And now, a guest post by a friend of the blog, and someone who has crossed the boundaries of spec-fic to write for tie-in projects and his own original work — David Mack.

***

When I embarked upon the writing of my Dark Arts series for Tor Books, it was a labor of love.

By 2014, I had already spent several years contemplating the series’ first novel, The Midnight Front, and shaping it in my imagination. When I was finally able to commit its first story to the page, it felt like a dream made manifest. In 2015, after my agent found Dark Arts a home with a three-book deal at Tor Books, I envisioned a bright future for my literary creation.

Unfortunately, I soon learned that not all dreams come true.

Despite receiving generally good reviews from readers, landing on some prominent “Best of…” lists, and its second volume being nominated for a Dragon Award, the Dark Arts series never found its way onto any of the bestseller lists or received nominations for any of the genre’s major awards. Consequently, I knew before I started writing its third book, The Shadow Commission — out now from Tor Books — that it would be my series’ last.

I had conceived of Dark Arts as being open-ended, with each book moving ahead into a different decade, enabling my characters to get into historical hijinks across the entire latter half of the twentieth century. Less than a year after the release of its first book, however, I was tasked with bringing my saga to an end.

It felt odd. Knowing that there would be no further adventures for these characters after book three made me think differently about its story. I became less interested in building up my characters’ fictional world because I knew I would soon be burning it all down. I felt like I had failed my characters, as if their lives and narratives were coming to bloody ends because I didn’t know how to sell their tales in numbers strong enough to stay alive in the modern marketplace.

Only now, in hindsight, do I see that my disappointments affected the course of this book’s story.

For those who plan to read The Shadow Commission — SPOILERS FOLLOW:

One of the recurring themes of the novel is that its main character, Cade Martin, believes he has failed his apprentices. Not because he didn’t do a good job of teaching them magick, but because he doesn’t adequately prepare them for the true scale of the horror that awaits them, and because when that evil arrives he is unable to save many of their lives.

The key motif of The Shadow Commission is betrayal. It’s about how we betray ourselves, how we betray the trust of those who depend upon us when we succumb to fear, and how the things we say and do might drive others to betray us. It’s also about how we atone for those sins.

By the end of The Shadow Commission, several of the series’ major and recurring characters are slain. I don’t think I would have gone on quite so ruthless a killing spree in the book’s final chapters if I’d had any reason to think the series might continue. But when I saw the final curtain falling, the last glimmer of limelight fading away, I thought it reasonable to want to meet my series’ end with a certain Grand Guignol-style flair.

It’s been nearly eighteen months since I finished writing The Shadow Commission. After I turned in its manuscript, I lost over a year of my life and career to a depression that left me unable to put words on pages. I’m still digging my way out of that pit of despair, struggling to give form to new ideas, new labors of love, as well as working on fresh literary ideas for Star Trek.

In that context, trying to gin up excitement to promote the end of my Dark Arts series feels like a bittersweet obligation, if I’m to be honest. I did my best to craft an exciting book, to take my characters to new places, to change their lives and their respective relationships to their milieu, and to make it feel like a satisfying ending to their saga, while leaving open the door for future tales, just in case a miracle should occur and lead to the series’ revival.

But if penning this trilogy about magic born of Faustian bargains has taught me anything, it’s that there are no miracles — and that everything ends.

So it is that I hurl these words like a fistful of cold earth atop the grave of my Dark Arts series and move on to my next dream, whispering to myself all the while: memento mori.

***

David Mack is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty-six novels of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure. Mack’s writing credits span several media, including television (for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), short fiction, and comic books. He currently works as a consultant for two animated Star Trek television series, Lower Decks and Prodigy. His new novel The Shadow Commission is available now from Tor Books.

The Shadow Commission: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Powell’s

Visit the author’s site. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

New York Times Bestselling author Caroline Leavitt’s 12th novel, With or Without You is a Public Library Association Buzz Book and A Publisher’s Weekly Fall Book of Note, and already has a starred Kirkus and Booklist raves that it “Packs an emotional wallop.” About three peoples’ lives that all disrupted when one comes out of a coma with both a personality change and a prodigious new talent, it’s a suspenseful literary look at love, fame and its discontents, who we are, and who we would like to be. Her work has appeared in The Daily Beast, New York magazine, Modern Love in the New York Times, The Millions, Poets & Writers and more.

