Three books. One recurring fear:
And why do I keep showing up anyway?
I have written three books. I have survived the particular madness of researching Caribbean colonial history at 2 am, the thriller plot that refused to resolve itself, and the very specific challenge of writing romantic fantasy while simultaneously fact-checking Cold War geopolitics. I have done hard things…and yet.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, prepares me for the moment I’m sitting behind a table at a book event, watching a stranger approach, and trying to calculate the exact correct amount of eye contact to make. Not too eager, not too aloof. Somewhere in the zone of “warmly approachable author who definitely has change for a $20.” It’s an art form I have not mastered.
On Saturday, June 6th, I’ll be at the Summer Lovin’ Book Fest at Oviedo Mall (1700 Oviedo Mall Blvd, Oviedo, FL) from 11 AM to 5 PM. And I will be doing all of the above. Internally. While smiling professionally on the outside.
Here’s the thing about being a Caribbean writer at a romance festival: my books don’t fit neatly in a box, and neither do I. I write at the intersection of romance, historical fiction, mystery, and magical realism, stories rooted in the landscapes, contradictions, and soul of the Caribbean. My work begins where the history books go quiet, and the village storytellers take over. I was born into Jamaica’s storytelling tradition, raised on the kind of narratives that pulse with equal parts splendor and shadow, and I have spent my writing life trying to honor that.
Redemption Songs (2015) introduced readers to a fierce female protagonist forged from the island’s own struggles. It’s a Caribbean family saga that doesn’t flinch. Friendship Estate followed, a provocative imagining of what might have grown from the bitter soil of colonialism had history taken a less-traveled path and changed its course. And my latest, I Am Cuba, weaves generational stories through the shadows of the Cold War, braiding action, adventure, romantic fantasy, and the magical realism that has become my literary heartbeat.
These are not quiet books. They are meant to spark conversations that linger long after the final page. So why, then, does sitting at a festival table reduce me to rehearsing opening lines in my head like I’m about to give a TED Talk to someone who just wants to browse?
Because this part, the showing up part, is vulnerable in a way that writing never quite is. When you write, the distance between you and the reader is measured in pages and months. At a table, it’s eighteen inches and direct eye contact. Someone picks up your book, reads the back, and you watch their face for clues. Will they engage? Will they give the polite nod and move on? Will they ask you something that makes you remember exactly why you write?
That last one always happens. Somewhere in the middle of the awkward silences and the moment I inevitably knock something over, a reader will ask a real question about colonialism, about what it means to write Caribbean women who refuse to be diminished, and the whole event reorders itself around that conversation.
That’s why I keep showing up. Not because it’s comfortable, because it most definitely is not. But because those moments are the whole point.
The legacy that runs through my work, displacement, resilience, the stories that official histories refused to record, didn’t survive because people stayed quiet and comfortable. It survived because someone kept telling it. At kitchen tables, on village corners, in the oral traditions that guided my pen long before I put a word on a page.
The least I can do is show up to tell it again.
Come find me on June 6th. Admission is free. Bring a friend. Let me sign something for you.
And if you see me calculating eye contact from across the room, just wave. It helps.
📚 Redemption Songs 📚 Friendship Estate 📚 I Am Cuba
You can find the links at www.lyndaredwards.com.
