Outskirts Press Presents Dawn DiRaimondo, Psy.D, author of Surviving Sibling Loss: The Invisible Thread That Connects Us Through Life and Death

Author Dawn DiRaimondo, Psy.D is taking her latest book, Surviving Sibling Loss: The Invisible Thread That Connects Us Through Life and Death on tour – a Virtual Book Tour, that is, with Outskirts Press! Technology has created a wide variety of ways to reach audiences all over the world. All it takes is a little thinking outside the box, and nowadays you can market a self-published book in a variety of affordable and impactful ways. Virtual book tours, for example, are a great way to connect with readers from all corners of the globe, all from the comfort of your own home. Join Dawn DiRaimondo, Psy.D and Surviving Sibling Loss: The Invisible Thread That Connects Us Through Life and Death as they appear in features and interviews (such as the one below) in the weeks and months ahead!


Luckily for us, Dawn was kind enough to answer a few questions as the tour was getting started so that we can give you a sneak peek into the mind of the creator of Surviving Sibling Loss: The Invisible Thread That Connects Us Through Life and Death.

OP: Tell us a little bit about Surviving Sibling Loss: The Invisible Thread That Connects Us Through Life and Death. What is it about?

Dawn:  Surviving Sibling Loss interweaves both my personal and professional experience with sibling loss. I begin with my own experience of losing my younger brother in 2004, while he was serving in Iraq. I also interviewed fourteen people that also lost one, and in several cases, two siblings. If people can’t relate to losing a sibling through war, they may relate to losing siblings through suicide, cancer, accidents, homicide and more. I share clinical insights about bereavement, as well as a chapters with excerpts from my interviews and a chapter on all of the most helpful things we did to cope after the death of our siblings. This book is designed to not only help people that have experienced significant loss, but also the people in their lives (parents, partners, friends and even therapists) that want to better understand how to support them. My hope is that after reading (or listening to) my book, surviving siblings are left feeling understood, validated and have a number of ideas on how to both navigate through their grief, and continue to honor their lost siblings as well.

OP: Why did you decide to write this story?

Dawn:  When my brother, Michael, died in 2004, I found only one book written about the loss of a sibling. Last fall, one of my clients shared with me that there wasn’t much written about sibling loss. I looked into it and found only a handful of books, and even less on Audible. I was disappointed and surprised to learn this and knew I needed to write this book. Siblings often feel lost in the grief process, as most of the focus and support (including their own) is geared towards their parents. The significance of what is feels like to go through life without one’s brother and/or sister is vastly unknown to others. Many people, including myself, report feeling like a part of them has died too after losing a sibling and have no idea how to process that level of grief. As a psychologist, I specialize in working with people who have gone through significant loss. Young people especially feel alone in their grief, as most people their age don’t experience significant loss for many years. Mainstream American culture doesn’t offer any traditions beyond a funeral to help people with the grieving process, as other cultures and religions do. Even our vocabulary and the English language lacks enough words to describe the feelings of grief, in part I believe, because people don’t want to talk about it. All of which leaves people feeling alone, not understood and under-supported. I want to help change the conversation around grief. I want to help normalize the feelings experienced and show people how to live with significant loss versus feel pressure to “move on”, which is something they can’t and don’t want to do. You don’t move on after the death of a child or sibling, you learn to live with that loss and my hope is that this books helps people learn how to better do that.

OP: How did you get your book published?

Dawn: After interviewing several people that published books, I decided to self-publish through Outskirts Press. My book is available in print, e-book formats and will be available on Audible very shortly.

OP: What types of readers would be interested in this story?

Dawn: People that have lost siblings, children, and their friends and family that want to better understand and support them. I also include a chapter for therapists and ideas to bring to one’s therapy, including insights and information for clinicians that may not have gone through significant loss yet themselves. I think anyone that has experienced a significant loss would find value and helpful information in this book.

OP: What is special about your book?  

