Kathy and I wrote the book, How to Save Your Marriage From 12 Top Marriage Killers based on our experience with the real-world couples who have come in our office as part of our family-law practice. Now that we have published a book that is apparently being widely sold and read, we are very interested in hearing about people's experiences with the book.
If you are a reader of our book (which we are starting to call "The Little Blue Marriage Book") we want to hear from you. Please tell us, not only whether you found the book readable and enjoyable, but--more importantly--how things worked out for you when you put the book into practice.
This input matters to us. A lot. For lots of reasons. Here are the most important:
1. We plan future editions. We want to refine the advice contained in the book based on the experience of real couples.
2. We plan future books. We want to base those books on a broader foundation, including what we hear from couples out there trying to work on their marriages.
So, we would like to hear from you. You can either post a comment on this site, or email us at honsingerbooks@gmail.com.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Back in Stock!!!
Our book, How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers, is now back in stock at even more bookstores, including Books a Million, Powells, and Better World Books, not to mention Barnes & Noble as pointed out in an earlier post. Let's hope that these folks ordered more copies this time so that they won't sell out as fast.
If you want to order the book directly, please see my earlier post about purchasing it with a discount code at Createspace.com. You can get it there for $10.00 plus postage.
If you want to order the book directly, please see my earlier post about purchasing it with a discount code at Createspace.com. You can get it there for $10.00 plus postage.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The Old Stew Meat Just Ain't What It Used to Be
I am the family chef, and have been cooking since I was a teenager. This is not unusual given my background, as my mother is Cajun and I grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Many, if not most, Cajun men cook. In fact, it is a widely-held belief in South Louisiana that you aren't a "real man" unless you can produce a reasonable variety of delicious meals out of a big black cast iron pot.
Some things about cooking are eternal--like how a big black cast iron pot does something magical to stews and gumbos and other meat dishes. Other things are not, like the meat you get from the grocery store. The meat you buy now is just different from the meat I learned to cook with. Take, for example, beef. When I make stew, I usually don't buy "stew meat" as it is overpriced. I shop for sirloin or round steak on sale, and then cut it into one inch cubes, just like my mother did (and probably still does--she is in her early 70's and still cooks). Back in days of yore, I would throw that meat in a hot cast iron pot with a few tablespoons of oil, quickly brown the meat, then brown the onions with the browned meat, then add water, potatoes, carrots, garlic, and seasonings, then simmer, and it would be stew in about an hour and twenty minutes.
NOW, I buy the same cuts of meat, cut them the same way, throw them in the same kind of pot with the same amount of oil, and the meat generates about a cup and a half of brownish liquid that I have to boil away before the meat will really brown (instead of just turning a sickly gray). I really don't want to know what this stuff is or where it comes from. I just know that I wish it weren't there so I could get about my business and brown my beef. It adds about fifteen minutes to the process of cooking stew. If there were a farmer's market or small butcher shop nearby, I would try buying my meat there, but that is just not an option in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
Chickens are different, too. When I make chicken and sausage gumbo, the chicken tends to fall apart sooner into lots of mushy, stringy bits instead of cohering as recognizable pieces. When I can find them, I try to make my gumbo with stewing hens, which have more flavorful meat and pieces that hold together longer, but I have a hard time finding these where I live, as well. Either the chickens are being bred to be tenderer, or they are being shot full of stuff that has changed the way the meat cooks.
On the other hand, there are lots of good things about the modern food world: the higher quality, variety, and flavorfulness of frozen foods, the wider variety of produce, the larger and better organized stores . . . change and progress are not all bad. I just hate that murky brown water at the bottom of my pot when I am browning my stew meat.
Waaaah, waaaaaah. Life is still good, but I wish that, like when I was a kid, I had relatives in the cattle business from whom I could buy beef I knew didn't have funny stuff done to it.
