[HTML1]More about Nancy Berland
As the president of Nancy Berland Public Relations, Inc., NancyBerland directs a team of professionals who get their kicks out of helping authors achieve their career objectives and helping publishers find a broader audience for their authors and books.
Voted Best of the Best Publicist by RWA’s Published Author Network, Nancy is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma School of Journalism who has served as a newspaper feature writer, restaurant reviewer, national trade association public relations director, corporate public relations consultant, speech and magazine feature writer and romance author.
It was when Nancy served as public information director of The Animal Health Institute in Washington, D.C., that she developed her skill for getting people with diverse interests to work together. There she chaired two committees of drug company executives, who established policy for their industry in international relations and in public relations. Her responsibilities included site selection for and planning the association’s annual meeting; media relations; coordination with the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and staff members of various Senators and Congressmen; staffing and coordinating the association’s press room for the National Institutes of Health meetings and overseeing an industry-wide proper use of drugs awareness program for producers of food animals.
Upon moving back to Oklahoma City, where she grew up, Nancy pursued her dream of becoming a published author, with six novels to her credit. In 1995, she coordinated the public relations efforts for the national Romance Writers of America’s National Conference in Hawaii, generating media coverage for every major news in the state, as well as features in U.S. News & World Report. After the Conference, one of the Conference’s two main speakers, Debbie Macomber, asked Nancy to represent her as public relations counsel. The two have worked together for fifteen years, and Nancy credits Debbie with inspiring her to launch her public relations firm that has become nationally recognized for creativity and producing for the clients served by her and her talented staff of eight.
More about Marie Bostwick
On the path to becoming a novelist, Marie Bostwick worked in the bean fields of Oregon, sang and danced in musical productions, acted in TV commercials, taught religion to deaf children, ran an event-planning business, worked as the scheduler for a U.S. Senator and directed women’s ministries for a large church. But as diverse and enriching as these experiences were, it was a conversation with a stranger that pointed Marie toward her true calling.
In 1994, as a mother to three active, young sons, Marie went on a much-needed vacation to a resort with some girlfriends. While there, she decided to attend a writers’ workshop, “not from any desire to become a writer,” she said, “but as a way to avoid playing tennis with my friends. I’m hopelessly unathletic.” At the end of the week the instructor approached her, and, thinking she was a professional writer, asked what she’d published.
“I just laughed. I told him that I was a mom, and the only thing I wrote was grocery lists.” The instructor insisted that whether Marie knew it or not, she was a writer. Marie thanked him for the compliment, saying she wasn’t a writer, just someone who hadn’t fired her imaginary friends when she grew up. “Then he leaned toward me and said, ‘Well, what do you think writers are?’ That got my attention. I think I realized then that he was on to something, that my secret identity had finally been unmasked.”
The signs were there from an early age. A voracious reader by the age of three, Marie said one of her first literary endeavors was a screenplay she wrote for “Camelot” before she was old enough to attend public school. The musical was a favorite of Marie’s, and, not having seen the movie, she wrote her own story to go with the music she’d heard on her grandmother’s record player. In high school, Marie wrote short stories and “a lot of sad, self-absorbed teenage poetry,” which earned her the school English award.
Marie’s eclectic reading provides endless inspiration for her stories. Her first two books, FIELDS OF GOLD and RIVER’S EDGE, are set in the years surrounding World War II. Though she received frequent letters from readers asking for a sequel to FIELDS OF GOLD, Marie wasn’t sure if she should write another book set in that period. Then she picked up a book about the Women Air Force Service Pilots, the WASP, who flew thousands of non-combat missions during World War II, and knew she had to write about them.
As Marie learned about the history of the WASP, the story of Georgia June Carter, the heroine of ON WINGS OF THE MORNING, became clear in her mind. Library Journal published a Q & A with Marie and a review of the November 2008 book. The same month her first contemporary story, “A High Kicking Christmas,” appeared in COMFORT AND JOY, a Christmas anthology with Fern Michaels that earned a berth on the New York Times bestseller list.
Born in Eugene, Oregon, the youngest of four sisters experienced a life of comfort in her early years, then financial hardship after her parents’ divorce. But childhood summers spent working in the
fields taught her industry and the dignity of good, hard work. They also provided the insight into the hearts and minds of small communities, the settings for her novels.
Marie dedicated four years to writing her first novel. Published in 2005 by Kensington Books, FIELDS OF GOLD was a finalist for the prestigious Oklahoma Book Award and for RT BOOK club magazine’s Best Historical Saga Award. RIVER’S EDGE won the Golden Quill Award, was a finalist for a National Readers’ Choice Award and was an alternate selection of the Literary Guild.
Marie enjoys volunteering to help others. When she was twenty-five, she became the first president of a new chapter of Habitat for Humanity in Georgia. Living in Colorado in her early thirties, she managed Promise Keepers seminars designed to train ministers to better understand the needs of men in their congregations. Then, in Mexico, she was the volunteer director of development for Manos de Ayuda (Helping Hands), a medical mission to the poor.
“It feels like the rest of my life and experiences were the lessons that I had to master so I could do this thing I was truly meant to do,” Marie said, adding, “I can’t imagine being anything but a writer.”
Marie has built a strong reader following with her Cobbled Court novels about a community of quilters in Connecticut. The series debuted in 2008 with A SINGLE THREAD. The second book in the series, 2009’s A THREAD OF TRUTH, finds the Cobbled Court quilters rallying to help an abused woman and her young children. A THREAD OF TRUTH deals with the serious issue of domestic abuse in a positive, uplifting, hopeful manner. The underlying message is that accepting help from people who care can make it possible for anyone, no matter how bleak their situation, to triumph over adversity. The third book in the series, 2010’s A THREAD SO THIN, addresses the struggle a young woman makes between marriage and career and the downstream impact of her decisions. The fourth novel in the series, THREADING THE NEEDLE, will be published in June 2011.
Today Marie lives in Connecticut with Brad, her husband of twenty-nine years, and their one son still in high school. When not writing or volunteering for her church, she enjoys quilting, watching movies and sipping tea on the front porch with friends and spending time with her family. She was a featured speaker at the Paducah Quilt Festival in April 2010.
YOUR BOOK IS YOUR HOOK! SUPPORTS…
Project Night Night and their efforts to put a new or slightly used children’s book in the hands of homeless children in shelters in the United States. Since 2005, they have hand-delivered more than 100,000 night night packages which include a stuffed animal, a blanket and a children’s book tucked inside a canvas night night bag. We encourage you to find out how you can donate to support their efforts today.
Read to Feed is a reading incentive service-learning program that offers global education opportunities and will foster in your children a love for reading, a passion to help others and a way to help create a better world.
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Practical training for a first time or seasoned author to learn to properly pitch your book to the book publishing industry, Hollywood, the media and others. Whether you are going to a writers’ conference, publishing industry event or have a sudden opportunity to pitch your project to a professional, this is your weekend to prepare, practice and polish up your pitch with the professionals.
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Graduates of The Mastery include Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, Fisher Stevens, Mary Louise Parker, Tommy Tune, Michael Bennett, Colin Higgins and many others.
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