***

Writing sometimes makes, rather than heals trauma, before it makes things okay again.

My novels tend to gestate for years before I know enough to write them.  Twenty-four years ago I was in a medical coma myself for 3 weeks, and in the hospital not expected to survive for 3 months, and then home and sick for a year. But they had given me memory blockers so I wouldn’t remember the trauma, so when I did get well, I couldn’t process what I had been through. I had all sorts of PTSD things going on. Certain colors or smells would make me break out into a panic attack, and I was afraid to go to sleep. When I asked my family and friends who had been around, they were so traumatized, they couldn’t speak about any of it without getting really, really upset.

A friend of mine, a shrink, told me to write it out, that the brain doesn’t know the difference, that people in hypnosis will shiver if they are told it is freezing.  So I did, writing this novel Coming Back to Me, about a woman just like me who goes in coma after a child. And it didn’t heal me.

So years passed, and I was still afraid to go to sleep and I began to think that maybe my mistake had been writing about someone like me, that maybe I needed to write about Stella, who unlike me, is aware and remembers EVERYTHING. And unlike me, she wakes with a personality change and brilliant new creative ability. Writing Stella, experiencing what I hadn’t been able to before, healedme in so many ways. When I finished my first coma novel, I was sad. But I wrote With or Without You, I felt this incredible sense of wonder and hope. And yeah, happiness, too, because I was freed of that past and I had come to realize that the mind is more incredible than we can imagine.

Hysteria sometimes is a good omen.

Here I am, with a month to go before my novel is due, and I am sitting in my writing office, pages spread around me, hysterically crying. Nothing seems to be working. The characters I worked so hard on feel flat to me and I want to slap them. The writing seems truncated to me and I don’t know how to fix it. I sob until my husband comes in and as soon as he sees the scene and the pages, the alarm on his face relaxes. He puts one arm around me. “You always do this,” he says gently. He tells me it is the calm before the storm that puts a finish on the work, and guess what, he’s right. He leaves me to it, and I begin to remap out scenes, to reorganize, to ask myself constant questions about what people are doing and why. Oh yeah, it takes me the whole month but at the end, I’m exhausted, and while I remain unsure about whether or not I’ve written a good book (I leave that for my agent and editor to tell me), I at least know that I’ve done absolutely everything I can to get the story to work and for right now, anyway, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done.

If I call backstory something else, then I can get it to work.

I’ve always had a huge backstory problem. Give me a character and I tend to want to go back generations. Every editor I’ve had has tried to pull me back from that, but I’ve been stubborn. But this book, my old Algonquin editor had left and I had a new one, Chuck Adams, and the first thing he said was, “We have to work on your backstory issue.” I panicked. A lot.

We did a lot of talking, a lot of rewrites, and finally, frustrated, I cut up all the backstory and spread it on the floor to see what needed to be there and why. And to my astonishment, I realized it wasn’t the backstory that was the problem, it was where I was putting it.

You want to think of your novel as one narrative driving line, but that line can trigger things in the past, and when those things are triggered, they change the character in that present driving line and then it works!

For example, one of my characters, Libby, a doctor and Stella’s best friend, is haunted by her past. She believes she caused her little brother’s death. To get the full impact of that, I was sure we had to live through that day along with young Libby, we had to feel everything she was feeling. But where was I going to put it? I couldn’t just have Libby be talking to Stella and saying, “Oh, by the way, let me tell you the story of what happened to my baby brother,” and then go off for half an hour about it.So then I began to think of triggers. Libby and Stella have a falling out about something major, and unable to cope, Libby goes to see a shrink, and it’s the shrink who tells her she has to go back to her old neighborhood and find out what really happened. We’re still in the present but while Libby is alone and traveling , she tells us about that day, as if it is front story, and happening, so we feel the trauma. Then, when she gets to the place, in the present narrative line, she talks to a few people, and when she discovers new information about that day, she is totally changed.

