International Book Club

June 22, 2020-Today is an exciting day; I’m pleased to announce that Pandamonium Publishing House will be starting an International Virtual Book Club! We’ll be reading books by authors from six of seven continents (If anyone knows of an Antarctic author, please email me, and we’ll add it to the list), starting with South America. We hope to help expand our reading diversity, and we hope to read titles that you have yet to explore.

Here’s how it works:

1. We announce the book on the last Monday of each month. This month’s read is The Alchemist by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho.
2. Each Friday, we do a virtual check-in on Facebook Live to talk about the book so far and what our observations and thoughts are, and we take comments and questions from readers. You can send us your comments/questions via email at pandapublishing8@gmail.com or by joining our Facebook Live event.
3. All you have to do is download or purchase your copy of the book from your favourite bookstore or app to participate and follow us on social media!
4. Each book has an allotted completion date of approximately one month.
5. Stay updated by subscribing to our blog, podcast, and newsletter at pandapublishing8@gmail.com. Send us an email, and we’ll add you to our list!

That’s it! Easy peasy! I’m excited to converse with you about our upcoming book choices, talk about the messages within the books, and chat about the authors and where they’re from. I hope you’ll join me! X LLB

The Value of Book Clubs

March 20, 2020-Book clubs can be a valuable source of ideas and recommendations from one reader to the next. Here’s what you can learn from becoming a member of a book club in your area. *Due to recent world events, the availability and creation of online/digital book clubs are an excellent idea!

1. You widen your views, ideas, and perception of the world. Have you ever discussed a book with a colleague and you each took away a different message from it? Of course, you have! No one sees the world the way that you do, and that’s what’s most exciting! A good debate/discussion around a topic gets new ideas flowing and expands our thinking. It allows us, even for a brief moment,  to experience the world through another person’s eyes.
2. It betters your own writing skills. We know that the more we read, the better writers we become. Reading different genres that are offered at book clubs, expand our horizons and help us leave our reading comfort zones. Perhaps we’ve only been reading historical fiction, and our book club picks a new psych thriller! This will only help you in the long run as an author because it will expose you to different voices, points of view, narrative, and dialogue, as well as plot structures and character development.
3. You’ll gain new friends. There will be people who you instantly connect with in your reading club and people who you won’t. That’s ok! Bonding over books is magical, and book clubs help develop life-long friendships in places all over the world.
4. You’ll finish the book. This is an important one! I knew a woman who said one of the reasons she joined a local book club was because she had a reading goal that year, and the club was the only way that she was going to reach it! A book club will “force” you to finish the book, which is a good thing.

We’re working on a lot of things around here and with the current outbreak, we are trying to find new ways to connect with our readers. Soon, we’ll have an online book club that you’ll be able to participate in each month. We’re just figuring out the dynamics of that and the best way to communicate with our book club members remotely. Stay tuned for more details!

Taken From the Headlines

January 29, 2020– Could your next book idea be right in front of your nose? Absolutely! While I was writing this post a few weeks ago, I scanned the headlines online from around the world. Here are a few of them that inspired the inner writer in me:

1.  Woman wakes up to find intruder in her bedroom.
2. Man drives off cliff and escapes with no injuries in ‘Miracle’ Crash.
3.  Baby born during record blizzard, last name Snow.
4. Huge asteroid expected to skim past Earth today.
5. Fly me to the moon for an out of this world date.

Inspiration is everywhere! Using news headlines is a great way to beat writer’s block and to get the creative writing juices flowing. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of a nudge from international headlines to write your next best seller! I challenge you to find two headlines and write a 500-word short story for each. If you want to really challenge your writing muscles, merge the two headlines together and start writing. X LLB