Beryl Singleton Bissell

Blogging at Fresh Fiction

Beryl Singletary Bissell | One Writer's View
August 13, 2007
Have you ever written to tell an author how much you've loved their book and then waited, hoping for an answer, in vain? I  Read More...

Dear Reader

When my book, THE SCENT OF GOD, was purchased by Counterpoint NY for publication in 2006, I thought the hard work of writing a book was finished. I didn’t realize that the hard work of being an author had just begun. After my publisher sent me on a national tour and a 20 city satellite radio interview tour, the real book marketing and publicity began – the talks to churches, libraries, organizations, book clubs, and even monasteries, and the interactions with readers across the nation and internationally. Many weeks I’ve been away more often than I’ve been home.

Of these events, my very favorites are speaking to book clubs in person if possible, and if not, via telephone conference call, and writing back to every reader who writes to me. Each letter or e-mail I receive gives me the chance to connect in a personal way with my readers and I’ve made many new and wonderful friends because these readers have taken the time to write to me.

I don’t know how many authors take the time to respond personally to the letters they get, but I do know how much those letters mean to them --often helping to subdue the nasty internal critic most writers must deal with. That critic does an excellent job questioning their ability to write well or to tell a story that will interest a reader. So on behalf of writers everywhere, let me encourage you to write to an author if you love their work. You will not only encourage them to keep writing, but you might even get an answer from them!

Because we all must grapple with love and doubt, guilt and forgiveness, books talk to us in ways that lectures do not. When we get involved in a good book, we often find ourselves recognizing what the book’s characters are going through. Yes, we say, I know that feeling, I’ve been there. And, though those characters’ lives might be totally different from our lives, we enter their struggles with them, learn from their mistakes, and return to our own lives a bit wiser and perhaps even a bit more compassionate.

I’ve had the joy of knowing that many readers have responded in this way to my book, THE SCENT OF GOD, which was selected as a “notable Book Sense Pick.” And when The Minneapolis Star Tribune (the biggest newspaper in a state that grows writers as prolifically as it grows crops) named me "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors," I felt immensely honored.

I hope you will read my book and will tell others about it and perhaps even give it as gifts. Your recommendation is worth more than any review or advertising campaign. Thanks for reading, and have a great summer!!!

Beryl Singleton Bissell

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Beryl Singleton Bissell is a Minneapolis Star Tribune Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors. Her debut memoir, The Scent of God, was published to wide national acclaim in 2006 and was released in paperback in April 2007.

Bissell was born in Saddle River New Jersey, grew up in Puerto Rico, entered a New Jersey cloister at the age of 18 and left fifteen years later when she fell in love with a priest/professor from Rome. She's been a nun, a wife, a widow, a single mother, a divorcee, and for the past ten years has been happily married to a man who is nine years younger than she is.

She has worked as a set designer in Puerto Rico, as national coordinator for a Catholic lay organization based in New Jersey; designed and sold 18-karat Italian gold jewelry; was associate development director for Milkweed Editions. Her life as a writer sprouted wings when she won the 1997 Loft Creative Nonfiction Award and received a Minnesota State Arts Board grant in 2000 for her memoir-in process: The Scent of God. For the past eight years she has been a columnist for the Cook County News Herald, a free-lance writer for various regional and national magazines, and a popular blogger at Gather.com.

Bissell lives on the North Shore of Lake Superior with her husband Bill and their beloved old dog Shelby. Bissell has two children, a son Thomas and a daughter Francesca who died in 2001. Three grandchildren and five step grand-children complete the family for this former nun who planned to never marry.

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