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I Felt A Calling And Responsibility
Ay Ya Yai! Miss Lou celebrates Louise Bennett Coverley’s transformation of Jamaican Patois into a source of literary authority, cultural memory, and belonging through biography, poetry, and personal recollections. What inspired you to write this book?
As a Jamaican-born Canadian who grew up experiencing the one-of-a-kind joy of Miss Lou on Ring Ding, a children’s show that exposed us to Jamaica’s culture, I was inspired to introduce Louise Bennett-Coverley—lovingly known as Miss Lou—to people around the world, especially younger generations, both Jamaican and non-Jamaicans. Miss Lou charged us to teach “di pickney di sinting dat belong to dem.” (teach the children the things that belong to them.) I felt a calling and responsibility to preserve her legacy through writing the book and through performing.
Miss Lou was a poet, performer, folklorist, educator, and cultural trailblazer. As Jamaica moved toward and gained political independence, she helped show us that true emancipation also meant embracing our language, culture, and identity. Through her wit and wisdom, she transformed Patois—what she called “Nation Language”—into a source of literary authority and cultural pride. In her poems, books, newspaper columns, and theatre, radio, and television performances, humour often carried a deeper message: stand tall, be ‘tallawah”—strong and resilient—and face adversity with courage. She gave voice to ordinary people’s joys and struggles, affirming that we are “smaddy pickney”—somebody’s children—and that our language and culture are uniquely ours.
I wanted to celebrate Miss Lou as a national treasure, our unofficial National Hero, and make the case for recognizing her contributions to Jamaica’s national and social development. Writing this book also felt like a way to preserve and promote the living culture she championed before, during, and after Independence. Miss Lou is our Queen Mother of Jamaican Culture and Poet Revolutionist. Her legacy reminds us that our culture cannot be erased or colonized.
I wanted readers to experience Miss Lou in a multisensory way—to hear her voice, feel her spirit, and see the impact of her work. The book brings together my essays, her poetry, songs, stories, proverbs, riddles, and games, alongside tributes from people who knew her. Miss Lou’s legacy lives not only in the archive, but in the memories and everyday practices of Jamaicans who continue to carry forward her dignity, tenacity, and love of culture.
Though Jamaica is a small country – “likkle speck”, our pride in ourselves, our language, and our culture is known around the world. Miss Lou helped nurture that pride one book, one performance, and one Patois declaration at a time. I wrote this book, Ay Ya Yai! Miss Lou: Voice of the Jamaican People, so the world could know this “shero”—the voice of the Jamaican people—and understand how she fought with the pen and not a sword, and elevated our people, language and culture for all to see. And as Miss Lou would end all her Patois poems: Ay Ya Yai!
2. How did your work as a Miss Lou tribute performer influence your interpretation of the social criticism embedded in her humor?
My interpretation of Miss Lou’s social criticism was not formed in the library alone. It was formed on stage, in costume, in voice, and in the response of the audience. It’s a synergy between performer and audience who knew the narrative and understood it.
When you perform Louise Bennett-Coverley, you cannot simply recite her. You must become her instrument. For over 30 years, I have worked as a Miss Lou tribute performer, as a folklorist, storyteller and cultural keeper. Through that work, the humour stopped being just funny to me – it became a tool, a weapon, a shield, exactly as Miss Lou intended it to be.
On the page, a poem like Nuh Likkle Twang, Colonization in Reverse or Jamaica Oman read as witty social commentary. On stage, when you deliver it as Miss Lou, you feel the bite behind the laugh. You feel when the audience laughs because they are uncomfortable, when they laugh because they recognize themselves, and when they laugh because truth has been told that could not be told straight.
I am not writing as an outside observer. Through my lived experiences on Ring Ding – growing up with Miss Lou in our living rooms, hearing that voice as a voice of authority, morality and nurture – and through performing as a folklorist internationally, carrying our culture to Canada and beyond, I was able to channel the voice of Miss Lou in a way that is embodied, not academic. Having said this, note, no one can be the quintessential Miss Lou, I am just blessed to be able to channel her along with my own unique artistry to tell the story.
My performances influenced greatly the interpretation of the social criticism because I lived it to some extent, observed it, and understood it.
I lived the classism she mocked – the way people would straighten their speech to sound more English, more acceptable. I lived the colourism, the shadism, the colonial hangover where what is Jamaican was seen as lesser. I observed it in the audiences abroad – the Jamaican grandmother who weeps because she hears home, and the second-generation child who is hearing Patois legitimized for the first time. I understood that when Miss Lou made us laugh at the boasy, pretentious lady or the man who denies his own language, she was not being cruel. She was doing social correction. She was decolonizing us with a joke.
When you stand in her shoes, you realize her humour was never just humour. It was Anansi tactic. Anansi uses wit when he has no power. Miss Lou used humour when Black, working-class, Patois-speaking Jamaicans had no platform. The laugh was the entry point, but the lesson was the payload.
This is why people would come up to me after performances and say, “Yuh favah and perform like Miss Lou. Unu related?” It was never about physical resemblance alone. It was because I was not impersonating her. I was channeling her spirit, her mission, her understanding that to preserve our folklore is a political act.
So, my work as a tribute artist taught me to read her work from the inside out. I no longer ask, “What is she criticizing?” I ask, “Who needed to hear this criticism and could only receive it through laughter?” And that question, I learned, not from a textbook, but from the stage.
3. What did the archives in Jamaica and Canada reveal about Miss Lou that personal recollections alone could not convey?
The archives in Jamaica and Canada revealed the scale and consistency of Miss Lou’s work in a way that personal recollections alone could not. They documented more than 70 years of her consciously championing Jamaican people and helping them recognize the beauty in themselves.