Some things about cooking are eternal--like how a big black cast iron pot does something magical to stews and gumbos and other meat dishes. Other things are not, like the meat you get from the grocery store. The meat you buy now is just different from the meat I learned to cook with. Take, for example, beef. When I make stew, I usually don't buy "stew meat" as it is overpriced. I shop for sirloin or round steak on sale, and then cut it into one inch cubes, just like my mother did (and probably still does--she is in her early 70's and still cooks). Back in days of yore, I would throw that meat in a hot cast iron pot with a few tablespoons of oil, quickly brown the meat, then brown the onions with the browned meat, then add water, potatoes, carrots, garlic, and seasonings, then simmer, and it would be stew in about an hour and twenty minutes.
NOW, I buy the same cuts of meat, cut them the same way, throw them in the same kind of pot with the same amount of oil, and the meat generates about a cup and a half of brownish liquid that I have to boil away before the meat will really brown (instead of just turning a sickly gray). I really don't want to know what this stuff is or where it comes from. I just know that I wish it weren't there so I could get about my business and brown my beef. It adds about fifteen minutes to the process of cooking stew. If there were a farmer's market or small butcher shop nearby, I would try buying my meat there, but that is just not an option in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
Chickens are different, too. When I make chicken and sausage gumbo, the chicken tends to fall apart sooner into lots of mushy, stringy bits instead of cohering as recognizable pieces. When I can find them, I try to make my gumbo with stewing hens, which have more flavorful meat and pieces that hold together longer, but I have a hard time finding these where I live, as well. Either the chickens are being bred to be tenderer, or they are being shot full of stuff that has changed the way the meat cooks.
On the other hand, there are lots of good things about the modern food world: the higher quality, variety, and flavorfulness of frozen foods, the wider variety of produce, the larger and better organized stores . . . change and progress are not all bad. I just hate that murky brown water at the bottom of my pot when I am browning my stew meat.
Waaaah, waaaaaah. Life is still good, but I wish that, like when I was a kid, I had relatives in the cattle business from whom I could buy beef I knew didn't have funny stuff done to it.
Buy "How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers" Direct from Createspace at Deep Discount
It has come to our attention that some booksellers are managing to sell our new book, How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers for vastly in excess of list price. In fact, it seems that one guy recently got about $30.00 for a copy. If you read this blog and want a copy of the book, we don't think you should have to pay list price, much less thirty bucks.
Accordingly, readers may purchase the book directly for $10.00 plus shipping by going to this page:
https://www.createspace.com/3572687
On the shopping cart page, there is a blank at the bottom of the page that is labelled "If you have a discount code enter it here." Enter the following code into the blank to receive your discount: DLTWEULT. This is our preferred purchase channel, by the way, because the authors (my wife, Kathleen, and myself) receive somewhat higher royalties from these purchases than from those sold by Amazon or in bookstores.
Accordingly, readers may purchase the book directly for $10.00 plus shipping by going to this page:
https://www.createspace.com/3572687
On the shopping cart page, there is a blank at the bottom of the page that is labelled "If you have a discount code enter it here." Enter the following code into the blank to receive your discount: DLTWEULT. This is our preferred purchase channel, by the way, because the authors (my wife, Kathleen, and myself) receive somewhat higher royalties from these purchases than from those sold by Amazon or in bookstores.
Our "How to Save Your Marriage" Book Back In Stock at Barnes & Noble and Elsewhere
Our new book, How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers has recently been in stock with several major booksellers in addition to Amazon.com, but sold out quickly. Apparently, the savvy folks with at least some of those entities have re-ordered the book (we hope, in greater quantities than before) and now have it back in stock. So, once again, you can order the book from Barnes & Noble for $10.79 plus shipping. Just go to www.barnesandnoble.com and enter "honsinger" in the search box. Our book is the first search result.
Get them while they're hot!
Of course, if your favorite seller is out, the book can always be obtained from Amazon.com, as it is a "print on demand" book. If you order it, they will print it for you and have it in your hands in a few days, even if other sellers happen to be out at the time.
Get them while they're hot!
