November 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is Friday the 13th of June. It’s not a really spooky day but we have a special guest on the show who’s an author of mystery stories so that’s fitting. The book is called Tremolo; Cry of the Loon and the author is Aaron Paul Lazar. Welcome to the show.
Aaron Lazar: Thank you Dr. Kent, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Dr. Kent: Did I pronounce your name correctly?
Aaron Lazar: You did!
Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about Gus Legarde.
Aaron Lazar: Gus Legarde is the main character of the Legarde Mysteries obviously. He’s a music professor who lives in the country in a great big home with a daughter, grandson, dog, and cat. He loves spend time with his family and when the series first started with Double Forte, he was an adult. But in the book we’re talking about today, which has just been released; Tremolo, Cry of the Loon, it’s a prequel to Double Forte and Gus is eleven years old in this book.
Dr. Kent: Part of the book I mean, the shaping glance if you will, the Cry of the Loon and so many of us know that sound from our childhoods. I grew up in Minnesota so I know the call well and I’m lucky that out here on the New York coast I can also hear the loons. Talk a little bit about why Tremolo, Cry of the Loons?
Aaron Lazar: When I grew up in my grandparents’ camp during the summertime, I loved that sound. It was too me it was so beautiful that it just represented my entire childhood really. I was surprised when I looked up a little information about it now looking back as an adult that the Tremolo is actually a distress call and that loons will make this interesting sound that wafts over the water but they’ll do it when a human comes near their nest or when they’re troubled.
So it sort of fits because Tremolo where Gus Legarde first brushes against danger in his young life. He also has his first crush and he has to dig down really deep to find courage to face the adversity that he’s faced with. All the trouble that goes on in the book, I though Tremolo is sort of an appropriate title for this situation.
Dr. Kent: So we can of course go on the web to all of your books. There’s a whole bunch of books and they’re all if I’m correct, all based on some kind of sound title; musical title, obviously your main character is a musician so that’s wonderful. The website is legardemysteries.com.
Aaron Lazar: Exactly.
Dr. Kent: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the book itself? You’ve already told us a little about the main character, tell us more.
Aaron Lazar: Okay; well it’s a coming of age mystery set in the Belgrade mists of Maine and young Gus sees a girl being chased through the foggy Maine woods. She’s scared, she’s hurt and she disappears. Basically it’s a histological trip back to the summer of 1964 when Gus faces his deepest fears while solving the mystery. I do have an excerpt from chapter 2 that I’d love to read to you if you’re interested.
Dr. Kent: Go ahead, I was about to ask you.
Aaron Lazar: This scene starts when Gus Legarde and his two friends have just sunk their rowboat and they’re treading water.
Chapter 2 (a reading).
The fog condensed and settled in for the night – impenetrable. Our parents’ faces warbled through the mists as we drifted away. The lake water grew warmer than the air. We reconnected our grip beneath the cushions, looping through the handles grasping each others cold, wrinkled fingers. Iris began to weep, her breath hitching with each sob. “Don’t cry,” I said. “It’ll just make you tired. You’ve got to save your strength.” I could barely see the outline of her head in the darkness. She sniffled and nodded. “Okay, I’ll try,” whispering with a firm voice. “You must be strong. As long as we’re together we’ll be okay.” “Yeah,” she said, splashing her hands beneath the water. The hours passed and we struggled to avoid sleep, singing I want to hold your hand, can’t buy me love, and please, please me, until our throats grew sore. The camp had blasted those songs for the last few weeks; we knew them by heart. The trees billowed in the wind punctuating our bizarre watery world with lost love and youthful yearning. My voice rasped as we sang, becoming weaker. I laid my head on the cushion, adjusting to the cold. My eyes as we sang a hard day’s night. A faint sound of splashing washed in rhythm with our voices. I raised my head from the cushion. The soft of water lapped the shore nearby. I squeezed the twins’ hands. “Which way was it?” was whispered. I pointed towards the noise. “It’s over there, come on!” We paddled toward the welcome sound. When our feet touched soft, sandy bottom we headed to shore landing on a bolder hidden under the canopy of white birches. “Where are the cabins?” Elizabeth asked. A strange scene of pitch black, no lights shown through the fog. No smell of grilled burgers wafted on the air and no sounds of scampering children met our ears. I sputtered with frustration at the chorus of crickets and peepers. We’re probably on the west end; we’ll have to walk a ways to find someone. Come on.” We picked our way along the narrow shore trail occasionally stepping over fallen trees. When we had walked in the fog for about 20 minutes we paused to catch our breath. Shivering, we stood there where pine needles had softened the earth. A flashlight glimmered on the trail ahead. Someone skittered forward racing away from the light. A wisp of a girl with long blonde hair came toward us. The light bobbed as its owner approached. “John,” a mans voice roared, “Sharon, where are you?” The girl nearly collided as we ran; staring with huge eyes she covered a trickle of blood in the corner of her mouth. She trembled and breathed hard, silhouetted by the eerie glow of the light clutching her torn blouse where two buttons were missing. Her palpable terror raised goosebumps on my arms. Before I could speak she panicked and hopped off the trail into the woods. A flicker of fear passed through me. Sensing the danger I pulled us into the woods, just before the man lurched past, the stench of whisky and sweat filled the air. He thundered on the trail bellowing like a man on fire. “Sharon, where are you?” Sharon had disappeared.
