Blog Archives
Quiet Recognition
The Worry Whisper follows a young girl who is anxious about reading aloud in class, and with the help of her little brother and grandmother, she learns how to manage her feelings. When did you first imagine the “worry whisper” as a bird?
The idea of the “worry whisper” as a bird came to me quite naturally—and, in many ways, from my own childhood.
I was an anxious child. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I remember how it showed up in small, everyday moments. I would overcompensate in ways that felt automatic—talking really fast when I was nervous, or doodling when what I actually wanted was to be quiet and still. There was always this subtle hum in the background, something I couldn’t quite name but could definitely feel.
When I began shaping the story, I wanted to give that feeling a form—something a child could see and relate to without fear. A bird felt right. It can appear unexpectedly, perch close by, and make itself heard in different ways—sometimes softly, sometimes more insistently. That’s what worry felt like to me. Present, persistent, but not something that needed to be chased away.
More than anything, I wanted children to understand that worry isn’t something to silence or fight. It’s something to notice, to understand, and to gently learn how to live alongside. The “worry whisper” as a bird wasn’t a single moment of invention—it was a quiet recognition of something I had known all along.
What inspired you to reframe worry as something to listen to rather than fight?
That shift came from both lived experience and reflection over time.
For a long time, I treated worry as something to get rid of—as if the goal was to silence it completely. But the more I paid attention, the more I realized that fighting it often made it louder. It would show up in different ways—restlessness, overthinking, that urge to rush through things or fill the silence. The resistance didn’t quiet it; it amplified it.
Over time, I began to see worry differently—not as an enemy, but as a signal. Something in me was asking for attention, for care, for a pause. When I stopped trying to push it away and instead listened, even briefly, it softened. Not because it disappeared, but because it felt acknowledged.
That perspective is what shaped The Worry Whisper. I wanted children to learn early what many of us figure out much later—that emotions don’t need to be battled to be managed. When we listen, we create space. And in that space, we regain a sense of steadiness and choice.
Why was it important that Aarya didn’t “defeat” her fear by the end?
It was important to me that Aarya didn’t “defeat” her fear because that’s not how emotions actually work—especially not for children.
Fear doesn’t disappear in a single moment of courage. It comes and goes. It changes shape. And sometimes, it shows up again right when we think we’ve moved past it. I wanted the story to reflect that reality in a gentle, honest way.
Growing up, I often felt like I was supposed to “get over” my anxiety—to be braver, quieter, more in control. But what I really needed wasn’t to defeat those feelings; it was to understand them. To know that I could feel nervous and still move forward. That both could exist at the same time.
With Aarya, the goal wasn’t to eliminate fear, but to change her relationship with it. She learns to notice it, to listen to it, and to not let it decide what she can or cannot do. That felt like a more meaningful kind of strength—one that children can return to again and again, long after the story ends.
What conversations do you hope this book sparks between children and adults?
I hope The Worry Whisper opens the door to quieter, more honest conversations—ones that don’t rush to fix, but instead make space to understand.
For children, I hope it gives them language for what they’re feeling. That they can say, “I think my worry whisper is talking,” instead of shutting down or acting out. And for adults, I hope it’s a gentle reminder to pause and listen—not just to the words, but to what sits underneath them.
I also hope it shifts the dynamic from problem-solving to connection. Instead of “How do we make this go away?” the conversation becomes “What is this feeling trying to tell us?” or “What might help you feel a little steadier right now?” Those are very different starting points.
And perhaps most importantly, I hope it normalizes these experiences. That a child sees they’re not alone in feeling this way, and an adult recognizes that what looks like resistance or avoidance might actually be a child asking for support—just not in words they’ve learned yet.
If the book can help even one family move from reacting to understanding, from fixing to listening, it has done what I hoped it would do.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Unscripted Growth | Instagram | Amazon
In The Worry Whisper, eight-year-old Aarya Bloom feels a quiet flutter in her chest — like a small bird tapping gently from inside. Tomorrow, she must read aloud in class. She loves stories. She loves words. But what if she makes a mistake? What if her voice disappears?
With the help of her playful little brother Kiyan and the gentle wisdom of Grandma Bloom, Aarya learns that worries aren’t enemies to fight — they are whispers reminding us that something matters.
