Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read

EPISODE 678 - Robert Howell - Canadian Author of the Gothic Horror, Blood Castle, the sequel to Blood Mansion

Robert Howell has a range of skills and experiences, having studied Business Administration in college while taking courses in literature, poetry, cartography, and supernatural studies.

​After completing college, he joined the military to satisfy his urge to travel across Canada and various parts of Europe. Following his military service, he spent 40 years in real estate, starting as an agent and later working in acquisitions for an investment company, focusing on locations such as Florida and Texas.

Despite having a successful career in real estate, his true passion was writing. To develop a profound set of writing skills, he took a writing course through the Long Ridge Writers Group, affiliated with the University of Connecticut.

​After completing his writing course, he did different types of writing, newsletters, articles, web content, and short stories, and found love in writing fictional novels. He has written the successful Charm series, a great urban fantasy teen trilogy. With Blood Mansion, he has turned his imagination to adult gothic horror.

​Born in Montreal, Quebec, he has raised four children as a single dad and has two grandchildren.

https://www.instagram.com/storywriter.ca/

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EPISODE 677 - Peter Cotton - Tales from Frank the Snake for Children from a Doctor, Grandfather and Storyteller

Peter Cotton is a retired physician living on Dewees Island in South Carolina, writing fun books for young children about Fred the lovable snake and his friends.

Peter grew up in England where the first tale was conceived long ago as a bedtime story for his then young children about how (not) to cross the road. When they had their kids, they asked what happened to “Fred-Fred”. Peter teamed up with a special illustrator (Canadian Bonnie Lemaire) and published the first book “When Fred the Snake got Squished and Mended”.

Together they now have a series of nine popular award-winning books, having fun in rhyme with Jungle Jim, Perdy and Jack and several animal friends. They go to school, welcome Jungle Jim, try camping, visit the beach, tour Charleston and recently have been exploring the sights of USA. Peter’s books have received numerous 5-star reviews (“move over Lewis Carroll”) and 5 Mom’s Choice gold awards. Peter enjoys presenting Fred at schools.

When not busy with Fred’s adventures, Peter travels widely to lecture, to enjoy his family, and to play golf. He reflected on life, and on his career as a Professor of Medicine/ Gastroenterology, in his memoirs “The Tunnel at the End of the Light”.

Peter says that he was not named after a rabbit. The English author Beatrix Potter wrote about Peter Rabbit, Flopsy, Mopsy, Benjamin bunny and Cottontail. Peter Cottontail is a shortened American invention.

https://petercottontales.com/

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EPISODE 676 - Jennifer Celeste Briggs - Watching Sarah Rise - A Journey of Thriving With Autism

Jennifer Celeste Briggs has a BA in English Literature from Swarthmore college. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband and two daughters. Her daughter Sarah has a genetic anomaly and autism. When Sarah was four, Jenny decided to run a Son-Rise Program for her, calling it Sarah-Rise, and training at the Autism Treatment Center of America.

The Son-Rise Program is a loving child-centered approach to helping those with autism and other challenges connect socially, verbally, and through increased eye contact. Organizing hundreds of hours of therapeutic play time for Sarah, Jenny trained and coordinated multiple volunteers who contributed their love and creativity to the venture. Jenny started a blog to share the experience of Sarah-Rise and has heard multiple times that her words were helpful to others dealing with life struggles.

Jenny wants to help parents feel understood and to spread the word about The Son-Rise Program. She hopes that her words bring comfort, joy, and inspiration to readers whatever their challenges and journeys may be.

Sarah is a feisty and determined four-year-old with autism and a unique genetic blueprint. Her mom Jenny is equally feisty and determined, which leads to clashes and strife but also leads to phenomenal connection and progress as Jenny runs a Son-Rise Program for her, calling it Sarah-Rise.