I don’t have to love my characters but I have to understand them.

In the beginning was Simon, in his forties, a once famous rock and roller with women hurling themselves at him, but now age has come calling. He puts mascara on his gray temples, he works out so he can fit into the same lucky jeans he wore when he was twenty, and he’s so desperate for his new big break that Stella, his longtime partner and very practical nurse, is ready to leave him.

When I showed initial pages to other people, the comments were always the same: Simon’s a jerk. Why doesn’t Stella boot him out? What a big baby. Simon was really the thorniest character I had to write.

Usually I adore my characters from the get-go, but Simon was a tougher nut to crack, mostly because his rock star persona isn’t one I’ve ever liked. So I began to feel it was both my job to come to love him and to make readers love him, too. I dug deeper. What was it that had happened to him in his past to make him this way? What was his “save the cat” moment (you know, when the killer stops his killing to rush into a house and save a kitten?) I began to post photos of hin around my office to feel like I was living with him. I asked him questions: What do you really need?” and then let him just tell me. And I began to realize that he had grown up under parents who didn’t think music—or he—were worthwhile. And then it struck me. Simon just wants to be seen and loved, and all of the music biz was just a barrier to that instead of the gateway he thought it was. And also, he loved Stella. He began to grow up. And by the end of the book, Simon was someone in my life and in my heart.

In writing about fame, I discovered it didn’t mean what I thought it did.

I thought I had made peace with the whole idea of fame and not fame. My first novel made me the flavor of the month and I thought it would always be that way, but it wasn’t. My publisher went out of business! I had a 3-book deal where the major publisher did no promotion and I had no sales. I got another 3-book deal, and it happened again, and making things more difficult for me was the fact that all my writing friends were building real careers, winning prizes, getting known.  When my 9th novel was rejected on contract, I was sure my career was over. Who was going to buy a book from someone with no sales? I cried, and then a friend suggested an editor for me, and to my surprise, she bought that unspecial book. Even more unexpected, it got into 6 printings before it was published and became a New York Times Bestseller its second week. My next novel with Algonquin was also a NYT bestseller, but it didn’t feel the way I thought it would. I still was desperate for more, more, more.

But the unhappier Simon was with his life, the more I realized I had to stop doing what he was doing—checking every place for reviews or news of me, comparing myself nonstop to every other writer on the planet, wondering every second what people thought of me. In writing about Simon, I realized, that his issue was fame was really an identity issues, a wound from childhood that he had to heal if he wanted to have a happier, saner life. And as I wrote that for him, I realized that was my issue, too and I needed to dig deeper into it.

Simon’s not famous. I don’t consider myself famous. But because of With or Without You, we’re both happy, and that makes all the difference to both of us.

Caroline Leavitt: Website

With or Without You: Indiebound | Bookshop | Amazon

Just a li’l head’s up: my computer has fritzed the fuck out. General consensus is, a failure of the logic board (a metaphor for this whole country, if you ask me) — but for our purposes let’s just imagine a robot whose square head is barfing sparks from every orifice, and then it falls into a bed, and then it shits that bed. (Relax, robot shit is just a sudden shotgun clatter of rusty gears. Embarrassing for them, but a mild curiosity for us meatbags.)

So, forgive me if you need something right now — I’m going to be a little slow to see and deal with. (I’m working on my iPad, which actually does surprisingly okay as a computer replacement, especially with Word on it. But it’s not all the way there.)

BUT BUT BUT

Hey, here’s a cool thing —

The cover to YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, MAGIC SKELETON, has popped up online at Rizzoli Books, if you care to see it. Having a hard time dropping in the graphic, but you can see the book cover and the description of it here. The words are by me, the art is by the amazing Natalie Metzger — really, my words are a very silly part of this book, but the art? THE ART. The art! I can’t wait you to see the various possums, or the sharks, or the wolf container? Seriously, don’t buy it for my shenanigans. You’re gonna want it for the art.

