Tag Archives: denise turney

Find out if you’re falling in love

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By Denise Turney

You feel alive, alert and in tune with everything around you, in ways that you hadn’t before you met your lover!  To exclaim that life is wonderful feels like such an understatement to you. If everyone could feel the way you feel right now, the world would be a much better place. Emotions and moods like depression, frustration, anger and sadness might not exist.

Being in love with someone else is one of the sweetest, most rewarding, feelings and experiences anyone could ever have!  Yet, a racing heart, overflow of hopefulness and a constant expectation that rich experiences will continue to unfold right before your eyes, doesn’t always point to the fact that you’ve joined in love with someone else.

What you’re experiencing could actually be lust. If you don’t pay attention, the relationship you’re having with your lover may not ascend beyond infatuation, could even dip downward into obsession. Neither you or your love wants that. To increase the chances that you’re actually in love and not feasting on lust, find out if what you’re experiencing meets the signs of falling in love.

According to Live Science, there are scientific signs of falling in love. These signs include thinking that the person you’re in a relationship with is unique or special. When you’re in love, you also focus on the positive traits your lover has.

Furthermore, “You bounce between exhilaration, euphoria, increased energy, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, trembling, a racing heart and accelerated breathing, as well as anxiety, panic and feelings of despair when your relationship suffers even the smallest setback.” The trick with this is to avoid longing for the “high” being in love brings. Get stuck on the “high” and you could find yourself jumping from relationship to relationship,, moving on to someone new whenever the “high” of being in love starts to wear off.

Longing to be with your lover all the time is another sign that you’re in love. Another sign that you’re in love is if you wonder what your lover would think about an outfit you wore, a new job promotion you received, how your home would look if you rearranged the furniture, etc. Bottom line. You care about what your lover thinks. You also want to see and help make them feel happiness, joy and satisfaction.

If you want your relationship to last throughout the remainder of your physical experience, you’re going to have to learn how to honor, respect, celebrate and appreciate your lover long after the feelings of being “in love” have evolved into something deeper. Appreciating the small, everyday things the person you love does goes a long way. So too does communicating with your lover regularly so you can deepen the emotional bond that you share.

It’s this that Raymond and Brenda learn as they evolve and grow as scenes unfold throughout Love Pour Over Me.

Share the experience. Get your copy of “Love Pour Over Me” Now at –

http://www.ebookit.com/books/0000001582/Love-Pour-Over-Me.html

Opening to love is a great awakening

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By Denise Turney
Love may never be fully defined. It’s outside the realm of human logic. Those who experience its impact, serving as conduits for love to flow through, generally say the most they can do is feel it. For some, that may come while creating a novel. For others, it might occur while jogging, hiking or white river rafting.

Our painful pasts

Most of us know when we’ve been touched by love. We feel joy, peace and care. We may also feel as if everything is okay. Worry, stress, anxiety and concern melt away in the face of love. Knowing this, it’s a marvel that we don’t pursue love more, every second of the day and night.

Painful past experiences may be a leading reason why more of us don’t pursue, open to love. To truly be open to love, we have to give and receive love. If we’ve been hurt in the past (i.e. relationship breakup, career dream failure or sidestep), we might become convinced that those setbacks will happen every time we go after something we think we lead us to love.

Awakening to a marvelous way of being

If we find success, we might even feel that we’re not worthy of constant (I’m talking never turning off) love. As Raymond Clarke learns in “Love Pour Over Me,” both of these situations are caused by a lack of forgiveness, also known as an unwillingness to release the past.

Releasing people from the past is probably the majority of the work that psychologists do, as most, if not all pain, is rooted to a past event. To get and stay unblocked, forgiveness is absolutely necessary. There’s no way around it. All the singing, dancing, money giving and church going in the world won’t remove the need to forgive.

For Raymond, it’s a lesson that takes years to learn, but later is better than never.

What event from the past still has you? What’s holding you captive? Let love show you how to let it go. It’s time you awakened and advanced.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! 

Why do some people succeed while others don’t?

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By Denise Turney

You probably started noticing it when you were in pre-school or kindergarten. Some people consistently outperform others, and this, without intending to. It just seems to happen. In fact, sometimes no amount of training appears able to help some people succeed.

Education or knowing how to do certain tasks plays a role. Repetition or doing a job until the subconscious mind takes over, making the work seem natural (as if you’d been doing the work all your life) also plays a role.

However, nothing may cause a person to succeed more than self-confidence. Martin Luther is quoted as saying that, “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.”

It takes self-confidence to think you can reach a goal. It takes self-confidence to try a new endeavor, apply for a job, go out on a date, make a new friend, write and publish a novel, etc. The list of things it takes self-confidence to pull off may be endless.

