The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – AmaZin Graceland: An Extra-Ordinary Horse Ranch by Marion M Puzio

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

AmaZin Graceland: An Extra-Ordinary Horse Ranch by Marion M Puzio https://www.amazon.com/-/es/AmaZin-Graceland-Extra-Ordinary-Horse-Ranch/dp/B0FJ9TV2FX To run the race is our Prize! To finish the race is our Victory! The word is out-there's going to be an Extra-Ordinary race today between Star and Spirit, over, around, and through GraceLand Ranch! There will surely be some AmaZin challenges! A raging river stream, a rocky mountain... wow, that sounds dangerous and exciting. I really like challenges and horses too, so I want to see how this race turns out. Let's get this book now because on the count of three, the race will begin! ONE! TWO! THREE!

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Because you're about to go on a moment. Monster Education Roller Coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks, Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Ladies, gentlemen, and there, early things that makes it official. Welcome to nearly 17 years and 2,600 episodes of the Chris Vos show. A top 100 show you can find, especially in business management. We're kicking ass taking names all over the world when it comes to ratings.

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It's an amazing young lady on the show. We're going to talking about her debut book that came out October 14th, 2025, called Amazing Grace Land, an extraordinary horse ranch by Marion M. Pusio. And we're going to get into it with her. We're going to talk to her about her experience, her interest here, and some of the things that she's using to uplift people, etc. She is a retired New York State teacher who enjoys writing. With over 26 years in the classroom, she's touched many youngsters' lives with words. Whether given or received, words are foundational to life's choices. This is her first children's book. As a woman of faith, she enjoys reading the Bible, and her favorite verse is Proverbs 226. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old,

He will never depart from it. Welcome to the show, Marion. How are you? I'm doing great. Chris, how are you doing today? I am doing excellent. It's great to have you. Give us any dot-coms or social media websites, anything you want people to look you up on the interwebs.

I haven't gotten around to doing that yet because I'm a brand new author and trying to feel my way around this new journey for me. I have a email address and I think I'm on Instagram too, but I guess I'm that'll come later. And when you get the link for the website that when you haven't made, send us an email and we'll add that to the post. And then if you want, do you want to give us your Instagram tag? Do you want people to look you up on Instagram?

Sure, but I don't have it right in front of me. Yeah, just send it to us and we'll add it to the post. So folks, you can find it there. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's in your new book, Amazing Grace Land? You know, I always love children, and I'm a teacher by trade, like you said, over 20, six years of experience. And I was a hairdressing teacher. And I found that I always loved to work with my hands. And I just, you know, I would grab whoever I could to set their hair when I was a

child. And as I grew up, you know, I really wanted to become a hairdressing teacher or a hairdresser. And my dad didn't want me to do that. But I pursued it after I got married. And in my adult life, with two babies and a husband to care for, I went back to school to become a hairdresser. And then my teacher that I had inspired me to become a hairdressing teacher. But I always liked writing things, even from when I was a kid, I always like writing things or about things, things that I liked, things that I disliked. And I always felt, you know, I had a talent for it, but I was never really good at punctuating or putting a period or a question mark.

And when I went to college, I had an English teacher who told me, you don't have to worry about that, because editors do that for you. Yeah, you just tell the editors do the periods. Oh, great. And this book was written quite a few years ago when I was younger, and I had tried to get published way back when, but nobody wanted it at that time. I know God has timing for everything.

And I guess at that time, it was 30 years ago, it wasn't time for this book to be published. But I think now, I was sitting down in the living room one day watching the TV, and I saw advertisement on television for the Trilogy Publishing Company, and if you have a manuscript, send it in. And the Lord said to me, send that manuscript in. And within five days, or six days, they got back to me and says, we'd like to publish your book.

Oh, wow. And I was elated. Congratulations. Yeah, yeah. I learned a lot of new things along the way, and I never knew the intensity of publishing a book. I got, you know, I went on an adventure with that. And like I said, I'm still trying to get myself together and, you know, feel my way around to have this book become a success, which I really believe it will become a success. I have people who have read the book and given me feedback, and everybody so far loved the books.

I don't know if they were being kind to me. or I really love the book. But even adults told me that they really enjoy the book and they love it. I mean, that's awesome. And, you know, your first book's the hardest. The first book is the hardest because you're trying to navigate publishing and writing, editing, you know, keeping your voice through editing. You know, it's a daunting task. But, you know, the reason that authors are so well respected or respected, I'm not sure if we're well respected, but.

