Writers4Higher: Writers4Higher features Leslee Horner

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Writers4Higher features Leslee Horner

Welcome to Writers4Higher

The purpose of the Writers4Higher blog: to feature authors in a new light, a fresh look at the way writers use their talents and life energies to uplift humankind. Writers4Higher doesn’t promote religious or political views. Authors are asked to answer three simple questions: simple, yet complex.

This issue, Writers4Higher features

Leslee Horner

Hi, Leslee. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family!

1. Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your inspiration.

My name is Leslee Horner and I am a mother, wife, and author. I left my teaching career ten years ago, moved to Florida, and became a stay-at-home-mom. In 2007, while spending my days with my then eighteen-month-old and three-year-old, my passion for writing was reignited and I began work on my first novel. I have written four novels since that time and recently published one of them.

SUMMER OF STARS (THE PAST LIVES OF LOLA RAY~BOOK ONE) is the first book in a four-book Young Adult series that follows a fifteen-year-old girl named Lola as she deals with the stresses of adolescence while simultaneously flashing back to the past lives in which she died the day before turning sixteen. In SUMMER OF STARS, Lola’s family is falling apart at a time when all she wants is to be normal. It’s bad enough that her bipolar mother slips into a deep depression and her father has a mysterious online friend but now she’s having dreams and visions of a life in the Holocaust. With the help of Ian, the new boy across the street, she realizes that it is her family’s past life together that she is seeing. Ian helps her make peace with both the past and the present, becoming her best friend in the process. Of course, being best friends with Ian isn’t exactly uncomplicated.

I get much of my inspiration from my fascination with the mysteries of life, particularly the journey of the human soul. Many people find easy answers to those questions in religion or science where as I tend to get caught up in the “yes, but, what if?” And that question is where all of my novels begin. With THE PAST LIVES OF LOLA RAY series, I used the theme of reincarnation (what if our souls really do live many lives in different times and bodies?) to also write about points in history that I find to be incredibly important. We need to remember where we’ve been in order to see how far we’ve come and to also not repeat tragedies of humanity.

2. Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?

In the next two years, I hope to have completed and published the entire Lola Ray series. Book two, AN UNREQUITED FALL, will be released in the fall of 2014. I may revisit my first two unpublished novels, HEALING NIGHT (women’s fiction) and A CIRCLE HOME (new adult) and polish them up for publication. I also hope to complete a current work in progress, LIFE IN THE WAKE (women’s fiction), about three women dealing with the sudden and tragic death of their best friend. I also have another Young Adult book series idea floating around in my head that, if the stars align, will make its way onto the page and out into the world in the years to come.

3. How do you use your talents/time to help others?

Something that I have always enjoyed is working with and being a role model for our youth. It was this passion that brought me to the teaching profession and guides me as I write fiction for young adults. For four years now, I have been the leader of the teen program (Uniteen and Youth of Unity) at Unity Eastside Church in Tallahassee, Florida. I think it is important for young people to have adults in their lives that listen to them with open hearts and allow them to be who they truly are. I try to be this kind of presence for the kids I spend my Sunday mornings with.