If you’ve struggled with self-confidence since you were a kid, consider setting a small, short-term goal for yourself. Write down resources (i.e. computer, transportation) necessary to achieve the goal. Also, write down the specific steps (i.e. filling out a job application, creating a sample CD, writing the outline for a research paper) you’re going to take to achieve the goal.

As you achieve more goals, you’re self-confidence will build. Trainers use this approach to build a boxer’s confidence, pairing new boxers with opponents they know the boxer can defeat. Before long, a boxer can build enough confidence to step inside the ring with a heavyweight.

By setting and fulfilling small, then larger goals, your self-confidence could also increase. To tell if your confidence is gaining strength, think about how often you try something new, how often you introduce yourself to someone you never met before, how many new experiences you allow into your life each day or week.

The more self-confident you are, the more risks you’ll take and the more enriching experiences you’ll enjoy. Taking on wise risks and leaping into more rewarding experiences could also find you succeeding more, surpassing your biggest goals. As Eleanor Roosevelt shared, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'”

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn how Love Pour Over Me‘s Raymond Clarke builds his confidence (especially his confidence to accept and receive love), hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.

Why Is Life Like a Rollercoaster?

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By Denise Turney

Like a rollercoaster, life seems to vacillate, going up and down. It took me several years to figure this out.

When I was a kid, my major concern was continuing to find fun things to do to fill up my day. That concern was swept away like water running off a counter edge as I played with neighbors, my sister and my brothers. Having fun was so easy then. It was my only job, the only thing I had to do. Over the years, my life (as I’m sure yours has to) has filled up with work, family responsibilities and other projects, daily responsibilities that, over time, can easily find life in this world feeling like a rollercoaster.

Riding the Life Rollercoaster

The days seem to be gone when each day seemed the same as the day before, except for the new and exciting trick, game or other fun activity my siblings, friends and I engaged in. Gone are the days when the only thing that made life in this world feel like a rollercoaster to me were major changes in the weather. I can still see myself sitting close to my family’s living room window on Dow Street watching rain streak slowly down the glass pane. I’d look out at the rain and wish it would go away. Forget the fact that rain watered plants, trees and crop, filling the earth with color and food. I wanted to go outside and play.

Then I started school (not my choice) and I started dealing with feeling propelled (pushed might be a better word) to do things that I didn’t want to do. Discovered teachers had rules, some that I questioned. Then it was off to college (of course, so I could earn more money at a job). Like you may have, I worked while I went to college, had a work/study job in the college traffic ticket office. After college it was off to a full-time job and that’s when life started taking on more of a rollercoaster effect.


My days were no longer filled with just having fun. In fact, when I started paying bills all by myself, days swung up higher and down further, intensifying the rollercoaster effect. After awhile, I no longer felt as if I could predict how my upcoming days would go, thinking they would only consist of fun-fun-fun. When you think about it, this might be a good thing. After all, do we really want to know how our days are going to go before they happen upon us? I’d think that would be a bit boring. But, then again, we’d also probably feel more in control of our lives.

Well, friends, fact is life in this world is like a rollercoaster. We hit high notes and then may have experiences that we feel will knock the wind right out of us. We’re all in this together, having different individual experiences that have common themes to them. As Raymond Clarke and his friends do in the new book, Love Pour Over Me, we can take the edge off the ups and downs by supporting each other. We can also get back to having more fun.

Get your copy of “Love Pour Over Me” Now at –

http://www.ebookit.com/books/0000001582/Love-Pour-Over-Me.html

Sources:

Amazon.com – http://www.amazon.com/Love-Pour-Over-Me-ebook/dp/B007MC0Z2C

Barnes & Noble – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/love-pour-over-me-denise-turney/1109600654

Feature Interview with Raymond Clarke, Starring in Love Pour Over Me

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Meet Raymond Clarke:  Born in Dayton, Ohio in the 1960s, Raymond Clarke is a world class track and field athlete. His athletic exploits have landed him on the cover of magazines like Athletic Ambassador, Track Historian and Sports Hall of Famers. Although rarely discovered, Raymond’s academic achievements are on par with his sports accomplishments, earning him Class Valedictorian of his graduating class. He has overcome great odds, tremendous childhood challenges, many of which have stopped millions of other men and women. While at a famous university in Pennsylvania, he shares a myriad of ups, downs and good-good times, as well as harrowing experiences (some life threatening), with three of his best male friends. Raymond Clarke’s determination and resilience, and, more importantly, his healed heart, help him see and later accept the woman he was born to love. This fictional character’s story is told in detail in the new book, Love Pour Over Me which is available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Ebookit.com, Google Books, iTunes, print bookstores and libraries.

love pour over me book by denise turney

Denise: How are you able to love Brenda so deeply considering the fact that your mom, the most important woman in a man’s life, left you?

