Richmond Hill author Rishma Govani has been generating a lot of positive buzz for her world-travelling children’s book Sushi & Samosas: A Trip of Tasty Transformations! 🍣
Author of Immigration, Race and Survival Cecily Alexander was featured in The Caribbean Camera!
This memoir is a collection of many journals she has kept over the years. She uses journalling as a way of working through feelings and emotions and of learning from her experiences. She has had a career as a dietitian for over forty years. Her career has included academic writing, and she has one previous book publication: a book on nutrition and weight loss called “Just Eat Less: Easier said than done.” She has a master’s in business administration specializing in organizational behaviour in addition to her nutrition degree from the University of Guelph. She has taught at both the university and college levels. She lives in Southern Ontario.
Fall has officially arrived, and with it our excitement for Halloween! In honour of the spooktacular holiday, the Tellwell team pulled together our top spine-chilling, hair-raising reads for October! 🎃
From horror books with demons and plagues to psychological thrillers with a thirst for revenge, we think you’ll love these eerie excerpts below. 👻
The Plague by Ryan L. Canning
She turned and ran. There was no end in sight. The bodies, the tents, the smell, they went on for miles.
The apartment filled with sounds from another world. Screaming, shouting, music with an unearthly twisted tune played out of the walls. A chorus of suffering, a background of nightmares and fears. It was angry, insulted and outraged.
Poppy Seeds on a Grave: A Collection of Short Stories by Mirko Markovic
Every ounce of blood in this man’s body drained from his skin and he froze in time, a statue paralyzed by the shock of what he had just seen.
– Mirko Markovic, Poppy Seeds on a Grave: A Collection of Short Stories
Get your copy of Poppy Seeds on a Grave: A Collection of Short Storieson Amazon.
The Book of Nodd: The Dreamwalker by B.S. Thompson
Suddenly he heard a snap and an electric bolt of pain shot down his arm, but the cottage did not stop rocking, and it would not be much longer before it collapsed on him completely.
– B.S. Thompson, The Book of Nodd: The Dreamwalker
Get your copy of The Book of Nodd: The Dreamwalker on Amazon.
Chains by M Todd
Before him, strewn about throughout the cavern from ceiling to floor, placed within the bluish rocks, were hundreds, or thousands, of human bodies. Men and women, their faces contorted in masks of horror and pain, frozen like macabre cadavers in a monster’s freezer.
Without thinking, I knew what I had to do. I tugged my sister out from behind me and moved her around me until we had switched places, me behind her with my hands on her shoulders. “Take her,” I said, and gave her shoulders a little shove forward.
Squinting, he focused with laser-like intensity to see what he could of the corpse below. He marvelled at the kaleidoscope of colours and textures the mangled body had created all over the urban canvas.
Was my mom a criminal? Did she know something or do something that helped ruin this man’s life? Did Mathis know? Was it even true? There was too much to think about all at once.
Blood and Silver won its second major award this year, taking home top honors for the Young Adult category at the 2021 New York Book Festival! Vali Benson previously won first place in two categories at the San Francisco Book Festival in the same year.
Carole Aldred’s I Call My Grandma Gigi, a book about celebrating the special relationship between grandmothers and grandchildren, received the Canada Book Award.
Tellwell children’s author Rachel Greening’s book If My Oak Tree Could Speak tied for second place for Best Picture Book (5 and under), and received an honourable mention in the poetry category for the Purple Dragonfly Book Awards!
Stephanie Hewitt’s books Where did Luna go? and Luna Loves Biscuits – received honorable mentions from the Purple Dragonfly Book Awards in the new author – fiction category. Congratulations!
Author Rishma Govani is getting lots of positive hype for her book Sushi & Samosas. Check out some of her interviews here: katethismomloves & twosouls.onejourney
Our authors have been making headlines all month long! From winning awards to securing interviews, to generating reviews – our authors are getting their names out there! Great work, everyone!
Kathleen Boucher’s Nine Ways to Empower Tweens #Lifeskills does it again! She is a finalist in the Young Adult Non-Fiction Category of the 2021 International Book Awards sponsored by the American Book Fest!
