What the Mirrors Knew by Linda Annas Ferguson

Every human journey is one of transition, but Anna Grace O’Neill’s is anything but conventional. Living alone in a bungalow on the riverbank of Charleston, South Carolina, and disenchanted by a less-than-satisfying life, she discovers once-buried revelations in a journal left by her deceased and beloved grandmother, Aine.

The mystery of why her grandfather, Angus, died before he could accompany Aine to America from Ireland after their teenage marriage years ago is one that she is driven to resolve. On her quest, she is called, as if by their spirits themselves, to embark on nothing less than a pilgrimage to the home of their youth. Their native land is part of the equally ethereal and earthborn Irish “Wild West” coast, where myths are a national heritage. Encountering surreal experiences, she is often unsure if she has been “taken astray” to another dimension by the invisible forces maintained in Celtic folklore, where alchemy and the ephemeral aren’t foreign concepts.

She is drawn off course when her path crosses that of an unexpected admirer, Kevin, a quantum physicist turned roving magician, yielding life-shifting events. Her formidable odyssey, as much within as external, creates a conflict in how she maneuvers the rearrangement of her once-mundane world.

Enriched with literary style and sensibilities, the story is interwoven with philosophy, magical realism, spirituality, romance, and alternate realities. Anna Grace’s struggles are the core incentive that keeps us rooting for her and leaves the reader’s hand resting on the back cover, deliberating well past the last line.

https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/linda-annas-ferguson.html

Bling's on the Trail of a Fluffy Puffy Tail by Dawn Secord

 Children's Picture Books

A glance outside the window gives our main canine heroine, Bling, a perplexing question.  Did she see a tail?  A squirrel's she thinks.  Fluffy and puffy, then gone in a wink.   Set out to request the assistance of a unique blend of flying, slimy, digging and hooved friends, Bling, is relentless in achieving her goal of finding that tail.  What she finds is not at all what she expected. Now, what does she do with the homeless critter with the fluffy puffy tail? No child will be disappointed as Bling guides them in curiosity, discovery, and an introduction to empathy through colorful realistic illustrations and rhyme.

#childrens #picturebook

https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/dawn-secord.html

The Kyrrah Incident: All Guns to Starboard by Michael Bush

Military Sci-Fi

A century after its disappearance, the lost colony of Kyrrah has been found.

The United Solar Colonies arrive to reclaim the fertile world and restore imperial rule. But Kyrrah is not a forgotten outpost. Rival factions born from generations of settlers are ready to fight for their independence—and for the planet itself.

As tensions erupt into war, Alexei Petrovski and Lieutenant Christine Rogers find themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that will decide the fate of Kyrrah. Beneath the planet’s surface, ancient secrets long buried awaken, threatening everyone who calls the world home.

What began as an attempt at reunification may become a battle for survival.

'A stunning, unforgettable masterpiece that grabs you from page one and doesn’t let go.' Amazon Review

https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/michael-bush.html

#amreading #scifi #military #goodreads #iartg

The Spider and the Sword by A. W. Di Marzio

Fantasy, Cross Genre Fiction, Science Fiction

An antique shop. A golden spider. A sword yet to be forged. World order to be upended—a journey to begin.

Two worlds of magic clash when intersecting spells set catastrophic events in motion. One Molecular Scientist, one interdimensional hop too many, captured on a world of magic—what to do with a muggle?

Marcus and friends are asked one simple favor: get a gold spider out of a glass globe—for the money. They discover that the spider is not what it seems and is a key to a world of magic and simplicity.

A sword entwined with magic and witchcraft must be forged—its true purpose is unknown. Enter these worlds of strange beings, deceit among mages, the wisdom of elders, and societal norms questioned.

A story of science, magic, witchcraft and muggles as they discover the worlds that entwine them.

https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/a-w-di-marzio.html

#amreading #goodreads #iartg #ian1 #fantasy #scifi

The 2026 IAN Book of the Year Awards is NOW open

 The 2026 IAN Book of the Year Awards is NOW open to ALL #authors.

The Independent Author Network presents the 12th Annual IAN Book of the Year Awards, an international contest open to all authors with 75 fiction and non-fiction categories.

Featuring cash prizes of $6,000 USD.

Recommended by ALLi the Alliance of Independent Authors.

The truth about indie publishing....

More than 50 million Books are available on Amazon. 📚

100,000 new titles are added to the Kindle Store every month.