Across her career as an ethnographer and performer, she researched and unearthed folklore through conversations with working-class people, including those in the countryside. Her work also affirmed the deep roots of Jamaican culture in African ancestry.
The records showed Miss Lou not only as a gifted artist, but as a teacher and nurturing presence who shared what you might call “the milk of culture.” They revealed her authenticity, her down-to-earth spirit, and the wit and wisdom she drew from the ancestors. They also traced how the adversity she faced strengthened her determination to become a voice for Jamaican people in their own language.
Miss Lou championed Jamaican, or Patois, as a language of identity, freedom, and creative expression. It emerged through the meeting of African languages with English and other influences under colonial rule, when enslavers and colonial authorities tried to suppress African languages, fearing they could help people organize and rebel. The archives help us see how Miss Lou reclaimed and elevated Jamaican as a language that expresses our personhood and identity as a people. Personal memories can convey the affection and inspiration she left behind; the archives reveal the breadth, depth, and enduring purpose of her life’s work.
4. What guided your translations of Miss Lou’s Patois poetry, especially when preserving its verbal precision, comic timing, and cultural meanings?
My translations were guided first by my own understanding and use of Patois, which I grew up speaking in Jamaica. I also consulted archival and scholarly resources to check the wording, context, and meanings of Miss Lou’s work. These included her earlier works held at the National Library of Jamaica and her later works archived at McMaster University Library, as well as books by Jamaican authors, professors, and linguists.
A particularly valuable reference was F. G. Cassidy and R. B. Le Page’s *Dictionary of Jamaican English*. Together, these sources helped me stay attentive to the precision of Miss Lou’s language, while also considering the cultural context, humour, and performance qualities that give her poetry its distinctive voice. My aim was to make the meaning accessible in English without losing the spirit of the original Patois.
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Miss Lou is an icon – a cultural visionary who celebrated Jamaica’s vibrant language and traditions. Through her work as an author and entertainer, she elevated the once-marginalized Patois into a language now studied in universities around the world. Dedicated to preserving Louise Bennett Coverley’s legacy, this book has been recognized internationally for its cultural and literary significance:
2025 NYC Big Book Award – Distinguished Favorite (Cultural Heritage)
International Impact Book Award – Winner (Historical)
Preserved in McMaster University’s Mills Memorial Library Collection
CANREADS Review Selection
Ay Ya Yai! Miss Lou: Voice of the Jamaican People is a joyful homage to Louise Bennett Coverley, the woman who gave Jamaica its voice.
Tiny Gifts
In I Did Not Survive. I Just Refused To Stop. essays, poetry, memories, humor, and observation come together in a deeply personal examination of the expectations placed on women. What expectations placed on women were you most interested in questioning through the book?
The expectations placed upon a woman are so contradictory that it confuses me: Educated, but not too opinionated.
Successful, but not too independent.
Confident, but not intimidating.
Funny, but not too loud.
Strong, but still feminine.
Ambitious, but preferably in a way that doesn’t inconvenience anyone.
I grew up watching how early that checklist begins. Get an education. Get a respectable career. Look beautiful. Get married to the “right” man. Have children. Keep the family happy. Adjust. Compromise. Stay quiet when necessary. And somehow, after all of that, still be grateful and keep looking beautiful.
What interested me was not simply the existence of these expectations, but how normal they become. We stop noticing them. We start mistaking conformity for character and sacrifice for virtue.
The book asks what happens when a woman says, “But what if I don’t want that?”
What if she wants a different career? What if her marriage ends? What if she wants to be loud, complicated, ambitious, emotional, messy, spiritual, angry, funny, or simply Human.
What if she doesn’t want to spend her entire life adjusting herself to fit neatly into someone else’s idea of a woman?
I was also interested in the contradiction of being told that women are free while being given very specific instructions about what that freedom should look like.
Even something as simple as becoming “Mrs.” can carry an entire cultural expectation — as though marriage changes the woman’s identity, while the man remains exactly who he was.
So I suppose the biggest question underneath the book is this:
At what point does becoming the woman everyone expects you to be leave no room for the woman you actually are?
I don’t think the answer is that women should reject every tradition, every relationship, or every expectation.
I think we should be allowed to question them.
And perhaps, occasionally, say:
No. That doesn’t work for me. And not need permission to be.
How has your understanding of faith changed through periods of grief, anger, uncertainty, and personal growth?
I think my understanding of faith has become quieter.
When I was younger, I thought faith was supposed to make everything make sense. Pray, believe, do the right things, and somehow life would follow a reasonable equation.
From “do good and good will come to you”
Life happened to
“no good deed goes unpunished.
Grief happened. Anger happened. Uncertainty happened. Things I prayed for did not always happen. Things I never asked for did.
And I had questions.
A lot of them.
We are often told not to question God, not to get angry with Him, and things of the sort. I think the opposite. You only question, have expectations of, or get angry with those you actually love. So why should having questions mean that you have less faith?
I learned that having questions does not necessarily mean having less faith. Sometimes it means taking your faith seriously enough to question what you have been taught about it.
I also began to separate faith from culture.
That distinction became very important to me. I have seen people use religion to police a woman’s clothes, her choices, her marriage, her divorce, her voice — sometimes with extraordinary confidence and remarkably little curiosity.
But when I went looking for God, I found something much bigger than other people’s rules about what a “good” Muslim woman should look like.
My faith became less about performing goodness for other people and more about the relationship between me and God.
It became less about having all the answers and more about being honest enough to say, I don’t understand this. I’m angry. I’m hurting. I don’t know what comes next.
And still praying.
