Blog Archives
Societal Rules and Rituals
Nebraska Avenue follows a lonely Brooklyn boy in 1976 Long Island as he joins a crew of paperboys whose neighborhood adventures, comic rituals, and risky scheme to clear their boss’s name teach him about courage, loyalty, friendship, and home. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for the story was my own experience moving from Brooklyn to Long Island in the 1970s, leaving behind my school, friends, and “block”, and needing to start over. My twin sisters, two years older than me, had a much easier time adjusting to our new environment. I was indeed a paperboy for Newsday, and most of the “shenanigans” depicted in the book actually happened.
Vinny’s world feels rich with period details, from paper routes to banana-seat bikes. Were these drawn from personal memory, research, or a mix of both?
I have vivid memories of that time period, which I supported with research to make sure my memory knew what it was talking about! I only wish I had kept my Royce Union bicycle all these years – although I’m pretty sure I still have the milk crate I used to deliver newspapers,
The novel treats childhood like its own small society with rules, rituals, and economies. Was that perspective central to the story from the beginning?
An examination of childhood societal rules and rituals was not at all planned. My intention was just to tell a story about paperboys (and one girl paperboy). But by Chapter 2 – beginning with Wally’s sister becoming annoyed at Artie’s immaturity – it became apparent that some of the most interesting things about growing up happen “between the lines.” Recounting the manner in which interactions between the characters were conducted became fun for me. For example, the frequent punches in the arm were essentially the way the paperboys kept order, with each of them having the authority to render judgment when someone stepped out of line. I recall receiving my fair share of (well-deserved) punches, all in good fun and with no lasting damage.
How did you balance nostalgia with the more tender emotional undercurrent of Vinny’s homesickness and need to belong?
I think most everyone is nostalgic for their formative years and could write a story about it if they put their mind to it. My eyes would sometimes tear up when I was writing about Mr. R’s struggles or the loneliness I felt after moving to Long Island. It would have been a very sad story if I remained in that space, so I tried to concentrate on the lighter moments. Fortunately, my summers as a paperboy were filled with those lighter moments – and way too many fireworks.
Being a paperboy gave me friends and confidence, not to mention the best financial lessons an early teen could hope to learn. Best of all, I remain good friends with some of the “characters” depicted in the book. I only wish today’s children could experience what my friends and I did fifty years ago.
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But the easy rhythm of morning routes and Fourth of July mischief doesn’t last. When a string of burglaries hits homes along Vinny’s route, suspicion lands on the boys—and a local cop with a long memory is more than willing to make it stick.
With no one else on their side, the crew sets out to prove the truth themselves—following the only lead they have and risking more than they bargained for in the process.
The news is only for a day. The legend of Nebraska Avenue is for a lifetime
Our Place in the World
Being Laramie Buchanan follows a twenty-three-year-old woman navigating grief, first love, family secrets, and sudden danger. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The first chapter of all of my novels is the framework from which the writing emerges organically. Sometimes a song, an observation, a dream, or a personal experience inspires the setting. The setting of the first chapter of Being Laramie Buchanan is reminiscent of my own law school graduation ceremony that took place at Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder. I recently saw a photo of me in a cap and gown at that ceremony, and as with all of my novels, I asked the question “what if”? For Laramie Buchanan, the question was “what if someone significant had been missing at the ceremony”? And from there, the story develops with answers provided in the backstory and its aftermath. I discovered that as I write, I am able to see the action develop in front of me – almost like watching a movie. As I sit at my keyboard, it often feels like the novel is writing itself and my fingers on the keyboard are just the tools needed to put it into words on a page.
Family secrets play a significant role in the narrative. Why do you think hidden family histories have such power over our sense of self?
I believe that our sense of self is silently built around us, almost like a hidden building structure, as we grow. It gives us a sense of security by knowing our place in the world, particularly in the closeness of the family environment. But hidden family secrets can shake that “structure”, sometimes almost like an earthquake, and force us to evaluate and repair the damage to make the “structure” safe and strong again. For Laramie Buchanan, the family secret wasn’t in itself “earth-shattering” but it added another layer of conflict and confusion to the complications she had begun to face in her early steps into adulthood.