Q. How will you ensure your book stands out to readers in a market with millions of choices?

A. The best way to move your book ahead of others in your genre(s) is to win an award contest.🏆

Enter Today. 
https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/book-of-the-year.html

#bookawards #bookawards2026 #cashprizes #goodreads #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #indieauthor #writersoffacebook #publishing #authorscommunity

Christy Landers Tallamy - The IAN Interview

Christy Landers Tallamy

Christy Landers Tallamy is a writer whose work explores the beauty and complexity of ordinary lives. Her style has been compared to Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, and her poetry and essays have appeared in several creative writing anthologies. She has also worked as a ghostwriter, blogger, and essayist. Her historical trilogy draws on her Southern roots to examine family loyalty, faith, and generational legacy. Christy is drawn to stories of people navigating survival in the grey areas between right and wrong, and to the seemingly small choices that ripple across generations. An engaging speaker, she offers author programs on literature, family dynamics, and the power of storytelling.

IAN: Please tell us about your latest books.

Christy Landers Tallamy: The Ruth Trilogy traces the generational cost of silence, faith, and survival in the 20th-century American South. Born in 1912 at the foot of Stone Mountain, Georgia, Ruth Shurlington grows up steeped in evangelical tradition and rigid expectations of womanhood. After the death of a beloved patriarch shatters her family’s stability, Ruth’s longing for love and certainty leads her into the arms of Leonidas Brantley—a much older man with a criminal history and whose charm masks a brutal need for control. Their marriage becomes a crucible of isolation and violence, binding Ruth to a life she once believed was divinely ordained.

As the years unfold through Sugarcane Saint and Sipping Mercury, Ruth’s private suffering ripples outward, shaping the lives of her children and entangling them in a legacy of buried truths. Sisters, neighbors, and fleeting flashes of courage offer the possibility of escape, but each attempt carries a cost—and each silence feeds the darkness growing inside the Brantley home. What begins as one woman’s private submission slowly hardens into a family inheritance, until the past is no longer something they remember, but something they are forced to survive.

IAN: Is The Ruth Trilogy published in print, e-book or both?

Christy Landers Tallamy: The Ruth Trilogy is available in paperback, hardback and e-book formats. We will be releasing the audio versions in 2027.

IAN: Where can we go to buy your books?

Christy Landers Tallamy: Christylanderstallamy.com/shop Sugarcane Saint at Amazon.com and Sipping Mercury at Amazon.com

IAN: What inspired you to write trilogy?

Christy Landers Tallamy: This story had been pressing on my family for generations. My grandfather was a moonshiner, a witch doctor, a community leader — and a deeply violent man. My grandmother, by contrast, embodied the image of the sweet Southern woman. That pairing cast a long shadow. They had seven sons, and every one of them became abusers. Their four daughters became, in very different ways, studies in female survival.

For most of my life, the stories of this family were a series of contradictions and whispers and pieces of unspeakable moments of violence. It was only after my mother’s last living brother passed away — the final gatekeeper of those secrets — that a weight lifted. In a moment of grief, over cocktails and appetizers at Carraba’s, my mother asked a piercing question: Who was my mother?

I had grown up under the weight of this legacy, carrying questions and wounds and unspoken truths of my own. Her question became my turning point. I began digging into my maternal family line, trying to understand who my grandmother really was and how she came to marry my grandfather. That search — for truth, for context, for compassion — became the seed of this trilogy.

IAN: Did you use an outline or do you just wing the first draft?

Christy Landers Tallamy: I did have an outline, though it didn’t start out looking very official. I began by gathering family stories and lining them up alongside real historical events, which turned into a document that was almost 100 pages long. It was basically a big, chronological brain dump of everything I’d learned about this family. From there, I went deep into research — visiting cemeteries, spending a full day at the Library of Congress, and reading years’ worth of historical newspapers to understand the world they were living in. I layered all of that into the timeline. Once I had that foundation, I curled up with my laptop and started doing the storytelling work — connecting the dots with narrative, character arcs, and imagined dialogue.

IAN: How long did it take to write the trilogy?

Christy Landers Tallamy: Between the deep research, the many interviews with family members, and the emotional weight of uncovering and writing about family secrets, it took nearly six years just to release the first book. Originally, the entire story was one very ambitious manuscript — about 1,200 pages — which my editor gently (and wisely) suggested might be… a bit much for a single novel. Breaking it into a trilogy was absolutely the right call, but it did stretch the timeline! By the time the final book is released, the whole journey will have taken about eight years from start to finish.

