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Empower Readers
Exit Signs follows an eighteen-year-old girl with plans to graduate early and attend Stanford, who has it all ripped away when her mom throws her out with nothing, leaving her homeless and vulnerable to coercion disguised as love. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Thank you for that question. For years, I kept this close to my chest due to the lingering shame, but the truth is: my own life was the inspiration. This actually happened to me. The story began years ago as a cathartic exercise titled Abandoned, which sat on my computer for a long time. However, after losing my eldest son to cancer, I felt a profound need to tell his story—and he had such a beautiful life. To tell his story properly, I realized I had to start from the very beginning. Stella’s journey is the result of that, and readers can expect her narrative to unfold across three books in this series.
The book emphasizes the practical realities of homelessness—money, hygiene, parking, paperwork. Why was that level of detail important?
I wanted the reader to truly inhabit Stella’s world. Those specific, gritty details aren’t just creative choices—they are drawn directly from lived experience. To write about such a sensitive topic with precision and impact, I felt it was a necessity to include the small, often overlooked realities that define a person’s survival from day to day.
The novel explores how control can disguise itself as generosity. What drew you to that theme?
That question actually makes me laugh a little because it hits so close to home. In my own life, generosity has often been the “front door” of my relationships, while control was the way they ultimately went wrong. I wanted to explore that theme to empower readers. My goal is for them to realize that they ultimately hold the power over their own lives and destiny. I hope Stella’s story serves as a reminder: do not let someone else’s “generosity” become your cage.
Can you tell us what the second book will be about and when it will be available for fans to purchase?
The second book is currently living in my head, and the characters—especially Stella—are screaming to be unleashed! While I am juggling a few other projects at the moment, fans can expect the sequel to arrive sometime in 2027. Of course, if the writing process goes particularly well and I stay “in control” of my schedule, perhaps we’ll see it as early as the end of this year!
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Instagram | Website | Amazon
When you have nowhere to go, any door looks like open arms.
Some doors don’t close; they slam. At eighteen, Stella Hart had a plan: early graduation, a Stanford acceptance letter, and a future she’d built from scratch. Then her mother threw her out with nothing but a pile of clothes and a slammed door, and everything Stella thought she’d earned disappeared overnight.
Homeless, broke, and alone in the SF Bay Area, Stella finds shelter in the arms of a man who seems like salvation. Jim offers safety, stability, and love. But safety, she will learn, can be a cage, and love can be a leash dressed up as loyalty.
As Jim’s generosity quietly hardens into control, Stella begins to see what she almost missed: the exits were always there. She just had to choose one. Exit Signs is a raw, unflinching story of a young woman who did everything right and still had to fight her way back to herself, through homelessness, coercive control, and an unplanned pregnancy, armed with nothing but her intelligence, her instincts, and the stubborn belief that her future still belonged to her.
For readers who know what it means to survive the people who were supposed to love you.
Real-World Challenges
Joshua Creed: Keeper of Worlds follows a troubled twelve-year-old who discovers he can travel between worlds, and must confront a prophecy, dangerous magic, and his own unraveling life. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My youngest son’s life was tumultuous at best, as he struggled with his emotional health. He always could be found, “in another world,” and I wanted to connect with him, so he could be the hero in his story. I struggled to do this and found a way to connect through writing. I imagined the story where my son could be a hero and fight off the demons to find his internal strength. He was the inspiration.
Joshua’s experience with bipolar disorder shapes how he sees himself and the world. What guided your decision to include this element?
As a mother of a child with bipolar disorder and as a teacher who has witnessed similar struggles within the classroom, I have firsthand knowledge of how mental health impacts young lives. At the time, there were few stories where a child like mine could surely see themselves as a hero. I felt it was vital to bridge that gap by weaving his real-world challenges into the fantasy world I was creating for him.
How did you want to challenge or reshape the traditional “hero’s journey” for younger readers?
As both a mother and educator, I believe there should be books out there for every child. There are several challenges that young readers face today. I just wanted to connect to one little corner of the market, kids struggling with mental health and the realities of life. Another fact is that there are many reluctant readers out there, and if a kid can connect to the story on a personal level, they’re more liable to read and find a love of reading. That too is a challenge I take on in my work.
Is this the first book in the series? If so, when is the next book coming out, and what can your fans expect in the next story?
Oh, this is only the beginning. Joshua’s journey is just heating up, and the stakes are about to get much higher. I’m thrilled to announce that Book Two, Joshua Creed: Curse of the Faet, is set to arrive in Summer 2026! As Joshua grows, he must master a new trade to survive the ancient magic closing in on him. Fans should prepare for a deeper dive into the world of the Faet, unexpected alliances, and a hero who is finally discovering what he’s truly capable of.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Instagram | Website | Amazon
Drawn through a mysterious connection to his eye and a strange, sacred tree, Joshua stumbles into the Land of the Ice Plants, home of the Norkels, a secret people on the brink of disaster. The Norkels believe an ancient prophecy: a Keeper of Worlds will come from the human realm to save them. To Joshua’s horror, every sign points to him.