Dawn:  I think the fact that I write this book from both a personal experience of losing my brother and as a clinical psychologist that specializes in significant loss, is unique and valuable. I purposely wrote the chapters to be short and easy to read because I know that traumatized and grieving people can’t concentrate for long, often feel fatigued and have difficulty with focus and memory. I structured the book so that people can easily skip around to the chapters they want to read or go back and re-read. The book is relatively short and the feedback I am getting is that it is easy to read, has a conversational writing style, and is comforting and helpful. I also think the interviews of the fourteen people I included, represent so many different ways people have lost siblings (suicide, homicide, cancer, accidents, etc) that hopefully people can relate to someone’s story and experiences in this book. I include feelings and dilemmas that I think people who haven’t lost a sibling yet wouldn’t realize or think of, i.e. what it is like to become an only child for the first time, to lose a twin, how hard it is to be asked how many siblings you have after they have died. Since many people don’t know what to say to someone after their loved one dies, I included a segment from the interviews on what to say and not to say to people after they lost their sibling.

OP: What differentiates it from other books in the same category?

Dawn: There aren’t many books written on sibling loss, a handful or so. I don’t think there are any written by someone that is also a therapist. As a psychologist, I am trained to give people information in a way they can take in, understand, feel comforted by and not feel reactive to or defensive about. My hope is that this skill translates into my writing style as well.

OP: Have you published any other books?

Dawn: No, just a dissertation (in 2002 on using music in therapy with adolescents).

OP: Do you plan to publish more?

Dawn: Haha. Can you ask me this again in a year? I am getting that question a lot lately. I don’t know, probably but not yet. This book was written in 2020 during stolen moments with two children home from school all year due to Covid, along with working from home (therapy via zoom) and a new puppy. I suppose if I felt inspired about something enough, I will. I’m just hoping my kids will be back in school at that point and the world won’t be dealing with a global pandemic any longer. One can wish. I would like to start a podcast about grief, as well as other topics that are commonly talked about in therapy sessions.

OP: Thanks for your time, Dawn! We look forward to learning more about you as you visit other bloggers!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dawn DiRaimondo, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist in Sacramento, California, where she lives with her husband and two children. She has over 20 years of experience working with adolescents, young adults, and adults. Her private practice specializes in treating people with significant grief and loss, depression, anxiety, and ADHD. Dr. DiRaimondo is also engaged in the emerging field of nutritional psychiatry and the interplay between nutrition and mental health.

For more information or to contact the author, visit https://www.outskirtspress.com/survivingsiblingloss

This author purchased the Virtual Book Tour marketing option, which allows self-publishing authors to connect with bloggers and harness the power of the blogosphere by taking their book on the “virtual road.” Learn more about this service by visiting your Publishing Center and reviewing the available marketing options.

Are you an author looking for help to market your self-published book?

Learn More

 

Life in the Morgue by Lance Anderson

Technology has created a wide variety of ways to reach audiences all over the world. It takes is a little thinking outside the box and you can market a self-published book in creative, affordable and impactful ways. Consider book tours! Tours are a great way to connect with your readers and technology has made them easier and more cost effective than ever!

Author Lance Anderson is taking his latest book Life in the Morgue, on tour — a Virtual Book Tour with Outskirts Press. This will allow Lance to take his book into the far corners of the globe, all from the comfort of his own home! Keep an eye out for Lance’s book as he will be featured on several blogs over the weeks and months ahead!


Luckily for us, Lance was kind enough to answer a few questions as the tour was getting started so that we can give you a sneak peek into the mind of the creator of Life in the Morgue.

OP: Tell us a little bit about Life in the Morgue. What is it about?

Lance: The best way I can describe this book is it’s not what you think it is. It is not a horror or gross, it is more focused on the people that actually work in the morgue, and their quirks and about the things that they had to deal with. The office itself and how things were run, the inter office politics and even some state and local government shenanigans. There was another saying at the office “dead people don’t vote” so sometimes things could get out of hand. With that being said the people that I worked with in real life always treated the deceased with the same respect whether they were famous or well connected with lots of money or a drug overdose found in an alley. The doctors there were all top notch and knew what they were doing. Greg the main character is just a normal blue-collar guy who managed to get this job and it so much more than he expected it to be. It becomes an all-consuming life for him, he sees and experiences things he or most people never thought about in his normal regular life.

OP: Why did you decide to write this story?