Still questioning.
Still returning.
Still complaining.
Perhaps that is what faith means to me now: not the absence of doubt, but the decision to keep a conversation going even when you don’t have all the answers.
I don’t think grief made me lose my faith.
It made my faith more honest.
How has learning to notice small experiences, such as rain, birds, tea, or a sunset, changed the way you move through the world?
I think I have become much better at being where I actually am.
For a long time, I thought the important moments in life were the big ones. The achievements. The milestones. The things worth announcing. #tags worthy 😊. Meeting the checklist with flying colors. The things that could be photographed, posted, celebrated, or added to the imaginary spreadsheet of a successful life.
Then I started noticing the smaller things.
The smell of rain. Birds making an unreasonable amount of noise in the morning. A warm cup of tea in my hands. The first cool breeze after a brutally hot day. A sunset that seems almost personally offended that you didn’t stop to look at it. The canvas of the sky painted with tea-pink light and bird silhouettes.
There is something wonderfully humbling about realizing that life keeps offering you these tiny gifts while you are busy worrying about your five-year plan. I remember watching a sunset, and someone asked if I had taken a picture.
No.
I was there.
That moment stayed with me.
I think noticing small things has made me less interested in rushing through my own life. I pay attention now. I notice the smell of petrichor. I watch birds. I garden. I get dirt under my nails. I stop for sunsets. Sometimes I will sit with a cup of tea and do absolutely nothing — which, in a world obsessed with productivity, can feel almost rebellious.
And I absolutely can’t resist sitting on a swing if I pass by one. There is something about a swing that makes me feel like I have temporarily been released from being a responsible adult.
These things don’t erase grief or uncertainty. They don’t magically fix a difficult day.
But they remind me that a life is not made only of the things that hurt us or the things we are trying to achieve.
Sometimes it is a cup of tea.
A bird.
A ridiculous sunset.
A patch of sky.
Shapes in clouds. Oh look, a horse and an elephant
A swing you absolutely had no intention of sitting on.
And for a few minutes, you are not trying to become anything.
You are simply there.
You are donating a portion of the book’s profits to education and skill development in underserved communities in Pakistan. Why was connecting the book to that work important to you?
Because this work started long before the book.
Since 2023, I have been part of a small diaspora WhatsApp donor circle that I run with two friends, Beena and Dr. Kokub. We started with a very simple idea: if we can help someone stand on their own feet, that is more meaningful than simply helping them survive one difficult month.
Our focus has been on education, skill development, and helping people create small home-based businesses — stitching, cooking, salon work, nursing, delivery work, things that can give someone an income, a skill, and eventually a little more independence.
There is something very powerful about that word: independence.
Not because everyone has to become wildly successful. But because having the ability to earn, learn, contribute, and make choices for yourself can change the entire trajectory of a life.
So, I wanted the book to do something outside itself.
That is why ten percent of my author profits go towards the same cause.
And this answer is difficult for me to write because, as I write it, I am also grieving one of the people who was part of that work with me.
My dear friend and fellow donor-circle member, Beena Amin, passed away recently.
She was one of the two friends with whom I have shared this little WhatsApp effort since 2023.
I don’t have a polished lesson for this.
I am human.
And yes, it has deeply affected me.
So I want to dedicate this part — and this commitment to giving back — to Beena.
We started something small together.
I hope I can keep carrying it forward.
For her, and for the people we were always trying to help stand a little more firmly on their own feet.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Linktree | Amazon
I Did Not Survive. I Just Refused To Stop. is the extraordinarily abnormal account of an average Desi Muslim girl who watched, questioned, and refused to look away — for twenty years.
Part memoir. Part essay. Part poetry. Part something that has no name yet.
Raw. Honest. Sometimes funny. Often uncomfortable. Always real.
Exploring identity, faith, grief, beauty standards, marriage pressure, belonging, and the courage to remain yourself in a world determined to make you fit.
For everyone who ever felt invisible, too much, not enough, or simply — wrong.
You were never wrong. You were just in the wrong room.
10% of all profits go to education and skill development for underserved communities in Pakistan.
I Aim For Entertainment
Love in a Hurry follows a woman desperate to find love and start a family and a Catholic priest questioning his vocation and wanting an heir, who meet in a support group and form an unconventional romance. What inspired the unusual premise behind Love in a Hurry?
As a young adult, an attractive priest visiting the parish came to Sunday lunch at the family home. He revealed he’d been pressured into the priesthood by his family; it was expected in Ireland. This meant he was destined never to have children, yet he’d have to baptise all the parish babies. I felt so sad for him and wanted to write a story where a pressured Irish Catholic priest escapes the Church to find his own path. The fate of priest I’d met? No idea. But I do think about him and wonder if he was ever happy following not his calling, but his family’s.
Miranda is a character from the second book of my series, Love in the Cupboard, my first sweet Catholic priest romance. With Miranda as the heroine in Love in a Hurry I felt that a Catholic priest would be the best fit for a virgin mother’s love interest— and the funniest.
How did Miranda’s childhood in care shape the adult woman we meet at the beginning of the novel, and why was it important for her desire for another child to be connected to a larger longing for love, security, and family?
Being passed from one care placement to the next, one foster family to the next, Miranda’s life has been filled with insecurity. It isn’t much better now, because her home is tied to her job as a live-in carer. Although her son’s daddies are supportive, she wants someone for herself to have her second child with because she has never been loved and has never been part of a family. She does not want her son to grow up as a lonely, only child who becomes a lonely adult.
