A Journey Toward Compassion
Speedy: Hurled Through Havoc tells your story, transforming a life of circus roads, painted panels, horses, recovery, and father-son reckoning into a reflective memoir about forgiveness, craft, and finding peace with the past. What was the most difficult part of writing honestly about your father?
The most difficult part was learning how to tell the truth without turning the story into an accusation. As a child, you only see your wounds. You don’t yet understand the fears, limitations, disappointments, and emotional inheritances your parents may have carried themselves. My father was a complicated man—hardworking, gifted in many ways, but emotionally distant and often trapped inside his own frustrations and limitations.
For years, I viewed many of those experiences through the lens of resentment. Writing the book forced me to revisit painful memories honestly while also asking myself deeper questions: Who was he before he became my father? What dreams did he abandon? What pain did he never know how to express?
That changed everything.
The writing process became less about blame and more about understanding. I realized forgiveness doesn’t necessarily erase damage, but it can free you from carrying the weight of bitterness for the rest of your life. In many ways, the book became a journey toward compassion—not only for him, but for myself.
How did your years as a traveling artist shape the structure and style of the memoir?
The road shaped everything about the way I write. Traveling through carnivals, circuses, fairs, small towns, back lots, and endless highways exposed me to an incredible variety of people and environments. Life on the road moves in episodes, almost like scenes in a film, and that naturally influenced the structure of the memoir.
The book isn’t written from the perspective of someone who lived a predictable life in one place. It unfolds through movement, encounters, visual memories, conversations, breakdowns, temporary friendships, strange situations, and moments of revelation that happened while constantly in transit.
Being a visual artist also deeply affected my storytelling style. I tend to write cinematically and emotionally through imagery, atmosphere, texture, and detail. I see scenes almost like paintings unfolding on canvas. Whether describing a muddy circus lot at sunrise, the smell of enamel paint in a sign shop, or the silence between a father and son, I want the reader to feel immersed inside the environment rather than simply observing it from a distance.
Travel also taught me to notice humanity. When you spend decades crossing America and living among performers, laborers, horsemen, mechanics, drifters, and dreamers, you begin to understand that every person is carrying an unseen story.
The book is filled with circus people, horsemen, mentors, and fellow travelers. Who had the greatest influence on your sense of craft and character?
It’s difficult to name only one because different people shaped different parts of my life. The horsemen probably influenced my character more deeply than anyone else. Good horse trainers teach patience, consistency, humility, and emotional control because horses immediately respond to what is genuine inside you. You cannot fake calmness, confidence, or leadership around them.
The older circus craftsmen and sign painters influenced my sense of discipline and workmanship. Many of those men came from a generation where your reputation depended entirely on the quality of your work and whether you kept your word. They taught me that mastery is built through repetition, observation, humility, and endurance—not shortcuts.
There were also mentors whose influence came simply through the way they carried themselves in difficult environments. Some had almost nothing materially, yet possessed dignity, humor, generosity, and resilience. Those lessons stayed with me far longer than technical skills ever did.
Oddly enough, even some of the most broken people I encountered became teachers. Watching lives destroyed by addiction, bitterness, ego, or poor choices forced me to examine my own direction and eventually pushed me toward recovery and personal growth.
What do you hope readers take away from your story about forgiveness, family, and becoming whole?
More than anything, I hope readers realize that healing is possible, even when the past feels tangled, painful, or unresolved. Many people carry silent resentment toward family members, toward themselves, or toward life circumstances they never fully processed. That emotional weight quietly shapes their decisions, relationships, confidence, and sense of identity for decades.
I hope the book encourages people to look honestly at their own stories with compassion instead of denial or blame.
Forgiveness does not mean pretending painful things never happened. It means refusing to let those wounds continue defining your future. Becoming whole often begins when we stop running from our own history and finally learn how to integrate it into something meaningful.