You know, people kind of, you know, when you become an author, people kind of look at you a little bit different. I don't know if you've seen that yet because you're still. Oh, yes, I've seen that. Yeah. They kind of look at you like, you know, when I wrote my book, people were like, oh, my God, you're really smart. And you're like, you've known me for 50 years.

You were there the whole time. You know these stories. You live some of these stories with me. And you're just like figuring this out now. But, you know, the problem is it's such a hard process. It's hard to sit down and write a book. It's hard to stay on that daily acumen of trying to write at least an hour a day, trying to write every day. It's hard to develop characters if you're doing a nonfiction.

I think that's harder than writing, or I'm sorry, it's hard to write characters when you do fiction. I think it's harder to do fiction than is to do nonfiction. You know, most of the nonfiction is, you know, stories of real life, right? But making up characters and plot lines and subplots and. And, you know, all the different things that go on, it's hard. You know, I think people realize that because I think a lot of people try to write a book and they don't get very far. And so, yeah, you're going through the gauntlet.

But the great thing is once you get through the other side of understanding how to make all this work, your next book is going to be a whole lot easier because you're not going to have to relearn all this crap that you had to deal with the machinery and the business of being an author. You can just kind of get back to writing a book again. And, you know, then there's the promotion. That's the fun of the business. But so tell us what this is. This is a children's book, if I understand correctly.

And what was the intent behind this? What did you want readers to come away with? As I said, I taught in the classroom for 26 years, and I've seen children go through many difficulties in their life. And I think that I kind of wrote this book a little bit to help them realize that everything has to do with attitude and how you perceive things that if you do things with a good attitude and you have a good attitude things will go a lot smoother for you and in the book there are two characters one's named star and the other spirit and a star is a really a rambunctious kind of a person

or not person but horse and thinks he knows everything but you know he doesn't and it's his attitude that's holding him back. And he challenges spirit to a race over, around, and through Graceland Ranch. And it's a different kind of race that they run. And he learns many lessons along the way about, you know, his attitude. And, you know, at first you'll see him, he doesn't care. And he doesn't think about other people's feelings or, you know, he's ungrateful. and as he's going along through all of the obstacles that they face together,

he starts to change. And by the end of the book, he realizes that his attitude has to change for the better if he wants to, you know, get ahead. He had run many races, but he couldn't win because it was his attitude that was holding him back. And that's why they sent him to Grace Land Ranch to kind of of adjust or help him to adjust his attitude. Attitude is really important in life. Your mindset, right?

Yes. Very important. And so what age group would you say this is targeted to? All right. So it was put out for children, ages four to eight, but although kids are really advanced these days, you know, you know, it's not like years ago when we were four and eight, you know, behind the times.

But anyway, but I have found that not only, only youngsters enjoy it, but like I said to you before, I have had a lot of adults come back to me and say, I absolutely loved your book. And I'm like, wow. Yeah, that's nice. And, you know, I mean, we enjoy reading kids' books, too. I mean, they're fun. And, you know, there's something about the innocence of them. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Why did you, why did you call it the, I know that there's a, there's a tall Z, a capitalized Z in the word amazing. Amazing Graceland. Is there a reason for that?

It's AMA, capital Z-I-N. And I don't know if this is, I haven't researched it totally, but the Z-I-N is wine. The AMA refers to in some cultures as water. Oh. You have water and wine, and what is that? That's the communion or the what you left us to take for. to help us along the way and I says water and wine this is my first miracle of getting this out there to the public and hopefully it'll bless children

around the world I hope it does go around the world and hopefully they'll realize that attitude and being positive and loving life living life God wants the best for us and and I think it's for every single person to enjoy their lives. Now, do you flesh that out in the book, about the water to wine sort of thing? No, but he does some of the obstacles that he goes through as the raging river that star has to overcome is the raging river, which has to do with water. And there's a lot of scripture in the book, too.

You know, I kind of tried to put the scriptures I thought that would go with the illustrations of what was happening. And the second challenge was the beautiful valley. The beautiful valley was all about how things look so beautiful, but yet they could be dangerous. And we have to beware, because things don't always appear as they are. So he brings a lesson from that by getting stuck in the quicksand.

And you know there's quicksand in the Bible. There was a scripture about quicksand in the Bible, which I was surprised, and I used it in the book. And then the third challenge that he faces is the Rocky Mountain. And the Rocky Mountain is a big challenge that he starts climbing the mountain, and his spirit calls out to him and says, come down from there. And he says, oh, no, you just want to win the race. That's why you want me to come down from here.

