Words and Wine

Words and Wine Author Event

Each month Kona Stories hosts an event with local and traveling authors. This event happens the First Tuesday evening of the month starting at 6 PM. Authors are available to talk story while you are getting your plate of appetizers and glass of complimentary wine. Authors then give a 15-minute talk about their book and themselves, the writing and publishing process or a short reading from the book. After all the authors presentations there is a time for individual questions and book signings.

November's Authors:

Anne van Leynseele’s present law and consulting practice focuses on the regulatory compliance, expansion, and exit strategies of domestic and trans-national cannabis, CBD, and hemp companies and providing counsel to national and international non-cannabis businesses seeking entry to the cannabis space. Her memoir, Cultivating Crime: The Dark Side of Legal Marijuana, is a true-life legal thriller exposing white collar crime in the cannabis industry and white male bias in the legal system. 

Next Anne tells the true story of two Gen-Z gamers who untangle the mysteries of the Robinhood/GameStop debacle in Young Trades.  Currently in development is Girls to Rule, wherein Anne delves into the societal forces that oppress girls ages 10 to 18. In her spare time, Anne van Leynseele mentors’ at-risk youth, surfs, travels, is an amateur fashionista, and co-owns/manages an international award-winning chocolate farm on the Big Island of Hawai’i.

Savor Your Chocolate is an eye-opening cookbook by international award-winning cacao farmer and culinary enthusiast Anne van Leynseele. You will learn 56 recipes that use cacao and unsweetened chocolate to create delicious dishes. True to the quote, “everything's better with chocolate”, Anne uses chocolate as a pseudo spice, adding a little oomph to soups and salads to infuse your seafood and poultry with the sophisticated flavor and aroma of chocolate. Let this innovative approach transform the way you cook.  Fun and informative, this page-turner changes chocolate from a sinful sweet to an indispensable ingredient. 

Carolyn G.A Ching is a Certified Hypnotherapist; Professional Counselor; Hypnotherapy, NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming), and Timeline Therapy Practitioner and Trainer and was a Registered Nurse for many years

Carolyn G.A Ching is the expert other professionals come to study with and the therapist other therapists come to for personal sessions. In her twenty- plus years of private practice in Australia and Hawaii, she has specialized in helping people overcome anxiety. 

Carolyn grew up in England, lived in Holland for nine years before moving to Australia where she spent 20 years.  She has lived in Kona for the past 9 years where she loves spending time by the ocean. She also enjoys spending time on the Sunshine Coast of Australia with her family. 

Anxiety the Book reveals the most effective methods to address the factors that are causing your anxiety, provides exercises and techniques that are easy to understand and use, and shows you how to create your own unique recipe for success. Like most things, anxiety arises from a combination of factors, and this book enables you to discover the things that have led to your anxiety and gives you specific tips and techniques to deal with those factors. 

Anxiety the Book has arisen from over twenty years of experience in helping people just like you to overcome anxiety. It is easy to follow and understand, enabling you to take the steps you need to make changes, at your own pace and with confidence. There are places for you to complete exercises and add your own notes' it’s your book, your very own recipe for getting your life back! 

Wendy Wilson, author of ETERNAL DIET, a novel inspired by Ann Rice, will speak about ETERNAL DIET and its sequel; YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT at Kona Stories of Keauhou Hawaii. Vampires are always depicted as beautiful, graceful and, most importantly, as thin. ETERNAL DIET and YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT explores the question; “What happens if something goes wrong at the turn?” 

Vampires stalking the streets of New Orleans is the weight loss plan Gwen chooses. Who knew blood suckers could be a dieting solution? She travels to New Orleans and meets centuries old Colin who agrees to turn her in exchange for an update to the modern world.  Colin is a centuries old Vampire living in New Orleans in need of an update to the computer age. He might be powerful, but against technology he's helpless. They reach a mutual agreement. Gwen brings him up to date as she embraces the thin, slim, and gorgeous life. But there is a catch. There’s always a catch.

 “Eternal Diet, by W.B. Wilson is well-written, with evocative turns of phrase and lush descriptions of the sounds, sights, scents and experience of New Orleans that transport the reader. From the first chapter I was drawn into Gwen’s world, the sense of immediacy and personal investment in her experiences evident from the start. The culturally rich, emotionally well-developed story drew me in and made me root for Gwen in her quest for a life of eternal youth, beauty and, above all, slenderness. An auspicious debut on the vampire literature scene by a very talented writer.”

Along with her two Vampire novels Wendy has had several works published in anthologies and magazines. The Hawaii Writers Guild published her short story “Firewalk” in their second annual literary publication Latitudes. In December 2018 she won 2nd place in the online magazine Beneath the Rainbow’s Christmas contest with the short story “Wishes Can Come True.” In 2019 her short story “To Be Or Not” based on ETERNAL DIET, was published in the British horror Anthology Hellfire Crossroads #7. A third short story “Night Marchers” is published in the anthology Beyond the Levee. Numerous online magazines have published other stories.