I also hope readers come away with a renewed appreciation for creativity, craftsmanship, imagination, and the value of authentic human connection. In a world that often feels increasingly distracted and disconnected, I believe there is still tremendous healing power in storytelling, art, honesty, and shared humanity.
Ultimately, the memoir is not just about circus life or traveling the country. It is about searching for home—not necessarily a physical place, but an inner peace that can only come through understanding, forgiveness, purpose, and self-acceptance.
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Push for the Truth
Diagnosis or Death centers around a therapist who is pulled into a case involving a suspicious online video, benefit fraud, and the death of a fellow practitioner. What first inspired the idea behind Diagnosis or Death?
Annabel is a consultant in Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, a form of non-speaking therapy that sometimes sees her carry out a kind of detective work, figuring out what makes her clients tick. We wanted to position Janna, the heroine, as a character with a strong sense of fairness and justice. In real life, our local authority, Oxfordshire County Council, is involved in a scheme (like the fictional one in D or D) to ensure benefit claimants get the support they’re entitled to. So, for Janna to use her new Master of Psychology qualification to assist in this felt like a good fit.
Why was it important that Janna feel grounded in ordinary pressures like finances, work stress, and relationships?
Janna is not a cop, so a murder case is something she is drawn into; it’s not her business as a matter of routine. The stories follow her as she realises something is wrong, looks further into it, and finds her courage to push for the truth. In each, there is a particular reason (revealed as part of the story) why police investigations stall, and she has to step in.
How did you approach portraying therapy and EMDR responsibly within a suspense narrative?
Annabel is a registered EMDR consultant, so she kept a close eye on how this particular form of psychotherapeutic practice was portrayed in the novel.
Can we look forward to more mysteries featuring Janna Rose?
In the third Janna Rose mystery, now under construction with a working title of Seashore of Sorrows, she travels to Australia and our favourite spot there, Jervis Bay, an idyllic nook of the New South Wales coast. That will hopefully appear early in 2027.
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Pursuing her passion for justice, Janna investigates further only to be drawn into a shadowy world of Artificial Intelligence, where identity is fluid and nothing quite as it seems.
But who are the men behind the scheme, and what are their real motives? With dark forces threatening to drag her down and peril around every corner, Janna must deploy all her insights into human motivation to reveal the truth.
Would Jesus Do Time?
Would Jesus Do Time? is a fierce, satirical stage work that imagines Jesus returning in present-day America, reenacting the cleansing of the temple, and discovering that the modern justice system has little patience for mercy, context, or holiness. After overturning tables in a church filled with Christian merchandise, Jesus is violently arrested, jailed, debated over by politicians, softened by visits from Mary and Mother Mary, and ultimately tried for crimes that the play frames as both legally plausible and spiritually grotesque. Along the way, the story moves through police brutality, prison labor, public defenders, media distortion, partisan hypocrisy, loneliness, shame, forgiveness, and the aching question beneath the title: would a society that claims to worship Jesus recognize him once he stood among the condemned?
I found the book at its strongest when it lets outrage and tenderness collide. The scenes inside the jail gave the story its most human pulse for me, especially the conversations with Don, Gunz, and Beaux. Beaux’s desire to be “something” beyond the narrow mythology of street fame lands with real sadness, because Jesus doesn’t simply scold him into goodness; he sees the entrepreneurial hunger beneath the damage. I also felt the ache of the visitation scene with Mary and Mother Mary, where the language of loneliness becomes more than a prison critique. It becomes a lament for all the ways incarceration strips a person of touch, responsibility, ordinary affection, and the small daily proofs of being alive. Chaffin is writing from a place of conviction, and that conviction gives even the roughest passages an unignorable heat.