Through lyrical storytelling, warm family moments, and beautifully relatable emotions, this heartfelt picture book helps children:
Understand what anxiety feels like in their bodies
Develop emotional awareness and self-compassion
Build confidence in speaking and trying new things
Practice calming techniques through reflection and imagination
Perfect for children ages 4–8, The Worry Whisper is ideal for:
Kids who struggle with performance anxiety or school fears
Parents looking to support emotional regulation
Classrooms teaching social-emotional learning (SEL)
Bedtime conversations about courage and resilience
Part of The Bloom Series, this story gently reminds young readers — and the adults who love them — that bravery isn’t the absence of fear. It’s learning to listen kindly… and still fly.
Includes reflective questions for children and a thoughtful message for adults to continue the conversation beyond the final page.
Because sometimes, a whisper can’t outshout a good laugh.
Mijo: We Bend, Not Break
Mijo: We Bend, Not Break opens as a multigenerational story about inherited silence, migration, and the long, uneven labor of becoming a different kind of man. Author Francisco Castillo begins in drought-stricken Michoacán with Joaquín, a boy starved for tenderness, then follows him across the border into California, through field work, fear, fatherhood, and the psychic aftershocks of survival. The book keeps widening from there, tracing how masculinity, trauma, family memory, and healing move from one generation to the next without ever feeling schematic. What stayed with me most was its belief that resilience is not hardness, but the stubborn decision to remain reachable.
What I admired first was the book’s emotional architecture. Castillo understands that generational damage rarely announces itself with grand speeches; it shows up in the hand that doesn’t quite reach back, the hug withheld, the child who learns to read distance as weather. Joaquín is drawn with real pity but not indulgence, and Antonia emerges as more than a counterweight to him: she is flint, witness, and moral pressure. I felt the novel’s strongest current in the scenes where love exists before the characters know how to perform it. That gives the book an ache that feels earned rather than manufactured.
I also liked that the prose aims higher than plain utility. At times it’s lush, but more often it lands on sharp, memorable images: labor as a language, silence as inheritance, tenderness as something nearly unbearable to touch. There are moments when the sentiment edges close to overflow, yet the book repeatedly recovers because its core insight is so recognizable: people can mistake emotional deprivation for strength, then spend a lifetime trying to unlearn the error. By the end, I felt I had read not just an immigrant family story, but a study in repair, crooked, incomplete, and therefore convincing.
I would recommend this to readers of family saga, immigrant fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, and trauma-and-healing narratives. It will likely speak to readers who respond to the intergenerational emotional intelligence of Sandra Cisneros or the intimate family gravitas of The House on Mango Street, though Castillo is writing in a broader, more openly restorative register. This is a book for readers who can bear tenderness without mistaking it for softness. Its deepest argument is simple and durable: what we inherit may wound us, but it does not get the last word.
Pages: 216 | ASIN : B0FT6N57CG
Complicated Relationship
Everything We Try to Hold follows a successful woman looking back across decades of family history, friendship, and loss, as buried secrets resurface, revealing how love, grief, and memory shape the lives we try to hold together. What was the inspiration for your story?
The inspiration for our story is taken from an actual event that Mikey discovered many years later. A complicated relationship! Using this as our basis, we layered it with some fictional characters and family situations.
The narration often feels conversational, almost confessional. How did you develop Caroline’s voice?
We wanted Caroline to speak openly to the reader, as a woman relating her personal trials and tribulations to a friend.
Caroline evolves professionally and personally over time. How does her creative work connect to her emotional journey?
As we developed Caroline’s journey, we compiled a comprehensive list of events drawn from our own and those we observed in our travels. Part of Caroline’s creative journey was taken from a nonfiction book I authored, and Mikey edited, detailing my several creative careers that produced my body of work. It detailed years of hard work with struggle and disappointment.
What do you hope readers feel after finishing the novel?
In the most difficult and demanding life stories, one can find happiness if you stay true to yourself.
“Collaboration is like carbonation for fresh ideas.” — Unknown
The creation of Everything We Try to Hold was borne out of a creative collaboration between two friends. My long relationship with Mikey (Michael) is based on an honest exchange of ideas without egos.
The Power of Secrets
In ILLEGITIMATE, you share with readers your personal journey to find truth, identity, and peace as you search for your biological father and your family’s ties to the Lebensborn program in Nazi Germany. What inspired you to share your story with others?
