Gerald “Gerry” Hass is a retired pediatrician with whom I’ve had the pleasure to work over the past few months through Janice Beetle Books.

A man who is as gracious and compassionate as he is productive and intelligent, Gerry has created a book about his experience as the co-founder of a health center in the South End of Boston. I have fully enjoyed helping him develop the book’s content and usher it into the print phase.

“The Story of the South End Community Health Center: The Early Days” tells the story of the founding of the South End Community Health Center, which opened its doors in the South End of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1969.

Back in 1968, Gerry was offered a position as chief of Ambulatory Pediatrics and associate professor of Pediatrics at Boston City Hospital. His administrative support was Mel Scovell.

As a teaching and research fellow at Boston University School of Medicine’s Home Medical Service in 1961, Gerry understood the need for primary health care services for the underserved and multi-ethnic population of the South End of Boston. Mel had been a senior executive in a large international chain of shoe stores and factories, and he understood business finance.

Together, they imagined and then created the South End Community Health Center to provide care for all South End residents, including recently arrived Latino families. They encountered many hurdles, and they leapt over them.

There were no private doctors in the neighborhood, so residents wanted their own local clinic, where the health needs of their children and families could be met. The South End Community Health Center gave personal and continuous care to thousands of inner-city families, and its staff members were sensitive to the lives and the needs of all South End residents, including recently arrived Latino families.

Last year—2019—marked the 50^th anniversary of the center. Gerry and Mel hosted a reunion in Boston, and Gerry also wished to honor that celebration with a book on the center’s founders, staff, and patients. In 2019, he visited these former colleagues and friends, interviewing them—about what they valued, what they remember, what they felt the center’s importance and legacy was in the community.

Gerry then developed one chapter based on each interview, and he brought that collection of material to me. Together, we determined the order the various entries would be presented. I created a manuscript, compiling all the material, and then I offered content edits. Finally, I copy edited the final work and supported Gerry through the design and print process with Off the Common Books in Amherst.

On March 17, Gerry will read from his book at the South End branch of the Boston Public Library. I will be in Florida and will not be able to attend, but I have much pride and faith in Gerry. He will lead this event in the same determined, elegant manner he has used to walk through the production process.

Key in the center’s growth and popularity was its staff—people like Gerry who were sensitive to the lives and needs of the Latino families they served, who took the time to speak their language, and learn and meet their varying health care needs.

This book is dedicated to the thousands of families who were patients of the South End Community Health Center in the South End of Boston, Massachusetts. It is also dedicated to the wonderful and caring medical and support staff, who loved working together for decades.

The heart and soul of the Center was the late Inez Washabaugh Ward, RN, PNP, the center’s first nurse. Many people who were interviewed spoke of Inez as a woman who was hard-working, respectful, kind, and full of good humor. I feel as if I know her!

Likewise, Gerry is my kind of person.

He is soft-spoken, and he is all about people and their stories. He is the kind of person who will speak aloud of a friend or acquaintance of his, and then tell you something about that person—making him or her real.

Gerry is also a major scholar and physician.

He came to Boston in 1966 from London, England, with his late wife, Terry. He graduated in 1958 from the London Hospital Medical College and did residencies at the Royal London Hospital and also the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street in London. He came to Boston in 1966 to teach at Boston University School of Medicine.

I am privileged to have had the chance to work with Gerry, to learn his stories and those of his friends.

I will be proud to have his book on my shelf, and I will give a copy to Jacques’ daughter, who is studying to be a physician assistant in Boston, and my daughter Sally, a medical assistant here in Easthampton.

Excellent job, Gerry!

The post Helping a Pediatrician Develop His Book appeared first on Beetle Press.

I’ve always wanted to be a full-time author. I also have developed a specialty over the past five years in working with people who have a long-held desire to write a book—to show it to others as a way to say, “This is my story.”

This work—and their stories—are meaningful to me. It all gives me deep satisfaction.

After I finished reading Big Magic and penning the Christmas book for my boyfriend, a series of revelations came to me like tiny seed pods blown my way in the wind. It went like this:

• You wrote a pretty decent memoir in 30 days, Janice. That means you could write another book, and it might also be pretty decent.
• There are a lot of other people out there who could use your help, a lot of passion stories waiting to be told and handed out by clients to their friends and family.
• You could create a second business around these ideas and start to nurture it with time and attention.

