I AM THAT WRITER

Traci Wooden-Carlisle began writing poetry and short stories as soon as she was able to form words on paper. She used that as a way to creating worlds, as well as, to communicate with God. A native of Los Angeles, California, she grew up attending United Methodist Church under the leadership of a pastor whose heart was for youth. Once she finished college at she found herself at a loss. She felt caught in the transition between childhood and adulthood. She surrounded herself with saints and volunteered her services as a graphic artist. Through the early-morning prayer, all night Friday prayer and 3-day shut-ins she started on her journey toward her most desired gift, an intimate relationship with God.

Today, Mrs. Wooden Carlisle lives in San Diego with her husband, David Carlisle. She serves as a church Office Manager, teaches fitness classes, continues to praise the Lord through dance, and is currently writing her second book in her Christian-fiction series.

Stephenie born in Connecticut in 1973. Her family was settled in Phoenix by the time she was four. The unusual spelling of her name came from her father, Stephen ( + ie). Stephenie went to high school in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was awarded a National Merit Scholarship, and she used it to pay her way to Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. She majored in English. Stephenie met her husband, Pancho, when she was four, but they only saw each other weekly through church activities. When they finally got around to exchanging words, sixteen years after their first meeting, it only took nine months from the first "hello" to the wedding. They have been married for ten and a half years now, and have three boys. Gabe is eight, Seth is five, and Eli is three. Twilight is her very first novel. New Moon is the second book in the series, Eclipse the third. The fourth book Breaking Dawn was released in August 2008.

Always outspoken and passionate, author Omar Tyree has been on fire since this 2000 interview on my cable television program, "Perpetual Moe-tion." Of all the interviews I've conducted as a journalist, this continues to rank among my top five. Listen in as we discuss Tiger Woods, Terry McMillan, the Hip Hop generation, and his writing career.

National Bestseller One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter-a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.