Author Kelsey Rae Vocal Trash

April is Earth Month and what better way to celebrate than to remind people of the little things they can do, day-in and day-out, to help save our planet. Meet Vocal Trash, also known as The Voice of the Trash, a highly skilled performance troupe who uses one-of-a-kind upcycled instruments, coupled with song and dance, to entertain and inspire. The group's lead singer turned author, Kelsey Rae has penned a children's book to complement the group's message, THINK . Before You Throw It Away. Additionally Steve Linder, creator and producer of Vocal Trash, has written a song by the same name. Music in harmony with the environment. This is Vocal Trash. Potential media angle: • Top 5 Instruments to Create with Your Child through Upcycling Recently featured on the Hallmark Channel's Home and Family Show, Vocal Trash's Kelsey Rae and Steve Linder provide an engaging interview. Please review the following press release and video links below, and let me know if I may schedule an interview. Thank you. Please see the following videos: Book trailer: http://youtu.be/2AOQgyiXkfo Meet Vocal Trash: http://youtu.be/TOjBue6W3Bg THINK … Before You Throw It Away: Inspiring Kids to Upcycle During Earth Month Fort Worth, TX, March 11, 2014 – One man's trash is another man's treasure, but have you ever thought that it could also be someone's music? If you've ever seen a Vocal Trash performance you know this to be true. Using clever one-of-a-kind upcycled instruments, their music-with-a-message inspires audiences to step-up their recycling efforts. Vocal Trash's lead singer, Kelsey Rae, has taken this a step further in her new children's book, THINK … Before You Throw It Away. In THINK … Before You Throw It Away, we meet Claire. Claire is a 10-year-old girl who finds adventure in the most unlikely place … a city landfill. With the help from her new and unusual friends, she soon discovers the importance of saving our planet by making better choices. Thanks to Claire's new musical group Vocal Trash, we all learn to reuse, recycle and ultimately THINK before you throw it away. "The story allows us to imagine a world where the things we love can live forever through recycling and upcycling,” says Kelsey Rae. "By making better choices, we can make a positive impact on our environment.” THINK … Before You Throw It Away is synergistic of the whimsical rhymes of Dr. Seuss and while it is written for children, it can certainly be enjoyed by people of all ages. THINK … Before You Throw It Away by Kelsey Rae Shaw Available at Amazon.com ISBN-10: 0989276805 ISBN-13: 978-0989276801 Children's book (Ages: up to 12 years) About the Author Kelsey Rae has been entertaining audiences since she was 5 years old when she was the spunky orphan, Molly, in the Tony Award-winning musical, Annie. Since then, she's starred in more than 30 stage productions and was even offered a spot on the beloved Mickey Mouse Club the year that Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears debuted on the show. Instead, she opted to take a role in Gypsy and followed her dreams to Broadway. Nowadays, Kelsey is lead singer and choreographer for Vocal Trash and author of a new book, THINK … Before You Throw It Away. About Vocal Trash Described as "Glee meets Stomp,” Vocal Trash plays to capacity crowds from Las Vegas to Madison Square Garden, presenting their own "wow factor” experience and making them a hit with all venues. Audiences can't seem to get enough of this energetic group whose "feel good” music literally gets people up and dancing in the aisles. Vocal Trash combines uniquely recycled musical instruments, such as their "one of a kind” bass and guitars, with an industrial percussion section made-up of metal trash cans, plastic barrels, water bottles and other landfill-rescued items. Their hip, yet poignant, presentation teaches our youth to use their imagination in a meaningful and lasting way as it relates to eco-friendly living. This makes for a powerful and personal tool to reach young minds while enforcing an important narrative to reuse items that would normally end up as discarded, earth burdensome waste. www.vocaltrash.net

Author Robyn Hatcher

Standing Ovation Presentations: Knowing Your ActorType Holds the Secret to Stellar Communication New York, NY, March 11, 2014 – When Robyn Hatcher talks, people listen. And that comes as no surprise given her groundbreaking approach to breaking barriers for people who struggle with speaking in small and large groups. Hatcher has formulated a no-fail equation for mastering public speaking in her book, Standing Ovation Presentations (Motivational Press). Hatcher reveals that communication is an art form in itself and that every person has an ActorType or some combination of the nine ActorTypes: Hero, Villain, Innocent, Sex Symbol, Curmudgeon, Whiz Kid, Super Hero, Buddy and Comic. "Public speaking is, simply put, a constant in our everyday lives and it's just not an option to take things for granted,” says Hatcher. "Whether you're giving the presentation of your career, coaching a soccer team, or running for PTA president – honing your communication skills and playing to your ActorType is your key to success.” To complement her book, Hatcher also offers public speaking training in a variety of formats: • SpeakEtc. Vocal Workout (CD): Hatcher knows that the tone, quality and inflection of our speaking voice accounts for almost 40% of our communication. Now you can train at your own pace with this CD featuring voice training, breathing exercises, pronunciation practices, and articulation and intonation drills. • Workshops: Presentation, public speaking and communications training and coaching. • Keynote Speaker: Dynamic and inspirational keynote address for conferences and corporate meetings. About Robyn Hatcher: Meet Robyn Hatcher: actress, voiceover artist, writer, expert communications guest for Huffpost Live. Once a shy little girl, now a strong dynamic presenter and communications expert, Hatcher is founder and principal of SpeakEtc., a boutique communications company focusing on presentation training. Hatcher is currently a member of the prestigious New York Women in Communications, Inc. (NYWICI), Savor the Success, Step Up Women's Network, Writers Guild of America East, Screen Actors Guild, Actors Equity and American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, and was an appointed member and committee chair of Manhattan's Board Five for six years. Get the book

