A New Look for 3 Olives & a Twist and BethDaigle.com

watercolor Santorini greece featuring Musing Mediterranean

Hi everyone-

After a couple of quiet weeks, I’m happy to share a new look for my blog, 3OlivesandaTwist.com, and my author page, BethDaigle.com.

Essentially, the two have come together. Whether you enter 3OlivesandaTwist.com, BethDaigle.com or you have either site bookmarked, you should come to the same place.

If you run into any problems, please let me know.

At The Top

(click Home, top left, to see the full site)

I hope you enjoy the main photo, featured in today’s post, as well as the site itself. This pretty watercolor of Santorini, Greece (courtesy of Pixabay.com) seemed the perfect backdrop for ongoing book updates. Pixabay is an awesome site for free images, by the way. This image will remain front and center for the next several months as I launch Musing Mediterranean. Then, eventually, it will become a sliding series of blog photos from my most recent posts.

Scroll Down

Just below the main image and the About Me, Book and Work pages, you’ll find yourself back at 3 Olives & a Twist.

I hope you like the new site. I would love to hear your thoughts. If you have any issues, please let me know.

A New Look for Email Notifications too

For those of you signed up for email notifications, that has been updated too. Finally, a much prettier way of telling you a new post is waiting to be read. Hopefully you got the email today. If you haven’t already subscribed, scroll to the top of the sidebar to the right (or if you’re on your phone, scroll down) and sign up now!

Thank You

Please let me know what you think of the new look and much gratitude goes out to my web designer, Andrew, from Interthrive and to Lisa DiAntonio of Green Park Studios for helping me with imagery and aesthetics.

I look forward to getting back to my regularly scheduled Tuesday posts.

Next week, my latest book club review on Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.

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More Book News and a Blog Update

Musing Mediterranean on Goodreads

 

This weekend Musing Mediterranean made its debut on Goodreads where interested readers who “Want to Read” can mark it accordingly. It is also available for pre-order at WiDo Publishing’s website. Here you can pre-purchase at the discounted rate of $12.75 vs. the $15.95 print price.

As usual, I was a bit giddy seeing my book online and ready to go. Reading through the summary brought me right back to the Mediterranean and all the fun we had while there.

The Summary

A trip to the Mediterranean—who wouldn’t be thrilled? Beth Daigle should be doing back flips as she prepares to escape her humdrum suburban life, but travel anxiety gets the best of her. This is a trip of a lifetime, something to look forward to, yet Beth is dreading it.

The daughter of an Italian mother and Greek father, Beth has always dreamed of visiting Greece and Italy. Her Type A husband, Tony, revels in planning every detail of their two-week vacation. The plan expands to include not only Beth and Tony’s two tween daughters, but Beth’s parents, sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew.

As her family’s excitement mounts, so does Beth’s trepidation. She experiences serious anxiety about the flight itself, plus spending two solid weeks with her extended family.

Despite her worries, Beth manages the eight-hour plane ride to Rome, and the adventure begins.

If you’ve never experienced the beauty of the Mediterranean, or even if you have, Musing Mediterranean will take you there through Beth’s eyes, page by page.

The Blog

In addition to all of this fun book stuff, I am also working on a new look for my website and blog. That will be coming soon, so keep an eye out. For the most part 3 Olives & a Twist will look the same, just a bit more cohesive with the rest of my website. If all goes as planned, I’ll finally be able to respond to comments and you’ll actually be able to receive them!

Fingers crossed for a smooth transition!

 

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Musing Mediterranean

Musing Mediterranean
Musing Mediterranean book cover

 

I was flipping through Instagram on Saturday and my heart skipped a beat when I scrolled past my very own book cover. WiDo Publishing/E.L. Marker had posted a teaser for the Musing Mediterranean book cover. While I had just finalized the book cover with the designer, seeing it on social media stopped me in my tracks. Wow! This dream just got real.