That’s how Janice Beetle Books LLC was born. This second business will allow me to focus on clients who have a book in their heads and hearts. At the same time, I will continue to support businesspeople and nonprofits who need to raise awareness through PR.

My friend and colleague Val Nelson is guiding me through the creation of Janice Beetle Books. Mark NeJame, a Northampton attorney who is also a friend and colleague, is launching the LLC. My daughter’s best friend Ali Winkler created the logo. And Danaë DiNicola of Turn Signal Media is designing the website, which will feature photos by Sandra Costello.

The growth is tangible. It fills me with as much anxiety and trepidation as it does excitement. Doubts try to nestle into my psyche, but they continue to get pushed away by these unmistakable signs I keep receiving from the universe:

• When I was locked out of a website I access frequently, I had to answer a security question I created over 10 years ago. “What did you want to be, as a child?” It asked me. I summoned the answer instantly: an author. An amazing reminder, validation.
• I’ve had four new client inquiries since I started moving in the direction of Janice Beetle Books. Each prospect wants help with a book.
• After I praised the magic of Big Magic on Facebook a few weeks ago, a reader and friend, Lynn Moynahan, responded with a suggestion for another book, Daring Greatly, by Brene Brown. It’s about vulnerability and the ways in which we hide our creativity because we are afraid. Brene is teaching me that it is courageous to move forward with this idea I believe in with my whole heart. It’s better to fail while reaching for a goal than to skitter away without trying.
• A few weeks ago, I was cleaning out a packed storage space in my basement, taking the time to go through each and every tote. In one, I found every journal I’ve ever kept and a folder full of typewritten pages. I took the folder upstairs and found a body of work that was important to me at one time that I thought I’d lost as well as three published works of fiction. I did not remember that my fiction was published once, never mind three times. The affirmation made me giddy.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Signs, signs. Everywhere signs. The universe has spoken.

Soon I will introduce you to Janice Beetle Books and all it has to offer. I will also continue to be here to offer PR consulting and assists with writing press releases, blogs, and enewsletters.  Let me know if I can help you with a project that’s connected to your work, or your passion—or both!

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In 2006, Tom and his wife, Beth Hewson, moved to Ontario, Canada. If he hadn’t written a book about the death of his brother as a teenager and asked me to edit it for him, I would know him even less now than I did 15 years ago. Instead, I feel very connected to Tom. I’m excited that his memoir, Seasoned: A Memoir of Grief and Grace has been printed. And I’ll be front and center at his first reading at St. John’s on Tuesday, April 25 at 7 p.m.

I feel the kinship with Tom on several levels. I understand his pride and his anxiety in the fact that people will now be able to read his book. I felt the same way when Divine Renovations came out, and I started taking it out in the world, wondering what people would think.

I also feel a deep connection to Tom’s story of loss. His brother Steve was hit by a car and killed while both boys were doing their paper routes. Steve was 15. Tom was 14. As his family buried their son and brother, they also buried their grief.

I empathize and understand the quiet mourning because my parents also lost a son. My brother Johnny died of leukemia at 10 years old, before I was born. I came around three years later and somehow, even though we didn’t talk about Johnny much, I still felt the loss.

I first read Tom’s manuscript a year ago. We have worked together since then to tighten and trim the book, and when it was ready, we turned it over to Maureen Scanlon of The Creative, and she designed the cover and insides, and brought it to life.

I communicated with Tom via Skype and email. My role in readying the manuscript was to make it more powerful and a little less personal. I remember telling Tom in that early phase to think of the book as if it were a family photo album. Together, we worked to remove images that were redundant, to add shots that brought new layers and voices into the story and to bring some images into better focus.

Tom greatly appreciated this work. In his acknowledgements at the back of the book, Tom says, “The skill, sensitivity, and professionalism of my editor, Janice Beetle, are gifts that helped to sharpen, shorten, and sweeten the narrative. Her challenge to go deeper into early interactions with Steve led me to new understandings I had never before considered.”

