Blog Archives
Emetophobia and Me
Jess Smith’s Emetophobia & Me is a raw and intimate journey through the often-misunderstood world of anxiety and phobia. In this memoir, she peels back the layers of fear, shame, and isolation that surround emetophobia, the intense fear of vomiting, and shows how it shaped her life from childhood through motherhood. But more than just a story of struggle, it’s a story of transformation. She invites the reader into her inner world, guiding us from the depths of suffering to a place of peace and understanding. Along the way, she shares insights about trauma, anxiety, and healing that are as universal as they are personal.
Jess’s writing is disarmingly honest. She doesn’t hold back. There were times I laughed, times I cried, and more than a few moments when I had to close the book and just sit with the feelings it stirred up. Her voice is authentic and vulnerable without ever becoming self-pitying. What I liked most was how well she captured the way anxiety works. How it loops, how it lies, and how it convinces you that fear is truth. Her childhood stories, especially about lunchtime at school, hit me in the gut. You can feel the weight of that tiny girl’s world. And yet, Jess doesn’t just linger in the pain. She moves forward, one tiny brave step at a time.
As someone who has danced with my own demons, I saw myself in these pages. But even if you haven’t lived with emetophobia, you’ll find something in her story that resonates. Her reflections on control, fear, and trust felt like they were written just for me. And her shift in perspective, learning that fear is just a thought, not a truth, was like flipping on a light switch. I didn’t expect to come away from this book feeling hopeful, but I did. Not because Jess claims to be “cured,” but because she shows what it’s like to live fully even when fear shows up. Her strength isn’t in having no fear. It’s in refusing to let fear make her small.
I’d recommend this book to anyone who struggles with anxiety, panic, phobias, or simply feeling not good enough. It’s also perfect for loved ones who want to understand what it’s really like to live inside a mind that never stops spinning. Therapists, teachers, and parents could gain so much empathy from this book, too.
Pages: 120 | ASIN: B0FLKKBJXT
Straight Outta Skokie
Straight Outta Skokie is a memoir that follows Al Krockey through a pivotal year in his life, starting in 1968 and echoing backward to the Chicago and Skokie of his youth. The book moves from his pandemic-era reflections to vivid scenes of adolescence and early adulthood filled with deli counters, bowling alleys, pool halls, protests, street hustles, and the ever-present soundtrack of soul and rock. It captures a moment in American history when neighborhoods felt small and the world around them shook from events far bigger than anyone could see coming. The pages drift through family struggles, the thrill of hustling souvenirs at Wrigley Field, the chaos after Dr. King’s assassination, and the budding counterculture that tugged him into adulthood.
The writing has a loose, conversational rhythm that made me feel like he was talking right to me. Sometimes the stories rushed forward, squeezing decades into a few pages, and sometimes they slowed into tiny moments that were emotionally resonant. I enjoyed how grounded it all felt. The details about Skokie diners, late-night runs to Jack’s, Maxwell Street blues drifting in the air near the hot dog stands, and the characters he knew from the ballpark made the world feel lived in and real. The way he told stories about scraping together money, wandering from job to job, and learning from the people around him made me root for him without even noticing I was doing it.
I also felt a weight in the way the book handled the darker turns. The shock of Dr. King’s assassination, the violence on the West and South Sides, and the way Krockey realized how insulated his own community was hit me right in the gut. There was a raw honesty there that surprised me. He didn’t try to wrap those moments in pretty language. He just let them sit. And that directness made me trust him as a narrator. There were times when the book meandered, or when the slang and side stories spun around a bit, but I didn’t mind. It felt like hanging out with someone who has lived a lot and is eager to tell you everything because each story still means something to him.
If you like memoirs that feel like a long, winding conversation full of humor, grit, music, and heart, then this book will hit the spot. It is especially fitting for readers who enjoy stories about Chicago history, coming-of-age in the late sixties, or simply digging into a life shaped by both ordinary moments and historic upheavals. It would also resonate with anyone who finds comfort in nostalgia or who grew up in a neighborhood that felt like its own little planet.
Pages: 281 | ASIN : B0FTTLJ6L3
Dissociative Effect
Jacqueline Redmer’s Dissociative Effect is a raw, searing collection of poems shaped by pain, memory, healing, and hope. Part memoir, part emotional excavation, the book moves through themes of trauma, womanhood, embodiment, medicine, and spiritual searching. It opens with a deeply personal introduction that lays the groundwork for what follows. Redmer’s poetry is not a passive reflection, but an active, pulsing lifeline. Across three sections, Pathos, Diagnoses, and ad sanadum, Redmer travels inward, dissects her story, and leaves nothing unexamined. It’s at once intimate and universal. Clinical and poetic. Grief-stricken and triumphant.
