In the pre-dawn hours of February 18, 1942, three American warships zigzagged in convoy along the south coast of Newfoundland. Caught in a raging blizzard, the three ships ran aground on one of the most inhospitable stretches of coastline in the world—less than three miles apart, within eight minutes of each other. The Wilkes freed herself. The Truxton and Pollux could not. Fighting frigid temperatures, wild surf, and a heavy oil slick, a few sailors, through ingenuity and sheer grit, managed to gain shore—only to be stranded under cliffs some 200 feet high. From there, local miners mounted an arduous rescue mission. In Hard Aground, based on eyewitness accounts of survivors and rescuers, and corroborated by archival and historical research, Bett Fitzpatrick tells the story of the men who saved themselves, the miners who carried survivors up the cliffs on their backs, and to the people of St. Lawrence who opened their homes and their hearts to the victims. Among them are seaman Edward Bergeron, who scaled the cliff and brought help, Lanier Phillips, the only black man to survive, Ena, who collected food and blankets and snapped the only pictures of that horrific day, and Clara, who took the last survivor home and nursed him through the night. Bett (Dorion) Fitzpatrick, grew up in Newfoundland when there wasn’t a child who didn’t know the story and the people who carried up the cliffs the 186 U.S. service men who survived the shipwrecks of the USS Truxton and USS Pollux. Award-winning author of Melanie Bluelake’s Dream (1995), Bay Girl (1998), and Whose Side Are You…

Six or seven years ago my advice to aspiring authors of nonfiction books was to build an audience platform by blogging. An example of how critical blogging could be to securing a publishing contract can be found in the case of Ann Marie Ackermann, author of Death of an Assassin: The True Story of the German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee. After an initial assessment of her manuscript, I had recommended she start a historical true-crime blog, and she did. In fact, the editor of the ideal book series at Kent State University Press became a fan of her blog and invited her to submit a book proposal. Her book won a 2018 IPPY in the True Crime category, closed a 180-year-old cold case, and has also been translated into German where it received critical acclaim and was recognized for its scholarly contribution to the history of forensics. Today, blogging may or may not be something an author decides to invest time and energy in. If your authority as an author is based on your subject-area expertise, it remains an important goal to have a visible presence on the internet establishing your credibility. Whether blogging is the best means to achieve that goal depends on you and your project. It may be more important to be listed as an expert source available to journalists and appear as a credible source in news publications covering your subject area. HARO (Help A Reporter Out) may be a better fit to…

Valentine’s Day is coming up and we’re giving away one free copy of The Soul’s Twins: Emancipate Your Feminine and Masculine Archetypes to one lucky reader. Author of Healing the Sacred Divide, Dream Theatres of the Soul and The Bridge to Wholeness: A Feminine Alternative to the Hero Myth, Jean Benedict Raffa offers a self-guided journey to spiritual maturity in her latest book, The Soul’s Twins. Released by Red Feather Mind Body Spirit, an imprint of Schiffer Books, in November 2020, Raffa’s new book draws on Jungian psychology and wisdom traditions from world religions. Jean Benedict Raffa offers a new theory of heightened consciousness and compassion. This book offers an overview of archetypes which embody five basic instincts: nurturance, activity, reflection, sex, and creativity. The drive for self-preservation is associated with solar energy expressed through masculine archetypes and the drive for species-preservation is associated with lunar energy and feminine archetypes. Readers are invited to take a self-assessment, the Partnership Profile, to better understand themselves, the imbalances and challenges they face, and opportunities for exploring specific archetypes in their own lives. There are two parts to questionnaire called the Partnership Profile. In Part I you answer questions about eight archetypes: four lunar and four solar. These represent differing ways your soul’s twins work together to satisfy your instinctual needs. Part II assesses your life satisfaction. Your score on this self-administered questionnaire will help you understand how the archetypes which make up your lunar and solar energies influence your personality, way of…