Boo Walker

Lowcountry Punch: Just The Ticket For Armchair Travelers Hankering For The Sultry South Benton City, WA, March 10, 2014 – If you're sick of winter weather, take a trip to Charleston, SC, rated #1 city in the US for three years running by the Condé Nast Traveler Reader's Choice Awards. You won't even need to leave home. Boo Walker's Lowcountry Punch (Sandy Run Press) evokes Charleston's gritty side and its charm so vividly the city itself is essential to the cast of characters. In Lowcountry Punch, DEA Agent T.A. Reddick leaves Miami for Charleston, SC after one of the worst nights of his life. He's hoping a return to his roots will heal a wounded heart and the guilt of killing a friend. The sleepy and sultry city of Charleston is filled with echoes of the Old South: genteel playboys, society debutantes, and quiet cobblestone streets. But as Reddick will soon discover, there's danger lurking under her charming veneer. When a movie star's death shines a national spotlight on Charleston's underground cocaine trade, he must go undercover to find the main supplier and shut him down. As a hurricane bears down on the port city and the DEA gets ready to spring its trap, Reddick must contend with more than he ever could have imagined. Brash and bold, TA Reddick is a hero you won't soon forget. Boo Walker also set Off You Go, a gripping and clever novella, in colorful Charleston. His second novel, Turn or Burn, has received critical acclaim. Walker attended College of Charleston before moving to Nashville to work as a banjoist and songwriter for the avant-garde punchgrass band, The Biscuit Boys. Some hand problems knocked him out of the game, and he stumbled into a position with Automated Trading Desk, a short term equity trading firm based out of Charleston, SC. When Boo decided it was time for a change, he grew out a handlebar mustache and moved clear across the country into a double-wide trailer situated on 5 acres of Malbec vines just down the road from Hedges Family Estate (seehttp://www.hedgesfamilyestate.com) on Red Mountain in Washington State. The Hedges family took him in and taught him the art of farming and the old world philosophies of wine. He now travels the world peddling the family's juice, and chances are you can find him in an airport somewhere working on his next novel. For more, please visit the website, www.boowalker.com

View From My Writing Instrument Six

I've been invited to speak to elementary schools to high schools to colleges. Writing isn't what I do. It's what I live. Why wouldn't I want to help the closet writer lift their creative flow toward a brighter sun? Through writing I've helped major businesses locate success. Couples use my words as their wedding vows. Song lyrics to posted notes. I was just as much afraid as you are. But who opened that platform? I've written six book. The seventh currently under construction. What helps a writer give birth to thought isn't ego. But the drive to help other writer's discover the freedom of being creative. The idea of getting up every morning to write was fully furnished by Julia Cameron's book The Artist Way. Chasing a career. Had left me empty. As did the teenage fantasy marriage that was supposed to last fifty plus years. Creative minds don't require mountains to block their visions. Life provides its own shade. Writing three pages. That's Julia's way. She calls them morning pages. I call them bleeding. Not many people accept that. Yeah...try getting that one by a classroom full of creatively starved writers searching for every reason why their imaginations won't let them go. So I changed the title of what I do...to broadcasting. Pen to paper. Fingertips to keyboard. Communicating is broadcasting. I live and breathe the broadcasting industry. So why not just punch out the holes and give myself another label? The writing side of personality doesn't agree. The only thing lower than a used car salesman and a nightclub manager is a radio disc jockey. Ouch. They're two completely different personalities and learning to work out their indifferences is what daily writing introduced to me to. What about the chef that happens to think he or she is a professional bowler? How about the seamstress whose fantasy is to manage a hair salon? No person is born with one idea. Yet we live our lives like it's supposed to be unbelievably focused. Writing helps you sort out the candy from medicine. The most brilliantly conceited people on the planet couldn't stand sitting on the same sofa with their true self located just to the right. Persona is everything in 2014. The visual of who we are constantly having to do battle with what others assume. Now toss onto the plate of refried beans...the image in the mirror that can't stand the fact that everybody around you is making a ton of money. Or that they're enjoying the limelight of success. Thirty five years in radio. 51 years a writer. What is success? It's pretty much like love. No matter how hard you try to remain faithful. Temptation is a text away. Sexual frustration in my book is an writing artist vowing to be heard. The writer has been labeled a pain in the dream come true. Therefore it lives silently inside dark caverns located somewhere between your belly button and muffin top. Being unwanted and un-needed is everybody's worst fear. Why then do we do it to the writer living within. Don't tell me you can't write! I don't want to hear that its extremely difficult. I can't stand it when people look at an itty bitty journal page and sweat huge bubbles of beads. Admit it. You're afraid someone will read what you have written. It takes guts to write. To begin and end a thought is brave inside a world of Twitter addicted Face Book freaks steaming over a bad day at work. Yet barely a one realizes that nobody cares about perfectly edited sentences and paragraphs. What you write isn't being viewed by space aliens dressed up to look like Jesus. Honestly...the only people that will say something about your writing are the foolish people you guilt tripped into reading your writing. They have to say something, "Oh I know. You suck." Daily writing but verbal vomit. That's hot. Poured over a thin sleeve of a once living tree. Just between you and me. The tree is still alive. So alive that it will extend its loyalty to man far beyond your final touch. You've watched Pawn Stars. They feature books hundreds of years old. I know who wants that? Then why do you take so many pictures with your smart phone. If you're gonna cut yourself off from drawing the real picture. Words written about you, the experiences and adventures. Then stop taking pictures. Because once you're gone. It'll be nothing more than digital trash and someone you love very much is gonna have to go through your phone and erase the selfie photos. Hopefully none of them will be of body parts. I mean that's how you treat your writing self. Like they've done something nasty.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates

