Author Interviews

As a nomad carnival vendor, I draw a lot of inspiration from my gregarious guests. In my travels, I have seen some strange things that give me a whole lot of strange ideas. A writer, an artist, and a dark thinker, I like to weave a visceral web of twists, terror, and wonder. My tales are burgeoning with treacherous environments, colorful characters with dangerous talents, and mind-bending story arcs. A touch of comical mischief follows as we journey the unknown wilderness in search of another scary story to tell ’round the campfire.

I’m a playwright who has been lucky enough to be a winner of the Derek Jacobi Award for New Playwriting, two-time winner of the UK Community Drama Festivals Federation for Best New Script, three-time Pint Sized Plays winner, and a range of other scriptwriting awards. I have also had short stories published by The People’s Friend, Your Cat Magazine, Cafe Lit, Writing Magazine, and more in over a dozen anthologies. Now it’s time for that novel.

Janet had her first film script optioned by Producer Steve Chicorel of Los Angeles-Beijing Studios. She has collaborated on two film scripts and a treatment of a TV drama feature for South Korea-based Cilium Film. She has adapted a Victorian melodrama for the screen, which has yet to be optioned.

I am a short and micro-fiction writer and occasional poet based in England. I am a late developer in terms of writing, having only shared my work with family until recently but now developing more of an outward profile. Professionally, I have worked for many years in information technology and the public sector on a wide variety of projects, some of which provide material for stories.

Julie Shackman is a feel-good romance author with the HarperCollins imprint One More Chapter. The Highland Lodge Getaway is Julie’s fifth book to be published with HarperCollins and her ninth novel in total.

Ivy Ngeow was born and raised in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. She holds an MA in Writing from Middlesex University, where she won the 2005 Middlesex University Literary Press Prize out of almost 1,500 entrants worldwide. Her debut, Cry of the Flying Rhino (2017), was awarded the International Proverse Prize in Hong Kong. Her novels include Heart of Glass (2018), Overboard (2020), and White Crane Strikes (2022). She is commissioning editor of the Asian Anthology New Writing series. The American Boyfriend was longlisted for the Avon x Mushens Entertainment Prize for Commercial Fiction Writers of Colour 2022 and is published by Penguin Random House Southeast Asia. She lives in London.

Kimberly Packard is an award-winning author of women’s fiction. She began visiting her spot on the shelves at libraries and bookstores at a young age, gazing between the Os and the Qs. Kimberly received a degree in journalism from the University of North Texas and has worked in public relations and communications for nearly twenty years.

Half Lancashire, half Yorkshire, and born on a farm in Somerset, I was raised on a farm in Shropshire, lived and worked on Merseyside and elsewhere, and currently reside in Wigan, Lancs. A writer and storyteller since childhood, I am a member of the Tyldesley Creative Writers (TCW) near where I live. A world-class procrastinator, I have only half-heartedly tried to get published. Several friends at TCW have self-published, and I admire them for it. I’ve also enjoyed reading their books. It’s high time I committed to publishing my own stuff!

Steve Adams’s writing has won a Pushcart Prize and has been listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays. He’s won Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers, been a guest artist at The University of Texas, and his plays have been produced in New York City. His debut novel, Remember This, was published in October 2022, and it was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters First Fiction Award, the National Indie Excellence Awards, and was selected for the Southern Festival of Books. He is a writing coach and freelance editor in Memphis at www.steveadamswriting.com.

I have been writing for a very long time, beginning with plays, some of which were produced in the US (I lived in LA for ten years), and I also was a freelance theatre and film critic. A good number of short stories have been published in recent years. ‘A Gap in the Fence of Time’ placed second in Gemini Magazine’s Annual Short Story Competition, while ‘Tea and Biscuits’ was a winner in the Ryedale Book Festival Short Story Competition. I won Moment magazine’s Short Fiction Awards for ‘Lecha Dodi,’ judged by novelist Alice Hoffman, and was a joint first-place winner for Writer’s Atelier’s 2nd Annual Contest. Other stories have been published by Fairlight Books, Prole, and Gold Dust. My primary focus, however, is my novels, and specifically evocative and emotive literary fiction.