The Son-Rise Program is an approach to working with people with autism to foster social connection. It provides intensely loving, focused one-on-one therapeutic play time, meeting Sarah where she is and never stopping her repetitive behaviors. Sarah’s language explodes, her eye contact intensifies, she plays games, plays imaginatively, uses the potty, eats healthily, reads, and writes.

Playing with Sarah is deeply rewarding for the volunteers who spend time in the Sarah-Rise room. While Jenny sometimes doubts herself and criticizes her parenting, she also explores new pathways to gentleness, joy, and laughter. She celebrates Sarah’s successes, marveling at the depth of love and creativity that her volunteers bring to the scene and stretching her own creative self. Accompany Jenny from Sarah’s birth through the decision to run Sarah-Rise, and follow the years of Sarah-Rise, pretending that markers are flowers and number flashcards are snowflakes. Have your heart warmed and your socks knocked off by this momentous journey.

“Watching Sarah Rise is equally informative as it is inspirational, gracious as it is gutsy.  A beautifully written story filled with hope, integrity, and pure emotion, Briggs intimately invites her reader to experience the unique heartbreak and joy that comes with mothering a neurodivergent child.”

-Sherry Sidoti, author of A Smoke and a Song: A Memoir

https://www.watchingsarahrise.com/

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Episode 675 - David Niemitz - Writer and Teacher - Guild Mage,  a serial fantasy novel

Writer and teacher David Niemitz joins the show from Connecticut to talk about his dual life in the classroom and on the page, and how both worlds feed each other. He shares how teaching “film as literature” to high school seniors, using stories like Star Wars, The Matrix, Moana and The Princess Bride to explore the Hero’s Journey, keeps him immersed in narrative structure, character arcs, and mythic storytelling. That daily engagement with story craft feeds directly into his own writing.

David explains the practical realities of publishing, contrasting the limited data and delayed royalty statements that come with working through traditional and small publishers with the detailed dashboards and page-read metrics available to indie authors on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and Kindle Unlimited. He talks frankly about the trade-offs: more support and distribution versus more control and information, and how audio rights and sales data can be even more opaque when handled by audio publishers.

The conversation then dives into his path to becoming an author. A lifelong reader raised in a house full of science fiction and fantasy, David rediscovered his passion for writing when he pursued a creative writing master’s degree while teaching full time and parenting a toddler. That intense season led to his first self-published science fiction novel, set on Europa and grounded in real-world technology and hard science principles. From there, he evolved his craft, ultimately launching Guild Mage, a serial fantasy novel that became his flagship series.

Guild Mage began as serial fiction following Liv, the daughter of a castle cook, who slowly discovers her otherworldly heritage and magical powers over many years. David wanted to explore what it means to age more slowly than those you love, watching human friends grow up, marry, and die while you remain “behind.” He layers in his own experience raising an autistic son, using Liv’s slower social-emotional development and sense of being left out as an emotional core, then gradually raising the stakes as she moves from bullied child to powerful adult in a complex fantasy world.

Community is at the heart of his process. Early chapters of Guild Mage release first on Patreon, where a devoted Discord community offers feedback, catches continuity errors, and even helps shape cover art concepts that his publisher then passes to illustrator Ben Moran. David describes this as “open development” for fiction, heavily influenced by decades of tabletop roleplaying games where he learned to watch what players love, adjust pacing, and keep tension high so no one gets bored.

He also unpacks his hybrid “pantser with prep” approach to plotting using worldbuilding notes, bullet lists, and physical note cards for complex multi-POV battles, while still leaving room for discovery and reader-driven emphasis. 

https://www.facebook.com/p/David-Niemitz-Author-61558007085046/

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EPISODE 674 - Hope Cole - Fantasy Author and Health Writer - Daughter of the Void

About the author
H.R. Cole is a Pennsylvania native who completed her first (handwritten) fantasy novel at the age of twelve. She’s remained an avid writer and has one published middle grade novel and a successful health journalism career. Cole lives with her husband, dogs, and cats in mountainous Upstate New York.