November 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. It’s Friday the 13th of June. It’s a beautiful day out here in New York; its cooled off a little bit there is suffering a little bit and it makes you think at this time of the summer back to in the New York area many times when there’s been heat stroke and things like that and while we’re thinking about the complex medical world, my next guest on the show has a book called The Empowered Patient: Hundreds of Life Saving Facts, Action Steps and Strategies You Need To Know by Dr. Julia Hallisy. Welcome to the show.
Dr. Hallisy: Thank you.
Dr. Kent: There’s so many things that we could talk about honestly from you know, it certainly feels like any time you go to the doctors office you’re in for some discomfort. What was your impetus to write this book?
Dr. Hallisy: After ten years of interacting with the system because of my daughters cancer diagnosis, we had this information and experience and I felt the responsibility to share it with others so they wouldn’t have to learn the hard way like we had. It’s a book I wish I had when my daughter was ill because it would’ve spared all of us a lot of anxiety and a great deal of suffering.
Dr. Kent: Small things like you know this infection that’s been spreading around the country. Its terrifying, especially elderly folks that end up in the hospital and young infants. What do we do about things like infections that we don’t seem to have any control over?
Dr. Hallisy: Well you know I think the reality is that patients have a lot more control on those issues than they even know about. I devote an entire chapter in my book to infection control and prevention because it is so important. Even though we all know how important it is this day for health care washes to do something as basic as washing their hands and that hospital infections can be life threatening, its difficult for patients to discuss something like hand washing. And it’s especially difficult to broach the subject after somebody has neglected to wash their hands.
So I tell people that they need to be proactive meaning that they need to state their expectations up front, right from the beginning. So before a provider even touches you, you simply state something to the effect of, “I know infections are a big problem in healthcare and I won’t feel comfortable unless I ask everyone to wash their hands and wear gloves if needed.” And no one wants to make patients feel uncomfortable. And their response will be of course I’m happy to, or of course we do that with all of our patients.
The patients don’t want to be in the position of being the hand washing police so I tell them don’t wait for somebody to breach protocol and then pounce on them. Tell your provider that you’re trying to assume more responsibility as a patient and that you’re trying to keep yourself safe from infection. No ones going to argue or feel offended by that logic, especially if you’re polite about it.
Dr. Kent: Can you explain to the listeners and to me what exactly happens in the worst case scenario? You’re thinking oh gosh, I’d really like to ask them to wash their hands or wear gloves and you don’t do that and lets say the worst happens. What could happen?
Dr. Hallisy: Hospital inquired infections; there is 1.7 million hospital acquired infections a year and that number comes from the center of disease control, and 99,000 of them are fatal. So you have a lot on the line when it comes to this and if people realize that it isn’t just oh, you know, am I going to get a rash on my skin or am I going to have my IV have to be started over or potentially talking about your life.
So if people realize that, I don’t think they would feel at all uncomfortable about saying this is really important, I can’t overlook this. I mean there’s lots of things patients can do to help prevent infections in hospitals. But first and foremost all the experts if we remind the staff to wash their hands and wear gloves is number one. By far it’s the most important and I even advise patients to work on keeping their own hands clean because we know that hands carry a lot of germs.