Of course, if your favorite seller is out, the book can always be obtained from Amazon.com, as it is a "print on demand" book. If you order it, they will print it for you and have it in your hands in a few days, even if other sellers happen to be out at the time.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Actually . . . Another Day or Two on the Coupons
There is a slight delay on the electronic coupon availability for ordering our book at a discount direct from Createspace. It will take a day or two to get it set up. Sorry for the inconvenience. Until then, you can still get How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers at the list price of $14.99 on Amazon.com.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Discount Coupon Coming Soon
Some merchants are charging nearly $30.00 a copy for our book, How To Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers. So that readers of this blog can get the book, not only below that inflated price, but also below the $14.99 list, I will be posting a link on this site tomorrow that will enable you to order the book directly from the publisher for $10.00 (plus shipping) with an electronic coupon/order code. Until then, you can always get it at list on Amazon.com by following the links in the earlier posts about the book or by going to the Amazon.com site and typing "Honsinger marriage killers" into the search box. That will take you right to the page for the book. Also, we have a limited supply of copies onhand in the office and will respond to email requests for autographed copies on an as available, time available basis. Please send requests to law@honsingerlaw.com.
Working with Your Divorce/Custody Attorney
I've been in this business for a long time (I handled my first divorces and custody cases more than twenty years ago) and I never cease to be amazed at how poorly many of my clients manage their end of the attorney/client relationship. Now, I'm not really condemning them, because they are going through a really stressful period of their lives and many of them have no experience in working with an attorney, so I don't have any right or reason to expect much, but if they would do a few common-sense things, their lives would be a lot easier (not to mention MINE), AND their fees would be a lot lower.
So, if YOU have a family law case and have an attorney, or are planning to retain one, here are a few things you can do to make the relationship work well, and save you legal fees to boot.
1. Be organized, especially for your first consultation. If the case has already been filed, bring with you everything that has been filed, or that you have been served with in the case, preferably in order of the date filed, with the oldest on the bottom and the newest on top (this sounds odd, but we attorneys are used to documents being arranged in that order). This is especially important if the case has been going on for some time. If you don't have all the documents, save yourself a lot of money by going to the courthouse and ordering a complete set and presenting them to the attorney. If you retain the lawyer, he or she is going to have to get all those documents anyway, and you speed things up by giving the attorney the lot of them from the beginning.
2. Follow advice exactly. This is particularly important if there are protective orders or other specific rules you have to follow. Many of my clients have gotten in trouble when they sent one "innocent letter" to the opposing party, notwithstanding my advice that the existing protective orders prohibit ALL contact of whatever kind.
3. Provide ALL requested documents, exactly as requested. If the lawyer says he or she needs all your bank statements from six months before the date the divorce Petition was filed up to the current month, don't just provide the most recent six months from the date of the request and neglect to provide the records from the other months, while arguing to your attorney that you "don't see why she needs all those other records." You can bet that the attorney is requesting them because some rule requires that exactly those records be produced to the other side, no ifs ands or buts. Making the attorney request these documents from you repeatedly only costs you more money. The attorney isn't asking for the records because she has a record collecting fetish or just because she needs even more piles of paper filling her file cabinets and cluttering up her office. She needs the records, for those dates, in that form, or she would not ask for them.
4. Take notes. Bring a note pad to all meetings with the attorney and use a notepad when you call the office. My clients spend huge sums of their money asking me the same question three or four times. Better yet . . . .
5. Ask your questions by email. There is hardly an attorney on the planet any more who does not make liberal use of email. If you ask a question by email, you get a precise, well thought out answer (as opposed to the off the cuff answer you MAY get on the phone) that you have in writing to refer back to again and again, and to read over and over until you really understand it.
6. Show up for appointments on time. Your attorney has set time aside for you, and may have appointments after you that will be thrown off if you are late. Be punctual and, if you find yourself unavoidably late, call the office and tell them you are coming and, if you are going to be significantly late, consider offering to reschedule. Many attorneys have very busy schedules that have little leeway for the unpunctual.