Book: Daughter of the Void: Chains of Fate Trilogy: Book One

Her power holds the promise of unraveling the fabric of the world, but using it will chain her fate to the gods.
In a world where tendrils of magic envelop all things, Raelyn discovers she’s one of the last of her kind: a warden. As a conduit of the gods capable of creating holes in the fabric of magic, she is a daughter of the void. Forced to flee as her city burns and her best friend is kidnapped, she finds herself in an unexpected partnership with Laris, a mage whose abrasive personality hides a desire to keep her safe. The pair are chased deep into the Vast, a treacherous mountain range filled with hostile feyfolk, where Raelyn grows ever closer to her companion and learns the consequences of being directly connected to the gods.

Guided by the spirit of the last Holy King and unknowingly hunted by Saraht, an enemy warden with a personal vendetta of her own, Raelyn and Laris embark on a journey to seek answers. Along the way they must confront the growing threat of war and the knowledge of Raelyn’s true purpose: a devastating power she will need to embrace to defeat Saraht, but one that will alter her fate forever.

https://www.hrcole.com/

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EPISODE 673 - Mary Alice Stephens - UNCORKED - Getting sober is one thing, staying sober another

Mary Alice Stephens is a creative nonfiction storyteller. As a television writer-producer for HGTV, Food Network, and other media outlets, she shared others’ stories on everything from outdoor adventures to home improvement. Now, in her debut book, Uncorked -- an Amazon #1 New Release in both Alcoholism Recovery and Midlife Self-Help -- Mary shares her own powerful story of alcoholism, recovery, and starting life anew at 45. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Dominican University of California and resides in Northern California. When not writing, she can often be found cyber-stalking her teens, planning her family’s next adventure, or searching for her elusive phone.

Book: Uncorked: A Memoir of Letting Go and Starting Over

Getting sober is one thing, staying sober another…

With a glorious bang, alcohol freed Mary Stephens from her lonely, self-critical teenage shell and fueled Fun Mary. For three decades, booze had been her best friend, the reliable spark igniting good times and (she thought) good friendships. But Fun Mary had a dark side: debilitating hangovers, blackouts, and perilous behavior. Not even a three-story fall that left her in a body cast could stop her from drinking. But finally, after putting her young son in danger and her marriage in jeopardy, Fun Mary had to go.

Now sober at age 45, everything Mary once cherished becomes a trigger—date nights with her husband, friendships centered around wine, and a father who expresses his love through alcohol. This new Sober Mary is lonely and vulnerable—feelings she drank to escape. Now what?

Told with heart and humor, Uncorked: A Memoir of Letting Go and Starting Over is the inspiring and relatable story of a woman's pursuit of a better life through sobriety.

About the Author

Mary Alice Stephens is a creative nonfiction storyteller. As a television writer-producer for HGTV, Food Network, and other media outlets, she has shared others’ stories on everything from outdoor adventures to home improvement. In her debut book, Uncorked, Mary shares her own powerful story of alcoholism, recovery, and starting life anew at 45. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Dominican University of California and resides in Northern California.

Praise for Uncorked: A Memoir of Letting Go and Starting Over

“Stephens’ insights into her alcoholism as she worked on the 12 steps are illuminating and feature wisdom that may be helpful to others in a similar situation. A valuable, enlightening window into one woman’s decision to quit drinking.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Her journey from the death of ‘Fun Mary’ to the birth of ‘Sober Mary’ is at turns deeply moving and amusing, and many readers will see themselves in her story. I was rooting for her the entire way.” —Kirsten Mickelwait, author of the novel, The Ashtrays Are Full and the Glasses Are Empty, and the memoir, The Ghost Marriage

https://www.maryalicestephens.com/

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EPISODE 672 - Karin K Jensen - The Strength of Water - An Asian American Coming of Age Memoir

The Sibylline Press edition of The Strength of Water, An Asian American Coming of Age Memoir, is scheduled for release on November 7, 2025! It is available for review on NetGalley and Booksprout. Pre-order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever books are sold.