And he says, no, I don't want to win the race. I just want you to finish the race safely. And he makes fun of spirit, who's supposed to be his guy. You know, he ridicules him. He's always ticking up dust around the other horses. He's really, he's really, you know, a character star. He's really a character, you know, kind of like we were when we were younger. You know, you thought you knew it all, but you don't know nothing.

And as they go through each thing, like I said, there is a part where, hey, he's always running. ahead of Spirit in the race. And there is a part where Spirit is not with him. He turns around and looks back and doesn't see him there behind him. He's always like about 12 lengths behind him to guide him. And he goes back to look for Spirit and Spirit says, him, why did you come back to look for me if you were so interested in winning this race? And Star says, I don't know. I thought I was worried about you, you know? And that's what you could see the change in his attitude starting to take place. Ah. You know, this is a great thing for kids to grow up. These are important lessons for them to learn and everything else. What was it like writing your first book? What was the, you know,

experience there? And what sort of process did you use to write? I would get up at 3 o'clock in the morning and write. Okay. And I found that if you don't get up at 3 o'clock in the morning and write while it's there. By the time the morning comes, you'll forget what you were supposed to write. I would write during the day, but most of the time I would find that I was quiet, you know, at night. And like I said, I wrote the book quite a few years ago. I had children, you know, small children at the time. And I would find that in the, in the, about 4.30 was the best time to do that. I am. Yeah. So when no one's bothering you, no one's quiet and you really and it kind of flows through you you know and kind of just flows right through

you i can't take the credit i always say it was the grace of god that helped me write this book give him all the glory because i i know it's going to help children all over the world and they're going to enjoy it let's see what else do we want to talk about the book is there any episodes inside of it any scenes you want to tease out and what they learn from him well i'm going to learn like I said, discipline, they're going to learn obedience. And those things are not bad. As a matter of fact, I think we need more of that today. Children are really kind of like confused because, I don't know,

there's this parents don't feel like they have to discipline their children or, you know, make them obedient. And I think they need that. As much as we hate it, we need it. I think that children will get to, you know, even though they hate it, they'll get to appreciate it. Because as they go through their life, you know, you have to discipline yourself before you can discipline others. That's true. That's what I always tell people when I discipline them.

I'm doing this because I need to discipline myself, but you're more convenient to do this on. In the classroom, if I wasn't disciplined and didn't have my lessons and things ready, for those students when they came in where they were lessons, they would have ate me up and spit me out if I didn't have that discipline to constantly be on the ball about what everybody had to do

and what they had to get accomplished for the day. Most definitely. Most definitely. Some of the other questions I had for you, how many drafts did you go through before arriving at the finished manuscript? Okay, so I went through quite a few drafts And I wrote all of it down in a spiral notebook years and years ago.

And, you know, as I went along, I changed a few things, but not really a lot. You know, like I said, it kind of just flowed through me. And, you know, now I'm very proud of the work that, you know, it turned out to be. And hopefully, you know, other people will enjoy it. I enjoy it when I read it and I wrote it. Yeah. And you went through editing. and all that sort of stuff.

The trilogy publishing company helped me every step of the way. For a new, you know, author like I am, they really helped me along, you know, to bring me along. I did all the illustrations with a team of illustrators that, you know, I had to tell them what I wanted on each page and they would have to send them pictures of how I wanted this here and that there. and they did an excellent job, and I loved the way the book turned out with all the pictures and the illustrations. It's beautiful, and there's pictures on every page. It's a funny story. I went to in Chapicro, I went to a book fair, and I wasn't able to participate in it, but I met other authors, and I handed out a couple of books. I handed out a book to a couple that I saw. This couple had two little boys, and I handed the book to that couple, and I said to them, I'm a new author,

And I would like to give you my book. I just had it published. And the father was holding a couple of books for the kids. But when he took the book from me, his son grabbed it out of his hand. And it started looking in the book. I said, oh, that's a good sign. I guess he was intrigued by the colors. Oh, yeah, the cover.

You know? Yeah, yeah. The cover makes the book. They tell me. Yeah, definitely, definitely. So how, when you grew up, what were some of the things that were influencing you and experiences you had that helped shape the book? Okay, so when I grew up, I can relate myself to star, because, you know, when you grow up,

you think you know everything. And there, the stars of the character in the book, correct? Yeah, stars, character in the book. And I can relate myself to him because I was like stubborn and, you know, you think you know everything, but you don't know nothing. You learn, life is a learning experience. Oh, yeah. And I had my faith, which I always had my faith, and that helped me along tremendously.

