Authors, Books, Gifts & More

Welcome back everybody. I am your host Sydney Little and you are watching Lit Happens With Sid on Fox 2 Detroit Live and we had a great day yesterday full of amazing authors, fellow book lovers and we're going to do the same thing today but one of our guests is actually doing something a little different but it's still book related so of course without further ado let's get into it. Lit Happens with Sid I would like to welcome back another fellow spooky lover Emily. Emily how are you? Good how are you? Thanks for having me again. Thank you so much for coming back and so you've been everywhere on my timeline. You were before but I feel like now it's picking up that like spooky algorithm and the way you come up with like suggestions I feel like it's almost every day that you have like something good to read. So right now what book number are you on? For the year yeah um 76 i think okay that's not bad yeah i'm not like a crazy i'm you know i've never read 100 books a year that's my goal this year for the first time ever but i i stick in like this 80 to 90 range usually yeah i'm close to my goal like i did a goal of like 50 at the beginning of the year and i was like oh you know i'm gonna surpass it but then when i started doing this show and i was like i don't have as much time as like i used to have so right now i'm at i think 41 so i was like okay i'm almost there yeah you'll get there you got plenty of time we got exactly we got a couple more months we're good but the way these months are flying i don't know and so emily tell us a little bit if people don't remember you from before what really draws you to anything thriller suspenseful or spooky um i think it was i got into it as i was trying to figure out what i liked to read i didn't really know what i wanted to read So I was reading everything, historical fiction, romance, fantasy, and something about the thriller horror genre has just hooked me. It's like the plot twist of it all, I think, the unexpectedness of it that I love. I don't like to know what's happening. I feel like some of the other genres for me personally get a little predictable, and I just, like, don't want that in any way, shape, or form. And a thriller or a horror book just knows how to turn a book on its head. and i think it does great because it makes you think more so than like oh my gosh romance and stuff the only thing you're really thinking about is like the outcome could kind of be either way but i feel like with thrillers and suspense it's like okay is something gonna like jump out is it gonna be this person is like really the killer or is it like a close friend or like you never know you never know what's gonna happen no my brain is constantly working when i read it so you sent over a couple of your favorite books and one of them is the place where they buried your heart and so tell us a little bit about what's in the book and what you liked about it so that one it's really underrated so if you have not read it please read it um it's basically a lot of people on the internet and myself also describe it as like monster house for adults so it's about this like big haunted creepy house that's eating children in this neighborhood and um yeah and it sounds kind of silly is what i because you know you think a monster house that's like a kids movie and it sounds silly but it is not a silly book it is dark it is scary it is it's a lot but it was one of my favorite like spooky books i read this year um i read it in september and it was like the perfect little like intro into my spooky season reading it was so good like so good love monster house i was just watching it the other day because i think they have it on like Peacock or something like that i think i think like i was like even though this is a kids movie this movie was a little freaky you know like even for adults i was kind of like they did a good job i know and i watched it the last time i watched it i was a kid i saw it in theaters and i never watched it since so then i read that book and everyone was saying oh it's monster house monster house i was like i should probably just like watch that movie again so i did and i was like huh maybe that like horror thing was in me the whole time you know yeah it was just slowly festering you know like slowly yeah and now here i am i know and it's funny when we go back and watch those movies because you don't realize how they have so many things in there or sayings that are really for adults like shrek has a ton of them like now let's get like when you're older and i'm like i love those type i call them like little goose eggs they just have like little thingies yep you appreciate it differently when you're an adult than you do when you're a kid exactly and so you also like um the house across the lake i feel like it's a lot of house things you know going on so give us a little synopsis of this one and even though you liked it what would you say would be a pro and a con okay this one's a good one for a pro and a con because this book i don't know how much you've seen of it on BookTalk or Instagram but it's a very um controversial book in the way that people either love it or they hate it there's no in between um it's about a woman and she's down on her luck she goes to this lake house her parents lake house i think um and she's there kind of just trying to get her life together and she starts watching this couple that lives in the house across the lake and she starts to see some things that raise some red flags with her um she starts to dig a little deeper and things go awry and it's a book where i don't like to tell people too much because it will shock you um the pro is if you are into like the spooky season reads this is going to be right up your alley um my jaw was on the floor i loved it was obsessed a con is um the