She longs for motherly love from the crotchety woman she cares for, and dearly wishes to be invited to stay as a substitute daughter instead of constantly being at risk of losing her home at the whim of her employer. Although one of the daddies might provide her with a second child, she does not want to be a single mother to two children. She wants a husband, the love of a committed man who will be there for her and her hoped-for children in a way that no one else ever has.
What interested you about writing a priest who is questioning whether his vocation reflects his own desires or his family’s expectations, and what does Kieran have to discover about himself before he can genuinely build a new life with someone else?
Even popes in the Catholic Church used to be allowed to marry, although rules varied around intimacy until 1139 AD, when the Catholic Church prohibited any marriage for future priests, even celibate ones—who often still managed to procreate. The Church was concerned about losing wealth to inheritance. However, today, if a married Protestant priest wishes to convert to Catholicism and become a Catholic priest, he is allowed. So there are some married converted Catholic priests with children. I think a life of celibacy and loneliness, without the companionship and love of a partner, is harsh and unfair—and too many men, and too many women, have been pressured into the priesthood, and into becoming nuns, by their families’ expectations.
Kieran has long felt lonely and sad, and the emptiness in his heart is amplified when he finds out that his brother had stood up to their mother in a way that had given her no choice other than to accept the situation. Kieran reevaluates his life. He now knows that, if he has any chance of true happiness, as his brother has secretly been enjoying for years, he must break free of continuing along the path his mother had chosen for him. He discovers that he has the strength to defy the Bishop, and his mother’s memory, by leaving the Church and starting afresh somewhere else—he just has to find a wife.
What do you enjoy about using awkwardness, misunderstandings, and physical comedy within a romance?
I aim for entertainment as well as plenty of heart, and I love characters who don’t fit into the expected norm, giving rise to behaviours and situations that can be quite a surprise and are typical of farce—a big part of British humour, past and present.
I love the unexpected when I watch or read a comedy, even better if it is a romantic comedy. The journey that takes us to the end of a framework heading towards a happy ever after can be enormous fun. Awkwardness, misunderstandings and physical comedy can add to that fun.
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Will they need a miracle to make it work?
Father Kieran Quinn is in crisis. His brother does not want children, so there won’t be anyone to inherit the long-standing family business—unless Kieran defies the Church by seeking marital bliss. Then he meets Miranda with a child in her arms, looking like a Madonna. But isn’t she taken?
Miranda Morton’s time is running out. She yearns to have a baby conceived naturally by a man who loves her, yet she’s never even been kissed! When she meets Kieran, he talks of returning to Ireland, but her life is bound in Bristol, where she’s a live-in help for arthritic Judith, her snappish, flame-breathing dragon of an employer.
Judith Gold generally can’t stand Catholics, especially priests. She must make her best-personal-assistant-ever see sense over this Kieran nonsense, before Miranda’s life echoes her own tragic past. But how?
The clock is ticking. Can Kieran and Miranda find happiness together before it’s too late?
Tropes:Catholic priest romance
Forbidden love
Cinnamon roll
Virgin
Single parent
Found family
Grumpy/Sunshine
Love in a Hurry: Rom-com-women’s fiction fusion, set in Bristol, UK. A story within a story, one tragic, the other guaranteeing a happy ever after.
Heat level: mild – sometimes described as ‘fade to black’ – and comedic.
Language: mild.
LOVE IN A HURRY is a TRAGI-COMEDY, the FOURTH standalone book in the LOVE & MISHAPS QUIRKY ROMANTIC COMEDY series. Witty dialogue, laugh-out-loud and heartbreaking moments, farcical situations and a multi-story interwoven plot. MARI JANE LAW’S brilliant, emotional, romantic comedy will tug on your heartstrings! Buy your copy today.
If you like sweet Catholic priest romances, read the double award-winning Love in the Cupboard first as Love in a Hurry is a standalone sequel.
Love & Pollination, Book 1 in the Love & Mishaps series, was shortlisted for Choc Lit’s 2019 Search for a Star competition.
‘…a delightful romantic comedy that seamlessly blends humor and heart.’ Reader review
Love in the Cupboard, Book 2 in the Love & Mishaps series, won a silver medal in the Readers’ Favourite International Book Awards 2023: Fiction – Humor/Comedy and a bronze medal in The Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2023: Fiction (adult).
‘Great fun. Laughter, as they say, is the best medicine. Just what the doctor ordered!.’ Reader review
Grief Is Lonely
Shattered but Unbreakable shares your story about losing your husband and young daughter in an accident, and another daughter to suicide twenty years later, and how grief transformed your life while faith, love, and community helped you move forward. What led you to share your family’s story?
I held this story back for a long time.
Not because it was too painful to tell, though it was. I held it back because I didn’t want the attention. A story like mine draws eyes, and I didn’t want them on me.
In April 2003, I was twenty-eight, a year from finishing nursing school, with four little ones at home. A car accident took my husband, Paul, and my oldest daughter, Cassie, on the same afternoon. I was left raising three children under five. The baby, Aria, was thirteen months old.
Twenty years later, I lost her too. Aria, at twenty-one, to suicide.
For years I only told it when I was asked, in living rooms and at women’s events, and the same thing kept happening. Afterward, a woman would find me in the hallway or the parking lot and say, “That’s my story too. Nobody talks about this.” Then she would ask if there was a book.
There wasn’t.
What finally changed my mind was realizing the story I was holding back was never really mine. It was not a story about my pain. It was a story about what held me when nothing else could: a God who stayed, friends who showed up without being asked, a love that outlasted everything that tried to break it. His story of goodness, not my story of loss. The more I sat with that, the more I felt Him leading me to share it, and keeping it to myself started to feel like keeping something that was never only mine to keep.
So, I wrote it.