Terrified and uncertain, Joshua is forced into a role he doesn’t want and doesn’t feel ready for. As he learns the truth about the prophecy, the power hidden in his eye, and the secrets of the sacred tree, he must navigate betrayal, strange magic, and the pressure of two collapsing worlds. Meanwhile, back home, his family fractures further, and Joshua begins to realize that the courage he’s learning in the Norkel’s world might be the only thing that can help him face the pain in his own.
Book One sets Joshua on a path from self-doublt to reluctant braver, laying the foundation for a larger battle to come—where saving the Norkels and saving his family may turn out to be the same fight.
Exit Signs
Exit Signs opens with an eighteen-year-old girl, Stella Hart, being thrown out by her mother after a lie at work detonates her already precarious life. From there, the novel follows her through car-sleeping, couch-hopping, cheap rooms, fragile friendships, predatory arrangements, and the long, humiliating mathematics of survival in the Bay Area, all while she tries to hold onto the future she imagined for herself, Stanford, stability, self-definition, even as pregnancy, coercion, and family damage keep redrawing the map. It is, in plain terms, a novel about homelessness and control, but it is also about the subtler violence of being treated as temporary in every room you enter.
Author Dawnette Brenner understands that catastrophe is not only dramatic; it’s logistical, sensory, and repetitive. The novel keeps returning to money, soap, gas, laundry, parking lots, hunger, paperwork, doors, and the freighted atmosphere of other people’s houses. That accumulation gives the book its tensile strength. I felt Stella’s vigilance in my own body. I also admired the way the prose often moves in clipped, pressure-built units, then suddenly opens into a more lyrical sentence when Stella’s mind slips from survival into grief or recognition. The result is a voice that feels both young and sharply weathered. At its best, the writing has a granular honesty that refuses uplift on credit.
What I liked even more was the book’s understanding of control: how it masquerades as help, how gratitude can be weaponized, how a girl trained to be “good” can be made legible to everyone except herself. This is where the novel has real bite. Stella’s progress is not a clean ascent but a series of grim recognitions, and I appreciated that the ending leans toward clarity rather than false closure. At times the interior monologue reiterates a point the scene has already made, and a little pruning would sharpen the writing. But I never lost faith in the emotional intelligence behind it. Brenner is writing from a place of close observation, and that gives the story moral weight without turning it into a sermon.
I would hand Exit Signs to readers of contemporary coming-of-age fiction, domestic drama, survival fiction, trauma fiction, literary women’s fiction, and character-driven social realism, especially readers who want emotionally immediate prose and a heroine whose resilience is hard-won rather than ornamental. It feels closer to a more intimate, female-centered cousin of Demon Copperhead than to conventional “issue fiction,” and readers who admire authors who can braid precarity with psychological precision will find plenty here. This is a bruised, clear-eyed novel about how survival can become a way of seeing.
Pages: 600 | ASIN : B0GPPH2WKJ
Joshua Creed: Keeper of Worlds
Joshua Creed: Keeper of Worlds is a middle-grade portal fantasy with a strong coming-of-age thread, and at its core, it follows twelve-year-old Joshua as his already-shaky life cracks open even further. His parents are divorcing, school feels like a minefield, and then his strange blue eye starts pulling him into another world, where prophecy, dangerous magic, and creatures like Wormly, Selia, and Gonthragon force him into the role of a keeper between worlds. What makes the book more than a simple quest story is that Joshua is not just trying to save a fantasy realm. He’s also trying to understand his family, his anger, and the fear that he ruins everything he touches.
I liked how directly the author, Dawnette Brenner, writes Joshua’s inner life. The fantasy setup is big, but the emotional entry point is small and human: a tetherball game, a suspension, a kitchen table conversation, a kid trying not to cry. I think that choice works great. It gives the book real footing before the world-hopping begins, and it keeps the stakes personal even when the plot expands into prophecy and interdimensional danger. I also liked that the magic has rules and consequences. The idea that crossing between worlds costs Joshua something, even time from his own life, gives the story weight and keeps it from feeling too easy.
I felt the book was at its best when it slowed down and let character and emotion breathe. Joshua’s bond with Jonah, his guilt over his mother being hurt, and the way fantasy becomes tangled up with family pain all land well. Those parts felt honest. The novel throws a lot at the reader: prophecy, magical tools, multiple creatures, vision lore, world rules, and escalating threats. Some readers will enjoy that rush. I respected the author’s instinct to make this adventure about responsibility instead of simple wish fulfillment. The book keeps asking a solid question: what does it actually cost a kid to become “chosen”? That question gives the story its backbone.
I’d recommend this most to readers who like middle-grade fantasy that blends portals, prophecy, and magical objects with family strain and emotional growth. Kids who enjoy stories in the lane of classic quest fantasy, but want something more grounded in school, home, and identity, will probably connect with it. I think adults who read middle grade closely will also notice the heart behind it. This is a fantasy novel, but it is really about carrying too much too young and learning that bravery is not the same thing as pretending you are fine.