If you’ve followed my writing for a while, you may recognize the art from my old column, Matters of Life & Beth, in Merrimack Valley Magazine. Artist, Ken Bonin, reprised his role as my talented caricaturist and Stephen Pennimpede artfully brought the drawing to life in color.

Thank you both so much!

 

I couldn’t have asked for a better representation of what Musing Mediterranean is all about. I am so excited to share this story with you very soon.

Reserve Your Copy of Musing Mediterranean!

I hope you enjoy the cover as much as I do and please consider signing up for your reserve copy today. Scroll to the bottom of my press release to enter your email.

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Book Update – Musing Mediterranean Coming Soon!

Musing Mediterranean book cover featuring parthenon, colosseum and library of celsus
A sneak peek!

 

It’s hard to believe the book I started in 2012 is soon to be published. In conjunction with E.L. Marker, I anticipate Musing Mediterranean to be released in early summer.

It has been such a passion project to this point, I can’t imagine what it will feel like to hold the first copy in my hands. Truthfully, none of it seemed real until I began working with an artist to craft the book cover. If you’ve been following my writing for a while you may recognize the artwork when it is fully revealed. For now, I’ve given you a just a glimpse of what the cover will include. I hope you like this sneak peek and hopefully I’m not giving too much away.

If you’re new to my blog or haven’t heard me mention Musing Mediterranean, here is a little bit of what you can expect. It’s a feel-good book chronicling my 2012 family trip to Greece, Italy and Turkey. It’s a light-hearted, summer read that I like to say is a little bit of Eat Pray Love meets My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Check out the press release put out by E.L. Marker here. Scroll to bottom to reserve your copy!

I like to think readers who’ve never been to the Mediterranean will enjoy seeing the countries I visited through my eyes. Readers, who have already traveled these lands, may enjoy a trip down memory lane. And readers who suffer a touch of travel anxiety, like I do, may enjoy the ridiculous, hopefully relatable, lengths I’ll go through to avoid being a shameless homebody. Here’s an excerpt I posted on the blog a while back.

I’m both excited and nervous about the book’s release. While I’m proud to have completed this book, the hard part, for me anyway, is yet to come. The selling and self-promotion of Musing Mediterranean will undoubtedly be my biggest challenge.

I hope you’ll help me with this last part because, God knows, I’m going to stress over every attempt I make at giving this little book of mine its fair shake at success.

I expect the next time I blog about Musing Mediterranean will be to announce it’s release. Woohoo!

Any advice or suggestions are more than welcome!

For the Record

I want to send Andy Cohen from BravoTV a copy of my book and have it appear on Watch What Happens Live! If anyone knows him, please hook a girl up. #bookgoals.

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E.L. Marker Press Release Announcing My Travel Memoir

EL Marker press release

 

If you haven’t already seen it on Facebook, I wanted to share the press release put out by my publisher, E.L. Marker, announcing my travel memoir Musing Mediterranean.

To those who have so kindly commented on Facebook – thank you so much for your encouragement and support. To my blog readers, I hope you will enjoy this perspective on my book and please consider reserving your copy of Musing Mediterranean when it is available for pre-order in 2018 (scroll to the bottom of the read more link below.)

As seen at WiDoPublsing.com:

Beth Daigle’s Travel Memoir to be Released by E.L. Marker

SALT LAKE CITY, UT November 01, 2017

When your whole family says, “Let’s take a vacation to the Mediterranean!” and it nearly gives you a nervous breakdown, how do you respond? You grit your teeth and agree to it. At least, that’s what Beth Daigle did in 2012… and somehow she lived to tell the tale.

Before her Mediterranean adventures, Daigle had been writing for many years. After numerous blogs and articles, she was ready to write a book. She states, “I had toyed around with several book ideas, but none seemed quite right.” Once the impending trip approached, the author grew more focused on keeping herself together than writing a story.

Read more…

 

 

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