In 1920s Detroit, King Ying stands on a box to iron clothes in her parents’ laundry business, endures taunts of Ching-Ching Chinaman on the playground, and tries to reconcile what passes for normal in Jazz-Age America with her father’s vastly different cultural values.

She dreams of a home, the elegance of her Jane Arden paper dolls, and winning her stern father’s affection. But when Ba incurs steep debts during the Great Depression, he sends her far from hope to his ancestral village.

In remote Tai Ting Pong, in the Guangdong Province of China, she feels as foreign in the land of her heritage as in the country of her birth. She must survive hunger, dangerous superstitions, and Japanese invasion as the Sino-Japanese War begins.

When guardian angels help her return to the U.S., it’s a chance to seize her American dream.

In this inspiring and heartfelt memoir, Karin K. Jensen records her mother’s transpacific quest for identity, survival, and new world dreams. The Strength of Water received a coveted starred Kirkus review and was included on Kirkus’s annual list of Top 100 Indie Books.

Book club discussion questions are included at the end of the book. Invite the author to your book club discussion!

From the Author

The Strength of Water is my mother’s memoir, as told to me, starting in the 1920s and spanning nearly a century. It offers exquisite period details of immigrant life in the U.S. and village life in China.

One woman’s epic odyssey, one family’s story of striving in a foreign country, one generation’s unique memory. An amazing memoir where the “strength of water,” the power of resilience and adapting to any circumstance, is the common thread that flows through the whole family, connecting everyone’s lives. Touching, inspiring, and brilliantly written.

Shen Yang, Author of More Than One Child

Throughout my childhood, my mother told stories of growing up in her father’s Detroit laundry business during the infancy of the automobile industry and later in a Cantonese village on the eve of the Sino-Japanese war. She also spoke of what it was like to survive as a live-in domestic worker and teen waitress in mid-century California.

The Strength of Water is a daughter’s careful excavation of her mother’s story; it is a mother’s disclosure of history, of trauma, of realities that mark not only her life but the legacy of her daughters’. This is a book written with tremendous love and authenticity. It is an important document of the Asian American experience.

Kao Kalia Yang, Award winning author of The Song Poet and The Latehomecomer

These stories felt like mythology, far removed from my experiences growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, yet vital to preserve as history. When I decided to set them down, I could hear my mother’s voice so clearly that I wrote in the first person. Thank you for taking a look.

A classic, vividly written immigrant saga - Kirkus Reviews

https://karinkjensen.blog/

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EPISODE 671 - David Wolfson - The underbelly of Wall Street - The story of a young idealistic college graduate starting out on Wall Street

What is the name of your book or books and where can it/they be found or purchased? 

Financial Syndicate: Some Job Opportunities Go Too Far; Found on Amazon

What do you want readers to know about your book/s? 

The reader will see a likable character with whom he or she can identify, along with identifying on how a small-town kid gets caught up in corporate intrigue.

What does being an author mean to you?

The ability to create my own characters and story, along with sharing it with the whole world.

How did your journey as an author begin?

Over a long weekend, I had a job interview in Chicago. On the trip home, my flight had a six-hour delay due to inclement weather. With a crowded airport terminal full of unhappy people in a similar situation, I plugged in my laptop and started typing. Through long commutes and long weekends, along with some late nights, the Financial Syndicate was born.

Who or what motivated you to write?

A college lit teacher, and from the above answer, the idea existed in my mind. However, during the long wait at O’Hare, I decided to put my idea to action.

What is your mission and or vision as an author?

To entertain, including making my reader chuckle or shed a tear, I also want to highlight an awareness of an issue not in the front pages of a newspaper or top of a newscast.

Do you only write in one genre or multiple? Please explain why or why not. 