twist doesn't work for a lot of people um and i don't i can't really say what the obviously what this is so like you really won't know if you like this book until you read it which is unfortunate i can't tell you based on why you like if you'll like it or not because i'll ruin the entire book for you so i feel like the way you're describing it kind of reminds me of i think it was the Alfred Hitchcock movie the man in the window or something in the window where it's like a guy across the street and i think he's got like a broken leg or something so he's like kind of stuck in the house and so he's like looking across in like his neighbor's house and like i think the neighbor's husband killed the lake something weird there's always something bad going on in the house next to you yeah and it's like and then you're just watching it's like okay like what do i do but then i feel like nothing great comes from anything dealing with a lake house i just don't it was a wild wild story it's one of my favorite riley sager books um but it's also a lot of people's least favorite riley sager books so it really just depends on what you like and yeah and riley is a great author when it comes to like different like thriller book and it really makes you think and it's plot twist after plot twist so i might have to add that one to my list to kind of compare his other books and it's like super good for fall i feel like because it is a little bit of a slower burn at the beginning i will say um to take the minute to kind of get into but like once he gets the ball rolling in that one it like spirals very quickly and it's highly entertaining i loved it and then your last one that you liked is a very popular one that is off the charts right now the witch by Freedom McCarney that's why i wanted to talk about it now i have not read this one yet i don't think i've read anything by her at least not yet so tell me a little bit about what's in this and what you liked about it so this one my i had two like really favorite things about it well three really Freedom McCarney has never done the whole spooky paranormal anything ever before so i really was like so curious and excited to see her kind of dive into that um and i think she did a great job with it um my favorite thing about it it had two timelines which i love a back and forth like past and present timeline so there was a past timeline in the 1600s there's this woman caroline she's accused of being a witch you know the whole witchy thing then there's a woman in present day Julia and she is now living in Caroline's old house and she believes that house is being haunted by this supposed witch um and yeah it's it it's really good i promise again i don't like to give too much away but um i loved it and the ending is one of my favorite endings Freida McFadden has ever written i thought she wrapped it up so well like not a plot hole in sight in my opinion some people beg to differ but i loved it i thought it got it was i loved it now what would you rate this out of five stars i gave it four and a half stars okay so that's really good then now would you like to see this in a movie or a tv show yes i could definitely probably it's i prefer a tv show for any book i read just because like get so much more out of it so i would say a tv show but you could do either one with it um yeah it was so good i've read like 20 ish 23 i think Freida McFadden books this one's like i think in my top five it's not my top three honestly it was that good yeah yeah because i've been seeing it like trending and people are like talking about like the cover and the storyline and everything else and i was like huh because i know like you said like she this is like the first time that she's ever done something like this so it's always interesting to see like especially if there's if it's their first time in that specific genre like how it's gonna turn out but i mean i think it's good that you gave it four out of five yeah i was nervous i was nervous because I'm like pretty excited for making me very hit or miss so I was just like you know I didn't go in with like crazy expectations and then I was like kind of blown out of the water when I read it I was like wow this was actually really good and I read it for another book club that I'm in and we're having our meeting tonight I'm really excited to talk about it with everybody you're like I got my points for you to talk about I'm ready and so are you currently reading anything spooky no actually I am in the middle of like a palate cleanser book I um just I this sounds so crazy but I like literally started having like scary dreams at night and I was like I think I need to like take a break I had one specific dream where my house was haunted it was terrible I was like I should probably read something else I'm just reading like a regular thriller there's nothing spooky about it it's more like murder mystery um yeah called The Party in the Woods by Fiona McPhillips okay big rave in the woods someone ends up going missing 20 years later they find his body and now everything comes back to the surface and they're trying to figure out what happened I'm currently reading like a middle school book because I'm like I needed like you said a little break because the last book I read was American Nightmare which was like a historical horror book which was very great by Kelly McWilliams and then I ended up then I was watching scary movies like Sinister 2 and all this stuff and i had a dream that like a ghost touched me and i actually felt it and i was like you know i think i just need a break for a little bit this is a little bit too yeah that's literally i've been watching a lot of scary movies too that's exactly where i am i was like and i have some really spooky books coming up because halloween like i tried to read spooky books at the end of october