Lori Hoeck

Serendipity can power some amazing things in our lives, especially when we have to pinch ourselves to believe how wonderful a turn of events can become.

After writing about Dark Hearts, emotional vampires, and narcissists on my Think Like A Black Belt site and writing a few posts on this site (here and here), I found kindred spirits from my readers’ comments and via emails.

We all shared the experience of having a toxic relationship sometime in our lives. Perhaps it was a boss, a spouse, or relative, but the feelings of worthlessness from constant subtle and not-so-subtle sabotage by someone close to us was a common theme. So was how we change ourselves to become strong enough to deal with it.

COLLABORATORS
In the discussions, Betsy Wuebker of Passing Thru and I found a similar desire to put a more concrete face on the toxic dynamics in a way that would help empower others. From that wonderful collaboration came the free ebook, The Narcissists: A User’s Guide. (You can get more details here or download it here.)

As the title ironically indicates, we wrote to ease the sense of powerlessness people feel in a toxic relationship and put readers more in control of their choices.

When Betsy and I put our finishing touches on the ebook’s first design, I received an offer I couldn’t refuse.

AWESOME OFFER
Deborah Dorchak of Sirius Graphix emailed me about a blog post I’d written, and we discovered our mutual interest in martial arts and emotional self defense. I asked her if she would like to also get a sneak peek at our upcoming ebook.

Realizing she was a serious ebook designer, I warned her in an email, “…it’s not pretty as an ebook, but hey, we decided to go less for look and more for much-needed content…”

After reading our ebook, she replied that Sirius Graphix was doing a big campaign to promote their ebook services in February. She asked if Betsy and I would want to participate. All she asked was that they’d be able to use it as an example in their portfolio.

HOLY BUCKETS??
As Betsy described in her post The Magic of Collaboration, “Holy Buckets! We didn’t even need to think about it! We were writers, not designers. Sirius could give us the visual aesthetic we coveted.”

Not only was I blessed to have a great co-author who could cut to the chase, inform and empower, but now we had help from Sirius Graphix with their powerhouse designer Deborah. Her unique and stunning work reflects an author’s heart, story, and message. When the ebook re-design was complete, it was as if Deborah let the design concept flow from us instead of plopping a design option on us haphazardly.

Eliza Fayle of Silver and Grace echoes my sentiments in her review of the book,

“Then {Betsy and Lori} sent me the final product, designed by Deborah Dorchak of Sirius Graphix. My reaction to this? ‘Holy Shit!!!’…The Narcissist: A User’s Guide is a work of art by the authors and the designer. Clearly this is combined effort of a team who truly believe in the book’s message.”

No doubt about it. Serendipity rocks. My thanks to Betsy, Sirius Graphix, and our online friends making the ebook launch of The Narcissist: A User’s Guide a wonderful success.

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Thank you for visiting,
Lori Hoeck