IAN: What do you hope your readers come away with after reading your books?

Christy Landers Tallamy: Part of why I wanted to tell this story is to honor the ways our ancestry shapes us and to validate the wounds we inherit. Just about a hundred years ago, my grandmother made a choice — she stayed with a violent man — and that decision rippled through my mother’s life, my own, and even my own little family so far removed from my grandmother’s life. But the story is also a reminder that every choice matters. Even when we feel small or insignificant, our actions have impact, shaping the lives of those who come after us.

In some ways, the trilogy is an insistence: You have value. You matter. The choices you make are important, and they shape not only your life but the world that unfolds around you.

IAN: How much of the trilogy is realistic?

Christy Landers Tallamy: The trilogy is rooted in real people and real events from my maternal history. As I pieced together stories, records, and memories, I built the emotional and historical truth of what happened. I carefully held truth in any violent scenes, only including them if I had multiple factual or witness sources to draw from. The truth of that legacy did not call for embellishment. From there, I shaped a narrative — compressing timelines, reimagining dialogue, and sometimes blending or altering identifying details to protect the wounded, if not the innocent. In other words, most of it is true.

IAN: What books have most influenced your life most?

Christy Landers Tallamy: It may be a cliché, but The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde has been incredibly influential for me. I still remember the mental churn the first time I read it — especially the idea that even a sin that goes “unseen” still causes damage. That concept stayed with me and, in many ways, planted the earliest seeds for the Ruth Trilogy. At its heart, my series explores that same truth: “sins” don’t disappear just because they are hidden — it lingers, shaping lives in ways we may not immediately see.

IAN: What book are you reading now?

Christy Landers Tallamy: As a personal reading challenge for myself this year, I’m (re)reading all the books that influenced me in my adolescence and early adulthood– including The Picture of Dorian Gray. I just recently finished The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth Speare and Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt. Both were still just as powerful to me in surprisingly new ways.

IAN: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Christy Landers Tallamy: Fragments. Broken thoughts. Streams of consciousness. This has always been my style—my way of finding the creative current. I move through an emotional landscape first and let my words follow the wandering, which sometimes means the reader feels every stumble and turn along the way.

That is a difficult style to navigate when applied to long form. It can be confusing. Disruptive. Misinterpreted. The period, the em dash, the comma, the use of italics, the repetition of a single word. These all come to represent something much deeper than grammatical accuracy.

Writing this way is a risk, but it’s also the most honest way I know to translate interior experience onto the page.

IAN: Who designed the covers?

Christy Landers Tallamy: In a world grappling with AI versus human art, I chose to remain old school. The cover art is a pastel series created by a young Virginia Commonwealth University art student, Mackenzie Haskell. I’ve been a fan of her work since I first came across it in a high school gymnasium, and the original pieces now hang framed in my office.

In our conversations about the covers, we focused heavily on the shadow in the background and how it moves closer with each book. We talked about evoking a sense of foreboding and creating images that felt like they were telling the story on their own. It was an ambitious vision for a first cover series, and I’m incredibly proud of where she landed.

IAN: Did you learn anything from writing your books and what was it?

Christy Landers Tallamy: I learned that the past — and our memories of it — are fractured, elusive things. Laying out the strands of my research felt like looking at the same image under shifting angles of light; each perspective revealed something new, sometimes contradicting what I thought I understood. I went searching for answers and discovered that was a futile goal. I didn’t find answers. I found compassion — for the people in my family, for the choices they made, and for myself.

Exploring such a deeply personal history also helped me unravel the hold it had on my own life. Heading into the final book of the trilogy, I have a clearer understanding that I am a melting pot of the people who came before me — the good and the bad. I can’t ignore the place I came from; doing so would leave me incomplete. Understanding my origin has given me perspective and strength.

At the same time, I’ve come to see that my story is my own. I am not bound by the ideas or the missteps of my ancestry. I get to define my particular branch of a very old tree.

IAN: What were the challenges (research, literary, psychological, and logistical) in bringing your books to life?

Christy Landers Tallamy: Choosing to tangle my art with my childhood traumas had a profound impact on my life. During the six years of active writing, I became deeply immersed in the lives of certain individuals. I uncovered family secrets that had to be processed all over again. At times, I found myself enraged by what had been done to my mother and her siblings, and I had to learn how to channel that rage into the work rather than let it consume me.