#1 New York Times Best Seller, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War Fmr. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates Discusses His Service Spanning Two Administrations. WHAT: From the former secretary of defense, a strikingly candid, vividly written account of his experience serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before Robert M. Gates received a call from the White House in 2006, he thought he’d left Washington politics behind. After working for six presidents in both the CIA and the National Security Council, he was happy in his role as president of Texas A&M University. But when he was asked to help a nation mired in two wars, he answered what he felt was the call of duty. In this unsparing memoir, meticulously fair in its assessments, he takes you behind the scenes of his nearly five years as a secretary at war: the battles with Congress, the two presidents he served, the military itself, and the vast Pentagon bureaucracy; his effort to help Bush turn the tide in Iraq; his role as a guiding, and often dissenting, voice for Obama; the ardent devotion to and love for American soldiers – his “heroes”—he developed on the job. However embroiled he became in the trials of Washington, Gates makes clear that his heart was always in the most important theater of his tenure as secretary: the front lines. Duty tells a powerful and deeply personal story that allows us an unprecedented look at two administrations and the wars that have defined them. Get the book

Author Deborah Schwartz Woman On Top

To take a chapter or several from your life...then put it on display. Takes guts. To build bridges to a wandering generation of Twitter addicted daily updates requires a writer that harnesses not control but belief in the success and well being of the person that picked up the book. Where are the great women leaders? Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Eleanor Roosevelt. There are thousands of women striving to find leadership. But why isn't it millions? What's keeping the turning points of America from becoming a nation lead by a woman? Woman On Top: Learning to Crawl Again and Finding Out You Have the Strength to Run New York, NY, March 4, 2014 - Deborah Schwartz's Woman On Top is the triumphant story of a young widow whose journey to find herself takes readers on an entertaining, yet thought-provoking ride. Inspired by her true-life story, Schwartz' Woman on Top is a battle cry for any woman who ever let someone make her feel less than worthy. Further, it's a lesson to us all that we hold the power to reach any summit. It is often said that, it's not the hills or mountains you have to climb that gives you strength; it's the challenge you face on your journey by having a pebble in your shoe. In protagonist Kate's case, the pebble felt more like a boulder. She was thrown into single-dom after her husband died from cancer. After a few years, she ventures back into the dating scene and meets Len, a Wall Street banker. What Kate discovers is a cocky narcissist who quickly tries to control every aspect of her life. Readers will scream in frustration at Len's controlling behavior while high-fiving Kate's efforts and subsequent achievements to finding herself again. She shows us that we are truly in-charge of our destiny, and (in reflection) that there are more important things in life than what kind of car you drive. In her stand-up-and-applaud road to independence, she reaches the highest heights. Literally, with a rewarding climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Born and raised in New York, Deborah Schwartz graduated from Tufts University and then obtained her Masters in History at Columbia University where she wrote her graduate thesis on "Feminism in Eighteenth Century England.” She received her J.D. from Boston University. Always a New Yorker to the core, Deborah's passion now is writing. For more information, please visit: www.deborahschwartz.net.