The writing itself is brash, profane, theatrical, and deliberately unruly. The musical numbers can sometimes feel biting and funny, sometimes blunt, yet they also give the piece its unique feel. I admired the audacity of placing comedy beside spiritual dread, as when a guard’s crude “Step on a Turd” routine becomes a grotesque little window into dehumanization, or when the courtroom turns into a spectacle of performance, manipulation, and public appetite. There’s a real dramatic instinct here. The image of Jesus in an orange jumpsuit is provocative, but what stayed with me more was Jesus praying in fear before trial, Peter and Judas holding him, and the final guilty verdict hardening into a “modern-day crucifixion.” Those moments have a raw spiritual melancholy that cuts through the satire.
I came away from Would Jesus Do Time? feeling challenged and unexpectedly moved. Its force comes from discomfort, from the way it asks whether compassion is merely a word people admire until it demands something of them. This book has a unique and passionate voice. I’d recommend it to readers who are open to politically charged religious satire, prison justice narratives, experimental musical drama, and stories that use provocation not for shock alone, but to press hard on the soul.
Pages: 134 | ASIN : B0GTMLKK9R
The Sweet Season
The Sweet Season, by James B. Farmer, follows a group of overlooked girls in a struggling Midwestern town who become the Sweets, a softball team built from “leftovers” and shaped by an aging coach with grief, regrets, and a stubborn belief in effort. At the center are Jessee, a gifted but emotionally bruised athlete, and Cat, a Somali refugee whose quiet courage changes not only the team but the town around them. What begins as a sports story gradually becomes a novel about friendship, discipline, community repair, and the long echo of one incandescent life.
I was most drawn to the way Farmer treats softball not as decoration but as a moral language. Practice matters here. Repetition matters. Failure isn’t glamorous, but it’s useful. The games have tension, yet the deeper victories happen in the smaller moments: a girl learning to trust a teammate, an old coach learning he still has something to give, a neglected town beginning to remember its young people. The novel has an old-fashioned largeness of heart, but it’s not soft. It keeps returning to hard subjects, poverty, prejudice, violence, grief, civic neglect, and asks what people owe one another when the scoreboard is not enough.
Cat is the book’s emotional lodestar, and Jessee’s arc gives the story much of its ache. Their friendship feels unlikely at first, then necessary, then almost mythic in its power to reorder lives. I appreciated that the novel lets love show itself through action rather than sentiment alone: tutoring, training, showing up, refusing to quit. At times, the book’s earnestness is big enough to fill a stadium, but I found that part of its charm. It wants readers to believe that character can be coached, that broken towns can be mended, and that a team can become a kind of chosen family.
This book will appeal to readers who enjoy coming-of-age fiction, sports fiction, inspirational fiction, and character-driven literary fiction with strong themes of resilience and community. Fans of A League of Their Own may recognize the fierce joy of women proving themselves on the field, while readers who admire Fredrik Backman’s blend of humor, heartbreak, and communal healing may feel at home in Farmer’s Centerville. The Sweet Season is a warm, bruising, deeply earnest novel about the people who teach us how to win without letting winning become the point.
Pages: 401 | ASIN : B0GWRXSHF4
So You Want To Be A Diplomat
So You Want To Be A Diplomat is an engaging and eye-opening children’s educational book that introduces young readers to the fascinating world of diplomacy. Written for ages 10 to 14, the book explains what diplomats do, where they work, and why their quiet efforts matter so much. Rather than presenting diplomacy as dry politics, Soules turns it into an exciting behind-the-scenes journey through embassies, foreign ministries, international meetings, and the careful conversations that help countries solve problems without conflict.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is the way it combines real history with surprising and memorable stories. Readers learn about ping-pong diplomacy, diplomatic bags, pandas on diplomatic missions, and how a single mistranslated word influenced decades of the Cold War. These details make the subject lively and easy to remember, while also showing that diplomacy is full of unexpected moments. The book also introduces inspiring figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Ralph Bunche, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Kofi Annan, whose patience, courage, and dedication helped shape the modern world.