Raymond: If you’ve ever known something was right deep in your gut, you’ll understand when I tell you I knew, I instinctively knew, Brenda was my woman. Despite all we went through, nothing could disturb that.

Denise: Did you ever go looking for your mother?

Raymond: (Sigh). No. I thought about her a lot, especially when I was a kid, but I never took off and starting looking for my mom. I wouldn’t even have known where to start.

Denise: Why did you choose UPemb?

Raymond: Coach Carter (he’s probably the closest thing I had to a loving father) and the school’s awesome track and field program. Track is my passion. Thank God, I’ve been very good at the sport since I was a kid. Plus, I got a scholarship to UPemb and with Coach Carter’s help I know I can earn a gold medal in the Olympics.

Denise: You hang out with a cool group of friends. What do these guys mean to you?

Raymond: Oh, man. Anthony, Patrick and Doug, these three dudes are my brothers. Sure. We’ve had our close calls, especially me and Anthony. The two of us have damn near cheated death and more than once. But we always work things out. I love those dudes. They’re like family. (shaking his head) We have some good times together! Our ladies get along pretty good with each other too, well. . . most of them.

Denise: Do you keep in touch with your friend from high school, the guy you ran with back in the day? . . . . .

Read the rest of this feature interview at:  http://www.lenasledgeblog.com/2012/09/raymond-clark-interview-by-denise.html

Get your copy of “Love Pour Over Me” Now at –

http://www.ebookit.com/books/0000001582/Love-Pour-Over-Me.html

What Makes Women and Men Fall in Love?

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By Denise Turney

Years ago I thought falling in love was something orchestrated only by heaven. Now, I wonder if that’s really the case. True. Little — if anything, feels as invigorating, as intoxicating and as all consuming as falling in love. Yet, as magical as falling in love feels, studies have revealed that the process of falling in love can be orchestrated, with intent, by everyday folk.

Power Feelings of Falling in Love

Your Amazing Brain says we fall in love in three stages. In the first stage, we feel lust (others might call it infatuation) for someone. Then, we move on to attraction and finally the third stage of attraction. The entire time we are moving through each of these stages, our brains are fast at work, causing the process to seem almost mechanical.

During the first stage estrogen (women) and testosterone (men) increases. It’s no wonder we feel so nervous and giddy during this stage. Hormones are rushing through our systems, including our brains, at heightened levels. It’s during the attraction stage that we can’t seem to stop thinking about a person. Adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin (the godmother of good feelings) take center stage during the attraction stage. We also tend to view the person we’re falling in love with as being perfect or damn near perfect. Some refer to this as wearing rose-colored glasses (of course, sooner or later, those glasses come off).

After we’ve been in a relationship with someone for several weeks or months, we may start to enter the attachment stage. This is when we start producing an increase of oxytocin and vasopressin. However, should our brains start producing or secreting lower levels of these hormones, we might start feeling less in-love with a person.

Growing Into Deeper Love With Someone

Studies have shown that the process of falling in love can be orchestrated if couples spend enough time together to allow their brains to move through the stages. There’s also still more research being done to discover what happens to our brains and our bodies during the early, middle and late stages of being in love. Perhaps we’ll never fully know what happens to us during the time in our lives when we can feel so out of control as we start feeling incredibly strong emotions when we meet and/or think about someone. What we do know is that the feelings generally don’t last.

If we run away from relationship challenges and don’t have conviction about a loving relationship, we may never reach deep commitment, we may never enter the deepest and sweetest places of a relationship. It’s what Raymond and Brenda learn in Love Pour Over Me as they try to understand why they feel so drawn to each other, almost as if heaven is pushing them together, so soon after they meet at college.

Falling and staying in love would be easy if all we had to do was focus on the one we felt a strong emotional and psychological connection to. But, that’s not the way it goes. As happens with Brenda and Raymond in the book Love Pour Over Me, other events of our lives seem to get in the way. There are jobs to go to, children to care for, houses to keep up, friends to hang out with . . . the list goes on and on and on . . .

Before you know it, we’re not feeling so in love anymore. Maybe it’s because our minds and our brains get cluttered with too many other things to focus on. Who knows? What remains sure is that, whether studied or not, little beats or compares to the feelings of falling in love. It’s an exhilarating time, and when it’s right, when a relationship can and does stand the test of time (and any other test thrown its way), being in love is right – perfect.

