Words and Wine Tuesday in Keauhou

Alan McNarie, Rosa Say and Carol Alena Aronoffwill be featured during Kona Stories Book Shop’s Words and Wine event at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Keauhou Shopping Center.

McNarie, a Big Island writer/journalist and author of “Yeshua,” will discuss his newest book, “The Soul Keys.” The novel doesn’t just bend the rules: it explodes reality and puts it back together again. The setting is the contemporary United States, but it’s an America where white rats pop in and out of dreams, ghosts hitch rides in Winnebago motorhomes, and the Oakland Bay Bridge seriously considers becoming a dragon.

In this world, an unassuming aquarium keeper named Sander Keynes and his girlfriend, Jenny Duenckel, discover an empty flying saucer sitting on an Ozark riverbank. When he gets home, Sander makes another discovery: there’s an armadillo in his bathtub—and it can talk, and it has no idea how it’s gotten there. Sander, Jenny and the armadillo, whose name is Dick, soon find themselves on a wild journey from Springfield, Missouri, to a secret military base on the Big Island — all the while being pursued by the FBI, the CIA, the Centers for Disease Control, NASA (no, not that NASA), mad scientists, the tabloids, Jenny’s homicidal ex-husband, and someone with a French accent. Along the way, they learn why all butterflies are insane, how a real psychic makes a living, how to literally travel on the wings of a song — and how to find the Three Keys to Unlock the Soul and End the World.

Say is a workplace culture coach determined to reinvent our workplaces value by value, making them healthier and more rewarding for us all. As founder of Say Leadership Coaching, Say is hired as an expert coach on values-based management, and as a change agent leading business in organizational culture design. She is widely known for her work leading the Managing with Aloha movement within Hawaii and internationally, work which draws from her 30-year career in the resort hospitality industry and residential resort development.

Initially published in 2004, “Managing with Aloha” is considered a classic work which describes how Hawaii’s values can be brought to the art of business universally. The book explores 19 different Hawaiian values, and demonstrates how managers can bring these universal values into every kind of business practice today. With many examples drawn from her own successful career as a manager, Say eloquently shares her tested common-sense approaches to blending social and economic goals of business enterprise in ways that define a healthy sensibility for working and living every day, somewhere in the world, Aloha comes to life.

Aronoff is a Ph.D. psychologist, teacher and writer who co-founded SAGE, a psycho-spiritual program for elders, helped guide a Tibetan Buddhist Meditation center, taught Eastern spirituality and healing practices; imagery, meditation, and women’s health at San Francisco State University. She guided Healing in Nature retreats in Hawaii and the southwest, and had a counseling practice in Marin County for many years.

She authored and co-authored a variety of books and papers, including “Dreaming Earth’s Body,” a remarkable collaboration that seems to spring from a single consciousness. Aronoff’s poems evoke the spirit of nature as well as the personal inner spirit. She reflects deeply on the nature of everyday experience and the transformative opportunities offered by listening to and acknowledging Gaia. The text is spare and direct, yet lyrical in its perfect descriptive beauty.

Following a more formal book presentation from each author there will be a Q&A session. The event concludes at 8 p.m.

Info: Brenda or Joy, 324-0350.