I wrote it because grief is lonely in a way people don’t expect, and because the version of faith most of us are handed in the worst week of our lives is all platitudes. “She’s in a better place.” “God needed another angel.” I wanted to put something in a grieving woman’s hands that told her the truth: God did not spare me any of it, but He carried me through all of it. And she is not doing this wrong.
I also wrote it as a nurse. I know what grief does to the body, to a marriage, to the job you have to go back to. Nobody warns you. I wanted to.
How has your understanding of healing changed since your earliest experiences with grief?
In 2003, I thought healing meant getting back. Back to who I was, back to normal, back to a life that made sense. I thought if I worked hard enough and prayed hard enough, I would arrive somewhere called “better” and stay there.
That is not what happened.
What I learned, the slow way, is that there is a version of you that existed before the loss and a version that had to learn how to live after it. They are not the same person. You can’t go back. You can only move forward, differently.
Healing stopped meaning the pain was gone and started meaning the love had somewhere to go. It meant carrying the loss, not erasing it. It meant letting something new exist beside the ache. Spring doesn’t erase winter. It grows alongside what remains.
By the time I lost Aria, I was, in a strange way, a grief pro. I knew grief lives in the body. I knew the fog would come, that the world would go quiet after the funeral, that anniversaries and ordinary Tuesdays would level me. I knew to let people in. I knew what to ask for.
None of that made it hurt less.
But it changed what I expected of myself. I stopped measuring my healing against anyone’s timeline, including my own. Some days survival is the strength. Some days getting through is the victory.
And I stopped thinking of healing as something I do. I did not just survive. I was sustained. God was not rushing me toward healing. He was protecting what little light remained.
That is the difference twenty years made.
What are some practical ways people can support someone who is grieving without unintentionally creating additional burdens?
Don’t ask. Do.
“Let me know if you need anything” is a kind sentence that quietly hands the work back to the person who can barely breathe. A grieving person does not know what she needs. If she does, she will not ask. So, look around, figure out what you would need in her place, and do that.
Bring the coffee. Drop off a meal in a dish she never has to return. Fold the laundry. Sit in the carpool line. Send the text that says, “Thinking of you today, no need to reply.”
When my daughter died, my friend Nancy asked if I had something for Aria to wear. I said no. She didn’t press. She asked what size, and a few hours later she was at my door with three dresses to choose from. That is what help looks like. It takes the other end of something too heavy to carry alone.
Say their name. The deepest fear of the grieving is that the world will forget. You will not remind us of our loss by speaking it. We never forgot. You will remind us that their life mattered.
Don’t try to fix it. The people who hurt me most were rarely unkind. They were uncomfortable, and they tried to make the discomfort go away with words. Grief doesn’t need a commentator. It needs a companion.
And stay. The casseroles stop. The cards slow. The world moves on, and that is usually right about when the fog lifts and the full weight finally lands. Put the anniversary on your own calendar. Text on the hard day you know is coming. Show up a year later, five years later. The friends who kept me standing across twenty years are the ones who simply never forgot.
What would you want to say to a reader who is currently living through the earliest and most overwhelming period of grief?
If I could sit with you right now, I wouldn’t try to say the right thing.
I would just sit across from you and let you be exactly where you are. Numb, shattered, confused, functioning too well, or barely functioning at all. You are not doing this wrong. Grief does not have a correct posture.
I remember mornings when I woke up with a weight on my chest so real it felt physical. Before my eyes even opened, I would remember. I would say it out loud and take a few deep breaths just to get out of bed. In those first days, I could not imagine breathing, standing, or surviving the next hour. But I did. And the only honest explanation is the One who promised to be my strength when mine ran out.
So here is what I would tell you. You don’t need answers to keep going. You only need the next step. The next breath. The next morning.
Let people in. Let them do what needs doing, hold what needs holding, wipe tears, wash dishes, or quietly sit with you. You don’t have to perform composure for anyone.
Don’t let anyone hand you a timeline, including you. Grief is not a race. You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to rest. And when the laughter comes back, and it will, you are allowed that too. Joy is not betrayal.
If faith is part of your story, hear this gently: God is not disappointed in you. He is not measuring your belief by how well you are coping. He is closer than you realize, and often quieter than you expect.
My faith did not spare me any of it. It carried me through all of it.
I am still walking. You are seen. You are held. And you are allowed to take as long as you need.
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Twenty years later, tragedy struck again when her twenty-one-year-old daughter, Aria, died by suicide.
In Shattered but Unbreakable: How Love and Faith Survived, Nadine shares the raw and deeply personal story of living through profound loss—not once, but twice. With remarkable honesty, she invites readers into hospital rooms, funeral homes, sleepless nights, difficult questions, and sacred moments where grief and grace coexist. As a nurse leader, mother, widow, and grieving parent, she offers a unique perspective on trauma, healing, faith, and the enduring power of love.
More than a memoir, Shattered but Unbreakable is a testimony of hope for anyone facing loss, heartbreak, or life’s unexpected detours. It is a reminder that while grief may change us forever, it does not have to define us. Even in life’s darkest chapters, faith can sustain us, love remains, and broken hearts can learn to beat again.
Is This All A Simulation?
The Tatagonian Code follows a wisecracking ghostwriter whose bond with a memory-altering entity draws him into a mission across universes, forcing him to confront who controls his past and whom he can trust with the future. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
There’s been much discussion in recent years about the possibility that we are living within a computer simulation. The question that came to mind was: If true, who runs the simulation and why? Then I asked what would happen if the masters had conflicting goals. So, I created Tatagonians and divided them into two opposing factions: gold-plated Cybortics and swirling Energetics. So, as with all global (and interstellar) politics, humanity needed one of them to flip and take its side. I’m a big fan of John Scalzi, who tends to have sarcastic protagonists. So Daniel’s persona was developed along that vein.
