Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the four hundred and fourteenth, is of Yani. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.
Yani is an Amazon Best Selling Author of five 5-star novels hailing from the North Philly and Germantown sections of Philadelphia.
She’s been in the top 20 of African American Fiction-Urban Life for her A Thug’s Redemption series and debuted at number 12 in Romance and Erotica for Obsessive Intimacies.
Yani has a unique way of bringing stories to life, giving her readers the feeling that they are watching a movie with every page that is turned.
Her characters are real, raw and easy to relate to while her story lines are original, and having the ability to evoke emotions in the readers from start to finish.
She has been featured in Yo! Raps magazine for ‘A Thug’s Redemption’ and was also a featured author at the 2013 Houston Black Book festival.
Yani first got her start writing for her school paper at University City. Her popular poems granted her an invitation to the Tri-State area’s number 1 Hip-Hop and R&B radio station, where she recited one of her most memorable pieces, “Why Tyrone Can’t Read”.
She then moved on to performing at various open mic nights in Philadelphia before landing a publishing deal with Publish America.
With the desire to self-publish and develop her own production company, Yani bought back the rights to A Thug’s Redemption and re-released it under her own publishing company “Anitbeet Productions”.
She then followed up with two sequels and penned her first erotic novel in 2014.
She is currently in the process of turning A Thug’s Redemption into an independent film and working on her sixth novel which will be released summer of 2016.
To learn more about this remarkable author and her incredible body of work, visit www.theauthoryani.com.
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And now from the author herself:
I wrote “Love’s Deadly Masquerade” to shine a light on a woman’s mindset while involved in an abusive relationship. I also wanted to show how we are impacted by what we are exposed to in our homes as well as how our parents’ relationships can influence us. A lot of us know women who are either in an abusive relationship now or were in one once before. The misconception is that physical abuse is the only form of abuse. There’s verbal abuse, mental and emotional abuse, as well as even sexual abuse. Now some of you may say, how can there be sexual abuse in a relationship? Believe it or not, there are women who are raped by their husbands or boyfriends and it’s done as a way to maintain power over the spouse who is being abused.
The main character in “Love’s Deadly Masquerade” experienced all of these forms of abuse. Many of us also make the mistake of calling the woman stupid for staying with the man who is abusing her, not understanding that it’s not that simple. Women who are abused stay for various reasons- they’ve been isolated from their family and friends and made to believe that they have no where to go. They are afraid of what will happen to them if they leave (the spouse may have threatened to kill them), they are afraid that they may end up in a worse situation and would rather stick with what they know, they think they can change the abusive spouse if they just learn to be more obedient. Some women also stay for financial reasons- no money or resources to survive on their own.
While I have never been in an abusive relationship, I have females who are close to me that once were and some who still are. I once believed they were stupid for staying, for putting up with the verbal assaults, the manipulations, the black eyes and sore bones. It took having a conversation with a couple of these women and listening without talking much to get a clear understanding.
Writing this book was hard because I had to strip away my own personality from Vanessa. I had to get into the mindset of a scared woman who had her self-esteem stomped on and made to feel worthless, and that is not me at all. As badly as I wanted Vanessa to strike back and stand tall, that would not have made an exciting story. I wanted it to be real, raw and easy to relate to. I also want people to see that women as young as 16 are suffering from different forms of abuse and because they are young and impressionable, they confuse it with love.
I want people to see that men who are abusive mostly target women who don’t have strong male influences in their lives- no father, no brothers and if they do have a father and/or brothers, they are weak. They target women who already have self-esteem issues and crave to be accepted and loved so badly that they will settle for and put up with almost any man that resembles what they likes just to be someone’s somebody.
It’s an exciting book to read and I can’t wait to get feedback from my readers expressing their thoughts and opinions on the story. And if you’ve ever been in an abusive relationship and you’re comfortable sharing your story, let’s talk and maybe hopefully a young woman who is in a dangerous relationship will learn something from our conversation and it can help her take the next steps.
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You can find more about Yani and her writing via…
Websites: http://www.anitbeetproductions.net- and http://www.theauthoryani.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Yani.The.Author
- Twitter: @urbanlit_goddes
- Instagram: @the_author_yani
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Thank you, Yani. It was great to meet you. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at opportunities-on-this-blog (the spotlights are option (a)) or email me for details.
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Morgen 'with an E' Bailey 