Now that the world is opening up to a new normal, our authors are diving back into the world of author events. This past month, we’ve seen some fantastic meet-and-greets, readings, and even a cross-country launch! We’re so happy and proud to see our Tellwell authors getting themselves out there to promote their books!
Paula Gregory – Dream High As The Sky
Mississippi-based children’s author Paula McClellan Gregory finished off the month with an adorable book launch at the Gumtree Bookstore to promote her inspiring children’s book Dream High As the Sky. Paula’s book launch included a fun read-along, a discussion about the children’s dreams, colouring time, snacks, exclusive bookmarks to go with signed copies of the picture book, and even a giveaway for a Dream High As They Sky t-shirt!
Dream High As They Sky follows little Zach (based on Paula’s grandson) as he discovers life’s possibilities and ways of achieving his dream of flying like the birds high in the sky. This high-flying children’s book encourages your little ones to follow their dreams. After all, Zach can tell you, “I dreamed as high as the sky, and my dreams came true.”
We are celebrating and recognizing the tremendous history, heritage and diversity of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in Canada. We also acknowledge the inequalities and injustices Indigenous people face every day.
Our hearts ache for the thousands of lives lost and stolen across the country.
We encourage our family, friends, staff, and fellow Canadians to educate ourselves about the land we live on, the history of the Indigenous Peoples who cared for it, and the issues facing Indigenous Peoples in our communities. Let’s become a country worth celebrating.
Here is a selection of moving stories by Indigenous indie authors.
Indigenous Peoples have always carried the knowledge necessary to heal. When our people heal, our families heal, our communities heal and our land will heal. You cannot have one without the other.
These stories are teachings, prophecy, and protocols shared throughout the years by elders, language speakers, medicine people, and helpers. They have been the foundation to individual healing and learning self-love. They teach us how to make good decisions for ourselves and for all other aspects in our lives.
When our people were young, they were sent on the land to gather as much experience and knowledge as they could, and when they returned, they would contribute what they learned.
I am Syilx and Secwepemc and although many of my teachings come from this place, they also intertwine with indigenous knowledge shared through ceremony from many other nations.
People from all backgrounds have embraced concepts from other parts of the world that promote self-love, healing, and well-being through practices of discipline and meditation.
Very little has been shared about indigenous systems and how it promotes self-love and approach to healing.
A really great book cover is one that captures the book inside it in some fundamental and, perhaps, unforeseen way.
Von Langoyan, Tellwell book cover designer
What do you enjoy most about designing book covers?
I enjoy the creative process of capturing and evoking the essence of a story through visuals. The cover needs to both intrigue a reader and give them a sense of the book’s genre and content. I enjoy staying up to date on design trends and using them in my process so our covers look fresh and contemporary.
Our authors sometimes have a vision for how they would like their covers to look, and I work with their input to create something they would love, and that is also captivating and current.
Where do you get your design inspiration?
Social media and the Internet, in general, are great for inspiration. I follow artists and designers who I admire to see what they are working on.
What have been some of your favourite covers that you’ve created for Tellwell? Tell us why.
I’ve had the pleasure of working on several book covers for the talented fiction author Monique Gliozzi, who lives in Australia. Monique’s books Foresight, Vestige and Diversity are paranormal thriller/mysteries and we wanted the covers to evoke a sense of supernatural spookiness.
Monique had a clear idea of what type of cover she wanted and provided us with really great, detailed instructions. I used a number of design elements to create a sense of haunting and mystique, such as the illusion of depth, partially hidden titles and objects, and surrealism.
We love seeing our Tellwell authors crushing it! From top award wins, to featured interviews, to rave reviews – we’re offering a huge congratulations to our authors for these terrific accomplishments!
AWARDS
Madalsa and Zuivere’s intergenerational poetry collection Get Lost Dirty Covid-19! won the IndieReader Discovery Award for Best Poetry Book! Described by IndieReader as engaging, emotive and enormously relevant, this poetry collection comes from a mother-daughter duo, providing the perspective of two different generations on this world-changing subject.
The book features nine COVID-19 themes with heart-touching poems relating to the isolation and pain we all felt in early 2020, to the bright and optimistic hope we feel now as we enter the new, vaccinated world.
