Author Interviews

Eileen “Ike” West is an accomplished writer and educator with an M.A. in Communications from Michigan and a B.A. in Speech and Psychology from Minnesota. Ike’s writing career started when her first opinion page was published at age twelve. She continued writing throughout her life, with magazine and journal articles and two novels appearing across North America and Europe. Her writing is often inspired by special causes like holistic health, women’s justice, and other issues related to equality. When she’s not writing, Ike reads, lectures, and enjoys the out-of-doors and time spent with her family.

Umar Siddiqui is a voracious Disney fan and fashion aficionado. He earned his BA degree from the University of CA, Riverside, and his MA degree in Mass Communications from Cal State Northridge. He loves writing, reading, going to Disney and the beach, and dabbles in working out. He plans to pursue a Master’s degree in Social Work. His books include Weightless, Woven Words, a mental health-related poetry book, and Float Your Boat, a self-help book. His book Candid About Couture is currently in production.

Danny Freeman is a former mathematics educator and school district administrator. He was born in Dallas and grew up in Houston. He has since lived in Arkansas, England, Vermont, California, Louisiana, and Utah. He now lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his partner. He has written a second gay-themed young adult novel and is busy editing it for potential publication.

Jeffrey Marshall is a writer, novelist, and poet from Scottsdale, AZ. He’s the author of five books, including the novels Squeeze Plays, Little Miss Sure Shot, and Undetected. Undetected and Squeeze Plays were named ShelfUnbound Notable 100 Indie books in 2020 and 2022, respectively, and Squeeze Plays also was named a Book Excellence Award winner in 2023. A retired journalist and the former editor of two national business magazines, Marshall has freelanced for more than thirty publications as varied as The New York Times, High Country News, and Tail Fly-Fishing Magazine, and his short fiction has appeared in online magazines like Bright Flash Literary Review, Ariel Chart, and Vocal.com, among others. A short story he wrote took first place in the 2022 Arizona Authors competition.

Chandler Myer published his first novel, Jayne and the Average North Dakotan, winner of the Literary Titan GOLD Award, at age 57, following a 35-year career as a professional musician. The book is based on his short story, That Night I Ran the High Heel Race, published in the Medium publication Prism & Pen. He has been published in Bear Creek Gazette and Medium publications Rainbow, An Idea, and Atheism101.

Alanna (rhymes with Hannah) was born and raised in Nottingham, England. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Classics and a Master’s in International Relations, and currently lives, works, and salsa dances in Barcelona.

In the topside world, I teach academic writing to people who are learning English at Kapiolani Community College in Honolulu, HI. In the river that flows beneath, I am a writer, a photographer, and a collage artist.

A.D. Vancise grew up in a small Canadian farming town. She has one (now all grown up) daughter, three dogs, and two cats. She enjoys working out, volleyball, gardening, all kinds of music, books—many, many books—and, of course, writing.

David Rogers Jr. started his writing career with second place in the Heroes’ Voices National Veterans Poetry Contest. He has published further poetry in Metonym Journal, Voices De Luna, and for the San Antonio Water System. Most recently, a creative non-fiction essay appeared in Fossil News: The Journal of Avocational Paleontology, and poetry in Voices de la Luna. 2020 saw the publication of his anti-war memoir Peaceful Meridian, and in 2022 his first novel, The Lay-off House, was released to the world. He lives outside Denver, Colorado.

Gloria Mattioni is the author of the multi-award-winning novel California Sister and an award-winning feature writer contributing to mainstream publications around the world. She also published the narrative non-fiction Reckless – The Outrageous Lives of Nine Kick-Ass Women, Dakota Warrior – The Story of James R. Weddell, and four previous books in Italy. She’s been, among other things, an investigative reporter, a human rights activist, an animal rescuer, and a magazine editor. She was born in Milan, Italy, but moved to Los Angeles in 1992. She still lives in California with her husband and part-time live-in granddaughter, conjures six impossible things every morning before breakfast, and travels much.

Randall Moore hails from Boise, Idaho, after living most of his life in Southern California. After a decades-long hiatus, he returned to fiction in 2013, and to date has completed thirty-one novels. He’s a rabid reader and lover of history, and peppers his tales with historical references while striving to make the details as historically accurate and pertinent as possible.

A 35-year-old brain cancer survivor, I’m just trying to figure out how to live a life that looks entirely different from what I expected! Part of that is lots of reading and crafts, games with my amazing (and sometimes infuriating) husband, and cuddles with my cute pup. Oh, and writing, of course.

Don Marinelli has served as a professor of drama, arts management, and entertainment technology at a host of colleges and universities, including Carnegie Mellon, Columbia University, Arizona State, Florida Southern College, and others. He resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Judith Clayton Van grew up on a horse ranch in Oregon, granddaughter to a famous U of O coach and cousin to the pioneers of the Pacific Northwest timber industry. She owned nightclubs, managed artists, promoted concerts, and exhibited paintings as a visual artist. She completed a BFA in Studio Arts, an MFA in Creative Writing, was a professor of English at Arizona State University, and a juried literary artist with the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Clayton Van served as fiction editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review and art editor of Superstition Review.

As authors, researchers, and practitioners, Pamela ShockleyZalabak, Ph.D., and Sherwyn Morreale, Ph.D., are ideally positioned to write a book about building and rebuilding trust. Their combined publishing record includes over 23 books and 150 journal articles, many of which have carefully probed the nature of trust. Their research-based trust model, developed with international colleagues and tested in organizations of many types and descriptions, includes five trust drivers—the reasons why trust is present or absent: 1) Competence, 2) Openness and Honesty, 3) Concern for Others, 4) Reliability, and 5) Identification.

Güngör Buzot was born in Turkey in 1953 and received her pharmacy degree in 1975 in Istanbul. She struggled with health problems and prescription drugs for most of her life. At the age of sixty-one, she discovered homeopathy and regained her health. Now she is healthy, strong, and happy.

Nathan Guardian is a lifelong writer. He has written for local newspapers and literary magazines and holds a degree in English. Wicked Women is the first of an original three-book series about New England witches.

Jordan Neben was born, raised, and currently lives in Nebraska in the United States. He graduated from high school in Lexington, Nebraska, right in the middle of the state, and went to college at the University of Nebraska nearby. A Lot of Questions, with No Answers? is his first book, though he hopes to write more books in the future.

Dwight Jesmer grew up an Army brat in a life of perpetual motion. He went to seven schools before finishing high school at Punahou in Honolulu, Hawaii. He graduated from Loyola Marymount and then spent a decade working in the film and television industry in Los Angeles. He left the smog of L.A. for the fog of San Francisco to work on his Masters in Writing from USF. He got into teaching and worked for almost two decades in the trenches of education.

Anastasia Lindsey is a timeless soul and author who participates in interdimensional traveling and building beautiful poems to capture the hearts of souls around the world in the most loving and supportive ways possible. This humble writer was born and raised in a small town in Illinois where she currently resides in a beautiful, cozy house on a patch of land with the love of her life, Dakota.