So patients can seek an alcohol based sanitizer next to their bed, I tell them to keep Kleenex so if they have to blow their nose they have Kleenex right at their disposal. Anything they can to do to also keep their own hands clean is important.
Dr. Kent: In your book is about kind of two things. It’s about the patient and the provider and what could the providers do better? I know that’s not really the goal of you’re book, but where are the providers lacking? Where do they make their mistakes?
Dr. Hallisy: Basic things like washing hands and wearing gloves I think that a lot of times understaffing is an issue and plays a role in that. People are rushed, maybe they’re understaffed so they’re running literally from room to room and it’s easy to overlook something basic like washing hands or wearing gloves. Providers need to be more responsible about prescribing antibiotics because the overuse of antibiotics is what has gotten us into this situation of creating resistant organisms like MRSA.
So they have to be bold to say to a patient you really don’t need antibiotics for this instead of taking the quick way out and write somebody a prescription and think well this probably isn’t going to work anyway or they don’t need it but they’re insisting on it so I’ll just give it to them. I think that the American Medical Association recommends that doctors wipe the flat end of the stethoscope with alcohol before it touches each patient because we know that flat end of the stethoscope is contaminated with all kinds of bacteria because its been tested to prove that.
I think another big part is try to engage the patient more to not say its only our responsibility and were kind of overworked and pushed to the limit but to engage patients to expect them to take a little more responsibility in their care and to ask patients to speak out about their allergies or medications they’ve taken in the past and to expect patients to keep their own hands clean and things like that. I think that would make a big difference.
Dr. Kent: Talk a little bit about your background and I guess also your daughter. How you got into this and why it’s such a passion for you.
Dr. Hallisy: Well my daughter was diagnosed at five months of age with bilateral retinal glaucoma, which is malignant tumors in the retinas of her eyes and that started an immersion in the system that was really non-stop for her entire life, which was ten years. We had chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, she had a hospital acquired infection and we ended up in the intensive care unit for seven weeks on life support.
She had an above the amputation there was really never a span of more than a few months that we weren’t involved in the system and that’s the different perspective than just a single hospitalization. I mean we really felt like we were totally immersed in that system. And being a healthcare professional, I’m a practicing general dentist, I could understand the terminology, I knew what people were talking about. I did training infection control, antibiotic use, and form consent issues so I could really assess and understand what was going on. And I think most important; I had the most vital thing in my life on the line, my child.
I had so much to lose and she was helpless to take care of herself. It was really on me and my husband to rise to the occasion and to be her advocate. So we went to all of these experiences, we learned a tremendous amount and then I started making notes and kind of jotting things down, just really to pass the time. My daughter noticed one day and asked me what I was doing and I said I was writing down all of the things that we had learned about being in the hospital, how to stay safe, where the risks were and we kind of started talking.
We both agreed that it should be a book; it would be a good book for people to have. So it came right out of literally the bedside of serving, writing things down, and then we decided we wanted to share that information with other people.
Dr. Kent: All of us, all of our families, we have people coming in and out of the hospital at all times. That’s what happens in families. Give us a tip of what should we be worried about besides of course to see whether the doctor has wiped off the stethoscope, saying would it be okay if you were to wash your hands. What else are we looking for?
Dr. Hallisy: The big ticket items, the things where there’s a lot of problems are for example something as simple as urinary catheters. Most hospital acquired infections come from catheters. Certainly the patient is in a position to say if one is ordered for them, “Do I really need it? Is there absolutely no other way?” Or, if one is used to ask probably on a daily basis, does this need to be removed today? Are we at the point where we can take it out? Because the longer it’s in, the greater your risk.
Now a lot of hospitals are having people wash their body presurgically with a chlorhexadine containing body soap. So that’s something to ask about. Should I be doing that? Can you prescribe that for me? I think that we tell people don’t shave the area to be operated on a couple days before surgery because you can put little tiny cuts in your skin that can be a portal to infection. Things like people don’t realize that new federal law says that people can add their own notes to medical records.
