Welcome to Creekside Café Daines Reed the author of Trust and Good Morning Beautiful. It is so good to have you here at my virtual café.
Daines: Sherri! This is such a cool way to connect! Thank you for inviting me.
Sherri: Daines and I met at the North Carolina Book Festival in Raleigh. We were seated back to back with our partners and struck up a friendship. Meeting you and Yesenia was one of the best things that happened at the festival. Did you enjoy the event? Where are you from?
Daines: I knew you’d be a fun neighbor as soon as I saw you. Besides meeting new readers, the best part about these events is connecting with other authors— especially in different genres.
I’m a North Carolina girl, but I had not heard of the North Carolina Book Festival until this year. As a local author, I try to support and participate in as many local events as possible. North Carolina is my home, so I have a lot of fun at these events.
Sherri: It was the first I’d heard of the North Carolina Book Festival, too.
I purchased Trust when I came home. Your words paint a picture I recognize all too well. I started reading just to get a feel for your story and found myself turning pages. Tell us where this story came from.
Daines: Thank you for your purchase! My goal was to write a book that you could fall right into— you know— get right into the meat of the story. The story is the culmination of many events—a conversation with my brother about our family’s future, ideas about legacy-building, an invitation to join a book club— these things all happened at once, and I was struck by an idea to turn it into a story.
Sherri: It is very often our work family and our gal pals who help us through the worst parts of our lives and are there to celebrate the best parts. I’m so thankful for my friends and family. Were your books inspired by your friends?
Daines: My books were absolutely inspired by my friends— especially a core group of phenomenal women whom I worked with for nearly 10 years. We were fortunate to work in an environment where we could create a strong support system for ourselves. As our friendship grew into sisterhood over the years, work became a place of refuge for us and we were able to see the value in that.
For this story, I wanted to really highlight the blessings that happen when friends become your family.
Sherri: I can’t believe it’s your first book. Trust is beautifully written. Good Morning Beautiful is your sequel to Trust, tell us a little about it. Will you have another book in this series? What are you working on now?
Daines: I wrote Trust with the goal of sharing a particular story. However, as the book progressed, I knew that each character needed to tell her own story. Isn’t that how real life happens? We may have a collective story, but we also have individual stories that place us on the paths we travel.
Rather than cram all of these important details into one book, I decided to write a series of books, allowing each character the proper space and time to tell her own story. This will be a five-book series.
Sherri: I’m looking forward to reading more of your work. You are such an inspiration. I hope we run into each other again someday soon and please tell Yesenia I’d love to have her on my blog as well. It has been delightful to speak to you again. I wish you much success with your books. I enjoyed our interview you can follow Daines through her links below and don’t forget to check out her books. Her third book The Pin will be coming out in August 2020.
Thank you for stopping by Creekside Café.
Social media links:
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