Month: June 2025

AUDIO BOOKS

by debrazauthor

Submitted.

OMG, I’ve done it. All the files, covers and details for my audio book are complete. I watched my pocketbook shrink, but this feeling is priceless. Having Dark Night Of The Soul recognized by the American Legacy awards is a really big deal to me. My heart and soul went into every page. I told my 7th grade English teacher that I wanted to be a writer. It took 42 years, a close encounter with death and many life changing moments to make that dream come true. Mrs. Lanoue, if you read this, I’ve never forgotten you. Sometimes I wonder what the 17 year old me would say to me, what would I say to her. Would she tell me to follow my friends and go to California. Jeffrey, a very talented musician, sexy too, invited to be the lead singer in his band. Obviously I didn’t go. Was this a missed opportunity, a chance to follow my other dreams, or a lucky escape from unknown dangers? What would I tell me when I was making that decision? Would I tell her to avoid the people and things that hurt me? Even now, approaching 70, I can say that avoiding the things that came as I aged, may have lead me to things far worse. Unanswerable questions will always be unanswered. I don’t think there’s one clear path, there is only the one we choose.

I have to get back to my books. All my characters faced difficult choices. I had them make the choices that I hope I would have made. Life has a way of sneaking into our art. Now for the somewhat funny moment. The other choices my characters could have made would have made for very boring books.

There are so many things I could say. The things that hurt me blessed me in ways I didn’t expect. Being poor made me realize how little value money has. Thinking I wouldn’t wake up, made me realize how much I wanted to look into my husband, my babies face meant to me. Taking many years to have my son, made me learn that all children are ours. Facing possible death taught me how strong I am. When I held my child in my arms I learned the value of life. Some say it takes almost losing your life to learn how to live. For me, it did. We are temporary. Live your best life, even when it hurts. And today smile for me. You can never have enough smiles.

Author Event

by debrazauthor

I will be signing and selling books

I will be signing and selling books at Rhode Island’s newest and only summer book festival. It’ll be held on Friday, July 12th, from n10 AM to 6 PM at the Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket, RI. There will be food trucks and live entertainment and best of all authors and readers. I’ll have my award winning Sister World Trilogy and the entire set of my Darkness and Light series. The first book, Dark Night of The Soul is a finalist by the American Legacy awards. Unfortunately I won’t have the books with their new covers, but that means you can buy the series at a discount. I hope to see you there.

New Covers, Audio Books and Old Age

by debrazauthor

I hate that head line but it’s true. I’ve gotten new, beautiful, covers for the books in the Darkness and Light series. My first, and unless I become a John Grisham, my only audio book will be released soon. When I first published Dark Night Of The Soul, the first book in the series, I was too concerned with the cost of publishing, than what the cover should look like. Titles are what draw me to books, but that isn’t true for most of us. Though I don’t regret making my own covers for the Sister World Series, BookFest loved them almost as much as I do, I do regret not following my instincts. Once Dark Night became the first in the Darkness and Light series, I knew the other covers should have Marcus on each of them. I just didn’t know how to do it. I created covers showing what he went through, not uniting them by who he was and what he became..

Although I can’t think of a time in my life when I didn’t love books and hoped to one day be more than just someone who read them, I was swimming in a pool without a life jacket. You would have laughed to see my 14 year old self taking beginner swimming lessons with the little kids (6-10 years old). I was more self-conscious than I am today, but I wanted to swim, so I put my head down and swam across the pool. I hope you see how I, once again, put my head down and swam across the pool, only this time it was pen, ink and a keyboard filling the pool. It really wasn’t that different than what I’d done before, Though the water is still over my head, today is different. Today I have a husband who, though he may not understand my desire, wants me to follow my dream, I have time to sit at this computer and however frustrating it is, I can try to figure out what I have to do,. I have friends and colleagues who help and support me. I don’t know you and you don’t know me, which means I really cannot offer you advice, What I can say is you should seek out those who support you, move forward even when your tired and force yourself to learn, even when you’re told the technology involved has left you behind. I’m frustrated, but I’m alive. Tomorrow may not come, but I have today. Yesterday is a fading memory that can and always does bring back memories showing a life well lived, but today is all we have. Live it well.