This is a question I had to ask myself for three years before I decided to put pen to paper. After all, some of my aunts and my uncle were still alive and well, and this is certainly not a happy subject to chit-chat about. I was transparent with them in my interest to write a book and received minimal pushback from only one of my cousins. My aunt certainly helped when she emphatically stated, “I want the truth to be known!” That is the power of secrets: they always want to be revealed.
You write powerfully about feeling unwanted and unclaimed as a child. How did you approach writing those early emotional experiences?
I realized a long time ago that good things can come out of bad experiences, and I believe my sense of independence and perseverance was developed out of a desperate desire for inner joy. It has to be innate, not provided by others.
Did you feel a sense of responsibility in telling this part of history through your family’s experience?
Most certainly! I suppose that’s why it took almost ten years of researching, writing, rewriting, rewriting, rewriting… I needed for the story to roll easily off my tongue as I read it to myself. Any pauses or stops in a paragraph required scrutiny, hence all the revisions. It paid off; my family has been very supportive and complimentary, even those who were cast in a not-so-pleasant light.
Do you feel a sense of closure, or is this an ongoing process?
I feel a type of closure. I understand and can empathize with my mother and her choices, as well as my father, who had his options taken away from him, my aunt, and her strength to accept herself for what she was, the additional quirks of other family members, and all things that went undiscussed. The most amazing closure came from my late-in-life relationship with my father. I am very much like him, and that was amazing, because I had never found any similarities with my mother. It was a DNA confirmation! I can certainly understand why adoptees feel the need to find their biological parent(s). My one huge regret is that my mother passed away in 2013, and I never had a chance to tell her I now understood her choices—how healing that would have been for both of us!
Author Links: Goodreads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Determined to chase her dreams, Susi joins a dance troupe, leaving her infant daughter, Maddie, in the care of her mother, Katharina—a resilient woman who has already raised six children, three with different fathers. Six years later, Susi returns, now engaged to an American Army officer. Maddie is taken from her grandmother and adopted to be raised in America.
As Maddie grows, she wrestles with her fractured identity and, decades later, finds her way back to her German roots. Just before her 60th birthday, a shocking confession from her Aunt Sieglinde shatters everything she thought she knew: her beloved grandmother once participated in a Nazi eugenics program that encouraged “racially correct” unions to produce children for Hitler’s vision.
That revelation ignites Maddie’s quest to uncover the truth about her own father—a journey that intertwines generations, secrets, and the unyielding need to belong.
ILLEGITIMATE is the true story of two women who had to uncover the identities of their fathers in order to truly understand themselves.
ILLEGITIMATE: A Daughter’s Search for Truth in the Shadow of Lebensborn
Illegitimate is a memoir about Maddie Lock’s search for her biological father and her family’s buried ties to the Lebensborn program in Nazi Germany. What starts as one shocking family confession turns into a long, personal hunt for truth, identity, and some kind of peace. Lock moves between childhood memory, family research, wartime history, and late-life discovery as she pieces together how silence, shame, and war shaped several generations of her family. This is a book about wanting to know where you come from, and what that knowledge can cost.
I found the writing vivid and deeply felt. Lock has a gift for small details that stick in the mind. A garden, a window, a stairwell, a face, a silence at the table. Those moments give the memoir real heart. The book takes its time in certain passages. Readers will appreciate that because it lets the emotional weight really sink in and keeps readers engaged. What hit me hardest was the way she writes about being a child who feels unwanted and unclaimed. That ache feels real. It’s not dressed up or forced. It just sits there and hurts, and that honesty gave the book a lot of power for me.
What I admired most was the book’s moral seriousness. Lock does not chase family truth for drama. She chases it because not knowing has shaped her whole life. I liked that the memoir does not flatten people into heroes or villains. Her mother, grandmother, father, and aunt all come through as messy, wounded, limited human beings. That made the book stronger and sadder. I also think the book handles its big ideas well. It asks hard questions about shame, belonging, inheritance, and whether truth heals or just rips old wounds back open. For me, the answer here is both. That tension gives the memoir its bite. It made me feel angry, tender, and reflective all at once.
