Tracee Lydia Garner is a national best-selling author. Family Affairs was not the first story she wrote but it was the first successfully completed and the one she says started it all. FAMILY AFFAIRS appears in the All That & Then Some anthology with BET/Sepia Books. Family Affairs won the grand-prize award, receiving an advance, a book contract, a trip to New York to accept her award and most importantly having her work published by BET Books.
Her fourth release, Love Unchosen, is three books in one about the Watt women: three, entrepreneurial sisters on the brink of love.
Tracee maintains that she is a creative writer as well as a journalist that enjoys writing "how to" articles, and articles of personal experience, both tragic and inspirational on the disability, African-American and woman experience, not necessarily in that order.
Tracee maintains that as her writing career takes center stage, she will always be disabled, and thus she must and always will be committed to the advancement and removal of barriers for persons with disabilities.
Love Unchosen: A Novel
By Tracee Garner
AuthorHouse
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1434320715/shadesofromance
The Watts sisters have spent most of their lives focused on their careers-until big sister Geena launches her own design company, Watts Your Style. Not only does she find success, but she finds true love
with her client Dr. Justin Webster, a recovering alcoholic. After getting married and giving birth to her son, Geena looks to her sisters to help run her company and hopes in the process they, too, will find true love.At her older sibling's request, middle sister Vashton returns to Virginia from North Carolina where she has run to escape the demons of her past and finds herself falling head over heels for Romeyo Payton, her ex-best friend's brother-in-law who is raising his nephew.
At her sisters' urging, baby girl, Ellie, relocates her virtual job as a professional organizer to help out as well. When rude client Husten Montgomery comes in with his bratty daughter, Ellie is determined to ignore her attraction and stay as far away as possible from the handsome man to avoid reminders of the loss of her own daughter.
Despite their close bond and their drive, each sister comes to realize true love is the greatest gift of all.
Website: http://www.teegarner.com/
What’s something you wish you’d known earlier that might have saved you some time/frustration in the publishing business?
That I was so good at telling a story... And I’m not bragging. I didn’t know what I was. I still struggle with knowing what my direction and purpose is supposed to be doing/going; but I would have just felt better about whatever it was I meant to do here on this earth had I had an earlier validation. And not just so much validation cause I think becoming a good writer comes from my disability and experiencing things which then takes age and growth (AND TIME) and painful times of isolation but just the something, whether it was writer or what. I’m glad, at 24 I won the BET First Time Writer’s contest, and I’m still writing and everything is for an appointed time, but along with my writing came increased steam, and better self esteem and a coping mechanism and okay, being eternally hard on myself, yes, I get mad at myself sometimes for being so slow to get it. Yes, I know it happens when it happens, but still, my mind tells me, erroneously so, that I’m late once again that perhaps I should have been here already (if only I’d pay attention and stop goofing off).
What one thing about writing do you wish other non-writers would understand?
That books aren’t perfect all the time. I still get upset when reviewers, the critics, say things, like “as an avid reader of so and so’s work this wasn’t her best.” I’m not mad, that’s what they do, but just frustrated. It’s like film, there are a couple of flops for some actors, oh well, you keep moving on. What’s more, no one has said this about me yet and I’m sure they will at some point, but why say it at all? If you don’t like, you just don’t like it, more often then not, you’ll pick up book two and three to keep giving a person a chance. Why write a really, really bad review just for the sake of writing it?
Join Tracee as she visits other stops on her tour. See what else she has to say on writing.
October 8
