Author Spotlight: Ieshia Wiedlin

Happy to welcome fellow Tule Publishing author Ieshia Wiedlin to the spotlight today. Ieshia grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and currently resides in Brookfield, IL, which is a suburb of Chicago. She is married and has two great kids, Lucas and Zoey. She has always loved writing and telling stories, mostly sci-fi and fantasy, and is a huge junkie for all things Marvel and Star Wars. But somehow in the midst of loving all things sci-fi, she was a sucker for all things Molly Ringwald. Ieshia became a huge fan of rom-coms and loves stories with strong women characters. Growing up the youngest, and the only girl on her block, she craved strong women who fell in love. She loves romances with strong women leads who have conviction, but are also filled with humor. It’s important to her that women in her stories are smart, strong, loving, and funny, and also represent for sci-fi geeks and music lovers everywhere.

Take it away, Ieshia…

Dreams Are Hard

For as long I could remember I have always had a book in my hand. Whether it was something from Judy Blume, Maya Angelo, or the Lord of the Rings. I always enjoyed being transported to a world far away. A world that allowed me to explore a different place or experience different emotions. Feelings of sorrow, joy, happiness, or love. There was nothing like grabbing a book and creating the vision of how the characters looked in your mind. That’s the part I enjoyed the most. Crafting the idea of how a street smelled, or how the person smelled based on what was written in the page.

As I got older, and the more I was transported to places, the more I wondered if I could do this. Sure, you write a paper in college that everyone compliments you on, or you are asked to write something for a friend to help them out, and it’s does exactly what they needed it to do. But surely, writing a whole story to make people feel all the emotions that you felt for so long when you read books. That seemed so far out of reach.

For so long, it was a dream to have my name on the cover of a book, to take people on a journey through the pages of words that I wrote. But I was always so scared of what that would mean. Will people like it, would they even read it? Would they stay until the very last page? Would they fill chat rooms and twitter feeds with how much they hated what I wrote?

It wasn’t until I had a conversation with my father who told me, life is too short. You have to do it! Period! If this is your dream, then work and make it happen. How would you feel if you looked back on your life filled with regrets of well, I had an idea, but I let fear lead me away from making a dream come true?

I took my father’s words and set up to put in dream in motion. But it’s really hard to make a dream come true. I received twenty- three rejections for There You Are. Twenty-three! Which was very hard to deal with. All that kept me away from writing in the first place was laid bare in front of me. With no’s and not-good-enoughs. But still I persisted and kept going until I got one yes. And that one yes has changed my life. It has made me an author. There You Are by Ieshia Wiedlin.

Still, it’s hard. All the books I’ve read for so many years don’t prepare you for the editing, analyzing, self-doubt, worrying.

The dream is real, but it’s hard, even harder because now it’s a real thing. A real physical thing that people can hold, or open on their paperwhite kindle. It makes me proud, but also scared to death. And that fear lets me know that I’m alive, that I am living a dream.

No matter how hard it is, or how hard the road is getting there, or how hard and bumpy the road is while I’m driving down. It’s a dream realized, and I will fully embrace every bit and moment of how hard it is.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

There You Are

It’s love at first sight…but can it be love forever?

Amina Wright loves her job in community outreach for the Chicago Bulls NBA team, but life has taught her to be wary of players. So she’s not sure what to expect when a good-looking anesthesiologist smoothly cuts in at the charity gala she’s hosting and handles the womanizing jerk trying to waste her time. Certainly gratitude is in order—but a relationship? Not on the table.

Dr. Nathan Moore doesn’t have time for a relationship, especially not a complicated one. He can’t believe he let his friend drag him to some fancy event, and he certainly wasn’t expecting to rescue a beautiful woman as a distraction. But now he wants to spend more time with Amina, even if most of his waking hours are devoted to the hospital.

Indulging in a relationship that sizzles their blood is the easy part. But her past threatens his career’s future, and their cultural differences are putting stress on the present. Can they build a love strong enough to heal both their hearts?

Amazon | B&N Nook | Apple Books | Kobo | Tule Book Store