In new ebook, author tells kids, it’s ‘Your Time to Shine’
Advance correspondent
MIDDLTOWN TOWNSHIP - Now could just be Cindy Dorman Genis’s time to shine with her children’s ebook, “Your Time to Shine.” It is a 13-page children’s story that brings the understanding of bullying down to a kid’s level. Her aim is to help bolster the younger crowd’s self-esteem.
Dorman Genis’s tiny tome is just one of the Middletown Township author’s ideas to promote human rights on a kiddie level, a level, she believes, is where basic “rights” training begins. But like the fiFWLonDO FODVVLF, “LLWWOH Engine That Could,” Dorman Genis’s message was a long haul. cor three years she tossed rejection slips from publishers over her shoulder and kept going.
“Simon and Schuster and others told me I had to have an agent. Their volume of submitted manuscripts was so great that they could not read any that didn’t have representation,” Dorman Genis said as she sipped coffee in the kitchen of her sillas of Middletown home. “I’m retired, I’m disabled and I just couldn’t afford to hire an agent.”
While waiting in the wings for something, anything to happen, the S3-year-old former Bristol restaurant owner kept the faith, plotting out two more books: the second, a story addressLnJ WKH NLOOLnJV oI 20 FKLOGrHn DnG 6 DGuOWV DW 6DnGyKooN EOementary School in December, “telling it through the magic of a star and a cloud,” she said, and the third, addressing the issue of “gender-confused children.”
“I’m good at writing because I write from the heart,” Dorman Genis said.
She also knows her topics. The gender book evolved from her own experience when her daughter Melissa informed her that she was gay, something that put an end to her mother’s assumption that Melissa would one day marry the guy she then lived with.
Dorman Genis and her husband John accepted their daughter’s sexual orientation and that spurred the author to include that issue in a book for kids.
“There are things we have to address and in a gentle way because just look at the children today. How many stories of children killing each other or killing themselves do we read about? We have to reach out to them. This is the 21st century. When is this going to end?”
Her writing passion carried her through until the day she met DnG VWDrWHG WDONLnJ Wo KHr 35-yHDr-oOG nHLJKbor, -oKn ErrLJo, who just happens to be trying to get what he calls a grassroots SubOLVKLnJ FoPSDny oII WKH JrounG. ErrLJo rHDG “Your TLPH Wo Shine,” was impressed with the quality of the writing and the timeliness of the content, and agreed to take Dorman Genis on.
TKDW PHDnV WKDW ErrLJo’V GrHHn 2DN 3rHVV wLOO SuW WKH booN out as an eBook with the hope that it will generate enough PonHy Wo Jo Wo KDrG SrLnW. ErrLJo’V FoPSDny LV D VPDOO VWDrWuS for the moment but he’s in the big time as far as contracts with Amazon.com, Apple and Barnes C Noble. cor A5.99, Dorman GHnLV’V firVW booN LV DYDLODbOH on FoPSuWHr, L3DGV, 1ooN or Kindle, he said.
“$n HBooN LV D SODWIorP on WKH wDy Wo SrLnW,” VDLG ErrLgo, a professor at Chestnut Hill College and a Ph.D. student. “We’re small, we’re just starting, but we can get our eBooks out there.”
TKH DorPDn GHnLV DnG ErrLJo “WHDP,” DV WKHy FDOO WKHPselves, will continue to work together to put out the children’s books that foster the author’s strong belief that “everybody in this world is equal” and should be accepted and comfortable in their own skin. “It’s OK to be different,” Dorman Genis said. Meanwhile, author and publisher have news for the big-time SubOLVKHrV wKo PLJKW FoPH VnLIfinJ DrounG: 1o :Dy!
“We’re in this for the long haul, from eBooks to print. It’s JoLnJ Wo bH GrHHn 2DN 3rHVV DOO WKH wDy,” ErrLJo VDLG.