How did Emma’s unequal memories of her relationship with Daniel shape your exploration of consent, responsibility, and the possibility of renewed intimacy?
At first, by remembering only bits and pieces of their previous relationships, Daniel felt betrayed by Emma—that she had used him to advance her project’s goals. But after he realized she actually HAD fallen in love with him twice, he knew there was something special between them. Rather than attempt to jump back into romance immediately, he allowed Emma to slowly regain her memories of their shared past. His love for her was the deciding factor in his participation in the war against the Cybortics.
What shifts in Daniel and Gofer’s relationship were essential to making an intrusive, memory-altering voice become someone Daniel could trust?
At first, Daniel viewed Gofer as a violation of his private life. Having an alien share your body would be discomforting, especially when you discover the reason is to experience existence as a human rather than a form of energy. Gofer also represented danger—an entity that Daniel couldn’t understand. Their relationship pivoted when Daniel realized he could use it to his benefit. For example, he could reverse Sierra’s implication in the killing of a thug who wanted to kidnap him and the alien. Still, he feared that such power could corrupt whoever possessed it. But after he realized the need for such power to save humanity, they became close friends even after Gofer separated from Daniel’s body.
How does Sierra’s friendship with Daniel, built through shared danger and insults, complicate his understanding of protection, vulnerability, and loyalty?
When Daniel first meets Sierra as his personal trainer at the gym, he views her as a potential romantic partner. She vanquishes that notion when she saves from being kidnapped and displays her militaristic, kill-when-necessary attitude. Knowing that Daniel lacks the toughness to be part of the mission to save humanity, she takes verbal shots at him to toughen up his mental game. Daniel doesn’t understand her killer instincts, but he begins to appreciate it when he realizes she brings to the table—unrelenting commitment to destroying the Cybortics.
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Daniel Cadence thought he had enough problems—his fiancée left him, he’s been assigned to write the memoir of a brain-addled backup guitarist, and he hates the physical trainer at the gym. But that was before he discovered the horrifying truth: humanity is living in a massive cosmic simulation controlled by an inscrutable race of astral beings called the Tatagonians.
Even worse, their species has fractured in two. While the Energetics use human hosts to experience the sensory world of Earth, the ruthless Cybortics purge and reboot civilization every 200,000 years.
Now, the clock on the latest wipeout is running out.
Teaming up with rogue scientists from Pullman Laboratories and bound to “Gofer”—a bizarre, sentient Energetic capable of bending reality across multiverses—Daniel is handed an impossible mission: infiltrate and destroy the Cybortic stronghold in another universe before humanity disappears one more time.
Armed with subpar tech, endless snark, and an alien entity he barely understands, Daniel must pull off the ultimate cosmic hack. If he fails, the next version of humanity will have to reinvent the wheel all over again.
Packed with sharp wit, mind-bending concepts, and Philip K. Dick–style speculative flair, The Tatagonian Code is a high-stakes sci-fi adventure about freedom, unintended consequences, and fighting back against interstellar creators. Scroll up and grab your copy today!
A Whole New Meaning
The Race for the Lost Coin follows a history teacher racing to rescue his kidnapped grandfather and protect an ancient teleportation coin from an industrialist intent on harnessing its power for his Nazi ambitions. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’m a bit of a fan of the Indiana Jones movies, a bit of a Trekkie, and an avid reader of sci-fi books and stories involving time travel. I wanted to write a story that combined my first love, ancient history and mythology, with contemporary fiction, particularly thrillers and action-adventure, incorporating the concept of teleportation.
It’s a unique mix, and I wanted to inject a bit of fun into the writing process. My first book, The Guardian’s Legacy, places the main character, Nikolaos, in the role of a reluctant hero and guardian of the coin. The Race for the Lost Coin introduces elements of the high-stakes chases we see in the Indiana Jones movies, the hunt for artefacts, and a recognisable foe: the Nazis.
Hitler and Himmler sought esoteric artefacts and spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars searching for sources of power and knowledge that they believed could help them win the war. It’s this combination of modern and ancient history that I wanted to explore and weave into my stories. At the same time, I hope to encourage readers to discover more about our ancient past.
How does Nik’s work as a history teacher shape his response to inherited guardianship, especially when protecting his grandfather disrupts his ordinary responsibilities?
It is Nik’s love of ancient history that not only piques his interest in becoming a guardian, but also helps him understand the importance of protecting the legacy of our ancient past for future generations. In many ways, this is what education is all about. Well, that’s why I studied teaching!
Nik’s role as a high school teacher places him in a position of responsibility, where he helps nurture the growth and intellectual development of young people. When he learns that his grandfather has been kidnapped, Nik must make a choice. Finding his grandfather becomes his priority, and his role as guardian takes on a whole new meaning.
This experience helps him understand what his grandfather had tried to explain during his training as protector of the coin: that some individuals use history to further their own agendas and gain power over those who are less able to defend themselves.
What guided your decisions about the coin’s painful landings, exhaustion, and unpredictable reactions, and how do those limits shape Nik’s choices?
I wanted to create an object of power that, while offering extraordinary means of transportation, also carried disadvantages for those who sought to control it. I decided that the impact of using the coin would physically manifest the consequences of a person’s decisions, with the effects potentially being either positive or negative. In this case, the coin’s power has a detrimental effect on the user.
Through his research into previous guardians and their use of the coin, Nik comes to realise the potential adverse effects of its continual use. He doesn’t make the decision to use the coin lightly, justifying his actions initially as a means of escape and, more recently, as a way to access resources he knows are available at his grandfather’s home. He understands that prolonged use could alter his biology, yet it’s a risk he is currently willing to take.