I’m very proud of those words, and I’m very proud of Tom. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Micronesia in the late 1960s, and has also been a preschool teacher and director, a child care counselor, a city parks and recreation superintendent, and a New Games trainer. He holds degrees from Valparaiso University in Indiana, George Williams College in Illinois, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

His book, Seasoned, is not just a story of grief and recovery, though. It is also a tender and lighthearted look at humor and laughter, winning and losing, and doubt and faith. It’s a book about family, fun, laughter and love.

Please join me at Tom’s reading on April 25. Hear him tell his story and buy a book! Proceeds from the sales will benefit the Stephen A. Zink Scholarship fund at Steve’s alma mater, Lutheran High School West in Rocky River, Ohio.

The post Author to Read April 25 in Northampton appeared first on Beetle Press.

I remember walking to her desk one day to ask her how to spell a certain word. “Look it up in the dictionary,” she told me without making eye contact. She did not explain how one looks up a word one does not know how to spell. So, I went back to my desk, and I did not attempt to figure it out.

Mrs. Lambson could have suggested that I come up with my best guess at spelling the word in question and look that creative spelling up in the dictionary. She could have suggested that I continue to refine my guess until I found the correct spelling.

Instead, I guessed at word spellings for many more years, until I eventually learned the technique on my own; it made perfect sense. The process of guessing, searching and refining was also a good practice to weave into my study habits, and it served as an excellent framework for looking words up in the AP Stylebook when I became a journalist after college.

Most reporters I worked with at local newspapers didn’t take an interest in the stylebook or much care if their copy was what we would call “clean”—free of grammatical and style errors—when they submitted it to an editor. I, on the other hand, rather obsessed over it. I wanted to stand out, and I was interested in newspaper style as well. I considered hunting through the stylebook for answers a bit of a game.

Eventually, my curiosity and persistence paid off; I memorized all the key style points over time and now only rarely have to consult the guide book. Now that I am using The Chicago Manual of Style more, though, as I develop and edit books for clients like Jim Ricci and Tom Zink. I find I must go back to my former discipline of looking things up. This is tedious, but important if I want to do my best work.

I have also recently been inspired to reread The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. This “little” book, as Strunk called it when he first published it in 1946, is full of good learnings and reminders on the craft of writing.

Reading, and refreshing my knowledge, is one way that I do professional development. It continually expands my brain in a way that is easy to manage, timewise. It’s also good for my clients, and so it is good for me and also good for my colleagues in The Creative, whom I work with a good deal.

We should all look for the ways in which we need reminders in our industry, and practice the things we might have grown fuzzy on, seeking out those areas that represent new territory.

What is your growth challenge? Figure it out, and eagerly study up!

The post Professional Development is Key appeared first on Beetle Press.

The trip went just as I planned it. I had one fabulous escapade after the next, and I enjoyed blogging about each one on the website I oversee that focuses on literary pursuits; check it out if you’re interested in adventure.

The more productive start of my stay, though, started in my third week in Majuro, when my daughter Molly returned to her teaching job after a break for the holidays. Molly’s kitchen table became my office, and the sea out back became my break room.

I went to the South Pacific with two major projects to work on, and it was truly a pleasure to have dedicated time to devote to them without the interruptions posed by email—as wifi often did not work—and other, more deadline-oriented projects.

I got my head deeper into the book that I’m writing on behalf of a local man. I don’t want to offer up too much about this project at this point except to say that my client had an experience in the workplace that traumatized him and his family, and he wants me to get the story down on paper.

I had the luxury of rereading all the interviews I did with him, further fleshing out the chapter summaries, conducting some research online and writing four new chapters. I loved every minute of it and still have plenty to do.

The other project I focused on was an editing job. A man I once went to church with, who now lives in Canada, wrote a book about losing his brother in a traffic accident when they were both in their mid-teens.

I read the client’s manuscript while en route to Majuro in late December and on my first long trip to the island of Eneko, and then I began the process of content editing.

My work was about giving the client feedback on such things as where readers need to hear more from him in the book, where passages run long, and where there are inconsistencies, redundancies and areas that raise questions or confuse the reader.

I edited the book’s introduction and first four chapters, and in several key chapters, found myself weeping. I will begin editing chapters five through eight this week.

Both of these books are compelling and powerful.  I can’t wait to be able to tell you that both of them—and a third I’ve been working on for several years—are available for purchase.

Stay tuned! And start thinking about how you can combine business with pleasure.

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