Rachel A. Greco dreams of being a dragon but has settled instead for being an author, which is almost as fun. Her short story, Fairy Light, won honorable mention in the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition. Leading Edge magazine published another of her stories, and her debut novel, The Gift of Dragons, is now out in the world. When not writing, she can be found reading, kayaking, or dancing with elves in the forests of her North Carolina home.

Jane Kay is a South African-born writer who lives in Europe with her American husband. She has lived and worked in Canada, Russia, and Portugal. Umbilical, her second novel, was published at the end of 2022. Set mostly in southern Africa, with interwoven elements of the U.S., Canada, and China, it is a story of interconnectedness across continents and decades and of an unwelcome inheritance, one that is as inescapable as it is perilous.

Mallory M. O’Connor, Professor Emerita of Art History, Santa Fe College, holds degrees in art and art history from Ohio University and taught art history at the University of Florida and Santa Fe College. She is the author of six published novels—the American River Trilogy and Epiphany’s Gift, Key to Eternit, and Xanadu’s Cavern (Archway Publishing)—as well as two non-fiction books, Lost Cities of the Ancient Southeast and Florida’s American Heritage River, both published by the University Press of Florida. Mallory’s husband, artist and professor Emeritus of Art, UF, collaborated on the book and provided the original art works.

Barbara Lane integrates her life experiences of being a foster child, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, entrepreneur, speaker, child advocate, educator, ministerial counselor, and author into her writing. By sharing her own personal journey, Barbara destigmatizes the fate of child abuse survivors, leading her to write Broken Water. In addition to her twenty-five-year service in private practice as a ministerial counselor, Barbara’s educational background in human development, social sciences, and family psychology with a focus on child abuse inspires her to share her expertise on interrelated issues: the family, family separation, the foster care system, attachment and bonding, child maltreatment, relationship formation, the resilience of the human spirit, healing from trauma, and the power found in having faith in something greater than the self.

Carole Wolfe writes women’s fiction that makes you smile. She enjoys running at a leisurely pace, crocheting baby blankets for others, and drinking wine when she can find the time. After moving nine times in twenty years, Carole and her family have settled in Texas.

Mr. Tennyson is an author and free spirit who resides on Saint Simons Island, Georgia. The origins of his book began in Athens, Georgia, and Portland, Oregon, where he discovered what he considers God’s greatest gift: the Cannabis plant.

Gina Darlington has been writing all her life. She wrote as a child, was published in high school, and later in a national magazine. She wrote articles for the local newspaper, essays, short stories, and a few ten-minute plays. She had a poem published in the local college literary magazine. Gina has been a teacher all of her life, first as a dance studio teacher, then at the college level, and most recently teaching quilting at local stores and in the community. She has written two novels, an autobiography, and a memoir of her journey into real estate investing. She lives in the mountains of Arizona (where it snows) with her husband. She has five sons, four daughters-in-law, and fifteen grandchildren scattered across the country. She enjoys traveling to see them.

Janice Berliner is a licensed and board-certified genetic counselor who has more than thirty-four years of experience in the areas of prenatal, pediatric, and cancer genetic counseling, as well as higher education. She has written many lay and scholarly articles and book chapters on genetics topics and has volunteered extensively within her profession and her community. Since 2018, Janice has been the Director of the Master of Science in Genetic Counseling Program at Bay Path University. Janice’s novels, Brooke’s Promise and In Good Conscience, are derived from her expertise working with patients and their family members facing the risk of disease and the intensely personal and life-altering nature genetic illness can have on family relationships. Her third novel centers on a family with multiple psychiatric conditions and explores the stigma and hardships of hereditary psychiatric illness, as well as the hope and healing born of the family ties that bind us all.

Ryan Cowan grew up in a small town in Ohio called Middleport. He currently lives in Hawthorne, California. A teacher with twenty years of experience, Ryan has taught all grades from K-6th. He currently works as a school administrator in Los Angeles.

I love storytelling and being able to develop characters that are often based on students I’ve taught. The main character in Stranded on Castaway Island, Annie, has her faults—such as bossiness—but the way she struggles to help her orphaned brothers and her lonely father, and then later saves Mirra’s life, makes her a hero. She’s gone through so much—losing her mom and being hurt by Mirra, her best friend. And now, she also needs to survive!