Becoming Truitt Skye: The Cave of Souls follows a woman torn between her past self and who she is now while being overwhelmed with the responsibilities that are placed on her. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?

What a terrific question! Thank you. The series reflects my desire ( read: obsession) with the journey we take as women to “become” who we are, which to me, is self-possessed and in love with the life we have lived, are living, and will live. To grow, we have to release. As always, I take most of my inspiration from nature. Like the seed, we break through the casings protecting us, then we have to get through the earth, rocks and all, in order to slowing unravel, grow stronger and stronger in our stems/cores, expand with our leaves and blooms, rest when the sun goes down and continue the next day until the winter returns and we die/transform and begin again, a wee different the following spring. Change means part dies for new growth to emerge. I wanted to express that aspect of growth in this series.

Truitt goes through a lot of emotions in this novel as she adapts. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?

Another awesome question! Thank you. The Cave of Souls falls in the middle of Truitt’s journey. And like all of us in the middle of our story, she knows the only forward is to let go of the past and she DOES NOT WANT TO/fears the unknown. I wanted it to be explosive. I wanted massive resistance, and pain. In fiction, we can overindulge to give the reader an experience. They can potentially have this hyper-experience so that their growth feels do-able. Or at least that is my dream for the reader… “if Truitt can, I can,” kind of love logic. Truitt is fighting the change she must make to become more, like we all do. We see the dream we want to live, and yet, we sabotage ourselves for fear we don’t deserve it. She is meant to be a role model for all of us to let ourselves express, and be, and live and die, and become more. Always more.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

I love a theme! The main theme I explored in Cave (my short name for the book), was “you have to feel your way there.” To me how we feel dictates who we are and what we do. It is the vibration beneath the action. So, of course, to take Truitt and the reader on the experience, I had to make Truiit attempt to avoid her feelings… which never works, but we forget that because we “think” that are thoughts will save us. My truth is that feelings come first, then thoughts. Mastering, by which I mean loving, our emotions, includes/requires expressing, celebrating and owning our feelings . This is the path to living the life of our dreams. Another theme of T2 was, “nothing we do is wrong. It is clarity in motion.” We are all so hard on ourselves for our mistakes and failures… it drives me insane that we are so terrible to ourselves.. I wanted to show that when we fail, we earn clarity and clarity is a superpower. It’s a classic theme that we can never hear too much!

What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?

I am in the process of editing the final book of the Becoming Truitt Skye series: The Equation for Imagination. It will release later this year.

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