I advise people in my book to read their medical records after being written or to get somebody their medical power of attorney to be able to be watched for them. You gain a lot of information by reading what’s going on. What you think is going on may not be what’s actually happening when you read the medical records. If there is a disagreement, if the patient isn’t making the progress they should and they feel that maybe the hospital or doctor isn’t communicating well or listening to them, they can write their own notes, their own account, their own opinions and experiences, date and sign it, and ask for it to be entered into the medical record, which is really the only official document of your hospitalization.
So there’s actually lots and lots of areas that patients can intervene in the system and really make a difference. They can talk about their allergies. I tell people don’t just assume that everybody is going to remember every single time that you’re allergic to something. But be prepared to speak up if somebody comes in and they’re going to give you something and they’re going to put tape on your arm that your allergic to, you’re going to have to be prepared to be proactive about that and remind people of things.
Dr. Kent: This has been a real pleasure speaking to Dr. Julia Hallisy. Her website is theempoweredpatient.com. The book is called The Empowered Patient: Hundreds of Life Saving Facts, Action Steps and Strategies You Need to Know. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Dr. Hallisy: Thank you.
Dr. Kent: My next guest is going to be speaking about his novel Tremolo, Cry of the Loon story. A Gus Legard Mystery. His name is Aaron Lazar. Come on back for that.
November 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! Today is Friday, June 13th. It’s thought of as a pretty spooky day, an unlucky day but let’s think of it as a unique day, one we don’t see that often. It’s the birthday of William Butler Yates; of course he’s not around anymore, he died 69 years ago but he was born on this day in 1865 and much more to think about on this day. I have four guests on the show. My first guest is world famous artist, author, and ne’er do well Stephan Sagmeister. My second guest is Julia Hallisy, my third guest will be Aaron Lazar and my last guest is a musician of course on sound authors we always feature musicians along with the authors and her name is Molly Mason of the famous duet of Jay Ungar and Molly Mason. My first guest, his name is Stephan Sagmeister and he is well known for doing among other things cover art for the Rolling Stone, Lou Reed and many others. His new book is called In My Life So Far. Its gorgeous, it’s striking, it’s new. Welcome to the show Stephan Sagmeister.
Stephen Sagmeister: Thanks so much for having me, it’s a pleasure.
Dr. Kent: Did I say your name correctly?
Stephen Sagmeister: Absolutely.
Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about this book, In My Life So Far. It’s so interesting. It’s not something that you page from page to page. You can lay it out across the table, you can mix and match. What was the idea behind it?
Stephen Sagmeister: Well it’s basically a little magazine that I found in my diary. At one time I had set down and really tried to think about what had I actually done so far in my life. What do I know by now and made a little list. It was one of the many lists that I made. In my design company we work for clients and even there we started to get clients that really gave us an incredible amount of freedom that basically said oh we have a book that we want to fill up but we don’t want to fill it up with promotional advertising, what can we fill it with?
So in answer to that question we take things from the diary and these little things I’ve learned from my life so far and published them. To give you an example, let’s say the city of Paris has billboards and we took five billboards with very large, complex typography put up there trying to look good in my life. The magazine comes out of this realization that my fear of competition or the designer always to be the nice guy can be fairly limiting in itself. We put it up all over Paris; it seemed like a very self indulgent thing for me at the time but we got lots of reaction.
It wasn’t not only oh can you send me a print I would like to glue them next to my toilet bowl and reminded of it. As we went along, more and more reactions came and we did more and more magazines, pretty much all over the world. The book Things I’ve Done in My Life So Far really features I think 20 of them. Originally they show from Japan to Lisbon and put all together in publication.
Dr. Kent: Not only do you have this In My Life So Far, this brand new book, but there’s a website where you invite other people to contribute. Tell me a little about www.thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com.
Stephen Sagmeister: So that’s because of the book about eight weeks ago we put that site up inviting everybody who thinks that they have learned something. Of course I would invite all of your listeners to write that down and design it in a way that they feel is appropriate to what they’ve learned and then upload it. You just go to thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com and in the beginning you can check out all the stuff up there.
There are hundreds of magazines up there that have been put up. There’s a wonderful book up there already. I remember I think one of the things that comes to my mind quickly is a taste for a sort of two image piece up there where you are going down a mountain says if you are not crashing you are not trying and the second picture you see him all bruised up with a big fat smile on his face and says you are not trying.