I would recommend Illegitimate to readers who like memoirs that mix personal history with larger historical fallout, especially books about family secrets, postwar identity, and the long shadow of trauma. I would also hand it to anyone who has ever felt cut off from their own story. I came away moved, unsettled, and grateful that Lock wrote it. This isn’t a light read, but it’s a worthwhile one.
Pages: 269 | ASIN : B0G5PD7LX8
There’s a Rhinoceros in My House
There’s a Rhinoceros in My House! is a playful picture book built around a wonderfully simple misunderstanding. A sleepy mom, stumbling through the house without her glasses, becomes convinced a rhinoceros has invaded the kitchen, only to discover that the supposed beast is really her husband, noisily making breakfast, flipping pancakes, vacuuming the rug, and clattering through the morning routine. The book turns that small domestic mix-up into a comic little adventure, then lands on a family-table ending that feels affectionate rather than merely punchline-driven.
What I liked most is how fully the book commits to its premise. It doesn’t overcomplicate anything. Instead, it trusts the delicious absurdity of a half-awake mind trying to make sense of thuds, crashes, and splashes. That trust pays off. The repeated rhythm of Mom blinking, squinting, and misreading the chaos gives the story a satisfying bounce, and the reveal works because the book has already made the rhinoceros feel real enough for a child to believe in it for a few pages. The humor is warm. The joke is rooted in family life, in the strange exaggerations that happen when we’re tired, annoyed, or not yet fully in the day.
I especially appreciated how the language leaves room for the wonderful illustrations to carry part of the joke. The book’s ideas are gentle and young readers will be able to recognize them. Every page is filled with colorful, lively artwork that gives the story its energy, with expressive scenes and playful visual details that make the household chaos feel funny, inviting, and easy for children to follow. I especially liked the character sketches at the end, which offer a fun glimpse into how the artwork was created. They add an extra layer of charm to the book, and I think children will love trying to draw the characters on their own. It’s a lovely touch that could easily inspire budding young artists.
I came away from this story smiling. It’s an easy book to imagine reading aloud, especially with relish for the sound effects and the slow, teasing build toward recognition. In the end, what stayed with me wasn’t just the joke of the rhinoceros, but the fondness underneath it, that sense of a family translating everyday racket into story. I’d recommend this picture book to young children who love silly visual misdirection, for families who enjoy read-alouds with a theatrical streak, and for anyone partial to picture books that turn ordinary mornings into something slightly magical.
Pages: 25 | ASIN : B0GNJ3CZ63
Resilient Couple
Albert DiNardo: The Last DiNardo is the story of a family that immigrated to Colorado from Italy and built a successful business despite facing many hardships along the way. What first inspired you to tell the story of the DiNardo family?
I was first inspired to write the story after meeting Albert DiNardo at his store in Canon City, Colorado. My wife had discovered the store on a recent trip and hit it off with the owner, Albert, and his companion, Heidi Willard. She told me about meeting this resilient couple, and I was intrigued by their story.
What surprised you most while researching immigrant life in Colorado during that period?
I was most surprised by two things I discovered while researching this story. The level of corruption at the Colorado state government in the 1920s, and also the lack of humanity at the federal government level in passing the Johnson-Reed Act limiting Italian immigration so severely. Second, I was inspired by the resilience and stubbornness of the parents of Albert DiNardo. They were really remarkable people.
The twins, Albert and Mario, grow into very different personalities. How did their contrasting strengths shape the family business?
Albert and Mario were very different in almost every aspect of their business life. Albert did the heavy lifting, the nuts and bolts of the business. Every day grinding was what he lived for and continues to live for. Mario, on the other hand, despised hard work. However, he did like the aspects of running the store and talking to customers, basking in the glow of hard work he was assumed to take part in. He did grind in his own way as long as it was indoors, out of the weather, and in the comfort of a heated and air-conditioned building.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your book?
I would hope readers would be as inspired as I was learning about these people and their lives. The absolute refusal to give up or fall victim to circumstances. They pressed on no matter what bad luck brought them, refusing to stop living for the better day that would come if they kept trying. Their belief in each other was inspiring to me.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Quiet Sacrifice
Family follows a grieving woman who stumbles upon a family secret when she attempts to trace threatening letters back to their mysterious sender. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
There is a very old, soft leather wallet from before the Civil War that has been handed down in my family. In it are letters. They outline one man’s attempt to hold on to our family’s good reputation when his brother‑in‑law and sister allegedly stole their father’s cash, leaving many debts. This was a family matter—no charges made in a court of law, but a conviction made in the court of public opinion. The man’s sister blamed him. The brother‑in‑law and sister left for Ohio.