so i was like okay this is a good time to like take a breather until i go right back into it and so emily before i let you go is there anything else you would like to say to fellow spooky book lovers out there um just enjoy the spooky season like read all the spooky books all year long really but you know right now is prime time spooky season for me will go through like till thanksgiving so i'm like i got so much lined up i hope everyone else does too it's a great time to just snuggle up and read i love it well emily thank you so much for coming back on the show and giving us some awesome suggestions and for taking the time to chat with me and fellow book lovers out there we greatly appreciate it yeah not a problem thank you again and we're doing a different adult business that is doing great things for us fellow book lovers and I would like to welcome the owner Renee of the Bookmark Babes hi Renee, because I was familiar with your amazing work and I'm so happy that we were able to get you on the show to chat so tell us a little bit about who you are and what really made you get into creating such a unique bookmark okay so I'm a big reader my mom was one of those people that were reading to me since I was little making me go to the library um and so I've been reading forever and I've been known in my circle as like a book nerd like big time right and so a couple years ago I was reading and I used to like keep like receipts um I'm also um a compulsive shopper so I also keep yeah same here so I used to keep those receipts in my books and so one day I woke up I was like I am too fabulous to have receipts in in my book and um and so so I'm a book nerd I'm a shopper and I'm also a crafter so I had a paper cutting machine and so I was like I'm going to make me a bookmark that looks like me so I made something that looked like me and I was using it and other people were like oh that's cute oh thank you right and so I was like well I wonder if people would buy them so um I started putting the paper ones on Etsy and um I was doing very well there and then my machine broke and so I know I know it was horrible I cried right so my machine broke and I just said well you know what um they were taking like forever to make anyway um so i decided to get a manufacturer and so i got a manufacturer and the rest is history and i love them because they're like this metal enameled bookmark but they come in so many different just women you got women with braids you got a woman on a horse you got a church girl which i was like i still need to get that church girl and you just have like so many different representations of women and i think it's great especially in this book community and it's not just for you know like reading books you can use it for your planners for your journals and you sent me some and I told my co-worker I said I have an extra and I forgot it today and she got on my case I said girl you don't even know what they look like and you open your bookmark and so you know like the whole process that kind of went into creating the different representations that you have with the bookmarks so two things so the first thing is you know as a shopper like I would go out in the store and I'm the type of person like when it's Christmas time I got all the Santas out or November time I got all so I would get all those things and it was so hard to find something that looked like me so I was like I remember distinctly with my grandma that we would like sit down and we would paint the Santa's brown and I was like well I don't want to do that right so whatever I created I wanted to be representative of everyone so no one finds themselves painting Santa brown so that's number one and number two is all of the bookmarks are named and modeled after like women in my life so the church lady is her name is marianne and that's modeled um after my uh my great aunt aunt marianne who was um a church lady okay had the gloves usher in the church had the hat white suit you come in with just a wrinkle she'd be like you need to give jesus your best you need to give god your best okay you have to go home and change so they're modeled after every single person so the one that's walking with the dog that's my mom so in our neighborhood um people was like i've seen your mom walking with that dog again and so that's her Mary and Max so they're modeled after people in my life and i love that not only are you representing black women but also other women all women and especially the ones that are in your life and the church one as soon as i saw that bible it reminded me of my grandma because my grandma was one of them church ones too and she did not play you know and as she got older she was on every board in the church and it's like man okay i get you retired but jesus christ and so i just love like all the different you know versions they make great birthday gifts christmas is coming up great christmas gifts especially if you have a reader in your life and so what is maybe one lesson or one goal you have with your business um well I want to make sure everybody feels representative the best thing about this business when people dm and email and say like I feel seen so there was a one with bald she has a bald head and she was like well I don't have cancer but I have alopecia and it's like this is representative of me so that makes me feel like good it keeps me going and so that's a goal in my business to make everyone feel representative to see themselves and anything and everything that I create so it won't just um end with bookmarks but with everything that I do to be a beacon for diversity and it's great because I think it's a perfect pairing because if you you know people are reading books that maybe they see themselves in and then they can add that bookmark in addition to it or maybe they're reading a book if they