Reading this book was not easy. There’s a kind of precision here that only a physician-poet could pull off. Some poems cut like scalpels. Others whisper truths I didn’t know I needed to hear. Redmer doesn’t flinch from the hard stuff, body shame, sexual trauma, mental illness, motherhood, aging, and invisibility. In “dis-comfort food” and “the crime scene,” she writes about girlhood and the betrayal of the body with such clarity, I found myself holding my breath. And then there’s “listen,” a poem that addresses the inability to scream during assault, and it just wrecked me. Her language is so direct. No wasted words. No prettying up the truth. But it’s not just pain for pain’s sake, there’s deep intelligence and heart in these pages.
What stuck with me most was the feeling of coming home to something hard. That ache of knowing and not knowing. Redmer has a gift for taking ordinary moments, eating a peach, watching rain, yoga class, and flipping them inside out to reveal emotional depth you didn’t expect. She made me think about all the ways we dissociate to survive, and what it means to come back to our own bodies. I felt comforted by her honesty, her imperfection, her willingness to say what so many of us only feel. Her poems gave me language for things I thought were unspeakable. And at the same time, I laughed, nodded, and underlined like crazy.
I’d recommend Dissociative Effect to anyone who has lived through trauma, especially women, caregivers, clinicians, survivors, and seekers. If you’ve ever felt too much or not enough, this book will find you where you are. Redmer doesn’t offer tidy answers, but she opens a door. You walk through.
Pages: 86 | ISBN: 1962082822
Kloe’s New Friendship
Kloe’s New Friendship follows a junior-high cat named Kloe as she tries to juggle school life, old friends, new friends, and the emotional chaos of having a challenging brother. The story sweeps through the semester with warm scenes of friendship, misunderstandings, secrets, and growth. Kloe tries her best to help a new student settle in while also holding her own friendships together, all while dealing with the unpredictable behavior of her brother, Wreny. The plot builds toward moments of tension, hurt feelings, and honest conversations, and it closes on a hopeful note that feels gentle and real.
The writing has a light touch, but the feelings underneath hit pretty hard. I found myself rooting for Kloe because she tries so hard to be good to everyone, even when she’s exhausted. Some scenes, especially the ones where she feels unheard at home, made my heart sink a bit because they felt familiar. The dialogue sometimes rambles the way real kids do, which made the friendships feel believable. I caught myself smiling at the inside jokes and wincing when something awkward landed the wrong way.
What surprised me most was how the book handled messy emotions. It doesn’t pretend everything is simple. Kloe gets frustrated and confused, and sometimes hopes for things she knows she probably won’t get. The moments with Terry, especially the falling-out and the reconciliation, felt honest. And the talk with Mrs. Adams carried a quiet warmth that settled me. The story looks cute on the outside, and it is, but beneath the soft edges, there’s a lot of heart and more depth than I expected. The illustrations feel warm and full of motion. I especially like how the artist uses soft shading and expressive eyes to show personality, making the characters feel relatable even though they’re animals.
I’d call Kloe’s New Friendship a sweet, thoughtful chapter book for kids who are navigating friendships, school drama, or tricky siblings. It’s also a comforting read for parents or teachers who want a window into how kids actually feel beneath the surface.
Pages: 66 | ASIN : B0FVCRVVJ1
My Lifetime Journey
The Stories is a collection of deeply personal reflections with each story representing an encounter with faith, destiny, or divine intervention. Why was this an important book for you to write?
For posterity, it was important for me to record amazing stories from my lifetime journey in various roles and over times and places. I had shared many of these stories with family members, my university students (as examples for learning), and colleagues at professional conferences, especially during the years when I presented conference papers on the topic of psychospirituality. It was important for me to share stories within the context of readers understanding human vulnerabilities and human possibilities. It was important for me to share these amazing, if not incredible, stories from my experiences as a civil rights pioneer and leader, as a child growing up in the Jim-Crow South, as a counselor-psychotherapist, as a consultant, as a family member and friend, and as a channel of messages from a spirit existence as well as my experiences in meeting people who voluntarily shared their stories of spiritual channeling, clairvoyance, and telepathy.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Much of my writings tend to teach and enlighten. Through my stories, I trust that I have communicated to readers to do what is right, continue to grow and learn, share your gifts and blessings with others, value family and your children, and listen to spiritual messages from God and your ancestors.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir and what was the most rewarding?
The writing of the manuscript for THE STORIES was more joy than a challenge. It afforded me the opportunity to recall and reflect upon significant experiences and encounters during my lifetime. I guess that a minor challenge was writing down my stories in detail from memory and personal records while I was still cognitively competent in my 70s. Some stories go back to age three and to times when I was in elementary school.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
I hope and trust that readers of THE STORIES will follow their heart and mind, and discover and pursue the light of talent from within them. After years of doing so, I realized that I was gifted as a thinker, writer, helper, leader, and organizer. Therefore, my purpose during my adult like has been to “CREATE [such as writings] and SERVE [e.g., as counselor and professor of counseling] for good cause.”