Crescent Moon Ranch feels almost like a character itself. What inspired the ranch setting?
I was born and raised in Boulder County, Colorado, which is a mixture of mountains and plains. Having lived here my entire life, I’ve absorbed the essence of the exquisite area, and it has naturally emerged in the writing of each of my novels. I have also practiced yoga for several years. So I felt that Laramie needed a place of renewal and peace to allow herself to regain perspective and perhaps experience self-discovery. I have travelled up the mountain canyons many times and could visualize a place like the “Crescent Moon Ranch Yoga Retreat” tucked away on “Raspberry Road” and let my imagination run freely.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I have begun writing the next novel, which will be a crossover of the literary/ contemporary women’s fiction/ romance genres with a slight fantasy element. This book may be available in late 2026 or early 2027. I also write illustrated picture books in rhyme for children, ages 2-6, one of which may be published within the next year, as well.
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Laramie Buchanan is a likeable, relatable protagonist whose journey from emotional reflection to self-discovery is paved by seemingly insignificant moments that carry consequential impact.
Spirited Laramie Buchanan steps into her early twenties full of lifelong curiosity and enthusiasm. Living in a quiet unassuming family, Laramie had fueled her thirst for discovery at the library since age 6 – learning to prepare French cuisine, studying Greek and Roman art, developing a passion for yoga. But as a young adult, the smooth life shaped in Boulder, Colorado, is upended when painful life events rapidly converge. A first love, ghosted, a death in the family, heartbreak, missing pages in a journal, a crumbling shack, and unwitting perils leave her stunned and nearly broken.
Can she muster the strength and resilience to bear harsh realities on her own? Will she allow a silent handsome mystery man to enter her life at the same time?”Being Laramie Buchanan” is another book in the “Boulder Girl” series that began with the award-winning debut novel, “Boulder Girl, Remember Me When the Moon Hangs Low”. Like Clark’s previous novels, “Being Laramie Buchanan” is set in and around vibrant, scenic Boulder, Colorado and follows Laramie Buchanan’s first steps and missteps into early adulthood. This book, with its blend of romance and grief, will appeal to readers of contemporary romance, literary crossover fiction, book club readers, and fans of authors like Colleen Hoover, Taylor Jenkins Reid, and Nicholas Sparks.
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
Library in the Clouds: Children of the Blue Knight
Library in the Clouds: Children of the Blue Knight, by Hal Olsoe, is a fantasy adventure about Gwen and Landon, two children forced onto the road after their home is burned, their father is killed, and their mother is taken. What begins as a desperate journey to find her slowly opens into something larger, involving old powers, hidden knowledge, political betrayal, and a legendary library that feels half myth and half warning. At its heart, though, this is a story about siblings trying to survive when the world has asked far too much of them.
What I appreciated most was how grounded the book feels, even with its gods, kingdoms, sacred places, and ancient books. Olsoe does not rush the children from one grand fantasy set piece to the next. Instead, the story spends real time on hunger, sore horses, bad inns, dirty clothes, fear, and the small choices that keep people alive. It gives the fantasy genre some dirt under its fingernails. Gwen, especially, carries much of that weight. She’s brave, but not in an easy way. Her courage is practical, tired, and sometimes harsh. Landon brings a softer counterpoint, and I found their bond to be the emotional center of the book. They argue. They misunderstand each other. They keep going anyway.
The author’s worldbuilding is ambitious, and I could feel how much thought went into the gods, temples, social order, and history of the realm. The appendices reinforce that sense of a wider world beyond the immediate plot. The story leans on travel and explanation, and some sections move more slowly than readers expecting constant action might prefer. But that slower pace also allows the book to breathe. The danger feels earned because the quiet moments matter, too. I was especially drawn to the way the book treats knowledge. The library isn’t just a magical idea. It becomes a question: who gets answers, who controls them, and what happens when wisdom turns into a weapon? That stayed with me.