The greatest challenge came when my editor told me I had permission to write the antagonist, Leonidas, as a flat embodiment of evil. She said it would be understandable — even acceptable. But then she challenged me to stay true to my deeper goal: to understand who my grandparents were and what shaped their lives.

So I didn’t write him as a caricature of violence. Instead, I researched cult leaders, violent offenders, and the psychology of abuse. I forced myself to step into his perspective in certain scenes and try to see the world through his eyes, even as he harmed his family. That work was truly soul-numbing. I chose to work with a counselor during this process to help safeguard my emotional well-being while writing such a dark character.

My hope is that I’ve portrayed Leonidas Brantley as a full human being — not to excuse his actions, but to explore the conditions that can give rise to such harm. Writing him with care was emotionally grueling, but it felt necessary. In many ways, it became a warning set down on paper: violence breeds violence.

IAN: Tell us about your next book or a work in progress. Is it a sequel or a stand-alone?

Christy Landers Tallamy: The Ruth Trilogy concludes in What Was Done to Me (releasing September 2026), where Ruth’s youngest daughter, Carolina, comes of age under her father’s cultish control. Her fight to break the cycle forces a fatal reckoning—revealing how one woman’s silence can echo across generations, and how one survivor’s voice might finally bring it to an end.

Yellow Heights-The IAN Interview

 Yellow Heights

I am an immigrant who came to the U.S. for graduate study. After twenty years of working in software engineering and investment management, I went to a top-ten education school to get a teaching degree and started teaching math, a subject that deeply inspired me and guided me through my life and careers.

Currently, I am taking a health break, writing a book, and teaching math and bridge to my community on a part-time basis. I like the outdoors and hope to run Boston Marathon again; it was during my last run that I decided to become a teacher.

IAN: Please tell us about your latest book.

Yellow Heights: Parent. Math coach. Climate science researcher. Software engineer and manager at Microsoft. Investment analyst, trader, and risk manager at hedge funds. Entrepreneur. A forty-five-year-old new teacher.

This book is about the journey of a first-generation immigrant becoming a math teacher in the United States. This book recounts his Kafkaesque experiences at education school, where he was labeled a white supremacist simply for asking questions. He shares firsthand accounts of teaching math at a public and a private school, offering a panoramic view of the issues surrounding wokeness, coddling, and the lack of accountability in education.

He critically examines the U.S. education system, drawing from the experiences of other teachers, parents and students he has worked with. His journey through different societies and education systems, and multiple careers-where math was his critical edge-adds depth and credibility to the final reflections.

From Book Reviews Cafe: ”Unbalanced is more than just one person’s narrative; it’s a monument to perseverance, flexibility, and the bravery to keep pushing forward even when the ground beneath you feels unstable. Readers will leave not just comprehending the author’s path, but also pondering on the larger immigrant experience and, perhaps, their own balancing acts in life.”

IAN: Is Unbalanced published in print, e-book or both?

Yellow Heights: The book is published in both print and e-book.

IAN: Where can we go to buy Unbalanced?

Yellow Heights: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, etc.

IAN: What inspired you to write Unbalanced?

The idea first came to me while I was pursuing an education degree during COVID. What I witnessed completely shocked me: a white classmate and I (an Asian immigrant) were labeled “white supremacists” simply for asking learning-related questions; students made a kind, well-intentioned teacher cry by accusing her of lacking empathy; I was called a “traitor of people of color” and “ideologically violent” for defending standardized testing—not even wholeheartedly; and teacher candidates were encouraged to “make good trouble within the education system.” I thought to myself, Is this the America I came for? How many people would consider this normal?

During my first year of teaching, I got along well with my students, but some of my colleagues puzzled me, and I experienced a few difficult conflicts. I began writing about these incidents—partly to document them, partly to clear my mind. I didn’t know what to do with my writing until I decided to take a break after receiving an unexpectedly poor review from my principal.

As I reflected on my experiences, I started to realize they might illustrate a broader story about the current state of education. When I searched for similar books, I found almost none. The few that existed were written long ago and didn’t capture what has happened in the past decade—when ideology became prominent, students more fragile, and teacher accountability more elusive.

That realization made me want to write this book. And as an immigrant whose native language is not English, I saw it as both a challenge and an opportunity. I’ve always loved a good challenge.

