I have read through these poems a number of times already and each time all my senses are on the alert. Clearly visible before my tear-soaked eyes is glaring proof of the senseless destruction of whole villages, with piles and piles of bloated corpses rotting in the sun and emitting an awful stench that floats in the air wherever the infamous bearers of death come knocking. In these poems, I hear the helpless cries of our men, women and children as they desperately flee for shelter into forests. Audible in the thick bushes is the agony of women in the pangs of child birth followed by the weak whimpers of new born babies, who barely have time to take in their first breath and then they are gone!

You’ve written a book that has great potential to positively influence the lives of orphans under the care of grandparents, would you want to share with us what inspired this book?

Yes, my mother left me and my siblings with my dad, when we were infants.  Although we were not orphans, my grandmother stepped in to help him raise us.  She died 8 years later, but she had such an impact on my life.

Reviews tell readers whether they should or should not buy a book, and the more positive reviews a book gets, the stronger the appeal it has for readers. Reviews give credibility to an author’s craft, and funny as it sounds, the majority of buyers rely on book reviews when making their choice of which book to buy. At times, just the number of reviews posted for a book is enough to make a reader buy that book.

Alicia Doyle is an award-winning journalist who discovered boxing at age 28 in the late 1990s when she went on assignment at a boxing gym for at-risk youth called Kid Gloves. She simultaneously worked as a newspaper reporter while training and competing as a boxer, making her one of only a few hundred women in America at the time who infiltrated this male-dominated sport. During her boxing career, she won two Golden Gloves championship titles and earned three wins by knockout – and her pro debut at age 30 in the year 2000 was named The California Female Fight of the Year.

It takes a lot of time and commitment to get a book written. But that is the easiest part of the process. Getting it published and into the hands of avid readers or fans of the genre poses a lot of challenges, especially for authors with minimal marketing experience.

No matter what you write, what keeps the reader engaged is your voice. The reader wants to think that they are seated across from you, listening to you. They want to hear you clearly and they want to connect with you and it is your voice that makes that connection possible, drawing them into your world and compelling them to pay attention to your topic, to follow your characters, or to stay with your train of thought.