FEATURED AUTHOR: Anjuelle Floyd

Anjuelle Floyd, author of Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident, June 2007, Three Muses Press, received her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, Port Townsend, Washington.

A graduate of Duke University, she received her MA in Counseling Psychology from The California Institute of Integral Studies, she has also studied at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, CA.

Anjuelle has practiced the art of Process Painting for the last decade.

A wife and mother of 25 years, Anjuelle is also a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.

She facilitates writing groups and provides individual consultation of fiction projects.


What would you like your readers to take away from your book?
That God is relationship.

And after prayer and devotion to God the most important aspect of our lives are the relationships we hold with others.

A spiritual teacher whom I met at Shelfari.com wrote:

Travel far--not only to make friends but to also shatter our own veiled existence…

--abu zhulixin

I offer my stories as experiences of travel so as author and readers we can begin to see who we truly are, not what and who the world tells us we should be. Then and only then can we begin to see others and the world as it is—and experience the miracle of a change our hearts and consciousness.

What have you learned throughout the process of writing, pitching - and now, promoting your book?

You have to stay honest—to and with yourself as a person and as a writer. The truthfulness you hold with yourself—accepting what your heart delivers and seeking to refine, not reshape that to what you think it ought to be or what will sell--will make your stories compelling, and help your stories resonate with readers.

People read to know they are not alone. Giving them who we through our characters lets readers know they are not.

This same authenticity will lend integrity to you as a writer and guide you in how best to promote your work.

What are three things you wish you'd known before you reached where you are now?

This is a hard one since I feel everything came when is was supposed to—that my work was published when I was best able to handle it—when I had attained the skills not only to write but know what I needed to work on in improving my craft and how to get help in doing that.

I wish had known how much people struggle with their writing and how impatient some people are to get their work out there, so much so that they make business decisions that are not in their best interest and that that of their creative spirit.

I wish I had known how important it is to trust your instincts in every part of your writing—not that you don’t need training and that there’s always room for improvement and to learn. I just wish I had known to trust myself—how to just let myself write and not get caught up in what others think—to just come from your heart. And that when you do. This is the most important aspect whatever your creative passion. Don’t be afraid to feel and to respectfully share those feelings with others. They’ll love you for it.

Then again I’m seeing evidence of that now—when I’m supposed to.


What aspect of writing do you love the best, and which do you hate the most?

I love revision—those aha moments when reading for the 5th or 20th time a story or novel I’m working on and having that aha moment went I begin to see the story that the universe is trying to tell me as a writer and a person. Then I know to have faith in the process, and that I am doing what I was sent here to do.

The hardest part for me is writing that first draft, particularly when getting to the middle part of a story—how to craft those steps leading up the transformation revealed at the climax.

I hate reading stories and novels that drag in the middle. And so I don’t want to write one. But neither do I want the pacing to go too fast so that readers miss what’s happening.

Writing the middle part of the plot line is definitely my greatest challenge. It’s also what I seek to refine. I’m always looking for ways to write a more moving and exciting middle. Meeting this challenge I know will make me a better author.


What's your secret to balancing career and family?

Prayer, love and a lot of patience.

A supportive husband and loving children are also immensely helpful. But they are God given, like all the stories I write. And so for me it comes down again to prayer and faith.

Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident

When looking back is the only way forward.

Memories of the Hindu icon of dancing Siva compel wife and mother,
Raven Clarke, to intervene in the attack of one restaurant patron on
another.

And so one truth begets another as the tale of a passionate confrontation travels from eyewitnesses to others not present. Each protagonist views the attack through an emotion-stained lens, the story taking on a life of its own as filtered through different individuals’ pasts, presents, and futures. Ultimately, every character unweaves and re-braids their hidden truths and exposes the chain of inner mysteries that bind them.

Read more about Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident, at: http://anjuellefloyd.com/