Soules writes with warmth and intelligence, treating young readers as thoughtful people capable of understanding serious ideas. The book clearly explains the skills a diplomat needs, including patience, discretion, curiosity, strong listening skills, a good memory, and respect for other cultures. I especially appreciated that it gives an honest view of the career, including both the exciting parts and the difficult parts. I learned a lot even as an adult reading this book, like how diplomats have to have a strong stomach because they’re going to be trying food in their host country, how they have to have a sense of humor for awkward moments, and how they have to have a good memory for names and faces (which I surely don’t).
So You Want To Be A Diplomat is an illuminating, inspiring, and highly readable introduction to an important career that many children may not have considered before. It is perfect for curious middle-grade readers, social studies classrooms, school libraries, Model UN clubs, and families who want to encourage global awareness. This book not only explains international relations in a clear and engaging way, but also shows young readers that peacebuilding is a skill they can begin practicing now. Highly recommended.
Pages: 38 | ISBN : 978-1972766378
First Time Homebuyer Gold
In First Time Homebuyer Gold, J. Baptiste offers a practical, plainspoken guide for readers preparing to buy their first home, walking them through the emotional and financial terrain of the process with an emphasis on preparation, restraint, and self-advocacy. The book moves from early questions about budget, location, and research into the mechanics of offers, purchase and sale agreements, deposits, appraisals, inspections, credit, debt-to-income ratios, insurance, property boundaries, and the final walk-through. What emerges is less a glossy dream-home manual than a protective companion, one intent on helping a nervous buyer understand what can go wrong, what must be verified, and where confidence matters most.
I appreciated the book’s steady insistence that a first-time buyer should not drift passively through the mortgage process. Baptiste repeatedly returns to the same empowering idea: read everything, ask questions, check the numbers, and trust your instincts when something feels off. The advice feels realistic, especially when paired with concrete examples such as the debt-to-income scenario where a buyer moves from a comfortable 17.3 percent DTI to a disqualifying 63.1 percent after buying furniture and an expensive car. Moments like that give the book its strongest pulse. They translate abstract financial warnings into something immediate and almost visceral, the sickening realization that one impulsive decision can endanger an entire closing.
The writing is direct, encouraging, and accessible. There are places where the prose leans on repetition and instruction, and some sections read more like a detailed checklist. I found a real warmth beneath that structure. Baptiste’s voice has the quality of someone sitting across the table from a first-time buyer and saying, with care but firmness, “slow down, look again, don’t let anyone rush you.” The discussions of “as-is, where-is” properties, underground oil tanks, flood insurance, HOA fees, and final walk-throughs carry a quiet urgency. I liked that the book doesn’t romanticize homeownership. Its ideas are grounded in caution, responsibility, and the dignity of being informed before making one of life’s largest commitments.
First Time Homebuyer Gold is a sincere and useful guide with a strong educational purpose and a compassionate heart. It’s best suited for first-time buyers who feel intimidated by mortgages, contracts, credit requirements, inspections, and closing-day responsibilities, especially readers who want explanations in everyday language rather than industry jargon. I’d recommend it to cautious planners, young buyers, and anyone who needs a confidence-building primer before entering the housing market, because the book’s greatest gift is its steady reminder that knowledge can turn fear into agency.
Pages: 72 | ASIN : B0C7DCBQ33
I’ll Be This, You’ll Be That!
Mansi Sharma’s I’ll Be This, You’ll Be That! is a tender picture book about a little boy whose anger toward his mother softens through imagination, play, and the steady reassurance of love. After Grandma’s glasses break by accident and Mommy scolds him, the boy decides he won’t talk to her, hug her, or even accept her slice of cake. But when he begins pretending he’ll become grass, a cloud, a river, a rock, a flower, a shark, the wind, and finally a bird, his mother answers each transformation with one of her own. She’ll be the soil, the sky, the shore, the beetle, the hummingbird, the sea, the mountain, and the mama bird beside him. Slowly, the game carries them both back to warmth, laughter, cake, and closeness.
