Kiwi author receives international award for debut book

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
27.06.13

Kiwi author receives international award for debut book

New Zealand author Marnie McDermott has received an international award for her first book, Beyond Happiness: The 12 Principles of Enduring Bliss, winning the body-mind-spirit category of the Seventh Annual National Indie Excellence Awards.

The international award based in Los Angeles USA is open to all English language books in print and honours the best books in over 100 categories.

“The volume and excellence of entries created a challenge of unexpected magnitude for the 2013 contest judges,” said Awards spokesperson Marissa Curnutte.

The competition is judged by experts from all aspects of the book industry, including publishers, writers, editors, book cover designers and professional copywriters. The criteria for recognition are stringent and they select award winners and finalists based on overall excellence.

Author Marnie McDermott says she was ecstatic to receive news of the win. “I’m deeply honoured and absolutely thrilled to receive international recognition for my debut as an author. I’m still pinching myself!”

Beyond Happiness is a non-fiction self-help book about happiness that McDermott was inspired to write after radically transforming her own life.

“I wanted to write the kind of book I wished I had read 10 years ago, mind-body-spirit for a new era that is as inspirational as it is practical. The kind of book you connect with, that gives you the tools to get on with creating the life you really want, and that you can return to over and over again,” she says.

McDermott believes we are obsessed with happiness. “Modern living sees many of us pursuing it incessantly. Yet I believe the more we focus on the things we feel we have to have or do to become happy, the more we become out of sync with who we really are.”

It is to help readers find this balance that McDermott wrote Beyond Happiness. The book includes stories about her own search for happiness. It covers the 12 Principles of happiness, each with guided reflection and ideas for incorporating them into your everyday life.

“It’s about rebalancing your life, connecting to who you really are, and unlocking all the happiness you know you want and deserve,” she says.

Beyond Happiness is available from selected Paper Plus stores, online bookstores like Amazon.com, the BookDepository.com, via her publisher Balboa Press, and directly from Marnie McDermott via her website www.marniemcdermott.com

McDermott’s second book, Soul Happiness, is due for release later this year.

ENDS

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