OKAY THAT’S IT FOR NOW.

More soon, when I’m less technologically hobbled!

Psst. PSST. If you were looking to get hold of a big-ass bison bludgeoner of a book but didn’t want the actual physical book with which to bludgeon bisons*, then I note that the book is available on Kindle today for a mere TWO BUCKS and NINETY-NINE PENNIES, except these are digital pennies, because real pennies are apparently in shortage. But at the very least, it’s an 800 page book, so you’re getting some narrative bang for your electronic buck. Epic sci-fi horror! Warning: may contain pandemic and also I may have accidentally predicted some parts of our future. (Kidding, the stuff I predicted was stuff we all knew was coming, because the call was coming from inside the house this whole damn time, which is why it’s particularly execrable that our “””president””” decided to undercut and undo every protection we had against coming catastrophe.)

Here’s the link.

Though of course if you still want it in print, there’s Indiebound and Bookshop.org.

Or, check it out through your local library.

There is a content warning, and I’ve concealed it behind a ROT13 filter so that those who desire the warning can simply unscramble it by c/p’ing the encrypted text into the window at rot13.com.

Pbagrag jneavat: fhvpvqny vqrngvba, fhvpvqr, gbegher, enpvfz naq ovtbgel, qvfphffvbaf bs zragny urnygu naq zragny vyyarff, tha ivbyrapr, naq n tencuvpny qrfpevcgvba bs Z/Z encr (sbhaq ba cc 434-435 bs gur uneqonpx, ng gur raq bs puncgre 50).

And now, a big bucket of praise for the book, because I am not above bragging.

*how many bisons could a bison bludgeoner bison if a bison bludgeoner could bludgeon bison?

***

A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. From the mind of Chuck Wendig comes “a magnum opus . . . a story about survival that’s not just about you and me, but all of us, together” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD AND THE LOCUS

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • The Guardian • Kirkus Reviews • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • Polygon

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Praise for Wanderers

“The book’s nearly 800 pages fly effortlessly by and offer both first-class entertainment and a clear-eyed view of the forces dividing contemporary society. As I finished this one, I found myself thinking: Where has this guy been all my life?” — Washington Post

“Wendig takes science, politics, horror, and science fiction and blended them into an outstanding story about the human spirit in times of turmoil, claiming a spot on the list of must-read apocalyptic novels while doing so.” — Gabino Iglesias, NPR

“This career-defining epic deserves its inevitable comparisons to Stephen King’s The Stand.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A suspenseful, twisty, satisfying, surprising, thought-provoking epic.”—Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Run Away

“A true tour de force.”—Erin Morgenstern, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus

“A masterpiece with prose as sharp and heartbreaking as Station Eleven.”—Peng Shepherd, author of The Book of M

“A magnum opus . . . It reminded me of Stephen King’s The Stand—but dare I say, this story is even better.”—James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Crucible   

“An inventive, fierce, uncompromising, stay-up-way-past-bedtime masterwork.”—Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World 

“An American epic for these times.”—Charles Soule, author of The Oracle Year

“Wanderers is amazing—huge, current, both broad and intensely personal, blending the contemplative apocalypse of Station Eleven with the compulsive readability of the best thrillers.”—Django Wexler, author of the Shadow Campaigns series

“A riveting examination of America.”—Scott Sigler, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Generations Trilogy

“If you ever wanted to know what America’s soul might look like, here’s its biography.”—Rin Chupeco, author of The Bone Witch

“With Wanderers, Chuck Wendig levels up—and when you consider the high level he was already writing at, that’s saying something.” —John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author of The Consuming Fire

“A tsunami of a novel.”—Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award-winning author of Into the Black Nowhere

“A defining moment in speculative fiction.”—Adam Christopher, author of Empire State and Made to Kill

“Trust me: You’re not ready for this book.”—Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Phasma

“An astounding adventure.”—Fran Wilde, Hugo-, Nebula-, and World Fantasy finalist and award-winning author of the Bone Universe trilogy

“Utterly brilliant and frighteningly plausible.”—Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians

