Vincent “Vinny” Valetutti is my friend Becka’s partner. I met him several years ago when he offered to drive our entire book group to a vineyard in a van so we could all relax and enjoy. Meeting all of us for the first time, Vinny was friendly and pleasant, and also a good driver!

This spring, I assigned a student intern working with me in my PR business to interview Vinny and write a press release on the traveling, thirty-foot-high, mock Sea Level Rise Ruler he created to raise awareness about rising sea levels. When standing next to the ruler, one has a close-up, dramatic view of how high the sea would rise if only five to ten percent of Antarctica and Greenland were to melt. 

Vinny towed his ruler on a trailer and parked it in a lot in downtown Northampton, Massachusetts, so people could visit it and learn more about one impending circumstance of climate change. Earlier this month, he towed his giant ruler to Washington, DC.

Helping get some media attention on this innovation gave me a deeper view into the mind that is Vinny’s. So, when he contacted me a few months after his initial outreach and asked for help with a book, I was interested in working with him. I have since learned much about the man behind the ruler.

Vinny grew up north of New York City and began to be fascinated by how things work at a young age. A retired engineer, Vinny has a great deal of experience in energy conservation and with heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in office buildings. 

Vinny’s career and his travels inform and inspire ideas of all kinds. As he imagines, he meshes his deep passion for the environment with his knowledge of history and politics, his global savvy, and his lifelong experience as a pragmatic, creative problem-solver. 

His book, due out this fall with a working title of If I Were President: 29 Unique Ideas for Solving Global Problems. As the name suggests, Vinny offers 29 ideas in his book, presented in these eight categories: Invitation to All World Leaders, Military, Constitutional Amendments, Capitalism, Social Issues, Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection, Taxation, and Patents. 

Many of the ideas are interconnected. Some have the basic premise of supply and demand at their core, and others were inspired by Vinny’s take on the bible from his childhood learnings. 

Vinny says he sees the world differently. His lens doesn’t focus solely to the left, or the right, and it also doesn’t land in the center. “Think of my mind like a sphere,” he explains. “You have a diameter, and you have the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. I’m anywhere in the volume of the sphere. Sometimes, I also think outside the sphere—kind of like thinking outside the box. I’m a warehouse of boxes, and sometimes, I think outside the warehouse.”

Vinny offers the disclaimer in his book that his proposals are not intended as fully formed concepts, and they are not intended as facets of a presidential platform. They are simply food for thought for all of us.

I offer the disclaimer that the Janice Beetle Books indicia on the book jacket does not signify an endorsement of the specific ideas within but rather wholehearted support of the author’s creativity and innovative thinking.

I hope you’ll check out this title when it’s released. It’s interesting reading in difficult times.

The post Helping an Author Get His Book Out appeared first on Beetle Press.

I’ve known Bobby Kelliher for over three decades. He is one of my favorite people.

Bobby is the kind of person who does not specialize in one-word answers. A story about a thing that happened to him might take twenty minutes, but it is sure to make you bust a gut laughing. Because Bobby speaks his own language. A computer, or a cell phone, for instance, would be referred to as “The Machine.” Google isn’t just Google. It’s The Google. 

The Bobby I know is loving and affectionate. He calls me Buglet and makes me feel special, noticed, understood, valuable. He calls himself Roooooberto. That makes him feel special.

Bobby is my dear friend Judy Kelliher’s older brother. Recently, I helped Judy finalize the manuscript for the book she wrote about Bobby and his two tours in Vietnam. I got to read the book several times, and I learned about a whole new Bobby—the Bobby who was torn apart by war—and with the help of others—put himself back together again.

It nearly broke my heart to know and understand what my sweet, funny friend has endured—and survived.

Judy’s book, “A Wartime PH.D.: One Soldier’s Story of Vietnam and Learning to Live Again,” takes a close look at Bobby’s life, growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and his young adulthood—hanging out with friends and his girlfriend, Margaret, and spending a semester in college in Florida before his father, unimpressed with his grades, “invited him home.”

Bobby decides to enlist in the U.S. Army, and it’s then that his hell begins. 

Judy well describes scenes from Bobby’s two tours of duty—including one that most devastated Bobby. I must say, though, that the moments in the book that I found most profoundly sad all occurred after Bobby has returned home and doesn’t know how to live with himself, with the images in his head.

His parents must comfort him when he awakens from nightmares, screaming in the middle of the night.

