Monday, May 19, 2025

Book Review: The Vagus Nerve Protocol by Adele Payne

  





The Vagus Nerve Protocol by Adele Payne
Starts with intro where the nerve is explained in detail, symptoms, what to do etc.
In this book they also explain a lot of  how to fix what is wrong. Ad
Love that the swaying and gentle movements are very similar to Qi Gong.
Breathing exercises tell you how to breathe to alleviate some issue. There  are a lot of these, very different from one another and also to deal with different issues.
Like subnotes that are highlighted in light gray, things to pay attention to.
Step by step instructions are included. Look forward to routine and getting back into rhythm.
An annotated bibliography is also enclosed at the very end and what they offer to this book.
Worthwhile book along with your journal to gauge how you are doing.


 

Friday, May 16, 2025

Book Review: August Dove by Joanne DeMaio

  


 
 

August Dove by Joanne DeMaio
In this story we find Shane and things have happened in the past and he knows what he has to do especially when he notices Heather show up from CA to confront Cecelia.
Story follows him, his work and attending school to teach the kids about lobstering and he knows he has to leave soon to head back to the ocean. It's October so not much time left to lobster.
Others confront him before and after that he has to admit to them what's going on...
Love jacket Maris makes for Cecelia and what it means especially due to the outcome of the trip to CA.
Love cover as it shows the jacket, so pretty.
So very descriptive, especially the fashion is wearing and seascapes. 

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Interview from author of: Saturn's Favorite Music by Laura Lee

   



Laura Lee Saturn's Favorite Music Interview

  

You drew from your own experience working in radio to write this novel. How autobiographical is it? Are you Clara Jane, down to the goth clothing?

 

Saturn's Favorite Music is the most autobiographical of the novels I've written, which is easy really because the first two weren't autobiographical at all. I tend to start with a setting that I can make real, and an idea that I want to explore and I go from there. With Saturn I knew that I had worked in radio in a specific time-- as automation systems were transforming the way broadcasting was done. I knew that there was a story in that bridge from the old to the new way. (The automation systems of that time would be very much the old way now too.) I had some funny experiences that I had written down. What took more time was figuring out what kind of story it was. I knew that I wanted the radio station to be something of a character in its own right. I wanted it to be a place and a community that a reader would want to spend some time with, and might feel a sense of loss as it started to unravel.

 

So I thought about who this person would be who the reader would follow as she got to know the station. Clara Jane is cooler than I was. I did like alternative music and go to places like City Club. I interned at an alternative music station and all that. I liked more hippie kind of clothing back then. Clara might be a little more single-minded than I was. She is more of a fish out of water in the small town than I think I was. My family was very supportive of my radio career. (My grandmother was an old radio actress on WXYZ. She played Miss Case on the Green Hornet for the entire run of the series.) I wanted Clara to have a bit more to prove and more pressure to be successful.

 

The character of Seth also has aspects of my personality.  I'm not as assertive as he can be, but I tend to bristle at authority a bit. You can often say that all of the characters in a novel are really the author.

 

Are the other characters based on real people?

 

None of the other characters are based directly on anyone I worked with. A lot of the anecdotes were based on things that actually happened, so there might be people who say, “I was there, I wonder if that character is supposed to be me.” But they're not. I just needed the right combination of characters to tell the story. I did borrow some little traits though. We did have a traffic director at one of the stations who used to bring in tabloids like Weekly World News once a week, for example. I didn't really have a nemesis like Rad. I worked with a lot of people and they were a lot of fun. I socialized a lot with the sales staff at one of the stations where I worked. I had to keep the number of characters manageable so sales people don't really feature in the book.

 

A lot of the places in the book-- like City Club in Detroit-- are real and others, like the town of Saturn are fictional. How did you decide what should be fictionalized and what should be real?

 

I made the small town fictional in order to let Clara Jane grumble about being there all she wanted without grumbling about any real place. I also wanted it to be clear that it is a novel and not a memoir. It is not about the actual places I lived and worked. At its heart it is about someone trying to find their place in a world that is constantly changing, and how that challenges who she thinks she is and who ends up going with her on her journey. I think that idea of being prepared for one world and showing up to a different one transcends the setting.

 

I don't know where the name Saturn came from. I had the idea of writing a funny story about radio long ago and in the earliest notes Saturn was the name that popped into my head. As the story evolved, a whole theme of aliens and alienation emerged so that must have all been floating around somewhere in my subconscious.

