Sunday, February 27, 2011

Dr. Judith Orloff and Emotional Freedom




“Emotional Freedom is a must-read for anyone who's tired
of feeling frustrated, lonely, or stopped by fear."
-Deepak Chopra


I'd like to tell you about my friend and colleague Judith Orloff MD - a UCLA psychiatrist and a pioneer who bridges mainstream medicine with intuition, energy medicine, and spirituality. She invites you on a remarkable journey where you can embrace more happiness and mastery over negativity than you may have ever known. Our world is in the midst of a meltdown. She describes how to stay intuitively and spiritually centered in our times.

Dr. Orloff celebrates the exciting paperback launch of her New York Times bestseller Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life. She is treating you to an incredible one-time book-launch offer with special gifts from herself and friends such as Dr. Daniel Amen, Dr. Joan Borysenko, Dr. Michael Beckwith, and more!

To purchase the book and receive your "Celebrate Joy" special gift collection go to:

In Emotional Freedom Dr. Orloff states:
“I’m presenting the unique process I use with patients and in my own life to view emotions as a path to spiritual and intuitive awakening (not EFT). I synthesize traditional medicine with energy medicine to offer you new tools to master emotions and become heroes in your own life. Inner peace leads to outer peace in the world.”

Publisher's Weekly’s review of Emotional Freedom says:
“Superbly written..Dr. Orloff regards emotions as a training ground for the soul, and views ‘every victory over fear, anxiety, and resentment as a way to develop your spiritual muscles.’”

Emotional Freedom has rave reviews from USA Today, Dr. Candace Pert, Christiane Northrup, M.D., Caroline Myss, Dean Ornish, M.D., and Mary Oliver, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. They call it “spectacular,” “a must-read,” “a heartfelt, accessible guide,” and “resolutely compassionate.”

In the book, you will discover:
• Four questions to transform fear with courage
• What your emotional type is
• How to stop absorbing the emotions of others
• How to combat emotional vampires with compassion
• The spiritual meaning of depression and hope

Purchase book and claim your "Celebrate Joy" special gift collection at:

If you'd like to liberate yourself from negative emotions and compassionately own the moment in all situations instead of just reacting when your buttons get pushed go to:


Nelson Mandela said: “As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Help liberate others and please share this announcement with them. Your support makes us happy and grateful!

For more inspiration and to learn about the Emotional Freedom book tour schedule and sign up for our affiliate program visit DrJudithOrloff.com.
View Video click on link

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Judith Orloff, MD and Freedom from Negative Emotions



EMOTIONAL FREEDOM: LIBERATE YOURSELF FROM NEGATIVE EMOTIONS AND TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE
UPLIFTING NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER BY Judith Orloff MD (in paperback now!)
Judith Orloff MD, a UCLA psychiatrist, presents her unique approach for viewing emotions as a path to spiritual and intuitive awakening. You'll learn how to stop absorbing other people's negativity and how to stay calm instead of reacting when your buttons get . Synthesizing neuroscience and intuitive/energy medicine, this book liberates you from fear—and the emotional vampires who suck you dry.
Purchase book plus get your "Embrace Joy" gift collection at http://www.drjudithorloff.com/emotional-freedom-paperback/
Be sure to come back tomorrow for a full post about Dr. Orloff and her work. 

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

The Crime and Its Solution, the Backbone of the Mystery Novel



The crime and its solution remain the mystery novel's backbone. Fleshing that crime out, relating all those pieces to the whole is what everything else is clarifying or relating to and should do for you, the mystery writer, or you, the mystery reader.

A mystery may be construed as a contest between the sleuth and reader. In the best case scenario, between reader vs. writer, the sleuth will know just before the reader does the solution creating an "aha" moment for the reader. "I should have known that, I should have seen that coming, what did I miss," are the usual reader reactions if you, the writer, have done your job.

Gillian Roberts in You Can Write a Mystery, (1999)says "The unraveling of the clues provides much of the basic framework of your novel." 

She recommends trying to have one clue in each chapter. Of course, if your chapters are only 3 or 4 pages long this maybe unrealistic. However, it behooves you to plant enough clues to keep your reader engaged and searching for those clues like a game player in a game of Wheel of Fortune.

The red herrings reputation for diversion is not without caveat. Too many false clues, side trips, for your reader can get annoying and disrupt the  flow of the novel and the reader's enjoyment. You may wind up on their "do not read" list.

A clue can be nearly anything. Did you know that 85% of all communication is nonverbal?   Nonverbal communication, body language, especially to a detective, investigator or judge trained in reading what the person being questioned is not revealing via their body language is trusted more than words being said in answer to the questions they are asking. 

If a suspect fidgets, cannon maintain eye contact or starts to have a redness washing up form his/her chest, to throat, to face—would you believe anything much of what they are verbalizing?  Or would you read his/her body instead. 

This wouldn't be enough to convict anyone and if you gave several of your characters flaws, inconsistencies, imperfections, they could divert attention from your clues or your criminal. A physical condition that makes a characters eyes blink continuously, more often than seems normal, could indicate misdirection, or lies.  Or, it could also be just that a physical condition that causes this to happen in this particular person.

With cleverness and total recall, think "Colombo" here, a clue slipped in earlier, before it had any significance, becomes important. It could be the first few chapters of your novel sets those clues in place before the reader knows enough to notice them or their importance to the story. Or perhaps your sleuth will misinterpret the clue as June Fabrizio does in my novel Antique Armor when the armor seems bent on creating chaos and perhaps murder. 

As you do this remember the saggy middle, the hard to hold up ignorable middle of anything from a long rope, long sentence, long paragraph, long list of things, what a great place to hide a clue in plain sight.

Whatever you do play fair with your reader and your sleuth. If you started out with a list of clues you wanted to incorporate into your novel, as some writers do, did you and were the clues tactfully disposed of by the end of the novel satisfying sleuth, the story and the reader?

One way to make sure you have tied up all those loose ends and revealed your clues, in the right spot ,to the right people, at the right time and place, is to print out your manuscript draft and highlight all the clues you've planted. Do any of them still need explanation or follow up?

Satisfying the died in the wool mystery fan is simply being true to the craft, and not leading him/her down a dead end path or to a solution of the whole mystery by the introduction of a fly on the wall at the end that had no place in the novel until that exact moment before you wrote THE END. Play fair, play clever, play with your clues but do not play with your reader, at least do not try to trick them. You want to retain a fan forever with your wit and wisdom and sometimes chutzpah. 

Make your reading time absorbing. Pit your wits against the accidental sleuth, who may be in a job like yours. Subscribe to my free e-zine Mystery Readers and Working Writers, the free e-zine for mystery lovers. Get a free e-booklet “ A Nice Quiet Family” a very short/flash mystery. http://www.billiewilliams.com