I would recommend Library in the Clouds to readers who enjoy character-driven fantasy adventure with medieval settings, sibling stories, and a sense of myth woven through everyday hardship. It will appeal most to readers who enjoy quests that are as much emotional as physical. This is not a light romp through a magical kingdom. It’s more like a long road taking you to beautiful places, frightening places, and worth following if you like fantasy that takes both its world and its young characters seriously.
Pages: 220 | ASIN : B0GZP9FP8Q
Being Laramie Buchanan
Being Laramie Buchanan follows twenty-three-year-old Laramie as she tries to step into adulthood while grief, first love, family secrets, and sudden danger keep pulling the ground from under her boots. After her mother’s death and the bruising return of Vick, the man who ghosted her and then reappears engaged to someone else, Laramie’s life begins to widen through her work at an art gallery, the discovery of a half-brother, and her repeated visits to Crescent Moon Ranch, where the quiet, guarded Chance Griffin becomes both rescuer and possibility.
I was drawn most to the way the novel treats becoming yourself as a messy, nonlinear act. Laramie is curious, capable, romantic, and sometimes maddeningly vulnerable, which makes her feel less like a heroine being polished for display and more like a young woman still learning where tenderness ends, and self-erasure begins. The book gives real weight to the ordinary textures of her world, flowers, yoga mats, gallery binders, cowboy boots, family kitchens, and those details build a kind of domestic gravity around the larger emotional turns.
What surprised me was how much the story refuses to stay in one emotional lane. It begins like a grief-and-heartbreak novel, then folds in family revelations, ranch-life renewal, suspense, violence, and a second-chance romance that feels deliberately slower and earthier than Laramie’s dazzling first love. Vick is the glittering wound; Chance is the weathered shelter. That contrast gives the book its strongest pulse, especially as Laramie begins to understand that being wanted is not the same as being cherished.
Readers who enjoy women’s fiction, contemporary romance, coming-of-age fiction, family drama, Western romance, and romantic suspense will find plenty to hold onto here. The book may appeal to fans of Robyn Carr’s small-town emotional landscapes, though Cynthia L. Clark gives this story a more Boulder-and-ranch sensibility, with art galleries, mountain roads, and country songs humming in the background. Being Laramie Buchanan is a tender and eventful novel about grief, grit, and the strange mercy of beginning again.
Pages: 278 | ISBN : 978-1977290427
The Atmosphere of War
Sawadika American Girl follows an American teenager in Vietnam War-era Bangkok, as music, first love, and shared sorrow help her find a place for grief, longing, and belonging. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Most people aren’t aware that during the Vietnam War, Thailand served as a major US military outpost, with over eight military bases scattered throughout the kingdom. In addition, thousands of American families lived in Bangkok with fathers who worked for the American Embassy, USAID, the CIA, the US Military, and as private contractors. All in direct or indirect support of the war effort. On top of that, in 1968, the year my novel takes place, nearly 5,000 GI’s were pouring into Bangkok each month on R&R, bringing their turmoil with them. This created a ‘little America’ that was complex and combustible and often at odds with Thai sensibilities and culture. Having grown up in Thailand, I understood these underlying tensions and knew it was fertile ground for a story. Making it a coming-of-age story with a 17-year-old female protagonist struck me as a powerful and unexpected way to shed light on this overlooked pocket of history.
Music feels central to Piper’s emotional life; how did you approach writing piano as both technique and feeling?
Music anchors Piper emotionally in a world that doesn’t make sense. The act of playing the piano becomes a private space where she works out her emotions. Her piano teacher is a Thai Prince who had studied with the great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau. Arrau’s technique was legendary for centering the body for maximum emotional expression. This is what the Prince teaches Piper. Her efforts to master this technique symbolize her struggle to come to terms with what is going on in her life.
