Your summer reading list is here!

Plus: Mark your calendar for the first group coaching session on July 26.

The Clothesline is a weekly newsletter from Vanessa Chiasson offering cozy business content for writers who love to plan, read, and travel.

Whatcha Doing on July 26?

Mark your calendars, because Friday, July 26 is the first group coaching session for the Ink & Income community!

What is group coaching, exactly? It’s an affordable alternative to a one-on-one consultation. Everyone in the group shares their current problem or struggle. Perhaps you want advice on how to interview more effectively, communicate better with editors, supercharge the SEO of your blog articles, make LinkedIn work harder for you, or establish a schedule for sorting out your tax troubles. I give my very best advice and feedback (just like I would if we were working one-on-one) and if someone in the group has a helpful resource to share, they can do so. Everyone listens to each other’s concerns, everyone supports one another, and you may just find that someone else’s issues are ones that you have as well. You leave the group coaching session feeling like you have some action steps for what’s bothering you, you feel motivated and encouraged, and we have all learned from each other.

In addition to group coaching, Ink & Income members also have three virtual co-working sessions a month - - this is the time for you to work on what we chatted about in group coaching and anything else you need external accountability to tackle.

Join the group at any time. Right now with summer specials, membership is as low as about $36 a month.

A few pet pics for Friday fun…

Frankly, it’s a miracle that I do anything other than share photos of Ebenezer and Clover, who have been part of our family for about 16 weeks now. They are the sweetest, smartest pets imaginable - about 90% of the time. I won’t even try to describe the mischief that occurs during the other 10% but let’s just say that we’ve lost about 25% of our houseplants, 50% of our duvets, and 75% of our sanity.

Your Summer Reading List Is Here!

Is there anything better than a sunny day at the beach or an epic road trip to the campground?

Actually, yes.

The best thing about summer is reading, ideally indoors, with air conditioning and maybe a cozy blanket. The prose is a little lighter and the days are longer so when you finish that great book, you can step outside just in time to watch the sunset, sip some lemonade, and enjoy the fact that it’s no longer blazing hot as the fiery sun dips below the horizon. Here are the books I’m excited to share.

(All these links lead to Bookshop.org, an independent alternative to Amazon that gives authors more profits for authors and affiliate members (like me!) more generous commissions, while retaining competitive pricing for shoppers. Thank you for your support!) 

The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher. A fictionalised look at the origins of famed Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Co, this is a great imagining of what people like Joyce and Hemingway were like in their early days. I brought this book with me when I travelled to Deer Lake, Newfoundland, just so I could leave it in the airport’s free little library!

The Coffee Lover’s Mystery Series by Tara Lush (I just finished book 4, A Bean To Die For). If you want some charming, light “beach reads”, this is the series for you. Our protagonist is a former crime reporter from Miami who has resettled in a sleepy seaside Florida town to run a coffee shop but - surprise! - she can’t resist investigating a murder or two. Who can, really?

The Last Party by Clare Macintosh. I love this new-to-me author! In a small community on the Welsh/English border, two police officers from two jurisdictions need to work together to solve a mystery that gets murkier and murkier.