Thank you for reading my blog. Please return often and read more blog posts. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You!

Sources:

Love Pour Over Me – http://www.ebookit.com/books/0000001582/Love-Pour-Over-Me.html

Your Amazing Brain: The Science of Love – http://www.youramazingbrain.org/lovesex/sciencelove.htm

Psychology Today: The Early Stages of Falling in Love – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-hardy/201203/the-early-stages-falling-in-love

Taping Into Your Inner Strength

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By Denise Turney

Believe it or not, you have limitless inner strength. There is a place inside you that never fails. There is a place inside of you that has the answer to every question you could ever ask. Right now . . . that place exists inside of you.

Stop Believing Lies About Yourself; Accept the Truth

The reason you may not believe this is because, as humans, we also listen to deception and lies. If we continue to listen to lies about ourselves we may start to believe the lies. The catch is that we behave or act in alignment with our beliefs. Even Superman couldn’t get around this if he tried. Our thoughts (a belief is simply a thought you think over and over) guide and shape our behavior.

Add to this the fact that we can have experiences that seem to confirm lies we’ve been told about ourselves and it’s not hard to see why we can, at times, feel lost, confused or uncertain. For example, if we believe a lie that we are ignorant and we score low on a school exam we may start to strengthen our belief in the lie that we are ignorant. Let our friends, classmates and/or parents see our low test score and start to tease us or even call us “dumb” and you can see where we could take the belief.

In time, we might stop raising our hand when asked the answer to a question in class. As adults we might shy away from volunteering to lead projects at work for fear that we will fail (all of this thought and behavior being driven by the belief that we are ignorant). We might even feel angry, perhaps absolutely outraged, when people refer to us as “dumb” – however, if the belief that we are ignorant isn’t examined and seen for the lie that it is we may continue to avoid situations that call for us to answer questions, etc.

Getting to the Truth

Now imagine what would happen to us if we believed 50 lies about ourselves. And here we are. It’s the reason we look out and see the world we see.

This common human struggle is one Love Pour Over Me’s main character, Raymond Clarke, faces. Like you may have, Raymond learned to believe lies about himself when he was a child. Many of the lies were passed down to him from his father (a man who also believed lies about himself) and people in his environment.

It’s not until he is grown, well into his adult years, that Raymond starts to examine the lies, turning them over, looking at their root and seeing the truth about them – that they are just that . . . lies, nothing more. Yet, he’s made a habit out of believing lies about himself (perhaps to avoid seeing that people who loved him but who didn’t know better themselves had, unknowingly, told him lies even cloaking them in words of “this is good for you” or “this is best”).

Fortunately, Raymond longs for the truth. It’s this longing that keeps him moving forward, that connects him with Brenda.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You!

Writing to Heal Yourself and to Awaken to Your True Greatness

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By Denise Turney

writing to heal yourself

Poetry, short story, journal and novel writing can be therapeutic, allowing children and adults to discover hidden thoughts and parts of themselves. These therapeutic benefits can be experienced whether you are deliberately writing to heal yourself or you’re writing to express yourself artistically.

Writing to Heal Inner Conflicts

At first glance, it might not seem as if writing can help you to heal inner conflicts. However, ask any writer, particularly a book author, if he wasn’t surprised at how book characters and storylines he created turned out. You’ll likely hear the writer tell you that he was surprised to discover he felt compelled to have one or more events happen to a character.

It’s as though hidden thoughts the author or book writer has within herself are being revealed through her work, guiding her to have book characters undergo certain experiences so the author can begin to heal herself. Akin to what actress, Angelina Jolie, shared during an interview on The Actor’s Studio about the acting process, stories and scenes authors create might also reveal future experiences authors will have in their personal lives.

Writing to Connect with Our Inner Self

One thing is certain; there is a part of us that knows the very path, the very choices, we should make. As we remove blockages to receiving and understanding this part of ourselves, we begin to heal. Hence, the joy of writing!

Although he isn’t consciously aware that he is writing to heal himself, Raymond Clarke (a college student and the main character in the African America fiction novel, Love Pour Over Me) sits down and starts penning his thoughts in a journal. Writing helps him to deal with perceptions and beliefs he has about himself regarding abuse and pain he suffered at his father’s hands. Writing also helps Raymond to capture and record beautiful and joyous experiences he shares with his friends and the woman he loves.

Although Raymond doesn’t do this, you can also write to record and interpret your dreams. This may prove particularly helpful should you find yourself having repetitive dreams which might be a sign that your subconscious mind is trying to get a message through to you.