The character of the Thai Prince who studied with Arrau is based on a piano teacher I had. There was a vibrant classical music scene in Bangkok at this time. Renowned musicians had Bangkok on their concert tours. This made sense because the Thai King was a talented jazz musician and composed his own music. And as a young girl, the Queen studied classical piano in Paris. I love that thread of the story because no one expects it, but it is absolutely true.
Jack and Piper’s relationship is brief but deeply affecting. What did you want their connection to reveal about war, loneliness, and belonging?
Life is always precious. But war, even the atmosphere of war, perverts that value, making life more precious and less precious at the same time. Piper and Jack experience this intensity from different vantage points, but each is tuned in to the sense of loneliness and dislocation that proximity to war brings. Most of the story unfolds during a single week, about the length of a soldier’s R&R. Under such conditions, time stretches. Three, four, or even five days together mean everything. That perception of time is woven into the fabric of their relationship.
How did you balance the intimate story of Piper’s coming of age with the larger historical forces surrounding her?
The bulk of the novel unfolds over a single week in 1968. That is on purpose. The assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy had happened, the Tet Offensive had occurred, and the casualty rate for soldiers and civilians in Vietnam was at a high point. All of that darkened the mood for Americans working in Bangkok. There were tensions with the Thai government. As a dependent, this increased the pressure for Piper to behave a certain way and not put a foot wrong. That kind of control is at odds with an individual’s ability to come of age, which is by definition about asserting one’s independence in a way that produces some kind of personal and intimate transformation. This put Piper on a collision course with the forces around her.
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One night, Piper ditches the American Teen Club to party with an older crowd. Sparks fly when she meets Jack, a 19-year-old GI on R&R from Vietnam. Defying the Army’s non-fraternization policy, they pledge to spend his leave together. As the hypocrisy of the war closes in on them, Jack’s name surfaces in a drug investigation and Piper discovers a disturbing truth about her father, forcing both to decide what they are willing to risk for a few more days together.
Sawadika American Girl is the story of a young American woman coming-of-age on the periphery of a brutal, unjust war.
Restorative Nature of the Outdoors
When the Forest Dreams follows a Polish American young woman who believes she may soon inherit her mother’s illness, as she decides to live her life to the fullest while she is able. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My love of modern retellings was the driving force behind writing my second novel. When the Forest Dreams is a contemporary reimagining of The Blue Castle, by L. M. Montgomery. The story stayed with me because of its powerful exploration of fear, freedom, and self-discovery. One of the central plot devices in the original is a life-altering medical diagnosis, and I was drawn to the emotional urgency that creates, the way the possibility of limited time forces a person to confront what they truly want from life. In the original novel, the diagnosis is angina pectoris. For my adaptation, I chose an illness that is more familiar to contemporary readers and one that can be difficult to diagnose, making the possibility of a misdiagnosis feel credible. For both Valancy and Emma, that mistaken diagnosis becomes the catalyst for transformation. Faced with what they believe may be their future, they begin to reclaim agency over their lives and choices. At its core, their journey is about recognizing that fear often keeps us confined long before circumstance does.
Emma moves from obedience into appetite and self-expression. Was her transformation something you planned from the start, or did it evolve as you wrote her?
This transformation is key to both the original and my retelling and has been part of the story from the beginning. The story is about confronting fear and recognizing how often fear holds us back without us even realizing it. As Alice Walker famously observed, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Once Emma breaks free of the things holding her back, she grows and matures, gaining an important understanding that it wasn’t the church or her parents who were keeping her down; she was the one holding herself back. Once she overcame that, things became clearer, and she found happiness.
Birdwatching and Central Park play a vivid role in the story. How did nature become such a grounding force for Emma’s inner life?
Nature is a grounding force for Emma because, in many ways, it is the one place in her life where she feels fully present and free. Much of Emma’s world feels muted and constrained, and I wanted birdwatching to be the one thing that belonged entirely to her—a source of wonder and escape, even within the limitations of her circumstances. I wanted to emphasize the restorative nature of the outdoors for mental and emotional well-being. For Emma, birdwatching becomes both a refuge and a way of understanding herself. Her connection deepens when she travels to the old-growth forests of Arkansas in search of the Ivory-billed woodpecker. In that wilderness, nature shifts from being a place of comfort to a catalyst for self-discovery and transformation.