How did you develop Nik and Detective Sauveterre’s attraction through their repeated confrontations while preserving the distrust and conflicting obligations between them?
I wanted Nik to maintain his independence while building friendships with unlikely allies who could help him operate outside the boundaries of the law. The inclusion of Detective Sauveterre was initially intended to make the detective a foil for Nik, but as the story progressed, their relationship began to change.
Nik wants to trust the detective, and during their first meeting, he realises that doing so was a mistake. However, their subsequent interactions establish a tentative rapport, which gradually develops into an attraction that becomes more evident each time they meet.
Although they often butt heads, their mutual admiration and attraction continue to grow. Nik is desperate to find his grandfather and recover the second coin, using whatever means are available to him, while the detective is determined to follow the leads and work within the boundaries of the law. Their conflicting approaches create tension between them, even as their feelings for each other grows.
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One toss of the coin is all it takes.
Nik races to Paris to find an ancient coin with mythological forces before a clandestine organisation can use its destructive power to wipe out civilisations. However, the trip does not go as expected. Nik’s grandfather has been kidnapped, and he is on the run, evading the French police, Interpol agents and a powerful, wealthy Slovakian magnate.
Nik teams up with a French taxi driver, a hacker and a librarian to avoid capture. Clues take him to Geneva and Rome, where he learns there is more to the coin than what his grandfather told him. After a close encounter with the police, Nik forms an alliance with the most unlikely partner—Detective Sauveterre. But is that the right decision?
Fans of Steve Berry, James Rollins, and Dan Brown will love this latest action-packed and suspense story from Award-Winning author Luciana Cavallaro.
Experiences Accumulate and Shape Us
Six Weeks is a heartfelt memoir of caring for your dying sister Nancy, that explores family history, faith, loss, and the lasting impact of choices across generations. What inspired you to share your story with readers?
I didn’t initially set out to write a book about death. I wanted to tell the story of my sister’s life and our relationship, which happened to culminate in six extraordinary weeks.
Nancy and I shared a lifetime of experiences, some wonderful, some difficult, and often quite funny. When she became terminally ill, I found myself responsible for helping her navigate the final chapter of her life. Much of that responsibility involved ordinary things: paperwork, medical decisions, conversations, and simply showing up when I was needed.
Those six weeks became a lens through which I could examine the decades that preceded them. Decisions made years earlier suddenly acquired new meaning.
But there was another reason for writing the book: the quiet erasure of people and the lives they lived. Grace is often quiet. So is the labor of caring for others. Neither announces itself, and both risk disappearing from memory when the people who witnessed them are gone.
I believe our actions speak, sometimes more profoundly than our words. The ordinary things we do for one another, the responsibilities we accept, and the promises we keep tell a story of their own. I wanted those actions to be heard, and the people behind them to be remembered.
Ultimately, I wrote Six Weeks because Nancy was much more than her illness. I wanted readers to know the person I knew, and perhaps recognize something of their own relationships in ours.
How did you balance protecting Nancy’s privacy with telling an honest and complete story?
I don’t believe any memoir can tell a complete story. Memory is selective, perspective is necessarily limited, and a writer must decide what belongs on the page.
My guiding principle was to include only the people, events, and actions relevant to Nancy’s life or our shared journey. The purpose was never to expose others, but to show how circumstances, relationships, and choices shaped the story we were living.
I believe there is dignity in telling the truth about circumstances as they were, without embellishment or unnecessary judgment. That meant including difficult moments when they were essential to understanding our journey, while leaving aside details that served no meaningful purpose.
I tried to let events, conversations, and decisions speak for themselves rather than manufacture emotion or assign blame. Nancy was funny, intelligent, opinionated, and fully capable of speaking for herself. Preserving those qualities mattered as much as recounting the difficult circumstances surrounding her illness.
Honesty did not require revealing everything. It required including what was necessary to understand how we arrived at those final six weeks and the decisions we faced together.
For me, protecting Nancy’s dignity meant allowing her to remain fully human, while telling the truth about the journey that shaped us both.
What was the most difficult part of revisiting memories while writing the book?
I believe we are the sum of decisions made by us, for us, and sometimes upon us by generations before our own.
The hardest part of writing Six Weeks wasn’t revisiting individual memories, painful as some were. It was understanding and illustrating how those experiences were connected, how one decision influenced another, and how their accumulated consequences shaped the people Nancy and I became.
The book moves between Nancy’s final six weeks and events spanning decades. What initially appear to be separate experiences gradually reveal their connections. Circumstances that once seemed unfair or incomprehensible become part of a larger picture, one that helps explain the abilities, perspectives, and sometimes the limitations we carry into adulthood.
For Nancy and me, difficult experiences had forged skills that would later become essential. When her final illness confronted us with decisions neither of us wanted to face, those abilities helped us navigate the practical responsibilities of care while finding opportunities for reconciliation.
I wanted readers to recognize something similar in their own lives. Understanding how experiences accumulate, and how they shape the choices available to us, can reveal possibilities that may not have been apparent before.
Understanding and forgiveness go hand in hand. Forgiving does not require forgetting. Sometimes remembering clearly, and choosing a different response, is precisely what allows us to repair old fractures and forge new paths.
For me, that is how even painful memories can ultimately be understood with grace.
If Nancy could read the finished book, what do you think she would say to you about it?
I think Nancy would be pleased, because the book represents something she wished for me: the opportunity to rediscover a creative life I had set aside.