don't see themselves in well at least they have a bookmark to kind of complement and take away you know from that and so Renee before I let you go is there anything else that you would like to say to fellow book lovers out there um especially with the holiday season you know coming around and tell everybody where they can find you so on instagram i'm at the bookmark babes and you can purchase one on rosemaryrenee.com and so the last thing i will leave with readers is thank you for supporting me and keep reading well renee thank you for what you're doing in this book community i'm gonna be grabbing some more so you'll you'll be seeing my name pop up very soon and so thank you for also taking the time to come and chat with me and fellow book lovers out there we greatly appreciate it thank you to the show daniel h wilson daniel i'm doing great sydney hey science fiction and a couple different novels and i feel like it's the perfect time to kind of dive into some of these especially with but before we kind of take a look of the work tell us a little bit about who you are and what really sparked your interest into becoming an author yeah i i'm daniel h wilson i uh i grew up on the Cherokee Reservation in Northeastern Oklahoma as a big science fiction fan basically as a kid I was a bookworm and I always wanted to write science fiction um and that didn't work out for me right away so I had to study science as a consolation prize so I did a whole PhD in robotics uh and then immediately took a left turn into writing science fiction and that's what I've been doing ever since so uh you know robots and native people that's that's pretty much my area that I like to write about yeah and those are like two dynamic duos i feel like you'll always have something to write about in in those two areas and so i want to talk about one of your books um which is robo apocalypse and it's very what's going on now because you know like we talk about how ai is advancing you even have like these big techs that are kind of like telling the government like whoa you kind of need to figure out a way to pump the brake because it's advancing too quick and you You know, they have like the robot, like the walking dog robot and the other robots that's walking around and kind of taking people's jobs when it comes to fast food and everything else. And so tell us a little bit about what is like a little synopsis of your book and kind of what was a big lesson you learned while writing this? Yeah. So Robo Apocalypse is exactly what it sounds like. And I don't want to say I told you so, but I told you so. So it's about a future where AI gets out of control. It's not Terminator is not trying to kill us all. It's something more complicated, but it's a world where all of the technology that we're used to, you know, autonomous vehicles, our phones, just, you know, everything has been automated. All the little mobile robots, everything that's in our environment, all of it stops working and turns against us. And, you know, I kind of wrote it meaning for it to be kind of hopeful because it's about people coming together to protect each other and to save the world. All different types of people, everybody with their back against the wall, you know, kind of that's when heroes are made. And so, you know, looking at it now, though, watching it happen for real, I think, you know, the number one thing I see is just we've got to have some kind of regulation. And you cannot just allow corporations to dictate how this technology is going to come into our lives and sort of the future that we're going to live in. You know, we should have some say in what that's going to be. It shouldn't just be like, you know, seven billionaires making these decisions. And so, you know, I think regulation is is key to avoiding the robo apocalypse. But, you know, we'll see what happens. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the movie I, Robot. I'm like, oh, God, we're all doomed. and so with this kind of book how long did you know like writing it and like because i'm pretty sure you had to do like extensive research when it came to telling this story yeah i mean this was a really weird situation so robopocalypse uh i had just finished my degree at carnegie mellon i was in pittsburgh for years and years building robots and so i wrote this a hundred pages of this thing and then it the pages leaked uh and it got bought as a book and it got bought as a movie and so i three days later i was in a room with steven spielberg and drew goddard and they were like okay so uh we love the hundred pages what's going on with the rest of the book uh and so it was my first novel that i've written i've written seven total now and uh including a sequel to robopocalypse but i was in a situation where i was sending my chapters to production designers and things like that now look the movie never came together but it was still a really amazing um kind of way to write a book you know because i would write a chapter and then i'd have a production designer call me and be like you weren't specific enough i'm trying to build this for real you know we've got pre-vis guys that are that are making these robots you know uh inside the computer so uh it was a crazy tight you know tight rope that i was walking for that but you know it came together and i think it's an awesome book yeah and then one of your latest releases is a hole in the sky which came out last year and another topic that has been going on especially for like the past couple of months where you know the the government is unleashing you know these classified ufo finding you know documents and everything and so tell us a little bit about what's in this book and what would you say how does it compare to everything that's going on now yeah i mean so the genesis of of uh wholeness guy was um because i write