Dr. Kent: What inspired you to do this book? You had friends that said look at all these journal entries or was it in yourself that you decided to do this? Where was the core of the project?
Stephen Sagmeister: As a designer I actually do a good number of presentations and here and there you know about our book. Sometimes in front of channel audiences, sometimes in front of live audiences pretty much around the world and here and there I show some pieces of the series and I always got the most resonance with them.
So I started to do presentations that only had these series in there, that didn’t show any of our other books, no record covers, no identity just to see pieces and again I got a very good resonance. So from there it was a pretty short step to say oh it probably must be a neat thing to have all 20 of them collected for a presentation.
Dr. Kent: What exactly when you were a young artist where did your style develop? Because in looking at this book and looking at your websites, in looking at your album covers and all of that you have a style. Where did that start to form?
Stephen Sagmeister: Well I grew up in the Austrian Alps in a very small town that is a beautiful area so I think that was one set of influences that definitely came from there. Starting with the apartment I grew up in, there were many signs from my granddad hanging about. My granddad was a known sign painter early in the 19th century. So we had a lot of his magazines here in and he was a conservative man but he was long gone by the end of the 19th century. He was still working in that style as he carefully got typography on them.
That’s basically what the situation in our apartment. Outside, if you take a step outside there was a lake in the Austrian Alps a good number of ### that again would sell little ### with magazines on them. Then I went to Oslo which of course is much more open influences in the depression but also in England we had a group called the Vienna 1900 in the recession that also new England was from in the 70s we had a group and it was called the Influential Group in Vienna Extremists of a great number of famous artists or important artists in Austria came out of.
I think because I grew up in a small town I always had this desire to live in a big city. The first time I saw New York I realized very quickly that this was kind of the mogul of metropolis was a symbol of a big city and I wanted to live here and got a scholarship to study here. I’ve loved it ever since.
Dr. Kent: With your design and your artwork it’s always fascinating that whatever you’re doing it seems like it’s emerging out of the space that’s already there if its something that’s concrete. Who did you look at as being influences? Was it Warhol, was it the abstract artists? Where was your great inspiration?
Stephen Sagmeister: Probably the biggest thing influencing my life was another designer who used to be a boss of mine. His name is Peter Collins. He used to run a company here in New York called ### company. He probably might be best known for being the creator of that magazine called Colors that was a very influential magazine in the 80s and 90s.
I would think that him and his staffs approach as well as his socially caring approach and big heart really was a big influence from many angles. I always kept my studio very small because in the design world the only thing more difficult than design is to figure out how not to grow. Everything else is pretty easy and that turned out to be very virtual and in many other cases. Peter died very early that I’m still very good friends with his widow Myra Collins who is a fantastic illustrator I know in her own right.
Dr. Kent: You have a unique thought about branding. Branding is of course in the business world, everything is the brand. What’s your take on that?
Stephen Sagmeister: I think that many other things its power is completely over estimated by the practitioners. If you listen to the head of an international branding agency, you will think that they have influence over our minds that we couldn’t even begin to understand. At one time I worked in these places and we met many of the people who were running these places. By and large they are a surprisingly unintelligent group of people that would love to manipulate our ways but when it comes down to it not quite intelligent enough to me.
In most cases I found that the average consumer make decisions on the quality of a product or a service if that product is in a category that is actually possible. I think branding has surprisingly little influence in product and service categories, we can know the difference. Coffee for example, most people know the difference between a good cup of coffee and a bad cup of coffee, branding though is almost a stamp of approval but in a minor role. A bigger role is how good is that cup of coffee? In other categories, let’s say vodka. Vodka consumers have not a clue between a good vodka and a bad vodka and they of course base their decisions on is it a beautiful bottle, do I like the name?
Typical branding items. But I think that those categories where the consumer really doesn’t have a clue are in the minority. In most other ways its pretty much is the product good or is the product bad? If you look at a brand realistically of course its part of the brand but its not what most international branding agencies have an influence on. It’s basically the company.
Dr. Kent: So, you’re sort of well known for this what they call hand-made design, which is something that is really gorgeous and sometimes shocking. Where did those ideas come from and how have they been accepted by the public?
