A Note from Your Publisher

A N E X C L U S I V E M O N T H L Y C O M M U N I Q U É F O R O U R W R I T E R S

INNER CIRCLEF E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 1

the

“Fill your paper with

~William Wordsworth

the breathings of your heart.”INSPIRATION for

ritersW

We think about self-help books a lot around here. We’ve all bought them at times, but do they always help? Sometimes they are great, but there are times we don’t really want to follow advice from one person, or pursue a prescribed route to success, or fill out a checklist or a worksheet.

One of the things that I love about Chicken Soup for the Soul books is that they can provide the same benefits as a self-help book, but in an easier-to-digest format. Storytelling has been the traditional way of passing on wisdom, traditions, and advice throughout the history of mankind. I know that I often turn to friends for advice, and for their own stories, when I need help with a problem that I know they have already experienced.

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen provided us with a wonderful new kind of book eighteen years ago, when they created the first Chicken Soup for the Soul – a self-help and inspirational book in the form of 101 personal, revealing, and helpful stories, written by real people to help other real people.

All of our books are inspirational, but we occasionally put one together that we think is particularly characteristic of the self-help genre. For Christmas 2009, that was CSS: Count Your Blessings, for Christmas 2010 it was CSS: Think Positive, and for Christmas 2011 it will be CSS: Find Your Path to Happiness. Our new book on happiness will include stories from people who describe their own paths to finding purpose, passion, and joy in their lives. We look forward to reading your submissions.

~Your publisher, Amy Newmark

Find Your Path to

Happiness

Stand by for the cover!

A Match Made in CyberspaceThere aren’t many octogenarians on Match.com’s upbeat television ads, but maybe the website should reconsider their marketing campaign.

Meet Phyllis Zeno, frequent Chicken Soup for the Soul contributor and 84-year-old newlywed. Her story, “Love Online,” recently chosen for our 2011 title Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for the Young at Heart is the humorous and heartwarming tale of how she met her husband, Harvey.

Widowed for two years before a friend convinced her to create a Match.com profile, Phyllis set out to find a man who “enjoys candlelight, soft music and good conversation.” After trading messages with a few gentlemen, she found “Harvey1926,” who she described as “tall and good-looking, with a mane of white hair and a smile that hinted at a sense of humor.” They had much in

common, including having worked at CBS in Manhattan many years before, except for one small snag – he lived in New York, and she lived in Florida.

She knew he was special when he told her, “We’ll meet in Paris!”

Despite their skeptical children and the difficulties of a long distance romance, love prevailed and the two were married in Harvey’s apartment in New York City, with a view of the Empire State Building, where they were surrounded by their combined five children plus their spouses, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

All of the touching details of Phyllis and Harvey’s improbable romance can be found in her full-length story, but perhaps the moral of the tale is that it’s never too late to find love... and someone to take you on a romantic two-week honeymoon in Paris!

A very common error –

“lay” versus “lie.”

Editor’s Tips

Contributor Phyllis Zeno and her husband, Harvey

We’ve noticed the word lay is often used incorrectly, even by

our best writers.

Lie means “to recline” or “be placed.” It does not act on anything or anyone else.

Lay means “to put” or “to place” and it is always followed by an object. Lay is something you do to something.

Therefore, you lay a towel on the sand before you lie on the beach. To use the word lay you must be doing something to an object. You can lay a doll in her toy crib, but once she is in there... she lies in the crib.

Here’s where it gets trickier... the past tense of lie is lay! How inconvenient. And the past tense of lay is laid. So... yesterday you laid the doll in her toy crib, and once she was there, she lay in the crib.

Changing the world, one story at a time®

Top: The Joshua TreeBottom: A close up of the sign

that hangs on the tree

The Joshua TreeWe were recently contacted by Amanda Pool, who wrote a story about her beloved son’s suicide five years ago at the age of fifteen, called “The Joshua Tree,” in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grieving and Recovery. One day, when Amanda was expecting to receive the police file of her son’s case in the mail, complete with photos of the scene, she opened her mailbox to find a blessing instead – her copy of CSS: Grieving and Recovery, and her son’s memory permanently printed for all to read.

Even more stunning was the fact that the cover of the book featured a tree, much like the “Joshua Tree” that stands by her son’s grave. For a mother whose greatest fear is that her son will be forgotten, the permanence of the book in her hands was a miracle. Amanda put it best herself on her blog, “Fighting for Life,” where she wrote the following:

“That afternoon I held onto the book all day. I lay in bed sobbing, clutching the book and moving in and out of the tangible world this book had created for me. For a while I felt as if I had my son back.”

One of our contributors sent us a note about recent developments regarding her story, “The Red Bank,” published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Gift of Christmas, which was sold exclusively at Walmart this past Christmas. Barbara Carpenter wrote “The Red Bank” about a fifth grade classmate, John Gibson, who gave her a clock bank as a Secret Santa present, at a time when she would have preferred new crayons or hair barrettes. Still, she used the bank and came to cherish it until it was stolen from her home forty-five years later. She had taken very good care of it all that time.

Recently, Barbara found John on Facebook and tried to contact him to give him a copy of the book with the story in it. Sadly, she learned he had died of Parkinson’s Disease the day before she found him, less than three hours from where she lived. He was just shy of his seventy-second birthday. Barbara was able to send flowers to his funeral and she is dedicating a copy of the book to the Veteran’s Inn, where he passed away.

Barbara Carpenter, with Chicken Soup for the Soul:

The Gift of Christmas and a photo of John Gibson.

One DayToo Late

I submitted my story a few months ago. I just received a story call-out from you for the same title. Should I send

my story in again or do you already have it?

Great question! If you have submitted your story for a particular title and then you receive a story call-out e-mail from us for the same title, please do not submit the same story again. The story call-out e-mail just means that we are looking for additional submissions. We already have the one you submitted earlier.

If you have made significant edits to your story, you may submit the edited version to us. In the “Comments” section of the submission form, please let our editors know that this is an edited version of an earlier submission. If you have just changed a few words or some punctuation please do not re-submit the story as you can make those changes during the production process if your story is selected to be published.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Food & Love is a go! Thank you for your positive comments and suggestions. You loved the topic, so we are going ahead with the Food & Love idea, targeted for publication December 27, 2011, in time for Valentine’s Day 2012.

AQ&

Ask t h e Webmas t e r

FUN FACTSabout

That’s right – we originate the title ideas, work with the authors and contributors, edit the books, have them

printed, and have them delivered to Simon & Schuster’s distribution center. We do the “marketing” of the books through our press releases, our media programs, and all of the other activities that you see, and S&S acts as our sales and distribution arm. Simon & Schuster is one of the largest book distributors in the world, so we benefit

from having their sales force and their customer relationships working for us on a daily basis! They also

have a highly-automated, huge, and very impressive warehouse and they do all our shipping.

Did you know that we are a publisher and we distribute our books through

Simon & Schuster?

Coming out in February...

An advance look at new book topics

Inside Scoop

Many of you indicated your desire to see recipes included where relevant. We think that is a good idea, although we have to look into whether we can include recipes that have not been professionally tested.

As we promised, we want you to have the inside track on getting your story into this book. We will not do an e-mailed “call-out” for this book for another month, so please submit your stories now to get a jump on the general public. Go to our story submission menu and select “To Be Announced” on the pulldown menu. If you submit there, your story will go into the Food & Love database.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grieving and Recovery

101 Inspirational and Comforting Stories about Surviving the Loss

of a Loved OneOn Sale 2/1/11