And that's another thing I think children are lacking today. Although we seem to be getting back to basics, you know, we seem to be getting back to faith and basics. Faith family are, you know, God. And I think it's really good that things might turn around and go back, you know, the pendulum swing back the other way. Because everybody, like I said, they need that knowing that God loves them. And he's not looking for perfection. He's looking for somebody to just love him back, you know? It's good to get somebody to love you back.

That's the thing I'm still working on. I go tell my mom she loves me all the time. And she's like, what was your name? So she's, who are you? What do I know you? But, yeah, I mean, these are important things. you do identify with some of your characters in the book some of that experience of your lifetime i mean the book was basically 30 years in the works some experience of your lifetime

probably weaves into the books and it's interesting how we use those to tell the stories sometimes things that happen to us that we're like uh no one's ever going to be interested in that you can you know contribute to some of the writing that people do you know we have a you know we just had the tom clancy folks on yesterday that they've written a big series of course with tom clancy's and then with their own books. And, you know, their military background. They were both in the Navy. Their military background helps give them, you know,

help them with the stories and the scenarios and stuff like that. So it's kind of interesting how we go through life and we're like, this isn't going to be, you know, this isn't going to do anything. But yet these can be tools we can use in the future. Yeah, you know, life throws things at you that you never expect. Yeah. If you're not rooted and grounded, when I, after I wrote that book,

I wrote that book in 96, I think it was, or 95, originally. Wow. And after that, I had a terrible thing happen in my life. My first husband passed away. Oh, no. And I was a widow. And, you know, at that time, when I was trying to get the book published, nobody really wanted it.

But, you know what? If I didn't have my faith, you'd be scraping me up off the sidewalk right now. Oh, wow. A lot of, it got me, my faith got me through a lot. of dark days and and I'm so thankful and happy that I'm here now and and you know like I said you know without your faith I just don't know how people you know survive. Did it sidetrack you at the time from publishing the book you know being busy with no I still tried to it was before he died that I tried to get it published I sent it out to about four or five publishing companies

but nobody was interested like I said that has a time for everything yeah And I guess the time is now. The time is now. So now we're here. I'm glad you finally got it out. Any plans in the future? Any future books? Or maybe anything you're cooking up?

Yes. I'm thinking of, I'm having some ideas come in to my head. I'm writing a few things down. And I want to see how this book goes. And I'm going to do it. I left a room at the end of the book so that it can continue. Because Star says to spirit, you know, oh, how did you jump over that raging? River. How did you do that? That was so hard to do. And he says, I'm going to teach you that and many,

many other things. So I left the little opening there for more lessons and more, you know, learning about life and, you know, and I have a few ideas, but I'm not going to round in my head right now. Plus, you don't want to give them away. So people can wait and buy the book, as we like to say on the show, to find out. Give us your final pitch out for people to order the book, wherever fine books are sold, and any dot coms or social media want to share? It's on Amazon.com and it's on Barnes & Noble so far, and that's where they can find it. And it's easier probably to find it under my name than the title of the book because a lot of times it gets confused with other amazing Graceland things. So Marian M. P-U-Z-I-O, it's easier to just put that in there and it'll pop right up for you.

And I also, I think Amazon gave me a link, too, which I can put the link on. And I've been getting calls from, you know, people all over to who want to buy the book for their, you know, brick and mortar stores. And I said, you have to call trilogy for that, you know, you know. Yeah. And I met so many nice people along the way. And, of course, your people, too, they were very good. Anna Jones was very good to me. And I just, she's a wonderful person.

And she helped me a lot. Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. All right. And I appreciate everything that you're doing for me. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me today. I'm so happy that we got to do this together.

Yes. I could show you a picture. Did you want to see? Yeah. There's the book. Amazing. Amazing, amazing, Grace Land. Amazing.

Amazing. Graceland. Thank you very much for coming the show, Mary, and we really appreciate it. And thank you. Thank you. And thanks for audience for tuning in. Order up her book, wherever fine books are sold. There'll be a link for it on the Chris Foss Show. Amazing Graceland, an extraordinary horse ranch out October 14th, 2025.

Might make a great present to put in some of the stockings. You know, it's November right now. So putting in some of the stockings of people. And if you're watching this five to ten years from now, like people do it. To just, you know, buy it. And if it's January, buy it for Christmas or buy it for the birthday. Kids probably love, kids love these sort of books. Definitely buy it.

And, you know, the more kids can read the better and it really expands their mind and their imagination. It's so healthy for them. Social media isn't. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out.

Great show.