 

RTV is actually based on three different stations. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati, but the theme song talked about a DJ moving “town to town up and down the dial,” and that was common then. After my internship at a New Rock (alternative) station in Canada, I worked at WKJF FM/AM in Cadillac, Michigan doing afternoon drive. The  physical layout of the fictional station was based on this station. That was where I did an entirely analog show cueing records and splicing tape and so on. It is also located geographically in the part of Michigan that I put the fictional Saturn. From there I went to a station called WFRA Mix 99.3 FM in Franklin, PA. I did middays and that was the first place that my shift became automated and I was given a desk job writing commercial copy and answering phones. I didn't like having a desk job, so I didn't stay long. Finally, I worked at WAGE AM in Leesburg, VA. It had just gone country from adult contemporary (a lot of stations did that at that time). That station was actually the one with the hyper-local focus, the radio obits and so on. It was also the station that had the early automation system with a computer called Gentner that monitored the signal and a bank of CD players controlled by a buggy program that came on 5 1/4” floppies. I was the program director and morning announcer there.

 

How did you pick out where you went, why not further away or in a different direction?

 

I liked the idea of doing something that was very grounded in the local area where I am from.

 

How did you recall the albums and songs you named in the book, did you use a diary or the internet to remind you what was playing at the time of the book?

 

I started by thinking of the songs that I associated with working at WKJF. A lot of them were 70s songs. That station played a very wide variety of music from the mid 60s up to 1992. So I think of bands like Steely Dan and Supertramp when I think of that station. The exact lengths of long songs that Seth rattles off from memory are actually from my own memory. And then there were some of the AC hits that we played to death, and that you don't hear so much now, like Jon Secada and Joshua Kadison. I have a few old airchecks of my shows that I listened to. I liked throwing in the “oh, I forgot about that song” kind of songs.  I also had some Casey's AC Countdown show discs.

 

 



I had a strong sense of exactly when everything was happening in the story. It runs from June 1992 to about September of 1993, I think. Initially, I had each chapter labeled with the month. I was careful to only include music that could have been played in the month of the action. If it came out in January 1993, it won't be in a 1992 chapter. There was only one that I fudged a little. Whitney Houston's “I Will Always Love You” came out in early 1993, and I wanted the character to make a joke about it when I referenced request shows, which was in the December 1992 chapter. So I knew I was a little early with that one, but all of the other songs correspond pretty well to what you might have heard on an AC station then. I often consulted charts to come up with a song title for the characters to be back announcing or teasing. There are a few little places where I couldn't resist having the songs comment on the action if you know the lyrics, but this was the exception more than the rule.

 

 

What form of music do you have in your house now: album, tape, digital and which do you prefer?



 

I have a huge and eclectic record collection. I have a lot of turntables also because at one point in the late 90s I took my record player in to be repaired and the guy told me to just throw it out, no one used record players and no one was going to use them in the future. So I started hoarding record players when I found them at garage sales. That said, I am a Spotify power listener. I feel a little uneasy about not owning the music I love now, and would like to have physical copies, but it's hard to listen to an LP in the car. It was nice to be able to stream 1992 AC hits while writing to put myself back there.

 

  




About the Book:

It’s the summer of 1992. Clara Jane is an alternative music-loving graduate from a broadcast school in Detroit. She lands her first job at a small market station in northern Michigan in a one-stoplight town called Saturn.

The hyper-local programming (featuring lost farm animal reports and radio obits) and its mix of light hits and great oldies is a far cry from the rock star glamour she hoped to achieve with a radio career.

But Clara finds a home with an eccentric cast of characters, especially the recently-divorced morning man Seth Jones. As Clara and Seth bond over their shared sense of humor and a mutual love of different genres of music, the station is sold and staff members start to be replaced by automation. Will Clara find the radio stardom she craves before the station goes completely robotic?

About the Author:


 
Laura Lee is the author of 21 books including biography, humorous reference, fiction, and children's literature. The Metro Detroit native brings a unique background to her work. She holds a degree in theater and worked as a professional mime, improvisational comic, and radio announcer before becoming a full time writer. She now divides her time between writing and producing (and traveling on) ballet master class tours with her partner the artistic director of the Russian Ballet Foundation. The San Francisco Chronicle has said of her work, "Lee's dry, humorous tone makes her a charming companion... She has a penchant for wordplay that is irresistible."