“Beautiful and harrowing—and timely as hell.”—Richard Kadrey, New York Times bestselling author of The Grand Dark

“A harrowing portrait of an unraveling America . . . terrifyingly prophetic.”—Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Ararat and The Pandora Room

“A brilliant, Hollywood-blockbuster of a novel.”—Peter Clines, author of Dead Moon and Paradox Bound

“Approach Wanderers like it’s a primetime television series, along the lines of The Passage [or] Lost. . . . Make Wanderers a summer reading priority; you won’t regret it.”—Book Riot

“Wendig is clearly wrestling with some of the demons of our time, resulting in a story that is ambitious, bold, and worthy of attention.” — Kirkus (starred review)

“A powerful story about humanity, technology, and the survival of the world. Comparisons to Stephen King’s The Stand are warranted, as Wendig shatters the boundaries of speculative and literary fiction…” — Library Journal (starred review)

“It’s not easy to write the end of the world. With Wanderers, Chuck Wendig has mastered it.” — Bookpage (starred review)

“Wanderers is OUTSTANDING. Wanderers excites me. You want well-developed characters and complex relationships? Read Wanderers. You want grounded sci-fi that ranks up there with bookstagram faves like #Recursion and #StationEleven? Read Wanderers. You want twists and turns and edge-of-your-seat action? Read Wanderers.” — Jordy’s Book Club

“An imaginative and absorbing work of speculative fiction.” — Booklist

It is 1971. The fictional city of Bellport, Massachusetts, is in decline with an urban redevelopment project on the horizon expected to transform this dying factory town into a thriving economic center. This planned transformation has a profound effect on the residents who live in Bellport as their own personal transformations take place.

Sydney Stallworth steps away from her fellowship and law studies at an elite university to support husband Malachi’s dream of opening a business in the heart of the black community of his hometown, Bellport.

For Omar Bassari, an immigrant from Senegal, Bellport is where he will establish his drumming career and the launching pad from which he will spread African culture across the world, while trying to hold onto his marriage.

Della Tolliver has built a fragile sanctuary in Bellport for herself, boyfriend Kwamé Rodriguez, and daughter Jasmine, a troubled child prone to nightmares and outbursts.

Tensions rise as the demolition date moves closer, plans for gentrification are laid out, and the pace of suspicious fires picks up. The residents find themselves at odds with a political system manipulating their lives and question the future of their relationships.

***

MARRIAGE THERAPY DOESN’T HAVE TO INVOLVE A THERAPIST, JUST THE RIGHT KIND OF DOCTOR

My husband and I were having a tough time. I had been working on my novel for years, grinding out one draft after another, sending out sample pages to literary agents, getting no response, or getting the canned response email rejection or a few nibbles in which an agent asked to see additional pages and then would later tell me that my work wasn’t “the right fit.” I’d burst into tears, punch the sofa cushions and cry on my husband’s shoulder. At the same time, my husband was having a similar response from potential employers. He’d been out of work for more than a year and either got no interviews, interviews that went nowhere, or interviews that seemed to go somewhere…and then silence. In desperation to get my novel to sell, I scanned a list of “book doctors” who charged upwards of $100 per hour. Unwilling to spend that kind of money, I brainstormed until it occurred to me that I could get hubby to be the doctor. After all, he was a newspaper reporter for more than 20 years and did consultation for a fellow journalist whose book ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. My husband took the job, didn’t charge me a dime, and as they say, the rest is history.

THE BEST RESEARCH CAN OCCUR WHILE HOLDING A FORK AND KNIFE

Who says that research can’t be fun? It doesn’t have to involve poring over dusty old back breaking tomes at the public library, spooling rolls of microfilm onto rickety old projectors, or watching documentaries until you’re bleary eyed. Once I decided that one of my main characters was going to be a Senegalese restaurant owner and his nephew was going to be a drummer who’s very good at making Senegalese dishes, I took a trip into town to try the cuisine at the local Senegalese restaurant. The chef prepared the most succulent pork chops I’ve ever had and I still think about the lamb stew. Several trips to the restaurant helped me to realistically portray the meals in the story. I even prepared the lamb stew at home and it was nearly as good as the restaurant version.

