Who Is J Reese Roberts?

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A writer of non-fiction books and essays, J Reese Roberts has penned a first novel. Allow yourself two consecutive days to read this novel of gripping spine-chilling excitement, an edge-of-your-seat thriller you will not want to put down.

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From the author:

Born in New York City, I spent many summer days walking with my father along the docks on Hudson Street where he worked in the addressograph department of  Book of the Month Club. I loved it. It was before the advent of computers when all club members' names and addresses were stamped onto metal plates. I think the smell, that odor of the dye passing over the cut paper, is what first excited me. I found it intoxicating.

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The city was full of the smell of coffee and fresh-baked rolls that were offered by street vendors and automated lunch counters that lined seventh avenue from thirty-third street through Times Square. I loved the sites and strange people that inhabited every corner of this now long gone fantasy of textiles and paper.

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He would bring home so many books: fiction and non-fiction, biographies, romance novels and mysteries. I began to read at a young age. It was here in those books that I found my stride: peace in a world ruled by bullies and tyrants, young and old.

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I was shy, very shy; hard-pressed to speak words freely. The doctor said I had a social phobia. But that was all. We didn't have a name such as Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) back then and you just kind of had to figure it all out by yourself.

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But I remember the bullying. We had it then, too. Unfortunately, today with the advent of social media, there is proliferation of more hurtful forms. I feel so much for those whose lives are oppressed.

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So here I have written about it. And I want to show through the daughter Mariah and her mother Veronica, how important family bonds are over those of supposed friends you make in elementary and high school. These friendships most often die. But your family and the wonderful people you choose as friends throughout your adult life...that is where you will find your everlasting strength.

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And you will grow. You will find your place. I spent over two decades in the business world with demanding deadlines, sales objectives and the unending political landscape of organizations. Finally I found my great place among the students of colleges and universities. Here I taught economics, although my students would swear that my grammatical obsessions belied the stress I placed on economic principles.

 

But no regrets. While I realize that I may have spent too much time within the business world and not enough in the teaching world, I learned much. And much of what I learned in both areas was utilized in the confines of this novel as well as my previous book that examined colleges behind closed doors.

 

I bring this all to bare in this novel of two women. It is a story of life and a story of love. A story of bullies and tyrants, and a story of the oppressed. I find myself aligning with one or two characters; one I know who I am and another I wish I could be. Perhaps you will do the same. It has a lot to offer each one of us.

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A Final Note:

This work has been several years in the making. It has also taken a period of rewrites and downsizing. To be honest, I had hoped by this time to be writing the second novel in a series. But sometimes we cannot always do what we want according to our chosen time frames. Such is the case with this author and the progress of the story of the two women. I had to deal with some unexpected medical issues. I never really had the time to submit the manuscript to agents and publishers. The amount of time going through such a process is extraordinary, and I wasn't willing to take that time. But as I go through the process I find that emotions and feelings became greater during the writing period. They allowed me to focus on what is most important to myself and the reader: the story, the characters and the prose.

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