hard science fiction and i do have kind of a technical background i occasionally get opportunities to do really cool stuff and so i had been um working as a threat forecaster for the united states air force where they'll hire a science fiction author and pair them with an analyst and you get briefed on technologies that they're worried about and then you write a science fiction scenario so that people can just really understand how it could be a threat instead of just reading a white paper, you know, that's just got a bunch of specifications. And so as a result of doing threat forecasting work, I was interacting with the Air Force and it hit me they're serious about all of these UFOs and, you know, what they call UAPs. They've got people whose job it is out there tracking this stuff down. And when I realized that, you know, they had got out of their lane into my science fiction lane, I realized maybe it was time for me to write about that. And so I wrote Hole in the Sky. It's basically an alien invasion story, but it takes place in an Indian country, you know, where I'm from. It takes place in northeastern Oklahoma, near the ruins of the mound builder civilization in Spiro. And so I really got a chance to kind of combine some of the technical work I was doing with some of the cultural stuff that's important to me. Now, when you had the opportunity to work, you know, with the government afterwards and writing these books, did you have to get anything like put through for clearance, especially since you had like a little bit of experience? I know sometimes they're very tricky in particular with that. Yeah, they can be. But, you know, for this, since I was writing a story for them, it's not classified or anything like that. I mean, I went and presented it at the Aspen Security Conference, and that was actually where I met General Glenn Van Hurk, who at the time was in charge of NORAD and NORTHCOM. And he joked around. He was like, you know, my job's pretty important. I'm in charge of tracking Santa Claus. But in reality, his job is to push the button. You know, like he's in charge of tracking everything in near-Earth orbit and in charge of nuclear weapons. And so just seeing that face-to-face, it was very serious. um but you know i realized i'm writing science fiction i'm at this conference it's like it's like congress people and you know green berets and astronauts and stuff like that nobody's taking me serious okay like they all have very serious jobs but nobody's trying to wrap me up in red tape or anything yeah they're like no he's classified, bug his phone, you know keeping i wish i was that important that'd be pretty fun they'd ask me what i do and i'd be like i write science fiction and they'd already be walking off you know come with us and so out of all of your books you know you say you've written seven and you've touched on a lot of different topics especially with it being science fiction you can kind of see the direction that everything is going in nowadays what is one or a couple lessons that you would like readers to hopefully take away from your work sure well i mean look like on a on a light note um i wrote a book called how to survive a robot uprising and if you are in a fight with a robot i would suggest going for the sensors first because the cameras and stuff like that that's going to be the most sensitive uh on a more serious note um you know i've been thinking a lot about the difference between sort of like western technology um all the stuff that we're surrounded by and the stuff that we're really afraid of and and you know might kill us uh based on the headlines and sort of indigenous technology that is the kind of technology that, you know, indigenous people collect over thousands of years. And, you know, indigenous technology and knowledge is all about sustainability. It's about keeping people alive for a long period of time. And Western science is all about feeding exponential growth, right? We got to make more money. We got more people. And, you know, one of those two approaches is killing us. And so if you're a scientist, you know, if you're out there building technology, I would say don't make the assumption that you have to be following that Western model. You know, there are other reasons to do science. There's other ways to think about knowledge and technology. And I'd urge people to look past their blind spots and see, you know, why are you really doing this? Because, you know, humanity is not going to last forever if we keep on trying to feed exponential growth in that way. And so what's next for you in this literary journey like hopefully more books yeah more books um you know i i've written two books in the robopocalypse series and i'm really hoping to finish that trilogy and write the third one um we are in the process you know the it's not dead yet uh we're in the process of still trying to get it um on the screen and so i'm going to find out about that this year and i'm hopefully be diving right in but you know in the meantime Hole in the Sky is up for, it's shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards. And I'm excited about it. And I'm excited to keep writing short stories and just, you know, keep, keep putting creativity out into the world as long as, as long as I can do it. And before I let you go, is there anything else that you would like to say to fellow book lovers right now, especially since reading, you know, is making such a huge comeback? Yeah, I would just say, you know, don't forget to read. Don't forget to come out. I mean, it's amazing how accessible authors really are i mean if you email if you email me i'll respond you know sooner or later but uh it's it's really like we're all connected you know we're all part of the same thing if we have if we have that bond where we love to read authors love to read