Author Interviews

Michelle Diaz lives in the Pacific Northwest and has been writing stories since she first picked up a pencil to try her hand at it. Thankfully, that particular manuscript will not be manifesting anytime in the near future. Her stories have grown since, covering a wide scope from sci-fi to fantasy and occasionally historical fiction. To advance her skills, she has taken courses from David Farland and Wulf Moon. She is a proud member of the Wulf Pack Writers and the Writers of the Future Forum. To see more of her work, visit: authormjdiaz.wixsite.com/author-michelle-diaz.

Mark Reps has been a writer and storyteller his whole life. Born in rural Minnesota, he trained as a mathematician, acupuncturist and chiropractor but never lost his love of telling or writing a good story. As an avid desert wilderness hiker Mark spends a great deal of time roaming the desert and other terrains of southeastern Arizona from December to May. A chance meeting with an old time colorful sheriff led him to develop the Zeb Hanks character and the world that surrounds him. Mark returns often to SE Arizona for inspiration, information and to maintain the general feel of the area, learn its history and understand the local residents.

Kylee Greenleaf holds a BA in English from SUNY New Paltz. She’s been honing her craft in Brooklyn where she finds inspiration all around her, convinced that the city itself is alive and whispering her stories. The False Wife is her first novel.

Marcia Kosar’s enthusiasm for travel and outdoor adventures began at a very young age. Born in Hamtramck, Michigan–at that time was a modest Polish enclave surrounded by City of Detroit–she grew up in the ‘Motor City’ suburbs of Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills. Family camping trips, winter sledding and ice skating in her backyard, along with visits to her grandparents’ nearby farm where she roamed the woods picking wildflowers and mushrooms, were the delights of her childhood.

Alice lives in Washington State. She has two sons and two grandchildren. She was married to John for thirty-three years. She loves movies, reading, music and a great glass of wine.

Like many first-timers, I tried writing during lockdown in Perth, Australia, in 2020 when my clients decided that I wasn’t needed in their offices to do the accounts anymore. My focus moved from numbers to words, and I shifted from Excel to Word, before discovering Scrivener.

I consider myself lucky because I was raised in a family that valued learning. By the time I entered kindergarten, I knew how to read, print, and write in cursive. Bedtime stories were a mainstay, and trips to the local library were as common as those to the grocery store. I couldn’t have known then, but they were instrumental in my becoming a writer.

Sandra McKay is the author of A Place For Me, An Orphan’s Journey Home, a historical novel based on her grandmother’s story, who rode the Orphan Train. Sandra spent two years conducting research in preparation to write A Place For Me, An Orphan’s Journey Home, which revealed a much bigger story than passed down in family lore.

I’m a proud New Orleans native and former dancer with Houston Ballet. Beyond my dance career, I’ve ventured into storytelling as a screenwriter and novelist. I’ve self-published three fiction novels, and my contributions extend to education with the Garage Ballet™ series, a collection of nonfiction instructional books where I share insights from my experiences as a dancer and teacher.

C.S. (Carol) Kjar is an award-winning, self-published author who lives out west where the antelope, deer, and bison play. Her humorous, wholesome books are about small-town people (mostly people past mid-life) who face big decisions they wish they didn’t have to make, but in the end, they are stronger for it. Her last name is pronounced “care” which she loves. It’s what we should all do: care for each other.

In addition to having been a teacher’s husband, Steven Earl Kladstrup is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Syracuse University, with Honors degrees in both Geography and Anthropology. He also holds a Master’s degree with Honors in International Management from Thunderbird (the former American Graduate School of International Management). After making a career out of writing and editing myriad proposals, contracts, marcom, and software documentation for other people, he has happily returned to his first love, the writing of fiction, with Jane Raggedfir Was a Dike, his debut novel.

Oliver Sheppard is a Texas writer and poet whose Thirteen Nocturnes collection of Gothic verse was a finalist for the 2020 Elgin Award for Best Full-Length Poetry Collection.

A born and bred Southern Belle, KAY ELAM took a circuitous route to writing novels but is almost there with her debut book, CALL OF THE CRICKETS, which was a finalist for the Claymore and Page Turner Awards in the summer of 2023. She won first place in the Open-Door Short Story Contest and has short stories published in four anthologies. She volunteered with Killer Nashville for several years as a panelist, facilitator, and reader for the prestigious awards.

Twice-shortlisted Poet of the Year, Perito Prize and Pushcart Prize shortlistee, and winner of the Best Creative Writing Portfolio Prize from Lancaster University, Elizabeth (she/they) is a chronic reader and writer of the Weird. Her debut poetry collection, salmacis: becoming not quite a woman (Renard Press, 2022), was hailed as “vital for society today” (Jennifer Hill, Ulverscroft Publishers). Their work has been published over fifty times worldwide, including by Rattle and Fly on the Wall Press.

Clare Braganza is a writer who spent three years teaching English in the mountains of Fukushima, Japan, before returning to the UK to follow her publishing dreams. By day, she works at Penguin Random House, where she helps sell her favourite children’s books around the world. By night (i.e., dawn and dusk) she taps away at her keyboard, dreaming up worlds of gods and spirits and angsty teens. She lives in London with long-suffering bookshelves and a pair of brilliant housemates.

Silja comes from a magical and mysterious land called Estonia. She has always been fascinated by stories and writing. As a child, she wrote ghost stories, poems, and Christmas plays to be performed with her sister. Later, she became an essay-writing machine, participated in all contests she could find, and eventually fulfilled her dream of studying abroad by doing an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, UK.

Charlene J. Centracchio is a native of Rhode Island with multiple degrees from Rhode Island College and Providence College in Social Science/Education (BA), Secondary Education/Gifted Education (M.Ed.), Counseling (M.A.) and Curriculum & Instruction (CAGS-Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies, which is similar to a Ph. D.).

My work includes original oil paintings that have been shown abroad and won multiple awards and recognition in artistic genre applications of watercolor, acrylic, and multimedia. After a successful early career in Engineering & Robotics, I found through the ashes of a divorce the inspiration and purpose to begin writing and painting. Since then, I have been honored to have studio and gallery locations across the US in Ohio, New Mexico, Kentucky, Georgia, and Florida.

Ben Cooper is a husband, father, author, speaker, educator, and beekeeper. He grew up on a family farm in western Pennsylvania and went on to get an Agricultural Science degree from Penn State University. Ben retired after working as an Agricultural Specialist for the state of Maryland. He teaches Beekeeping courses at Allegany College of Maryland and mentors new beekeepers.

Katie Baron lives in rural New Jersey with her husband Joe and their two golden retrievers, Archer the Therapy Dog and Geordi the therapy-dog-in-training. Katie has three grown children and two grandchildren.