Selma’s Monthly News – January 2023

Good Morning! Here’s the Monday Morning Blog!

Have you had a chance to touch base with your teen? Check in with them and ask them if they need help with anything. Be open to what they may bring up to you and work with them to find solutions. Since we welcomed in a new year, you could ask them about what their goals for 2023 are and talk about what things would be to be done to achieve them.

New Year, new format

With the Mentoring A Dream website going live on January 1st, Selma’s monthly news posts will take on a little different look. I will be focusing more on being an author and what is happening with my writing journey. Our word for 2023 is EVOLVE and that is what these changes are leading to.

Selma’s logo has changed a little bit. We created a new tagline that is focused more on her journey. Instead of Author, Blogger, Mentor, her new tagline is Author of Young Adult Fiction.

So, here is the monthly news for January 2023

Mentoring a Dream website goes live

Mentoring a Dream (MAD) has always been that next step in my mission to help teens succeed. One of the ways is to provide the adults in their lives with resources to help them reach out to their teens through the noise of everyday life.

Part of the plan was to break the mentoring piece of the brand off from Selma’s side and create its own place to be. The Mentoring A Dream website went life on January 1, 2023. Have you had a chance to see it yet? Click on the link above and take a look.

What changes? We will be migrating the mentoring focused material to MAD and Selma’s site will become more focused on books and writing.

We are excited to embark on this new journey. On MAD’s site, with the four quarterly themes of diversity, mental health, peer pressure and bullying MAD will dig a little deeper into these areas and provide information to help parents talk to their teens and help them through the challenges that these themes present for them. While Selma will continue to write about these challenges in her novels to create relatable characters and storyline for teen and young adult readers.

Writing Updates

Speaking of goals for 2023, I have two main projects that I will be working on this year on the writing side of the house.

Completing and publishing – Josh’s Story – Spring 2023
Completing and publishing – The Street’s Way – November 2023

Josh’s Story

I continue to work on a short story about one of the characters in Shawn’s Way. Josh’s Story is about how Josh Alberts becomes one who bullies. As I was working on the manuscript this week, I have gotten some new insight into Josh’s character. I look forward to sharing his story with you in early 2023.

The Street’s Way

The other big writing project on docket is getting The Street’s Way ready for editing! Be ready for the continuing story of all of The Way Series characters in The Street’s Way, coming your way in late 2023!

The Way Series – teen reads about teen challenges

Looking for a couple of good teen coming-of-age reads focusing on teen challenges? Check out The Way Series.

Book #1The Hard Way – is the story of Paul Jones and his starting his freshman year of high school and how he has to navigate dealing with pressure from his peers to do things to fit in.

Book #2Shawn’s Way – is a continuation of Paul’s journey from The Hard Way but now we meet a new freshman, Shawn Townson, who is forced to navigate being the target of a bully. An upperclassman at his school is taking out his frustration on Shawn.

Book #3The Street’s Way, is a continuation of The Way Series and introduces Mikala to the storyline as a runaway and homeless teen. To be released in late 2023!

Follow this link to my books tab to learn more about the series and to pick up your copies!

Selma’s Books.

Have a great week!