readers love to read so reach out you know don't be shy um you know we're not a computer algorithm we're not a giant book studio it's just it's usually just a person and their laptop and so you know we're right here awesome well daniel thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat with me and fellow book lovers and for all of your knowledge we greatly appreciate it thank you thanks for having me on i'd like to welcome amazing author under your belt but before we kind of take a look at that anybody who does not remember you from before a little bit about really sparked your interest into becoming an author yes so i am um a dmv washington dc um based author born and raised uh i write women's fiction with all types of sub genres so it could be romance urban fiction um historical like with whatever is my main focus is that my main characters would be women and it would just you know showcase like us and our um eternal struggles um and i uh what got me into writing was i i have been an avid uh reader since i was oh since my teen years teenage um years um so this has been it basically been part of my life reading and writing um so i decided to just go ahead and jump out you know take a leap with faith and here i am on this journey and you're doing great so your latest release is Uptown Love which is a love story that's based in New York and it follows Keisha and Malik and Keisha is like this independent woman you know she's built her fashion career and like that's her focus and Malik has been her best friend since middle school and it's secretly like you know they secretly love each other but they don't really know you know like how to say it because her guard is up and he's like I'm just waiting for you to stop playing games and so tell us a little bit about what kind of went into creating their love story yeah so uptown love was a collaboration for pages in the city it was a book event back in july um so when the founder of the event came to us with this idea i immediately he was like yes i wanted to sign off for it you got me we had to pick a borough in new york um so i pick harlem because i love harlem like in my mind i was i'm a harlem girl okay it was just a given um when i started brainstorming i wanted to do a friends to lovers that was my main trope it was just immediately i was like this gonna be a friends to lovers and i wanted to do a setting where it was the summertime a weekend um a fake date so all these ideas just came to me and i wanted to create you know my my fmc keisha to be someone who was guarded i i knew i wanted her to be a fashion designer don't ask me why i just i i just knew i i knew that's what i wanted her career to be um and i knew i wanted my mmc um to be someone who was her rock um i wanted to do a best friend i wanted malik to be that patient person that had been there with her whole life I just wanted to write a story where I wanted the readers to be like, Keisha, come on. You don't see it? This man is in love with you. I just wanted the readers to feel all those feelings and how something could be right in front of us. But we're so used to this person being there. um and also we have this doubt that we don't want to mess anything up that we kind of start self-sabotaging when it comes to it so i just i do assume when i did the outline and the brainstorm before i just do those things i wanted to include in this story and with keisha i loved her like how she was like her clothes like looking the best was like her guard that was another form of like you know having her guard up because as long as she looked good like that was her main focus not really how she felt you know like on the inside and i remember i tagged you in my story when i read like the one line and it was like aren't you tired of working so much and pushing people away i was like miss girl you did not have to read me like this and i was reading myself yes but i loved it and she made me so mad with that little ain't gonna give it away with that little incident at the wedding i'm like girl okay now i wouldn't be that slow it's like you what are we doing yes yes i wanted like oh i wanted keisha to like make people's blood boil like this man you you you telling us how this man been there like he was the one carrying your fabrics he was the one showing up in your fashion shows he was the one that would sit up there when you had your first heartbreak like girl get it together this man is telling you if i come as this date i'm not doing no playing i'm coming and i'm coming for real and you still even when you start feeling the feelings and once you start feeling the feelings like okay this feeling more than our friendship it's feeling like more she immediately self-sabotaged with the wedding scene like she you know she got scared and for the readers they feel it like she's getting scared and she's like okay i'm about to ruin this yep and i loved how like her best friend was like yo like you better quit playing before you lose him you know like and i get where she was coming from because you know like her last heartbreak it it made her feel like she was too much everything thing that she had going on it was like you're not worthy you know enough to be loved you got too much going on you're not worth it and Malik always showed up he stood ten toes down when it came to her like he didn't care middle of the night call he's there and i kind of get where she was coming from because of what she went through before she had her guard up and then she was also scared like okay what if we try this and it don't work then that mess up our friend like how could we go back you know to being best friends or you always being there for me so i kind of get she didn't want to mess up her support system especially after everything that she went through but it's like if you don't try it you know you