BANGING ON A DRUM IS HARDER THAN YOU THINK

In my continuing effort to accurately portray my drummer, I signed up for a drumming circle led by a master drummer from Guinea. Even though I’d already taken an adult education course, I soon realized what a leap it was to take a master class.

Seventy-five-plus students showed up, drums in tow, ready to learn new rhythms from a musician they revered. The student seated next to me kept grumbling, “People who aren’t serious about this should stay home!” I wondered if he’d figured me out, that I was an imposter, not a real drummer. I could feel my shoulders slumping in a ridiculous effort to make myself invisible.

The room went silent as the master drummer played a combination of rhythms. He beckoned us to repeat them. On the beat, he slowly strutted around the large circle, inspecting our hands closely, nodding and smiling slightly when he was pleased, narrowing his eyes when a tone or slap was made without confidence.

As I feared, as he was making his rounds, he paused in front of me, raised a hand to get everyone to stop playing and worked with me one-on-one. After he tried again and again to set me on the right path I finally confessed in a weak voice: “I’m not a real drummer. I’m a writer wanting to learn to play to create a drummer for my novel.” He gave me a smile and continued circling the room. When he came back around to me, he paused again. Was I hitting the drum wrong? Apparently not. He gave me a flirtatious wink and kept going.

TAXIS AND MANUSCRIPTS DON’T MIX

I was on a business trip to a convention in Chicago and brought my laptop with me that had a copy of my manuscript on it. I was feverishly working on the manuscript whenever I had a chance—at the airport gate, the hotel room, on the airport shuttle. One afternoon after leaving the convention center, my boss and I took a taxi back to our hotel. I was so exhausted that it wasn’t until we were out of the taxi and in the lobby of the hotel that I realized that I’d left my computer bag in the trunk of the taxi. I was practically hyperventilating. The only copy I had of the manuscript was on that laptop. I hadn’t backed up the file. Keep in mind I wasn’t concerned about the loss of my work files. Of course, I hadn’t bothered to take note of the driver’s name or the taxi number. I did remember the name of the taxi company, however, but calls there didn’t help. Eventually, it occurred to me that the driver was likely making a continuous loop from the convention center to the hotel. I stood out front and waited. Sure enough, he eventually returned and I got my laptop back. Whew!

I COULD HAVE BEEN A DANCE INSTRUCTOR

Maybe not the kind of instructor who opens up a school, teaches ballet, tap, and jazz, and conducts recitals, but a halfway decent choreographer of fight scenes. In The Talking Drum I have a scene in which my drummer gets into a wrestling match of sorts with his wife. There’s a bowl of lobster stew involved, an herbal aphrodisiac in a jar, a wall-dial-style mounted telephone with an extra lengthy cord, and a pepper grinder. The drummer’s wife discovers that he is trying to insert some of the herbs into her bowl of stew and assumes he’s up to something sinister. They get into a tussle that involves a bear hug, squeezing of wrists, squirming, her using all of her weight to knock him against the refrigerator door with the palms of her hands, the jar of herbs flying out of his hand. I actually spent a good hour in my kitchen choreographing the scene, acting it out to make sure the two characters could actually go through those motions. In another scene, my drummer gets into a bar fight, pounces on the guy seated next to him and is eventually kicked out of the bar by a bouncer in a bum’s rush. That required some choreography on my part as well. I didn’t spend time in a bar going through the paces, but I think it nonetheless came out pretty believable in the published work.

***

Lisa Braxton is the author of The Talking Drum, published in June 2020 by Inanna Publications, and a recipient of a 2020 Outstanding Literary Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. She is a fellow of Kimbilio, a fellowship for fiction writers of the African diaspora, and an Emmy-nominated former television journalist, an essayist, and short story writer. She received Honorable Mention in Writer’s Digest magazine’s 84th and 86th annual writing contests in the inspirational essay category.

Lisa Braxton: Website | Twitter | Instagram

The Talking Drum: Amazon | Inanna Publications