Of course, writing can also be used to share stories with a local or global audience. It is at this point that healing (whether you pen a mystery, romance, etc.) you experience may start to impact hundreds, thousands of millions of readers.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You!

Great Novels Make Reading to Learn Fun

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By Denise Turney

Gain good reading comprehension skills and you can shorten the amount of time it takes you to learn. You can also improve your communication skills and gain the confidence to talk with people from diverse backgrounds because you know you’re well versed on several interesting subjects.

Reading Fiction is a Gateway to Learning

Reading books filled with illustrations and dates that illustrations historic events occurred on and reading books filled with facts and numbers can help you learn. However, you might not have a lot of fun learning this way. In fact, this type of reading might feel like work.

It’s a reason schools and youth organizations use colorful fiction books to teach children how to read, count and learn basic subjects like science and history. When it comes to older children and adults, reading good fiction can help stimulate independent thinking. Good fiction can also help you to solve a puzzle you have been striving to find the answer to for several days, weeks or months.

Novels Can Hold Answers to Challenging Questions

Sometimes the answers to your questions might be revealed in dialogue shared between two characters in a novel. Other times you may arrive at an answer to something that has been puzzling you after following the ins and outs of a romantic or mysterious relationship highlighted in the pages of a novel. You may even come to realize that you are not alone as you deal with a perception challenge, especially as you continue to read and discover that similar challenges keep coming up for your favorite book characters. This is one of the benefits gained while reading Love Pour Over Me. [Keep in mind that real people create novels and sometimes they include real life perception challenges they’ve faced in stories they write.]

But perhaps most of all, reading good fiction is a great way to learn grammar skills. It’s also a great way to learn how to become a talented storyteller yourself. [It’s no wonder great authors advise up and coming writers to read a lot of good fiction.]

So enjoy curling up with a good novel. Read books to your children and young relatives. Give books to family, friends and colleagues for holidays, etc. Get to know characters in intriguing novels and let yourself grow, expand and learn.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Even if you choose not to purchase your copy of Love Pour Over Me today, I encourage you to “consider Love.”

Authors Getting the Most out of Book Blog Tours

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By Denise Turney

The first time I heard the term “blog tour” I thought the person I was communicating with was talking about an online radio tour. Turns out my assumption was only partially accurate.

Meet New Readers on Book Blog Tours

Blog tours can include a blend of written and oral author interviews. They can also include book reviews, with some blog tour hosts posting reviews of your books at retail websites like Amazon.com, Google Books or Barnes & Noble.com. During the early days that your book is on the market these book reviews can be particularly influential, helping book buyers to decide whether or not they want to pay for and read your book.

Then again, for book buyers like me, the reviews might not hold much weight as I decide whether or not to buy and read a book based on excerpts I read. I’ve got to get a feel for the writer’s style, the way the writer works with words, causing them to flow like sweet music.

All said — book reviews certainly don’t hurt.

Other rewards and benefits you can receive as an author conducting book blog tours include, of course, introducing yourself and your books to new readers. This is a key takeaway for authors. After all, if you plan on enjoying a lengthy writing career you want to attract new readers. Blog tours definitely helped me to introduce Raymond Clarke and other main characters in Love Pour Over Me to new book readers.

Additional Book Blog Tour Benefits

As an author, whether you write fiction or nonfiction, when you go on blog tours you can reap additional benefits. Some of these benefits include:

  • Creating relationships with blog owners (make sure you thank blog owners for supporting you before and after your blog tour runs)
  • Opportunities to conduct your first radio interviews
  • Reasons to write and distribute press releases about your new books
  • Chance to have your name, bio and book information listed at several book blogs
  • Additional links tracking into your official book website (helps improve your website’s search engine rankings)
  • Opportunities to answer questions posed by blog visitors

As a tip when scheduling book blog tours, I recommend that you pay no more than $50 to $60 for a four-week blog tour. I paid $50 for a four-week blog tour which put my book, Love Pour Over Me, in front of thousands of book buyers.

To get the most out of your blog tour make sure you create accounts at social media sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google Plus and StumbleUpon. Share your blog interviews with follows at these social media sites. Also be sure to respond to questions hosts and visitors post on your blog tour.

Also, you may be able to attract more followers to your blog tour if you giveaway prizes and/or free copies of your books. If you’re on Good Reads list your blog tour schedule at your Good Reads personal blog and in the Good Reads events section. Invite your Good Reads friends to attend your book blog tour.

Above all – have fun – lots of it! After all, isn’t that why you write? Because you love it!

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Even if you choose not to purchase your copy of Love Pour Over Me today, I encourage you to “consider Love.”