Patricia Sands

Author

lifelong friendship

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!

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.”

 

Let’s begin 2011 by answering some questions

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Ok – the decorations have all been carefully put away for another year. The suitcases have been unpacked. The last of the shortbread has mysteriously vanished. It was a wonderful holiday season and now it’s time to get back to business.

THANK YOU TO ALL THE READERS WHO TAKE THE TIME TO WRITE TO ME. I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW REWARDING IT IS AND HOW MUCH I VALUE YOUR FEEDBACK AND YOUR STORIES ABOUT YOUR OWN GROUP OF FRIENDS.

I’ve decided the first challenge I’m going to tackle in 2011, from a very long list, is to answer some of the questions I’m receiving from readers about different characters in The Bridge Club. Today let’s talk about Cass!

Yes, her character in real life did in fact live on a sailboat on the other side of the Atlantic for eight years with the man in her life at that time. Her experience was very much as described in the novel and she and I spent many long hours talking and reminiscing as I developed the chapter. She did indeed make tapes and send them to us from time to time which we then returned to her. It was a fantastic way to stay connected and of course long before the days of computers. If only  we had been able to Skype! The journey came to an end as described and she did meet her current employer a few years later when she worked as a cook on his yacht. Even though she made some very unconventional choices in her life, everything somehow worked out. Her relationship with her son is strong and he is a fine young man. To the rest of our group, in her real life the model for Cass really does exemplify the saying to “dance as if no one is watching”. She is proof that for some women, thinking outside the box is the way to go. It has certainly worked for her! If you have a dream, pursue it.