Lance: I wrote the book because no matter where I go, once people find out where I worked they all want to hear stories about what happens there, or specific cases, and some of the types of things that I had to deal with. I was at a friend’s backyard cook out a few weeks ago. A young married couple had arrived, and the husband walked right past the hosts and came and sat next to me and started talking. His wife came over and told him it was pretty rude to not say hi to the hosts first. He responded the only reason I came is because Lance was going to be here, he is going to make this an interesting day.. A woman that had recently started dating one of my other friends was sitting next to me. I had only met her on one other occasion chimed in with “what’s going to make it more interesting?” He looked at her and said, “go ahead, ask him where he used to work!” She did, so I told her, and spent most the rest of the afternoon telling morgue stories and talking about cases. It only took a few minutes when I noticed most everyone in the back yard was now standing around the table I was sitting at listening to the stories. People find the stories intriguing, funny, sad and dramatic, and are always asking for more. I had been asked by countless people to write about it over the past several years, so I think it will appeal to lots of people.

OP: How did you get your book published?

Lance: I did a lot of internet research on going to a major publisher vs. self-publishing and decided that Outskirts Press seemed to offer everything I was going to need to turn this into a book. Outskirts made it very easy to go through the whole process.

OP: What types of readers would be interested in this story?

Lance: The book is written as a fiction, but I think it will appeal to anyone that enjoys the inner working of what happens at a morgue or specifically the medical examiner’s office. The story has drama, humor, some office politics and action. I think the story crosses several genres and will appeal to many different types of people.

OP: What is special about your book?

Lance: Well I think it is written from a perspective that hasn’t been seen before. Greg Benson is just an ordinary guy getting through life as best he can. He suddenly finds himself dealing with things and situations that never would have entered his mind that this stuff could happen. The book is written as a fiction but, I used the basis of real situations in the storyline. Some of the situations are twisted around a bit and I did not use real names or locations. I used a Steven king quote in the beginning of the book “Fiction is just the truth wrapped in lies” and I think there is a lot of validity in that statement.

OP: What differentiates it from other books in the same category?

Lance: I did a lot of research trying to find a book to compare it to and really did not find one that I could match it with. Most of the other books I have seen about Morgues or Medical Examiners seemed to be non-fiction case studies or were highlighting the deceased and what brought them into the morgue. This is a good story about a few years in the life of someone who was not really trained or equipped to deal with what he saw, but he managed to excel anyway. Everyday people never think about this stuff and what can and does happen on a daily basis.

OP: Have you published any other books?

Lance: I have co-written a movie script with a friend and it was shopped around and picked up by a major production company and they asked if I could write a sequel, so I did, and they loved that as well. Currently they are sitting in a holding pattern, but we are still in contact and they say they are going to produce them but won’t put a date on when.

OP: Do you plan to publish more?

Lance: Well I am an active paranormal investigator as well and have plans to write about a particular ghost hunt, I was on as well as another book that covers many other investigations I have done over the years. Who knows, if Life in the Morgue does well. I have enough stories and scenarios to write a sequel to that, maybe even a third.

OP: Thanks for your time, Lance! We look forward to learning more about you as you visit other bloggers!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lance Anderson spent most of his life as an ironworker until he decided it was time for a change. He took a job at the medical examiner’s office, where he worked for six years and assisted in more than two thousand cases until he was forced to retire due to vision problems. Life in the Morgue is his debut novel, but he has also written two movie scripts that are in the process of being produced.

For more information or to contact the author, visit https://www.outskirtspress.com/lifeinthemorgue

This author purchased the Virtual Book Tour marketing option, which allows self-publishing authors to connect with bloggers and harness the power of the blogosphere by taking their book on the “virtual road.” Learn more about this service by visiting your Publishing Center and reviewing the available marketing options.

Are you an author looking for help to market your self-published book?

Learn More

 

Amazon Featured Book-of-the-Week

Here’s this week’s Featured Book-of-the-Week available now on Amazon.com!


The Cry of a Widow

by Abiola Davis
(5 Stars – 2 Customer Reviews)

Price: $19.95

Abiola Davis’s “The Cry of a Widow.” In the cry of a widow, Rebecca wakes up one Sunday morning thinking to herself, “it’s just another day.” She quickly discovers that this was no ordinary day, and that this day… would change the rest of her life forever. An inspiring true story about the everyday challenge and courage one faces as a widow/widower.

Please note that product prices and availability are subject to change. Prices and availability were accurate at the time of this posting; however, they may differ from those you see when you visit Amazon.com.© Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.All rights reserved. Amazon, Amazon.com, the Amazon.com logo, and 1-Click are registered trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Amazon.com, 410 Terry Avenue N., Seattle, WA 98109-5210.