put you like just lay it out on the table and i think a lot of times communication is like a big thing where people don't communicate and they don't know how to communicate and if she can just say hey i do like you i do have feelings for you i have since middle school but these are these are my flags of what i'm scared about don't let him pay for somebody else's mistakes yes yes and we like i know what for me personal experience because when i write these um stories every female character is like a piece of me in the story is the experience i went through um and i had a habit of that like a habit of you know one waiting for the other shoe to drop like i just knew it's coming i'm breaking myself for it i'm not even living in a moment and enjoying this because i'm so busy waiting for the other shoe to drop and also basically holding like what people did to me in the past you know holding that against this person like are you saying that but i done heard that 50,000 times yeah you start putting the timeline like all right let me see i'll give you another week yes listen like me and our friends we said three months yep that's what you see if if like three months is the make it break if it make it past three months then yeah this person might be good to go so we just counting down counting down so i just wanted like and it's real life like that's how we all do male or female like we had to have especially when we um and that's not more so like we know with life you're going to have heartbreak and stuff not going to go right. But I think it's us having the expectations and us holding on to the potential We saw this type of future with this person and it don't pan out. And then this person, her ex, him telling her you're too much and him being intimidated by her career um we take that as a personal and i think of it as it's that person's problem when we gotta start thinking about it like that's the you problem and that's for you in this literary world like is there are you currently working on another book are you kind of on a hiatus right now and then maybe there'll be a book that comes down the line yeah so right now i have one more release for 2026, which will be my holiday collection. And it's coming with three stories. So I'll have a Thanksgiving story, a Christmas story, and a New Year's story. So it's a holiday collection that will be dropping in November. November the 20th. I want to do it right around Thanksgiving. And then after that, I'll be on a little break. Yeah. Which is always good to have those moments to breathe. Yes. yes i'll be on a little break it's not that long a little short break because i really learned that i can't take a long break because my mind starts what like my mind be going 100 miles i'm like okay i'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs and i need to be outlining something i could be working on a chapter so my break never that long but i'm gonna try to give me a month but we're gonna see out that work usually i only last like two weeks and then it's like yeah yeah out and about then you like get ideas and stuff especially about like the holiday season you see so many different examples and you'd be like oh yeah okay that could be a book this could be a book you know you just start writing down notes and the next thing you know you got a whole a whole thing yes yes and then you know the holiday season like you get with your friends like i get with my friends and stuff and we do catch up and i'm hearing stories like hold on i'm gonna have to put this in a book now hold on let me get my phone out to write this in the notes to give you a voice memo you say what happened he did what well as always it is great taking the time to come and chat with you and i can't wait to see your next releases come out and then hopefully i'll have you back before you go on your break so thank you so much for coming to chat with me book lovers we greatly appreciate it thank you so much for having me it is always a pleasure as we are in spooky season i would like to welcome in a wonderful psychological thriller author Talise Nicole Talise how are you hey i'm good how are you i'm doing great so you have quite a couple books under your belt that really get you thinking when it comes to love a little bit of killings you know here and there you know the psychological aspect of it so before we kind of take a look at your work tell us a little bit about who you are where you're from and what really sparked your interest into becoming an author and specifically a psychological horror author okay okay yeah um well i'm Talise Nicole i am an author of psychological thrillers i'm from Lansing Michigan but i um live in Dallas Texas now so uh what inspired me to write thrillers um i love the mystery of not knowing something and trying to figure it all out i don't know i just i've been a puzzle girl since i was little um i just love suspense and being scared and and uncertainty so i like to write it and i think that topic and genre it gets you like you said it gets your brain going and i feel like it kind of opens another side of your brain that we don't typically use in everyday life which i think is why a lot of people go to like fiction or psychological thrillers or horrors because it really makes you think it kind of plays detective a little bit because you're slowly trying to piece you know different things together and sometimes you're right sometimes you're not because it's plot twist after plot twist right right that's exactly what i go for with now are you a reader as well yes i am now are you a psychological thriller reader or do you kind of read all genres to get different ideas for your books, I'm definitely a mood reader um, but thrillers, psychological thrillers have my heart, but yeah I'm definitely a mood reader, um I love romance too sometimes like if