The man stayed. He worked for years to pay off every one of those debts and avoid selling his father’s farm in a depressed market. When prices finally rebounded, he did sell it, then sent money to his brothers—and yes, to his sister.
That mixture of duty, hurt, and quiet sacrifice stayed with me. Family is my way of exploring what happens when secrets, loyalty, and public reputation collide in another time and place.
Were there any twists or revelations that changed during the writing process?
Yes. I’ve worked with this story for years, so there have been more changes than I can easily count. But that’s part of what I enjoy about writing. I originally drafted more than twenty books in this series just for my own pleasure, and now I’m editing them so I can share them with others. Each book goes through several iterations as the characters and their choices become clearer to me.
The revelation I enjoyed most in Family was the carriage scene where the older, married people are sharing their most embarrassing courting stories. Those moments arrived quite naturally on the page—and yes, both stories are drawn from my own experience. I laughed while I wrote them.
Faith is woven naturally into the characters’ lives rather than presented as a simple solution to problems. Why was that approach important to you?
I chose to write about 1619 London because faith was central to life then. For many people, it was simply the air they breathed. I wanted to give readers a chance to think about how people can live with faith in that kind of world—sometimes through short, sincere prayers in the moment, sometimes through wrestling with God rather than receiving quick, tidy answers.
My hope is to gently encourage readers who are inclined toward faith to consider weaving it into their ordinary days—not because I think they “should,” that’s between them and God, but because of the comfort and peace it often brings. I admire people who can quote chapter and verse. I can’t. And I don’t believe the insight and comfort I gain from a passage is always the same as what someone else might take from it. That’s part of the beauty for me.
On my website I offer a free 35‑page booklet titled Living With Faith… When You Feel… It looks at feelings many of us experience at one time or another—being overwhelmed, afraid of the future, and discouraged. It’s not a project or a checklist; it’s meant to be a quiet companion. You choose a verse that might speak to how you’re feeling and let it sit with you. No memorizing. No turning it into another task in an already busy life. Put it near your coffee maker or toothbrush, let your eyes land on it, and allow its meaning to stretch forward to greet you where you are on your journey.
That’s the kind of faith I wanted to reflect in Family: honest, present, sometimes questioning, always entwined with real life.
What is the next book you are working on? When can readers expect to see it released?
Thankless Child, book three in the On The Wings Of Angels series, is set in 1619 London. Elizabeth Bowmar’s life is shattered when she tries to help an old friend. Forced into an uneasy alliance, she must unravel a conspiracy of greed and betrayal to save herself and expose the corruption strangling the city.
Thankless Child is currently in edit and will be released in a few months. I’m excited to bring readers back into Elizabeth’s world as she faces new dangers and deeper questions of justice, loyalty, and faith.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Website | Amazon
Amidst the shadows of 1619 London, Elizabeth Bowmar, a young midwife devoted to helping others, confronts an unseen menace that strikes at the heart of her own household. Whispers in darkened doorways, missing letters, and subtle threats all point to a danger that knows her routines, her loyalties, and her weaknesses far too well.
As conspiracy and fear tighten around her family, Elizabeth must trace the threat back to its source before it destroys the people she loves—and the hard‑won future she is only beginning to claim. Her world may be 1619, with cobbled streets and dim candlelight, but her fight for independence and the right to choose her own path is timeless.
When every choice seems to carry a cost, Elizabeth must decide whom to trust, how fiercely to protect her family, and how far faith can carry her when those closest to her may be hiding the deepest secrets.
Set against a richly drawn London on the brink of upheaval, Family weaves together mystery, faith, and love as Elizabeth uncovers a plot that could shatter more than her home. Step into a world where history unfolds, faith prevails, and love stirs in this gripping Christian historical mystery, Book Two of the On the Wings of Angels series.
Family will appeal to readers who enjoy the rich historical atmosphere and slow‑building romance of Julie Klassen and the faith‑forward intrigue of Roseanna M. White.