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
The Small Hours
The Small Hours follows Michael Virtue, a psychologist whose life starts to unravel after the death of his closest friend and the slow collapse of his marriage. While he tries to keep himself afloat, he becomes drawn back into the long unresolved mystery of his uncle Robert, who vanished during the Spanish Civil War. The story moves between letters from the 1930s, Michael’s midlife turmoil in the late 1980s, and the old scars still lingering in Andalusian towns. The more he digs, the more he learns that war does not end when the guns go quiet. It stays in the people who survived it and in the families who never got answers.
The writing feels calm on the surface, but underneath it hums with grief and regret. I kept noticing how the author lets moments stretch out. A small gesture becomes heavy, and a stray memory turns sharp. It feels real. Michael is not a tidy hero. He stumbles. He doubts himself. He drinks too much. He tries to fix things he does not know how to fix. I found myself both frustrated with him and rooting for him. The letters from Robert were my favorite part. They carry this sweet mix of hope, fear, and youthful bravado. They made me ache because I already knew what Michael didn’t. The tone of the book is warm. It held me in a quiet sadness that felt honest rather than forced.
There were places where the story surprised me. Some characters walk in with very jagged edges. Delia, especially, knocked me off balance. She is blunt and unpredictable and sometimes a little wild, and she shakes Michael awake even when he doesn’t want to be awake. The Spanish sections were the most vivid. The villages feel sun-bleached and haunted. Every old stone seems to carry a memory. I could almost smell the dust and the sea air fighting each other. The pacing sometimes meanders, but I didn’t mind. It felt like wandering through someone’s emotional attic, bumping into things they forgot they had stored away. The author lets sorrow echo, and for me, that made the book feel relatable.
By the time I reached the end, I felt like I had sat with a friend who finally said something they had needed to say for twenty years. This book would be perfect for readers who like stories about family secrets, grief that does not behave, and the strange ways the past keeps tugging at the present. It is also a good fit for anyone who likes slow-burning emotional journeys and stories that blend personal history with real historical wounds.
Pages: 463 | ASIN : B0FH7CLCDH
A Man Driven By Greed
The Kingdom Thief follows Princess Sitnalta as she races to undo a thief’s reality-warping wish, becoming the lone keeper of the truth in a world that no longer remembers who she really is. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The Sitnalta Series finds itself focusing a lot on this coin- its origin, its powers, and the power of wishes. Through the first book, with Sitnalta’s relationship with the troll, Najort, we look into the consequences of wishes done with the right motivation, and by good people. For the sequel, I wanted to look at the reverse. Wilhelm is not Najort. He is not Sitnalta. He is a man driven by greed, and what would that look like, if he were to acquire the coin and make a wish.
Sitnalta and Navor’s relationship holds so much emotional weight. How did you approach balancing romance with the fast-paced plot?
For someone their age, the idea of a budding romance can be what drives a person. In a way, it is the plot. Navor wants to help Sitnalta, and Sitnalta wants her home back. This should be in balance with what is happening outside of their little bubble. For them at least, their feelings are just as important as magic, and politics, and stopping the mad man who has stolen a kingdom. When you look at the world through the lens of two young people and their feelings, one thing is never more important than the other. As a parent of teenagers, I’m surrounded by that on a daily basis, and that was my approach.
If you could expand one section of the story, give readers more time in any particular place or emotional moment, what would it be and why?
I would love to spend a lot more time in Navor’s head. He has a lot on his plate right now. Writing his dreams, his fears, and his hope for the future was a lot of fun, and I would love to have done a lot more of that.
What can readers expect in book three of the Sitnalta Series?
Oh, without giving too much away, I can say that we have tragedy, a very different type of romance, and so many questions about the past get answered. In a way, this is almost a prequel, but still very much Book Three. Sitnalta would not have been ready for these answers before now. I hope that wasn’t too cryptic.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
Princess Sitnalta has been living happily ever after with Queen Aud and King Gerald as her adoptive parents, enjoying the peace in her world. Her growing friendship with the mysterious Prince Navor leads her on a journey to visit his island kingdom. While there she receives the horrible news that her kingdom has been conquered and cruel King Wilhelm is responsible.
With King Gerald and Queen Aud imprisoned, Prince Navor and a secretive network of spies as her only allies, Princess Sitnalta feels lost and adrift. Nothing about Colonodona’s takeover seems right, and Sitnalta suspects magic may be to blame.
Far from home and unsure of whom to trust, Sitnalta must find a way to save her kingdom, and return her beloved Aud and Gerald to their rightful thrones.
LITERARY TITAN 