7. DO NOT just drop by the attorney's office, except to drop off and pick up documents when you have been requested to do so. There are few things more disruptive, especially in a a small law office, then having one or more unexpected clients just show up (many times, more than one client will pick the same time to appear and demand attention from a small staff and/or the attorney who may have other things scheduled or have planned to use the time in question to attend to the mountain of work on the desk). An attorney is a busy professional, similar to a your family doctor. Call and let them know you are coming and, if possible, make an appointment for a particular time so that the attorney or the staff can give you the attention you deserve.
8. Have reasonable expectations regarding time. If you retain an attorney on Monday Afternoon, don't expect to have your complex Petition for Modification of Custody, Parenting Time, and Child Support done by Wednesday morning. A week to ten days is an entirely normal and reasonable time frame for a law office to generate even the most routine pleadings except in a dire emergency, given how tight most attorney's schedules are and the extent to which their attention is demanded by court appearances and "hard" deadlines.
9. Have reasonable expectations regarding return communications from the attorney. An attorney is not like an insurance clerk, working at a desk processing one file after another in the order received from eight to five every day. Rather, many attorneys, particularly those with trial-related practices, must spend much of their time out of the office attending hearings and conferences, meeting with opposing counsel, investigating cases, and engaged in other activities that keep them away from their desks, sometimes for days at a time. And, when an attorney who has been out of the office for a three day trial gets back in the office, there are often so many urgent phone messages and emails to return that it can take a day or two to get through them. I have explained this to client after client, yet I frequently will get a phone message from a client on Tuesday and, if the call is not returned by Wednesday morning (even though my staff has told the client that I am in a three day trial out of town), I get home to find three angry emails in my in box complaining about how I "never return phone calls." When the staff tells you that the attorney is "in conference" or "out of the office," more likely than not this is not a dodge but a true statement of what is going on. I practice in one of the geographically largest counties in the United States (Mohave County, Arizona). The Mohave County Superior Court holds trials and hearings in three cities, Kingman, Bullhead City, and Lake Havasu City, each of which is about an hour's drive away from the other, and there have been weeks in which I have had to appear personally in all three (indeed, there have been individual days in which I have had to be in two of the three). I often meet with opposing counsel in Bullhead and Kingman, which can keep me out of the office all day. Unless I am going to give up all of my evenings and weekends to returning phone calls (not a good idea when one is married has a 14 year old daughter), there are going to have to be times where it may take a several days for people to hear back from me.
10. Be specific when referring to documents. Every court document has a title--it usually appears a few inches down from the top of the page, opposite from the part of the case caption that gives the names of the parties, and often right below the case number. Every letter has a date. Often I spend the five minutes of a phone call with a client trying to ascertain what document they are talking about. The client says, "I am really upset about this letter I got from the court saying that I have to . . . ." when the client actually got no letter from the court and certainly nothing that says that they have to do what they think they have to do. On the other hand, if the client would tell me, "Hey, Paul, I have a question about the Order to Appear that I just got in the mail from your office," then I would be able to give useful help right away.
The attorney/client relationship is a two way street that requires hard work from both attorney and client. If you work with your attorney and bear in mind a few simple facts, you can make things move more smoothly and far less expensively.
So, if YOU have a family law case and have an attorney, or are planning to retain one, here are a few things you can do to make the relationship work well, and save you legal fees to boot.
1. Be organized, especially for your first consultation. If the case has already been filed, bring with you everything that has been filed, or that you have been served with in the case, preferably in order of the date filed, with the oldest on the bottom and the newest on top (this sounds odd, but we attorneys are used to documents being arranged in that order). This is especially important if the case has been going on for some time. If you don't have all the documents, save yourself a lot of money by going to the courthouse and ordering a complete set and presenting them to the attorney. If you retain the lawyer, he or she is going to have to get all those documents anyway, and you speed things up by giving the attorney the lot of them from the beginning.
2. Follow advice exactly. This is particularly important if there are protective orders or other specific rules you have to follow. Many of my clients have gotten in trouble when they sent one "innocent letter" to the opposing party, notwithstanding my advice that the existing protective orders prohibit ALL contact of whatever kind.