I'm in that mood, you know Valentine's Day probably, no other than that I'm killing people like all the other days, you know that's what we're doing 364, we're killing people and so like I said, you have quite a few different books that is under your belt, but one of the books that I wanted to talk about, um was a beautiful disaster, and so for anyone that's not familiar with this book, give us a little synopsis, um of this story and what would you say was the best part about writing this? Okay, um well the book is about a lady who has experienced heartbreak after heartbreak um she gets sick of it and the men who break her heart end up missing and there's a detective that is on the case looking for one of the missing men and he runs into her, he runs into Nicole and they kind of fall in love, so now he's investigating and he's not sure who she is, what he got into, um and she has these plants that look very suspicious and very healthy and green looking, he's like why are they so healthy, right now what was the motivation behind the story was like there any like little, maybe little tidbits some real life experiences, you know, not the weird parts but you know that kind of inspired this storyline, oh yes yes definitely, um I originally wrote this as a short story and um I was upset I was very upset with with somebody that I was dealing with and and it just it came from there it was just a bunch of rage, it was a bunch of just hurt I was pouring my heart out and then I got mad I was like no forget that so I just went took that twist and turned it into thriller like thank you for the motivation yep that's exactly what I said and so even though this is a psychological thriller you know false story what would you say is maybe one lesson that you would like readers to take away if not just from this book from any of your other books um I want readers to when they hear my name or know that I'm writing something i want them to expect the unexpected i want them to come in with an open mind and try to understand why people do the things that they do you know morally gray i always say this is my favorite color um it's always a motive behind somebody's action um whether it's intentional or not intentional so i like to explore the what if so just expect that and expect crazy twists and turns yeah because people always know what they're doing they they try to act innocent or they try to act like oh my god i think you knew yep and so when the consequences come fafo i mean to each right right it's up to least as we are in spooky season um even though i celebrate spooky season year round no matter what the read is the movies whatever would you have any final words for fellow book lovers for spooky season just expect the unexpected just sleep with both eyes open maybe a little nightlight you know here and there right right and so talisa before i let you go is there um are you working on anything else like can readers expect more of you somewhere down the line oh yeah definitely i'm working on something right now it's another thriller um expect more thrillers expect more thrillers, expect more plot twists and twists and turns and um keep being scared yeah well you'll always have a real reader out of me because i like i said i read thriller and anything spooky year round so Zalise, thank you for what you're doing in the book community and for taking the time to come and chat with me and fellow book lovers out there we greatly appreciate it thank you, thanks for having me so as i told you we had a wonderful day full of amazing authors And then that bookmark company, which was pretty cool when she sent it in the mail, I felt like it was Christmas day. So I highly recommend if you have a reader in your life or maybe you're a reader or you have like planners that you really like to do, you're into journaling. I highly recommend going on there, picking out a couple. They're perfect for stocking stuffers or anything like maybe, maybe not little kids, but maybe teens and up. I highly recommend it. And then you guys know the best way to get in contact with me is by scanning the QR code, which will take you to my email, Instagram, or Facebook. So email, I recommend if you are an author and want me, you have a pitch or you kind of want me to take a look at your book, I highly recommend whether it's like EPUB or PDF so then that way I can just easily slide it onto my Kindle. And then I also have Facebook where I pretty much use that to post individual interviews in case you happen to miss it during the show. and then instagram where i'm a little bit more active where i have interview clips of course where i tag the authors in case maybe you want to reach out to them um links for their books in case you missed it on the show and then also other book recommendations from other book people in the community and then any reviews and recommendations that i have from books that i am currently reading or have read before so highly recommend just scanning the qr code that is the best way to get in touch with me and so that is going to do it for this edition of Lit Happens with Sid but don't we will be back next weekend for much much more an entire day probably longer than an hour full of interviews that are lined up and this is the perfect season really it's great to be reading all year round but this is the perfect time because the weather get colder it's really not much to do outside so what's better than grabbing your favorite drink and then grabbing a book so I highly and even with your kids make it like a fun little challenge in case you I don't want to say get snowed in because we don't want to mention that yet but it's Michigan you never know so that is going to do it for us of this edition of Lit Happens with Sid and I will catch you guys next weekend for more books and more fun until then happy reading