 

My Review:

Saturn's Favorite Music by Laura Lee
Story follows Clara Jane as she graduates and heads off to her first job at a small rural town in MI. Love all the songs and little known facts about the singers. Brings back so many memories and I was surprised I like 99% of the songs today. Love the atmosphere she discovers when she first arrives and how it comes to be her second home.  After a while she meshes with Seth and they put on dual show that fans like. The station is up for sale.... a new buyer shows up and keeps them all on, then the station goes digital and that's not what Clara wants at all in  her life. Love changes she has planned for and how determined she is. All types of relationships in this read.
Great entertaining read. Learned so much about the start of radio stations and all the work involved.







Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Book Review: Double-Edged Reckoning (A Western Edge Mystery Book 1) by Nicole Helm

   


 

 
Double-Edged Reckoning (A Western Edge Mystery Book 1) by Nicole Helm 
Like this book because it includes ranches and also other careers that meld together in Marietta. Love this genre and how ti all comes together.
Story starts out with Samantha and she's hot on the trail of who really killed the woman her father went to prison for 15 years. Now that he's out he's staying at his sisters cabins.
Another murder happens and Sam knows what she has to do and sets out for TN to get Nate to help. He left when he mother was killed and his father beat him up. Out of the Army now he has skills.  Love their devoted attention to details. He is very familiar with the creek growing up there with his brothers and they are able to find a clue to pass along to the cops.
Cal, another brother, a lawyer also comes back to the ranch to help with his expertise.
Landon has been running the family ranch along with Aly.  Love the conversations among the brothers as to how life was when they were growing up, when their mother was alive. SO many dreams, nightmares and scenes of her and how she died come to light.
They know what they have to do and step up to the plate. More clues of recent death and now two will go to prison. Place would be awesome if all brothers hang around and pitch in to help.

Monday, May 12, 2025

Book Review: Easy Container Gardening in Any Climate: The Ultimate Guide to Grow Your Own Organic

  


 
Easy Container Gardening in Any Climate: The Ultimate Guide to Grow Your Own Organic Herbs and Vegetables, Create a Sustainable Environment, Maximize Yields, and Utilize Any Size Space by Kiley Manning 
This book is a keeper. It discusses so many subjects. Everything from the type of planter or pot to the right soil mix and contents for what you want to grow. It includes which plants to try, watering, fertilizing, how to cmpost and so much more.
Love sections on turnips which I have some in a hanging basket now, just planted the other day and they hang outside and now I know what I need to do to take care of them, hfarvest and potential insect  problems.
Never thought about grafting or growing berries but am open to those methods. Even flowers have a section, many of which are in my garden now, to help keep pests away from the crops.
KEEPER!
 

Book Review: Financial Planning for Retirement Made Easy by George Radcliffe

  



 
Financial Planning for Retirement Made Easy  by George Radcliffe
What I like about this book is it gives you information for what you can start to do to save and get ready to retire, with your money, assets, etc.
It talks you through others experiences and what sturggles they wree faced  with and the solution to the issues.
Refreshed as I'm retired already and found a few things I need to discuss with my advisor.  
Love sections on how to reinvent yourself, keep busy, learn things and actually set up things you make to sell them as income to help with the bills.
So much of health is discussed and what to look for short term and long term coverages.
Real estate and how to make money with that but watch your taxable income rate also as you might be paying more as you'd be in a higher bracket.
Touched on RMD's and how to use the stock market to make money with diverse portfolio and treasury bond and state municipal bonds as they can save you tax free money. So much in this book.
Excellent reference book to keep handy.
 

Thursday, May 8, 2025

Book Review: A Powerful Mental Toughness Workbook for Young Athletes by Chest Dugger

 




A Powerful Mental Toughness Workbook for Young Athletes by Chest Dugger
This book discusses the eight traits athletes possess.
Each one is so empowering and inspirational and uplifting.
Each trait is described in detail relating to the athlete and how it appears in your sport and how to overcome obstacles.
Bonus reward is included as a printable version of visual drills in this workbook.
Love hearing the stories from athletes of different sports and how they were able to overcome their struggles. Love full history of how they even wanted to be in the sport that choose them and how they survived and overcame struggles. Lots of hard work and many others look up to them today.
Like drills that are also included in this workbook. Love different mantras and variations.
Bootcamp drills are also highlighted at the end with daily plans.
There are eight athletes that are discussed and with which trait they have achieved in this book.
So many I knew the names of and their sport.
Very positive read.