Stephen Sagmeister: Well I think that I’ve realized that we now have about 80 years of modernism. If I look at the foundation of modernism, be it ###, its been 80 years and at least 40-50 of those 80 years modernism has been predating the dominant styles throughout the world of pretty much anything. Be it product design or graphic design. And of course initially there was an incredible reason and desire for this simplicity and this form full of function for this to happen.
Now that we have it as the status quo over the years, an unbelievable amount of simple boring things have come out of this movement and very much mechanical development has happened. If you ask a regular consumer, I don’t know if I ask my mom who designed this book or who designed this website? She would probably think a machine did it. Or, who designed this newspaper? She would be completely unaware. She would be aware that there was a journalist who wrote that article but she would be totally unaware that there was probably a designer designing the typeface, designing how that article was laid out and that there was many meetings involved behind it. So I think there is a pretty valid sense of making or bringing some subjectivity back into this.
Some human touch if you will and I’m not even arguing that every piece of design should be done per se, I don’t know say a time table for the port authority probably doesn’t need to have a human touch it can show a table that shows the time in a pleasing and concise manner. But even there, let’s say that I look at the emergency exit instructions in the planes. I actually collect these things. I have hundreds of them. They look the same pretty much from every airline. You have the modernist, simplistic icons of little figures, some of those pulling on emergency handles and so on.
Now pretty much in every plane I’ve ever been when they do the emergency drill it almost never see anybody taking that card out of the backseat pocket in front of them and actually look at it because they’re just so boring. There’s now a couple of airlines, Virgin Atlantic is one of them, that redesigned those much sweeter with a little bit of fun in it. They tell you the same content in a more pleasing manner. Last time I took a plane to London on Virgin, I actually, not the whole plane, but I saw eight, nine, ten people actually checking it out. So I think even in these very factual very dry situations, there is room for some more emotion.
Dr. Kent: It’s really been an honor speaking with you and through the years in perusing through your biography its extraordinary how many places I have seen your artwork in the past from album covers to other things. This book is extraordinary. In My Life So Far; it’s beautiful, it’s something you can, I mean I plan to put it on the table and look at it again and again. So it’s been a real honor, this is a gorgeous book.
Stephen Sagmeister: Well, thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show will be a woman named Julia Hallisy; come on back for that, its going to be a good one.
June 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Interview with Aaron Lazar [8:38m]:
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In addition to receiving publishing contracts for Double Forte’, Upstaged, Tremolo: cry of the loon, Mazurka, Healey’s Cave, and One Potato, Blue Potato, Aaron writes “Seedlings,” a monthly column featured in the Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine (FMAM) and the Mysteryfiction.net literary newsletter “Voice in the Dark.”. His short articles on writing have appeared in Absolute Write,and his short essay, “Word Paintings” was included in the 2007 Bylines Writers’ Desk Calendar. Check out the Great Mystery and Suspense Magazine for the flash fiction piece, “Follow the Leader” and visit his blogs at www.murderby4.blogspot.com and www.aaronlazar.blogspot.com. Aaron is the Saturday Writing Essential host on Gather.com. Aaron works as an electrophotographic engineer at Eastman Kodak Company, in Rochester, New York, but his true passion lies in writing. While currently working on his thirteenth novel, he also enjoys gardening; cooking family feasts; photography, cross-country skiing, classical music, and French Impressionist art. Although he adored raising his delightful daughters, he finds grandfathering his “two little buddies” one of life’s finest experiences. http://www.legardemysteries.com/tremolocryoftheloon.htm
March 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Interview with Ashley Marriott & Dr. Marc Paulsen [10:34m]:
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Ashley Marriott and Dr. Marc Paulsen have some very convincing arguments why we should all dump our trainers and read their brand new book, Dump Your Trainer! We had a great conversation about personal training, motivation, and much more.More information from their website: www.dumpyourtrainer.com
“Ashley is the quintessential people person… She understands why you fail and gives you what you need to succeed.” - Marc L. Paulsen, M.D.
“Nobody, absolutely nobody inspires like Ashley.” - Joe Salazar, clientAshley helped me to reach my goals by always being encouraging and making the workouts varied, fun and interesting.” - Noel Olken, Cliet“Ashley’s the best! She’s helped hundreds of people transform their lives, motivating them to get healthy and fit.” - Kerri Kasem, Radio/TV Host“You’re gonna’ see celebrities and their trainers in a whole new light.”