What I liked most is how honestly the book treats a child’s anger without making it seem silly or wrong. The boy’s feelings are big, prickly, and dramatic, exactly the way they can be at that age, especially when shame sneaks in after an accident. I found the mother’s response quietly beautiful. She doesn’t lecture him into forgiveness or rush him past his feelings. She joins him. That idea feels simple on the page, but as a parent, it landed with real weight. The writing has a soft, repeating rhythm that makes the story feel almost like a call-and-response lullaby, and some of the images are genuinely lovely.
The artwork has a sweet, hand-drawn warmth that suits the emotional arc of the story. I especially liked the way the early pictures hold the boy’s stubbornness in bright, crayon-like color, while the nature scenes open the book outward into clouds, rivers, birds, flowers, and wind. The artwork feels childlike in a way that matches the story’s imagination. The strongest image for me was the one where the mother and child are hugging at the end, because the emotion is immediate and easy to read. You can see the happiness in their faces.
By the end, I felt moved by the book’s gentle confidence in repair. It understands that children don’t always need a perfect explanation for love; they need to feel that it’s still there when they’re messy, mad, embarrassed, or trying very hard not to care. I’ll Be This, You’ll Be That! is a sweet and emotionally aware children’s book for families with preschool and early elementary children, especially kids who are learning how to name anger, accept comfort, and come back after a hard moment. I’d recommend it to parents who want a cozy story about unconditional love that also gives them a quiet little model for patience.
Pages: 38 | ASIN : B0GKY1FWFR
Embodied Grace: Trusting Yourself, Healing Deeply, Expanding Fully
Stacey Webb’s Embodied Grace is a tender and spiritually attuned exploration of healing through the body, intuition, self-compassion, and daily devotion. Part memoir and part guided practice, the book follows Webb from a moonlit awakening in India through the lived terrain of motherhood, police work, nervous system repair, shame, boundaries, and radical self-acceptance. At its heart is a deceptively simple invitation: grace isn’t something we earn by becoming better, calmer, or more acceptable. It’s something we learn to inhabit, breath by breath, when we stop abandoning ourselves.
Webb grounds expansive spiritual ideas in ordinary, sometimes painfully familiar moments. The book begins beneath the crescent moon in India, but it doesn’t stay suspended in the mystical. It comes down into the playground corner where she cries while her children play, into the jolt of seeing the school’s phone number appear after Ashton’s kindergarten struggles, into the private ache of wanting to be the “good girl” who never disappoints anyone. Those scenes gave the book its pulse. I believed her most when she let the polished language of healing meet the roughness of actual life. Her writing is warm, lyrical, and repetitive in a deliberately soothing way, almost like a hand placed on the reader’s back.
The ideas in the book resonated with me because Webb refuses to treat healing as a triumphal climb out of pain. She returns again and again to the body as a messenger, not an enemy, and that felt quietly powerful. Her discussions of the nervous system, glimmers, intuition, shame, and boundaries are accessible without feeling thin, especially when braided with her experiences as a detective and as a mother of four. I appreciated the distinction she draws between being kind and being merely nice, and the chapter on boundaries in friendship stayed with me because it frames “no” not as rejection, but as a bodily truth that can make room for a deeper “yes.” The book’s spiritual language is broad and openhearted, moving through God, the universe, the body, and inner knowing with ease.
Embodied Grace felt less like a manual and more like a companion for the slow, uneven work of returning to oneself. Its strongest gift is not novelty, but intimacy: Webb writes as someone who has practiced what she offers, often imperfectly, and has the courage to show the trembling underneath the teaching. I closed the book with a feeling of steadiness, as though its gentlest claim had done its work: that self-love can be received, not performed. I’d recommend it to readers drawn to somatic healing, intuitive spirituality, self-compassion, motherhood memoir, or anyone untangling shame from worthiness and looking for a voice that is soft without being shallow.
Pages: 374 | ASIN: B0GS5RWXYQ