What do you hope readers take away about duty, identity, and the possibility of reclaiming a life that feels predetermined?
Duty and identity often shape us long before we have the chance to question them, and I hope readers take away that a life that feels predetermined is never truly fixed. At its heart, this story is about courage, transformation, and the quiet reclamation of self—the idea that it is never too late to challenge expectations, redefine who you are, and choose a different path. Fear of change is often the greatest barrier between us and the lives we want, and I hope readers come away believing that growth and reinvention are always possible, no matter where they begin.
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What if the life you were meant to live was waiting just outside your door?
New York City, 2013. Emma Jablonski’s life is as dry as the day-old bread at her family’s bakery. Living with her parents and grandmother, she clings to the only escape she knows: a recurring dream that feels more real than her waking world. But when Emma’s eyes are open, she’s reminded of what’s out of reach—Jake, the enigmatic boy-next-door.
After a life-changing diagnosis forces her to face her fears, Emma decides it’s time to truly live—before it’s too late. With Jake and his vibrant friend Vee, she dives into a whirlwind of experiences: a fake engagement, dazzling parties, and an obsession with the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird that may not even exist.
But as her daring adventure is coming to an end, Emma begins to embrace a future she never thought possible. Dreams and reality aren’t supposed to mix . . . are they?
A modern retelling of L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, this gentle story of love, resilience, and the beauty of the unknown reminds us to seek joy in the most unexpected places.
When the Forest Dreams
When the Forest Dreams, by Andrea Ezerins, follows Emma Jablonski, a dutiful Polish American bakery daughter living in a cramped Upper East Side apartment, who believes she may be on the brink of inheriting her mother’s illness and decides she has only a little time to begin living before life closes around her for good. What unfolds is a romance of awakening: Emma slips from obedience into appetite, from silence into speech, and from mere survival into a more enchanted attentiveness to birds, trees, food, friendship, and love. The novel braids immigrant family pressure, illness anxiety, Central Park birding, and a slow-blooming relationship with Jake into a story that is at once tender and self-consciously dreamy.
I was taken most by how emotional the book is. Emma’s voice has an inward intensity that could have grown claustrophobic, but instead it becomes the novel’s chief pleasure: she is funny, pious, exasperated, lonely, sensuous, and faintly feral all at once. Her private vocabulary of birds gives the story an animating pulse; the white-eyed vireo, the kingfisher, the wood duck, even the idea of the elusive ivory-bill make the natural world feel less decorative than salvific. I liked that the book understands how deprivation can make beauty feel almost violent. A plush quilt, a duck on a pond, a hand on the shoulder, fresh parmesan, a cup of tea these are not trimmings here. They arrive with the force of revelation.
This isn’t a book embarrassed by sincerity, and that gives it a certain old-fashioned glow. The prose is lush, and the emotional beats are worn close to the skin, but I found that part of its charm; the book is unabashed about wanting transformation, romance, and a reprieve from beige existence. Veronica also gives the story a welcome texture, preventing it from collapsing into a sealed two-person fantasy. Beneath the romance, I felt a persuasive argument that a life can narrow by increments, and that reclaiming it may begin in something as humble as cooking for someone, naming what you love, or admitting that duty alone is a meager gospel.
I’d recommend When the Forest Dreams to readers who gravitate toward contemporary romance, women’s fiction, coming-of-age fiction, immigrant family drama, and nature-inflected romantic fiction. Especially readers who like introspective heroines and stories where emotional thaw matters as much as plot. It will likely appeal to people who love L. M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle or readers of Emily Henry who wouldn’t mind a more sheltered, more devotional, more bird-struck heroine; the author’s note makes that lineage explicit, and you can feel it in the book’s faith in reinvention.
Pages: 344 | ASIN : B0FWZXGTXC