His marriage to Margaret becomes troubled because he is devastated and doesn’t know how to express, even to his wife, the ghosts that haunt him.

His children don’t fully know him.

In a pivotal moment of crisis, Bobby’s sister Mary connects him to help at the Veterans Affairs Center in Leeds, Massachusetts, and the road up—to a PTSD diagnosis, still so new in that era, and to peace and acceptance—begins there. 

While I saw glimmers of the Bobby I know today during the war—in his dedication to his men, his bravery, his modesty, his humor—it is in this second part of the book that I begin to recognize the Bobby I know today.

The Bobby who works at the bank and has tremendous compassion for people who are falling behind in their mortgage payments.

The Bobby who works at the jail and brings humor and empathy to the inmates, who bond with him and miss him when Bobby retires.

The Bobby who works with young people with disabilities.

The Bobby who drives seniors to their appointments.

Although a minor character in the book, Margaret shined out for me. I know Margaret somewhat, having met her at Kelliher family gatherings over the years. I had no idea what grace, tenacity, and steadfast love she brought to her marriage and to Bobby’s healing. I am so grateful to her.

I admire her, and Bobby, too. 

I am so proud of Bobby for sharing his story; of Margaret for giving permission; and of Judy, for capturing it all so well. Writing a book based on someone else’s life and experiences is a tremendous undertaking. It’s time-consuming and all-encompassing, and Judy handled the process with grace, as she handles all difficult matters.

When the project was tough for her, she persevered. 

When she worried she wouldn’t be able to finish, she kept going.

I will be honored to feature “A Wartime Ph.D.” in my NEW! section on the Janice Beetle Books Home page very soon, and in Clients’ Books. In addition to copy editing, I also designed the book’s cover and inside pages. 

As it was for Judy, it was, for me, a labor of love.

The post A Book About Healing That Broke My Heart appeared first on Beetle Press.

Through Janice Beetle Books, I had the privilege to stand up in public and talk about Flight of Integrity with my client, Peter Cichon, in the audience with his wife and family. It was a thrill second only to the privilege of helping Peter tell his story in the first place.

As I explained to an audience of about 40 at South Hadley Public Library—which graciously hosted the talk—Peter came to me about four years ago, referred by my friend and colleague Fran Fahey of Fran’s Fine Editing in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Peter sat down in my office and told me the story of a trauma he experienced while working for an airline at Bradley International Airport in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

At the time I met Peter, those events were at least a decade behind him, but I could see the angst and turmoil still on his face and in his body. He said he needed to tell the story because that would help him to feel some sense of closure and peace. I felt honored that he chose me to be his storyteller.

We agreed early on that we would tell the story as a work of fiction based on fact to protect Peter and his family, his colleagues, and the airline itself. My friend and colleague Judith Kelliher helped me interview Peter several times, and Judy also interviewed Peter’s wife and some of his friends and colleagues.

Peter delivered to me several large cartons filled with documentation that included transcripts of court depositions, police reports from the Connecticut State Police, personnel records from the airline, and recommendations and commendations about Peter.

Together with the material gathered in interviews, the information informed my writing. I prepared a manuscript, which Peter and I subsequently edited together, until it fully resonated with him. (Since Jacques is an air traffic controller, I had him read the book as well, and took his good feedback into account.)

Then, my friend and colleague Lisa Stowe of Florence, Massachusetts, designed the book’s jacket and inside pages, and it was printed by Off the Common Books in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Flight of Integrity is the story of a different time in our history and focuses on troubled race relations and incidents of sexual harassment at the airline for which Peter worked as a ramp agent, or baggage handler.

The ongoing drama centered around three employees who had been known to harass female employees and intimidate other colleagues. Peter took on the role of advocate and defender for those employees who were targets. It was his belief that he could make the airline a better place, where people would want to work. Instead, the situation went in a direction Peter never could have seen coming.

At the reading, I heard feedback from people who have already read the book and described it as a page-turner they could not put down. I particularly appreciated that a woman who worked with Peter, speaking directly to me, said I had done a good job in the writing because the book rang true for her. 

Peter talked about how hard it was to feel persecuted and misunderstood, and he thanked me for bringing his story to light. He said he feels relief now, as if he has had his day in court.

Read Peter’s story, and see what you think!

Contact me if you’d like to plan a cozy reading for a book group or at a public venue in your area.

The post Flight of Integrity Takes Flight appeared first on Beetle Press.