What a wonderful surprise to see this latest review about my book, 21 Simple Things You Can Do to Help Someone With Diabetes. When I wrote this book, it was meant to be a short, simple guide just to inform people who knew diabetics. It isn’t a medical guide, and it isn’t meant to be an earth-shattering, 300-page manifesto. Just a short simple guide to give people a little bit more info about the personal side of diabetes.

So that’s why it’s fabulous when someone gets what I’m trying to do and likes it! So yay! for my latest review. Here’s a snippet:

The author simplifies the subject matter and has created a powerful checklist for the uninformed. It is an easy to read, easy to understand guide hitting on emotional, sensitive and practical situations that we probably experienced ourselves, or overheard in conversation at some point in our lives.

Have you had awkward moments with a friend or family member that is diabetic?
Could you have handled it better? This guide gets you there.

Read the rest at Amazon!

A nice surprise today to see my book, Internet Dating is Not Like Ordering a Pizza, featured on Entrepreneur Magazine. The review is listed under the small press book watch, undoubtedly as an off-shoot from my appearance in the Midwest Review of Books. Once again, Midwest Review of Books is an incredibly valuable resource for writers. It’s hard to get a review there because of the volume of books they get in, but if you can, it’s definitely worth it.

How great a name is Geek’s Dream Girl for a blog? I loved this concept! And the blog is fabulous.

It’s also the second stop on my virtual book tour. Check out my post on How to overcome the fear of Internet dating. (You know some of you folks are afraid to Internet date! You tell me that all the time – now click on over and get some advice!

I’m happy to announce that my latest poetry book, Father’s Eyes, has received the 2008 Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice Award for poetry.

Allbooks Review Editor Shirley Roe said of the winning books:

It was a difficult decision from the hundreds of books reviewed in 2007 but these books shone above the rest.

Allbooks reviews books from North America, Australia, France, South Korea, Israel, China and Great Britain as well as several other International countries. Allbooks Reviews is a member of Freelance Writing International and Reviewers International, Mystique Books, Author’s Den, and Ryze Networking.

I’m finding that many of us have had the same experience in our childhoods with alcoholic parents and all the bad patterns that end up happening as a result of it. I wrote Father’s Eyes as a way to help tell my story through poetry, since poetry helped me get through my childhood and the Lord helped me become a healthy and healed adult.

I’m very happy my labor of love Father’s Eyes has received such a great honor, and out of so many other works! I’m proud and very grateful. Thanks to everyone that has purchased Father’s Eyes and a special thank you to all who have wrote telling me how the book has touched their own lives.

Just found out my This I Believe essay is still second out of now 31,000 entries! That’s after a year and a half on the system.

Thanks to Richard Blake at Reader Views for posting a review of Father’s Eyes on Amazon:

A poet’s journey to discovery & self acceptance, August 14, 2007
By

Reader Views “www.readerviews.com” (Austin, Texas) – See all my reviews

Reviewed by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (8/07) “Father’s Eyes” is the story of Cherie Burbach’s personal journey. It is a story of self-doubt, anger, isolation, and pain written in a poetic form. While grieving the loss of her father, as a result of suicide, Cherie writes of her feelings. She felt guilt for his illness and addiction, even as she faced the burden of his death.

As a child and young adult, Cherie struggled with the experience of living in an atmosphere of verbal and emotional abuse. Cherie was driven to live up to her alcoholic father’s expectations. Nothing she did would please him or bring a word of praise. Her longing for love was rewarded with loneliness.

Cherie’s poems are sensitive and insightful. They are flowing and rhythmic in style. These are deeply-thoughtful poems. Although elegiac in nature, the poems reveal a God- given spirit that keeps Cherie going in her search for love. Unbroken by the experience, she tells of healing as she discovered strength through God’s never ending grace.

In the poem titled “Read the Label.” Cherie relates another forward step in her surrender: “I read the label, passionate and honest I’ll take it. I said in fact, I’ll wear it out of the store. I handed the clerk my old skirt and told her I didn’t want it anymore. As I walked out I looked at the mirror one more time, and smiled.”

The poems bring to light Cherie’s growth and transformation from a woman of despair to a woman full of hope. She relates how she was able to accept forgiveness and guidance as she embraced life as a child of God.

While offering hope and comfort to those who have experienced similar abusive family relationships, there is a universal commonality that will touch the heart of all readers, allowing them to both identify and empathize with those grieving who need comfort and those downhearted who need encouragement.

Cherie has a demonstrated a remarkable gift of poetic expression in this haunting and promising account of her life journey, “Father’s Eyes.”

Thanks to T.L. Cooper (Author of All She Ever Wanted) for her recent 4-start review of Father’s Eyes on Amazon.com:

Engrossing, interesting, and insightful, August 10, 2007

In easy to read poetry, Cherie Burbach discloses her journey of self-discovery. Her poetry provides an insight into the journey we all travel to find who we are and who we want to be in life. At times uncomfortably familiar, at others entirely foreign, Father’s Eyes will engross the reader. Although Burbach found her salvation and the strength to accept and finally to be herself through religion, anyone who has struggled with a past beyond their control can relate to the pain, struggle, and ultimate strength found within these poems. Their honesty is heart breaking and yet hopeful. Emotional without being overly sentimental, Father’s Eyes is filled with poetry to touch the soul.

Thanks to the Midwest Review of Books for featuring Father’s Eyes as a reviewer’s choice in their Wisconsin Bookwatch section.

“Wisconsin poet Cherie Burbach uses verse to chronicle her evolution as a
Christian woman who, as a girl, grew up the daughter of an alcoholic father, who
had to struggle with self-destructive patterns, and who was able to eventually
understand that she is a child of God.

In the pages of “Father’s Eyes”, Burbach presents more than fifty poems
that, taken collectively, reveal an autobiographical influence while
illustrating through the power of carefully crafted language just what can be
accomplished in even the most difficult of circumstances with the love of God.”

Read the rest of the review here.