IAN: What do you hope your readers come away with after reading Unbalanced?

Yellow Heights: Maybe a clearer picture on the current state of K-12 education;

Maybe a deeper appreciation of the immigrant’s struggles and unique perspective;

Maybe a better understanding why second-career teachers often can’t fit in;

Maybe a glimpse into how learning, especially math learning, can work;

Maybe how learning is a life-long journey and school is just one stop…

IAN: Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?

Yellow Heights: This is primarily based on my life, although several parts were stories of other people’s life, told from my perspective. At times I omitted or deliberately changed identifying characteristics to preserve a degree of anonymity, but everything in this book were based on real events.

IAN: How is Unbalanced different from others in your genre?

Yellow Heights: The most popular teacher biography by far is Teacher Man by one of my favorite writers, Frank McCourt. Most of the other influential books on teaching, however, were written long ago, and the educational landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade.

In general, it’s difficult to write a book about education while actively teaching. Yet when teachers leave the profession, they often lose the desire to revisit their experiences—especially if those experiences were painful or disappointing.

I haven’t found a math teacher’s memoir. I was a math teacher with twenty years of professional experience and several years of volunteer teaching, so I had a clear sense of what good math instruction should look like. When that ideal clashed so sharply with reality, I felt I could offer readers a unique perspective. As an immigrant who also had to struggle to find my place in this country, I believed my story could bring something new to the conversation.

IAN: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Yellow Heights: Writing in good English was the biggest challenge. Even during my many years working in finance, English had not been an impediment for me, so I thought I could write well in English. But it took me a long time even to realize the gap. My earlier version had usage of English that I thought was creative, with immigrant characteristics, but it turned out most were just bad English.

My wife said I invented words with a grimace on her face, and although I proudly said “Shakespear also invented word”, the truth was that I slowly realized and improved the book’s grammar and expression, over the two years of writing and revisions. Since I self-published the book, I couldn’t hire an editor every time I made changes, and I made many rounds of changes. Even the first edition of this book had some mistakes that were undetected, which was being corrected for the second edition.

IAN: What was the hardest part of writing Unbalanced?

Yellow Heights: The hardest part was to confront my past failures. The way I left the school made me feel I was fired for being a bad teacher and I couldn’t get over it, until I wrote about it honestly. I also had to examine my motivation for becoming a teacher at the age of 45. It was only when I became completely honest with myself that the book became something I was truly proud of.

IAN: Did you learn anything from writing Unbalanced and what was it?

Yellow Heights: I find that writing is first and foremost for the author. It is a form of being really honest with oneself, and as open as possible with the whole world. It is often a form of reconciliation and healing.

That being said, one has to be considerate for the readers. I don’t want to sacrifice my value simply to please the reader, but I will try very hard to make it easier for the reader to get the message, to resonate and to enjoy. There are always blind spots and having objective beta readers who can give honest feedback is super important.

Like the book title suggests, finding the balance is often the key. I enjoyed the process of finding the balance of being true to oneself and respecting the readers.

IAN: Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

Yellow Heights: First of all, I hope you enjoy reading the stories.

Secondly, I hope it make you think.

Lastly, I hope it stimulates you to some kind of action, either by sharing it quietly, discussing with friends, or raising your concerns loudly to improve education, for the future of this country.

JJ Winston: The IAN Interview

JJ Winston

JJ Winston is a Behavioral Health Fiction Writer who is the Author of the award-winning fictional novels, “The Anniversary,” released in April 2017 and “The Commemoration” released in June 2020, “The Revelation,” released in April 2025 and the non-fictional “The Anniversary Guide to Behavioral Health and Workbook,” released in April 2018.  Ms. Winston’s uses her extensive behavioral health and legal education along with her professional and personal experiences to write fiction that is entertaining but informative with the aim of raising awareness about mental health, human trafficking, and sickle cell disease.  Ms. Winston is now employed as a Post Decree Magistrate in Family Court and in her personal time she serves on various boards and committees whose aim is to improve the lives of those living with behavioral health issues.

IAN: Please tell us about your latest book.

JJ Winston: The Revelation is a gripping tale of love and resilience, Juliette and Grandville Stubbs face challenges that would break even the strongest bonds. Having endured the tragic loss of their daughter, wrongful imprisonment, and the horrifying truth about Juliette's missing cousin, their love has been put to the test. But just when they think they've rebuilt their lives, a global pandemic strikes, and Grandville unexpected disappearance sends Juliette into a spiral of fear and uncertainty. As she battles to keep her family together amidst new crises, the stakes have never been higher. Will their love prove strong enough to weather yet another storm?