Pages: 281 | ASIN : B0GPP1XLTD
Lost In His Own World
Dawnette Brenner Author Interview
The Ancient Sacred Tree: Birth of a Hero follows a 12-year-old boy who finds himself thrust into a magical land full of danger. What was your inspiration for this thrilling novel?
My inspiration for my story hit me after several episodes of depressive and manic scenarios with my son Joshua back in 2006. I felt helpless, as I watched my youngest child suffering from the throngs of what I learned to be bipolar disorder. He often would daydream and seem lost in his own world and although I researched to find answers, support and help, I couldn’t imagine this world he lived in, full of darkness. It was dreadful. Anyone with this disorder knows that it can cripple a family. I couldn’t fathom this life and so I created a world in which I wanted him to be the hero, one where he could over come any obstacle, to tell his story.
Joshua struggles with being bipolar and his parents divorce. I felt that you handled both with care and realism. Why did you want to cover such sensitive topics in your novel?
As a mother it was heart-wrenching and I learned so much, but still the world seemed to stigmatize the mental disorder my son suffered with and I wanted to change that for my son and others like him. As a teacher, I felt this story, in the hands of kids, could help them relate to a character like Joshua and they could empathize. Kids like Joshua would also enjoy reading that a character like them could overcome obstacles and become a hero, faltering along the way, but always striving to overcome. These are both important in our world with kids in schools, to help end the stigma and normalize these kids in not only their eyes, but others in school as well.
The world Joshua entered is full of magic and wonder that is described superbly. What were some themes you wanted to capture when creating your world?
I actually wanted to describe a fantastic world, full of intrigue and one in which I felt my son would enjoy, he seemed to love imaginary play outside with his action figures. So in the beginning that’s what I wrote, but as I progressed and the characters formed in my mind, and real life also took us on a journey through darkness, it was dreadful. Secondary to the imaginary world, it was essential Joshua Creed faces grave darkness, soul crippling darkness, although not as prevalent in this book, the series will encompass thematic elements of the darkness in anger and the peace at the end of the tunnel.
Will this book be part of a series? Where will book two pick up and when will it be available?
Yes! The book will be a series of three, possibly more books. I’m currently in the editing stage with book 2 and will come out this year, with book three later this year or early 2019.
The book will pick up two years later, where Joshua continues struggling in school and learns a great deal more about the prophecy of his destiny. If you pick up a copy of the first book, there’s a preview of the first chapter at the end. Enjoy!
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Website
![The Ancient Sacred Tree: Birthing a Hero by [Brenner, Dawnette N.]](https://i0.wp.com/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51KdyB3pOdL.jpg?w=604&ssl=1)
Joshua Creed receives disturbing news about his parents, but before he is able to process it, he is flung into a world of intrigue and danger where he must fight for his life and the lives of the inhabitants. He discovers he has secret powers, and the mystery of his eye is revealed, but it isn’t easy being bipolar and only nine years of age. His newly found friends and family help him through his adventure but not before he’s forced to change schools.
The action-packed, fun, and exciting adventures of Joshua begin in this first adventure of his destiny.
The Ancient Sacred Tree: Birthing a Hero
![The Ancient Sacred Tree: Birthing a Hero by [Brenner, Dawnette N.]](https://i0.wp.com/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51KdyB3pOdL.jpg?resize=295%2C440&ssl=1)
The Ancient Sacred Tree: Birth of a Hero by author Dawnette N. Brenner is about a 12-year-old boy named Joshua who finds himself thrust into a magical land full of danger.
This book made me really emotional. Not only does the book cover a tough but important topic, how kids deal with divorce, but the quotes from anonymous children talking about divorce were heartbreaking. It really is important to remember that kids can be affected in different ways and often see more than people think, and like Joshua, often feel guilt. And on top of that, the book is also dealing with mental illness as Joshua is a pre-teen dealing with bipolar disorder. Having a book that deals with subjects like this is very important, and I feel that Brenner handled the subjects really well. This is the kind of book that readers can definitely connect to, both in how you deal with struggles and watching the struggles of others.
Brenner has done a fantastic job of entering into the mind of a child. The imaginative world that Joshua finds himself in is a great representation of the kind of imaginary places children make up to escape to. I loved how the land of Ice Plants and Norkels has not just a dreamlike quality but really captures how imaginary worlds are distorted versions of what we see and know. Things like Thragons that seem close to familiar but are a magic of their own. The imagery she uses really brings the fantastical world to life. The back and forth switch from the magical realm to the real world is disorienting, but it is clear that this was intentional as we watch Joshua dealing with the world around him.
Joshua is an incredible character who is dealing with a great deal both internally and externally. This book is a magical way of showing and handling tough subjects for your adult readers. I found this book to be enchanting to read, even when it made me want to cry, and I would highly recommend it. I would definitely give this book 5 stars for its unique creativity, and the extraordinary way it deals with its subject matter. I look forward to reading book two!
Pages: 186 | ASIN: B074PK4GHW