During her final six weeks, we spent considerable time reflecting on our lives, the trials and tribulations we had experienced, and the humor that had so often helped us through them. Nancy knew I had placed much of my creative life, including writing, on hold to pursue a business career and assume responsibilities that allowed me to help others in more practical ways.
She wanted something for me.
Nancy had written herself and dreamed of becoming a writer, but life never afforded her the opportunity to fully pursue that ambition. We had been forged in much the same foundry, shaped by many of the same experiences, and she recognized in me a creative passion that had remained largely unexplored.
She also wanted our lives and experiences to have meaning beyond the two of us. She believed the lessons we had learned through difficult choices, reconciliation, and grace might offer understanding and inspiration to others.
In her final letter to me, Nancy encouraged me to find peace and pursue new paths. Looking back, I see that wish as one of her final gifts. After years of practical responsibilities, she wanted me to reclaim something of myself.
Writing Six Weeks became a way to honor both wishes. Nancy’s life and our shared journey could be preserved, while the experiences that shaped us might help others better understand their own. At the same time, writing opened a door to the creative world I had deferred for so many years.
In that sense, the book reconciles much of our journey. It preserves Nancy’s story, offers the possibility of grace and inspiration to others, and allows me to explore a creative life that she understood and encouraged.
If Nancy could read the finished book, I think she would be pleased that her story continues to be told—and that I finally opened the door she wanted me to walk through.
And, of course, as my big sister, she would insist on having the last word.
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When an unexpected diagnosis brought Nancy home for hospice, the doctor gave her about six weeks.
For her brother Bill, those weeks became more than a countdown. They became the final chapter in a family story shaped by duty, silence, erased women, hidden labor, and weight carried quietly from one generation to the next.
Moving between Nancy’s final days and the generations that came before her, Six Weeks is a literary memoir about caregiving, sibling love, family fracture, and a promise between siblings to reconcile the choices they made, the choices made for them, and the weight carried forward.
At its center is Nancy: funny, stubborn, faithful, private, and determined to meet the end with dignity. With those who loved her nearby, her brother tries to give her that dignity through the language he has always trusted: work, presence, protection, and love expressed through action.
Restrained, intimate, and deeply personal, Six Weeks is a witness against erasure and a record of what it means to carry someone home with grace.
Their Shared Determination
Patrol Officer Hudson follows a concerned woman searching for her missing brother, and her only clue leads her to an infuriating patrol officer who, while trying to keep her safe, is also keeping secrets from her. What inspired the setup of your story?
I do ride-alongs with my Sheriff’s office and assist in their new officer role-playing scenarios. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to volunteer with our sheriff’s office during the National Police Bloodhound Association (NPBA) Certification Program. Hiding from those bloodhounds, combined with my experience as a retired high school teacher, inspired me to put a troubled teen at the center of the story.
How does the search for Pike force Hudson and Verie to build trust faster than they otherwise might, and what did you want their disagreements about honesty, protection, and independence to reveal about each character?
Hudson cares about Pike and Verie’s family. Although Verie had never met Hudson, she knew from her mother that he was someone she could trust, and Pike’s note telling her to find Hudson reinforced that trust. At the same time, I wanted Verie to remain suspicious of him because he was still a stranger to her. She had been cheated on in a previous relationship, so trusting a man didn’t come easily.
Hudson is all about protecting and serving his community, and that includes Verie, even when she doesn’t necessarily want his protection. Their disagreements allowed me to show Hudson’s protective nature while also showing Verie’s independence and determination. Hudson believes withholding information is sometimes necessary to keep people safe, while Verie believes she deserves to know the truth, especially when it involves her brother. Searching for Pike forces them to work through those differences and learn to trust each other much faster than they normally would.
What role does family loyalty play in both the romance and the suspense storyline?
Family is extremely important to both Hudson and Verie. Verie’s loyalty to Pike is what drives the suspense. She refuses to give up on her brother, even when searching for him puts her in danger. Hudson already cares about Pike and wants to protect him, but he is first and foremost an officer of the law. He can’t ignore what Pike has gotten himself involved in simply because he cares about him and his family.
That same loyalty also brings Hudson and Verie closer together. As Hudson becomes more invested in keeping Pike safe, he also becomes protective of Verie and the rest of her family. Verie begins to see that his involvement isn’t just about doing his job—he genuinely cares about what happens to them. Their shared determination to bring Pike home safely helps build the trust between them and ultimately strengthens their relationship.
What is the next book in the Haven Island PD: Protecting Paradise series that you are working on, and when will it be available?
The next book in the Haven Island PD: Protecting Paradise series is Diver Sawyer. I’m also writing my clean romantic comedies under my other pen name, NL DiDeo, so I’m splitting my writing time between the two series. Diver Sawyer is currently planned for release in April or May 2027.
Together they must find her brother before it’s too late.
Verie
My brother’s missing. His medicine sat untouched on his desk, and the only clue he left behind was a note scribbled on a crumpled math assignment.
Find Hudson. Need help.
So I do.
Officer Hudson Shaw is bossy, infuriating, and far too handsome for his own good. He promises to help me, but every answer leads to more questions—and he’s keeping secrets.
I.don’t. like. liars.
Hudson
Verie thinks I’m hiding the truth.
If she knew everything, her life could be in danger.
Her brother is tangled up in something worse than either of us imagined. Every move he makes pushes him deeper into the crosshairs.
I’ll do whatever it takes to bring Pike home.
If I fail, I won’t just lose the case—I’ll lose Verie, too.
Patrol Officer Hudson is a first-person, dual POV small-town romantic suspense featuring a protective hero, forced proximity, slow-burn chemistry with serious heat, and family loyalty. HEA guaranteed.