IAN: Is The Revelation in print, e-book or both?

JJ Winston: Both, at my website NovelistJJWinston.com and Amazon.com.

IAN: What inspired you to write The Revelation?

JJ Winston: As a mental health and legal professional, I have been struck by how many people do not want to speak about mental health, and how much stigma exists regarding this subject. In my first novel, The Anniversary, I was determined to write an engaging novel that was entertaining but also educational.  I wanted to use my characters to teach my readers about how trauma can have a significant impact on our mental health and how important treatment is.  In my second and third novels, The Commemoration and The Revelation, I also introduced other topics that are important to me.  The first is Sickle Cell Disease (SCD).  My daughter and several of my nieces and one nephew are living with this disease, and advocating for my daughter has made me aware that many people know nothing about SCD and that I could use the words contained with my novels to teach my readers about it and raise awareness.  Lastly, I introduced human trafficking because the State of Ohio where I reside is number fourth in the nation for this issue.  I wanted to use my work to teach my readers that human trafficking is modern day slavery and raise awareness about this important subject.

IAN: Did you use an outline, or do you just wing the first draft?

JJ Winston: I did not outline any of my novels and just started writing. My first novel, The Anniversary, was a short story that I wrote years ago.  I allowed a professional writer to read it to gain feedback, and she liked it so much that she suggested that I develop it into a book.  I took her advice years after she gave it to me, and I just kept writing until I had it done.  For my second and third novels, The Commemoration and The Revelation, I also wrote without the use of an outline.

IAN: How long did it take to write The Revelation?

JJ Winston: It took me four years to write my debut novel, The Anniversary and three years to write my second novel The Commemoration and my about four and a half years to write my series conclusion The Revelation.

IAN: What do you hope your readers come away with after reading The
Revelation?

JJ Winston: It is my hope that after my readers finish my series that they are entertained but also have more knowledge and awareness about mental health, trauma, Sickle Cell Disease and Human Trafficking.  I also hope that my readers also learn through my novels the importance of forgiveness.

IAN: How much The Revelation of is realistic?

JJ Winston: My novels are very realistic, and I am often asked for the name of the individuals that my fictional family is based on. As a social worker and legal professional, I have worked with hundreds of families throughout my career and the problems experienced by the members of my fictional family feel real though the characters and what they are dealing with are made up.  It is my hope that when people finish my novels that they are moved by how realistic my story feels and that they see themselves and their family members and friends in my characters.

IAN: Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members.

JJ Winston: The beautiful women of my Sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Inc, have been extremely supportive to me in respect to my writing.  They have celebrated both me and my writing and they have allowed me to be a vendor at numerous events where the members of my Sorority have purchased my novels.

IAN: Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?

JJ Winston: I learned how to read when I was three years old and this is where I developed my love for words.  When I was in junior high school and high school, I would often write poetry, and I was always placed in gifted English Classes.  Oprah Winfrey advised that everyone should have a bucket list with at least 100 tasks to complete in their lifetime and writing and publishing a novel was somewhere near the top of my list.

IAN: Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?

JJ Winston: I learned that it is important to have the right team when writing your book.  You must surround yourself with individuals who have talent and skill who can offer feedback, editing, and can assist you with marketing and formatting and love and care about your story as much as you do. 

IAN: Do you have any advice for other writers?

JJ Winston: Never give up and don’t let anyone discourage you from reaching your dream.  Find the time to write for at least 15 minutes a day and overtime you will have a novel.  Once you finish your novel, be sure to connect with professionals who can ensure that your book is the very best it can be before publishing it.

IAN: Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

JJ Winston: It is my sincerest hope that my readers continue to support me and that they tell their family, friends, and social circle about my novels. I also hope that when my readers finish my novels that they have gained an understanding about numerous subjects and that they will give their time, money, service and resources to entities who mission is to raise awareness about mental health, sickle cell disease and human trafficking.

IAN: Tell us about your next book or a work in progress. Is it a sequel or a stand-alone?

JJ Winston: I have not written my next book yet and I do not yet have a new book in progress.  My last book The Relation was the conclusion of my Anniversary Series.  I am currently brainstorming my next novel, and I have not yet decided if it will be a stand alone novel or a series.