3. Provide ALL requested documents, exactly as requested. If the lawyer says he or she needs all your bank statements from six months before the date the divorce Petition was filed up to the current month, don't just provide the most recent six months from the date of the request and neglect to provide the records from the other months, while arguing to your attorney that you "don't see why she needs all those other records." You can bet that the attorney is requesting them because some rule requires that exactly those records be produced to the other side, no ifs ands or buts. Making the attorney request these documents from you repeatedly only costs you more money. The attorney isn't asking for the records because she has a record collecting fetish or just because she needs even more piles of paper filling her file cabinets and cluttering up her office. She needs the records, for those dates, in that form, or she would not ask for them.
4. Take notes. Bring a note pad to all meetings with the attorney and use a notepad when you call the office. My clients spend huge sums of their money asking me the same question three or four times. Better yet . . . .
5. Ask your questions by email. There is hardly an attorney on the planet any more who does not make liberal use of email. If you ask a question by email, you get a precise, well thought out answer (as opposed to the off the cuff answer you MAY get on the phone) that you have in writing to refer back to again and again, and to read over and over until you really understand it.
6. Show up for appointments on time. Your attorney has set time aside for you, and may have appointments after you that will be thrown off if you are late. Be punctual and, if you find yourself unavoidably late, call the office and tell them you are coming and, if you are going to be significantly late, consider offering to reschedule. Many attorneys have very busy schedules that have little leeway for the unpunctual.
7. DO NOT just drop by the attorney's office, except to drop off and pick up documents when you have been requested to do so. There are few things more disruptive, especially in a a small law office, then having one or more unexpected clients just show up (many times, more than one client will pick the same time to appear and demand attention from a small staff and/or the attorney who may have other things scheduled or have planned to use the time in question to attend to the mountain of work on the desk). An attorney is a busy professional, similar to a your family doctor. Call and let them know you are coming and, if possible, make an appointment for a particular time so that the attorney or the staff can give you the attention you deserve.
8. Have reasonable expectations regarding time. If you retain an attorney on Monday Afternoon, don't expect to have your complex Petition for Modification of Custody, Parenting Time, and Child Support done by Wednesday morning. A week to ten days is an entirely normal and reasonable time frame for a law office to generate even the most routine pleadings except in a dire emergency, given how tight most attorney's schedules are and the extent to which their attention is demanded by court appearances and "hard" deadlines.
9. Have reasonable expectations regarding return communications from the attorney. An attorney is not like an insurance clerk, working at a desk processing one file after another in the order received from eight to five every day. Rather, many attorneys, particularly those with trial-related practices, must spend much of their time out of the office attending hearings and conferences, meeting with opposing counsel, investigating cases, and engaged in other activities that keep them away from their desks, sometimes for days at a time. And, when an attorney who has been out of the office for a three day trial gets back in the office, there are often so many urgent phone messages and emails to return that it can take a day or two to get through them. I have explained this to client after client, yet I frequently will get a phone message from a client on Tuesday and, if the call is not returned by Wednesday morning (even though my staff has told the client that I am in a three day trial out of town), I get home to find three angry emails in my in box complaining about how I "never return phone calls." When the staff tells you that the attorney is "in conference" or "out of the office," more likely than not this is not a dodge but a true statement of what is going on. I practice in one of the geographically largest counties in the United States (Mohave County, Arizona). The Mohave County Superior Court holds trials and hearings in three cities, Kingman, Bullhead City, and Lake Havasu City, each of which is about an hour's drive away from the other, and there have been weeks in which I have had to appear personally in all three (indeed, there have been individual days in which I have had to be in two of the three). I often meet with opposing counsel in Bullhead and Kingman, which can keep me out of the office all day. Unless I am going to give up all of my evenings and weekends to returning phone calls (not a good idea when one is married has a 14 year old daughter), there are going to have to be times where it may take a several days for people to hear back from me.
