What is Family?

by Joanne Simon Tailele, Celine Valentin (Illustrator)

Children's picture book. Travel with Nugget all over the United States asking "What is Family/" to all extended family members.

38 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 12, 2015

About the author

I was born a midwest girl in Youngstown Ohio and wrote my first short story at the age of ten in blue colored pencil. It was a mystery called "The Mystery of the Missing Marble." For most of my life, my writing was private, for my own enjoyment and therapy. In 2010, I discovered NANOWRIMO and I challenged myself to write a 50K novel in 30 days. I finished it, but it was awful. After joining an online writer's group through Writer's Village University, I picked away at my story for a full year with the help of the other girls in my group from all over the globe. It took me another year of edits and rewrites when I joined a local writer's group before I felt it was ready for the public eye. ACCIDENT is my first novel and is the reincarnated version of the original Accident through NANOWRIMO. It is now available as both a print copy or ebook through Amazon.

My second publication, a novella, Town Without Mercy is a mother's struggle to find out why her daughter opened fire on a crowd of people during a 4th of July celebration. Written through the eyes of the parent, it is all of our worst nightmares. Was it nature or nurture that turned her daughter into a killer?

To coin a phrase from Jodi Picoult, my writing idol, my stories are "moral fiction, not because I plan to change anyone's mind on a subject but because I hope to cause you to think about modern day issues that most people would prefer to shove under the rug."

I currently reside on Marco Island on the SW Gulf coast of Florida with my husband. Proudly the parents of 8 his and hers kids and 9 grandkids, we spend out time boating and enjoying the white sandy beach of Marco when I am not writing or selling real estate.