As of now, I am currently writing in mystery-suspense. However, in the future, I am looking at other genres such as historical fiction. Also, given that I am a diehard romantic, I would like to test the limits as a male romance fiction writer

Are there certain themes or topics that you cover as an author? What are they? Why these? 

In the Financial Syndicate, I am looking at the issuance of toxic securities and fees earned from them. In my second book, I am covering contract employment. Also, I would like to write a book about the current political environment, specifically a short-sighted and attention-seeking President, hating institutional norms.

What do you want readers to know about you? 

I am accessible, easy-going, and I will sit for hours talking to any reader and answering any question. I am really looking forward to bookstore tours, with readers talking to the person behind the book.

Instagram - @wolfsonauthor

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EPISODE 670 - Barbara Viniar - Little bird is the story of a girl who finds the courage to forge her own path to womanhood in 1910

I was born and raised in the Bronx, NY, but once I left for college at 17, I never went back. With the benefit of having lived in many other places in the U.S. and abroad, I now look back fondly on my neighborhood, a place where people knew and cared about each other. But as a teenager I couldn’t wait to escape. I wanted to meet new people and explore New York City, which I was able to do at the H.S. of Music and Art, one the city’s selective high schools at that time. Being immersed in the arts was one of the defining experiences of my life.  

Writing brings me joy. It will be the cornerstone of this chapter of my life. 

“With meticulous historical research and heartfelt storytelling, Viniar introduces an unforgettable heroine - not because Fannie is extraordinary, but because she feels so real. She’s the kind of character who becomes a friend, someone you’ll root for as she navigates the trials of youth, immigration and identity as a Jewish woman. ”

— Robyn Rosen, Ph.D. Professor of history, Marist College

Book - Little Bird - “Like the heroine of her timeless novel, Barbara Viniar has meticulously embroidered this story of a talented young woman torn between the tradition she respects and the dreams she can’t deny.”
— Elyce Wakerman, author of A Tale of Two citizens and Father Loss

After an old photograph and newspaper article revealed that my grandmother, Fannie, was married to a cousin at 17 and later divorced, I felt compelled to tell her story. But with only a few dates and names to go on, I had to create the story from my imagination.

It took three years of writing and rewriting, not to mention researching the life of a Jewish immigrant in New York City from 1910 – 1917 to finish Little Bird.

I only hope that my Fannie captures what might have been true about my grandmother. I often feel that telling her story has been a way of discovering my own.       

They say writers are either compulsive plotters or “pantsers,” happy to let their stories evolve without a plan. I am somewhere in between. I had a detailed outline when I started, but then characters surprised me. Their voices changed the story. 

I am often asked if I have written fiction before. Have I always dreamed of writing a novel? Absolutely not! This passion, this commitment of time and emotional energy to writing a novel has all been new to me. I would sit down at my desk and lose track of time. It still fills me with terror and joy.

https://barbaraviniar.com/

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EPISODE 669 - Leonard D. Hilley II - epic fantasy series, sci-fi suspense, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and young adult novels

Leonard D. Hilley II grew up in Fort Payne, AL, where his never-ending curiosity introduced him to the world of biology and books. During his youth he was an avid insect collector and reared butterflies and moths. His love for science eventually merged with his writing. He currently resides in Marietta, Ohio, where he writes science fiction thrillers, epic high fantasy, and YA mysteries.

Education: B.S. Biology; MFA in Creative Writing

Leonard D. Hilley II is the author of Predators of Darkness Series, The Chronicles of Aetheaon, The Forrest Wollinsky Vampire Hunter Series, and The Nocturnal Trinity Series.

Leonard D. Hilley II also writes short stories for YA. Two books were inspired by his early love of biology: Rearing Dragons in My Backyard and Fiddling Worms. He also writes a mystery series for YA: Dee’s Mystery Solvers.

https://leonarddhilleyii.com/

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