between friends

2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards

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Well, this was a great start to my day! I opened my e-mail to discover the following message from Indie Book Awards.

“Congratulations! Your book has been named a Finalist in the First Novel (over 80,000 words) category of the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Congratulations! Your achievement will be published at www.IndieBookAwards.com along with the other Finalists and Winners in the next few weeks. Also, we will be sending out a press release within the next month announcing the Grand Prize Winners and advising media and others where they can see a complete list of Winners and Finalists.

Additionally, The Bridge Club will be listed as a Finalist in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards catalog which will be distributed at Book Expo America (“BEA”) in New York later this month to thousands of attendees including book buyers, library representatives, media, industry professionals, and others. Our intention is to promote the Winners and Finalists to as many people as possible.”

Being notified last month about The Bridge Club being a Finalist in the ForeWord 2010 Awards, this is more icing on the cake. I’m thrilled and delighted and wanted to share my good news! Thanks to all of you who continue to give me such great support and feedback for The Bridge Club. On we go!

Girlfriendology – what friendship is all about!

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Here’s another great website. Girlfriendology celebrates the meaningful friendships women share. Their posts are informative, entertaining, and important, supported by relevant links. The interaction of their thousands of followers speaks to the popularity of Girlfriendology. They have just begun a Wednesday page where women can send in photos of their girlfriend groups and I’m sharing the wonderful women of my “bridge club” this week. Rock on, ladies!

Read below or click here to go directly to the page.

Wordless Wednesday: Patricia’s Bridge Club / Girlfriend Group

Well, it’s not completely WORDLESS Wednesday, but it is a great reason to feature the beauty of girlfriends!
We’re started a new feature on Girlfriendology on Wednesdays to feature YOU and YOUR GIRLFRIENDS. Every Wednesday we’ll share a photo of a girlfriend group and tell you a little about them. We’re hoping it inspires you to spend some beautiful moments with your girlfriends and to share with Girlfriendology. (To submit your girlfriend photo, check out Wordless Wednesday/Girlfriendology.)

Author, PATRICIA SANDS shared this about her girlfriend group:

This is my “bridge club” during a one-week reunion on Vancouver Island last September. Friends for over 45 years! My recently published novel, The Bridge Club, is based on this amazing friendship that has never faltered. Friends forever is our motto.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about her friendship novel:

Where can you find a story about friendship, laughter and the good things in life that also touches on alcoholism, infidelity, porn addiction, terminal illness and grief? For most women, it’s often within their own circle of friends. Patricia Sands reminds us of the complexities of women’s friendships in The Bridge Club, a moving tale of eight women whose lives intersect once a month initially to play the game of bridge. What began as one night turns into four decades that span the segments of a woman’s journey from youthful optimism to embracing the challenges and opportunities presented in life’s later years.
For more than forty years, the mantra of these women has been “one for all and all for one.” Beginning their monthly soiree in the psychedelic Sixties, unpredicted twists of fate weave through the good times and strong friendship they share as the years pass. The constant from one decade to the next is loyal and nonjudgmental support, even when agreeing to disagree is the final solution. From the exhilarating cultural changes of their early times together through the “zoomer” years, their connection never falters. As they celebrate turning sixty at a group birthday weekend, each woman recalls a time in her life when the Bridge Club came to the rescue. After tossing around ideas mixed with a generous helping of common sense and a large dose of laughter they decide to refer to that time as their “SOS”. Eight chapters document each one’s story.
Everything is put into perspective and the strength of their friendship is tested when one of these women faces a life-altering decision. Her choice profoundly affects all of the group, pushing the limits of their beliefs and values. The unique alliance they share is confronted with an unimaginable crisis.

Based loosely on her own bridge club, Sands weaves the reader through a maze of life’s inevitable scenarios as the club bears the death of a member’s spouse, one woman’s meeting with her biological mother, the inevitable marital and health issues, and another’s final chance at freedom from the painful addiction to alcohol through rehab.

Although she has taken liberties with the actual events and it is truly a work of fiction, most issues faced by the characters in the book were experienced in her own bridge club. The bottom line of the story is a testament to friendship and hope.

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.”