10. Be specific when referring to documents. Every court document has a title--it usually appears a few inches down from the top of the page, opposite from the part of the case caption that gives the names of the parties, and often right below the case number. Every letter has a date. Often I spend the five minutes of a phone call with a client trying to ascertain what document they are talking about. The client says, "I am really upset about this letter I got from the court saying that I have to . . . ." when the client actually got no letter from the court and certainly nothing that says that they have to do what they think they have to do. On the other hand, if the client would tell me, "Hey, Paul, I have a question about the Order to Appear that I just got in the mail from your office," then I would be able to give useful help right away.
The attorney/client relationship is a two way street that requires hard work from both attorney and client. If you work with your attorney and bear in mind a few simple facts, you can make things move more smoothly and far less expensively.
Marriage Killers Book Easy to Buy on Amazon, but Selling out in Brick and Mortar Bookstores
Our recent book, How to Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers, has been in stock in several brick and mortar bookstores but, as best we can tell from their online inventories, has been selling out and is back ordered. On the other hand, the book is still easily and readily available from Amazon.com (see link at the end of this post) as a print on demand paperback or as a Kindle ebook.
If you have tried or are trying to purchase the book through a local bookseller, they will probably be able to order it for you. You may wish to suggest that they try to keep it in stock, as it appears to be doing well when book stores put it out on the shelves.
We are eager to hear comments from readers, and not just raves, either. There are plans for future editions and we want to include in those editions anything we can do to make the book more helpful to real people in the real world.
Here is the link to the book's page on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/How-Save-Your-Marriage-Killers/dp/1460983491
The page gives you the ability to "look inside," so you can review the table of contents as well as read many of the internal pages so you can see if the book is likely to be helpful to you and your marriage. We believe in marriage and strongly believe that many troubled marriages can be saved. This book is designed to help you do just that.
If you have tried or are trying to purchase the book through a local bookseller, they will probably be able to order it for you. You may wish to suggest that they try to keep it in stock, as it appears to be doing well when book stores put it out on the shelves.
We are eager to hear comments from readers, and not just raves, either. There are plans for future editions and we want to include in those editions anything we can do to make the book more helpful to real people in the real world.
Here is the link to the book's page on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/How-Save-Your-Marriage-Killers/dp/1460983491
The page gives you the ability to "look inside," so you can review the table of contents as well as read many of the internal pages so you can see if the book is likely to be helpful to you and your marriage. We believe in marriage and strongly believe that many troubled marriages can be saved. This book is designed to help you do just that.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Our New Book on Marriage Killers is Selling
For those of you who liked the "Marriage Killers" posts, my wife Kathy and I expanded the idea to book size and have published it under the title "How To Save Your Marriage from 12 Top Marriage Killers." The book is available from Amazon.com and many other sellers. Here is the blurb:
"How To Save Your Marriage From 12 Top Marriage Killers is a psycho-babble-free, easy to use, practical guide to preserving YOUR relationship from twelve common causes for the destruction of modern marriages. This book takes an honest look at Infidelity, Lack of Magic, Incivility, Stepchildren, Lack of Equality, and other, real-world pitfalls of modern marriage, discusses them with the help of case histories drawn from real life, digs down to their practical causes, and offers solutions that you can take right now to the kitchen table and the bedroom to use as tools to start rebuilding your marriage. Enlightened by the real world experience of author H. Paul Honsinger’s more than twenty years as a divorce attorney, and held to understandable plain language by author Kathleen Honsinger’s years of experience writing software user manuals geared for business owners, this book skips the psychoanalysis and the emotional finger-pointing and gets to the nitty gritty, providing real world, usable solutions that ordinary couples can start putting into use TODAY to keep their marriages together."
The book has been available for only about a month, and--while there are no official sales figures yet--it appears to be selling. Several sellers have stocked it and then suddenly sold out (including Barnes & Noble and Booksamillion), and there are all sorts of signs that it is moving on Amazon as well.
The web page for the book should appear very soon at www.honsingerbooks.com. You can view the book's Amazon page here:
It is available on Amazon as a print on demand paperback for $14.99 and as a Kindle ebook for $9.99.
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