We’re looking forward to introducing you to Lynda R. Edwards. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Lynda R., thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
Reading has become my greatest teacher and my most consuming passion, but not in the way it once was. I lose track of time completely when I’m immersed in a book, but it’s no longer just about getting lost in the story. Now I find myself disappearing into the craft itself, studying how authors construct their magic word by word.
I’ll be reading something like Verity by Colleen Hoover, and suddenly I’m not just racing through the plot twists, I’m pausing to dissect how she made my pulse quicken with just a few carefully chosen words. I’ll spend twenty minutes re-reading a single paragraph, asking myself: How did she make me trust this narrator completely, then plant the first seed of doubt so subtly I didn’t even notice? I lose hours analyzing sentence structure, the rhythm of dialogue, how a thought is written versus how it would be spoken aloud to create maximum emotional impact.
What’s remarkable is how different authors teach me different lessons. The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods showed me the elegance of weaving multiple timelines, how to drop breadcrumbs that connect past and present without losing the reader. Reading Oliver Senior opened my eyes to how voice and cultural specificity can make universal themes feel both deeply personal and widely accessible. Each author becomes an unconscious mentor, showing me new ways to approach character development, pacing, and emotional resonance.
I find myself again when I close the book, but I’m never quite the same reader or writer I was before. I return to my own work with new questions: Am I varying my sentence length enough? Is this dialogue revealing character or just filling space? How can I make this moment land with the same precision that stopped me cold in what I just read?
The beautiful irony is that the more I study craft while reading, the more I appreciate the artistry involved. I’m simultaneously more critical and more in awe. A perfectly constructed sentence can make me put the book down to savor it, to figure out exactly why those particular words in that particular order created such a powerful effect.
This approach has transformed not just how I write, but how I think about storytelling entirely. I’m building a mental library of techniques, studying a cross-section of voices and styles because each one adds another tool to my writer’s toolkit. What starts as losing myself in a story becomes finding new parts of myself as a writer I didn’t know existed.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hello readers! I’m a storyteller born and raised in the vibrant town of Mandeville, Jamaica, where the Caribbean’s legendary oral tradition first captured my heart in 1967. Growing up surrounded by the island’s rich cultural tapestry, I was immersed in stories that seemed to dance between reality and magic—a foundation that would later become the cornerstone of my writing.
My love for storytelling runs as deep as the Caribbean Sea itself. What makes my work unique is how I weave together multiple genres within each novel, blending romance, historical fiction, mystery, and magical realism to capture the full complexity of Caribbean life. I don’t believe stories should be confined to neat categories when real life is so beautifully messy and multifaceted.
I made my literary debut in 2015 with REDEMPTION SONGS, a gripping Caribbean family saga centered around a powerful female protagonist. This was followed by FRIENDSHIP ESTATE, a provocative exploration of alternate history that imagines a utopian vision challenging the bitter legacies of colonialism. My latest work, I AM CUBA, ventures into Cold War-era generational stories, blending action, adventure, romantic fantasy, and that signature touch of magical realism that has become my literary trademark.
What drives my writing is the desire to honor both my Jamaican roots and the incredible storytellers who came before me. Each narrative I craft aims to transport readers across time, place, and emotion, reflecting the colorful world that continues to fuel my creativity. I write to preserve our stories, celebrate our resilience, and share the magic that happens when Caribbean culture meets the limitless possibilities of fiction.
Currently, I’m working on expanding this blend of genres even further, always asking myself: How can I push the boundaries while staying true to the voices and traditions that shaped me?
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I was a precocious child.
As the firstborn grandchild, I was cherished and indulged to the point of what some might call spoiling, but I prefer to think of it as being loved without limits. In those early years, before the world began drawing its careful lines around who I should become, I existed in a space of pure possibility. I was simply beloved, simply me, with no expectations weighing on my small shoulders except to laugh, to wonder, and to dream.
Then life began its gentle but persistent shaping. I became a daughter who learned to carry family pride. A granddaughter who absorbed wisdom and responsibility in equal measure. Eventually, I transformed into a wife, navigating the delicate dance of partnership. An aunt, watching over little ones with protective tenderness. An employee, trading hours for security, playing the roles that society deemed necessary and proper.
I became a responsible adult, as we all must, taking on life’s endless responsibilities, checking boxes that others had drawn for me. I learned to walk the straight lines the world had mapped out, to speak in the measured tones expected of someone serious and dependable. I wore these roles well, perhaps too well, until they began to feel less like clothes and more like armor.
But underneath all these carefully constructed identities, that precocious child never disappeared. She just waited, patient as the storytellers of old, holding onto the truth of who I was before anyone told me who I had to be. What I want to be. What I have always been, beneath the layers of expectation and duty, is a storyteller.
That’s who I was in the beginning, spinning tales from the shadows and light around me, finding magic in the everyday moments before anyone taught me that magic wasn’t practical. The storyteller in me predates every other identity I’ve worn. She remembers when stories weren’t just entertainment but truth-telling, when they were how we made sense of the world and our place in it.
Now I’m reclaiming her. I’m choosing to honor that precocious child who believed stories mattered more than anything else, who saw wonder everywhere, who understood instinctively that the most important truths can only be told through metaphor and imagination.
The world may have told me who I had to be, but my stories remind me who I’ve always been.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Absolutely. There was a moment when I came dangerously close to walking away from everything.
When I started writing my first novel, it was pure compulsion; there was a story in me that had to come out, like breathing. I wasn’t thinking about fame or fortune; I was just answering an urgent creative call. But then Friendship Estate was published, and something shifted. The accolades and well-wishers went straight to my head, and I found myself thinking, “You know what? I want to make a living out of this. I want to be the next John Grisham with all his success and honors.”
That’s when reality hit me like a cold wave.
Writing doesn’t work like that. I could wallpaper a room with the rejection letters I’ve collected. QueryTracker became my best friend, then my worst nightmare. Every “thanks, but this isn’t for us” felt personal. Every silence felt like judgment. The business side of publishing, especially self-publishing, demanded things I hate: constant social media presence, relentless self-promotion, and marketing myself like a brand instead of simply being a storyteller.
Yes, I wanted to quit. The word “quit” sat on my tongue like a bitter pill I was ready to swallow.
But then I asked myself the question that saved my writing life: Why did I start writing in the first place?
It wasn’t for the bestseller lists or the royalty checks, though I’d be lying if I said I don’t still long for those things. I started writing because it’s a compulsion for me. Once a story begins growing inside you, you can’t stop giving birth to it. The rejection letters couldn’t taint that passion because the passion was never about external validation. It was about something deeper, something ancestral.
I realized that maybe my path isn’t about conquering the world first. Maybe I was meant to uplift the Caribbean first, to honor my ancestors by telling their stories in our own voices, with our own rhythms and truths. Maybe the world will follow once I’ve done that work authentically.
The stories still demand to be told. That compulsion that started everything? It never left. And I’ve learned that’s enough reason to keep going, rejection letters and all.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What’s a cultural value you protect at all costs?
The cultural value I protect at all costs is the sacred duty of telling our authentic stories in our own voices.
My Jamaican ancestry represents a beautiful convergence of two powerful storytelling traditions: the ancient African oral tradition that carried our ancestors’ wisdom across oceans and through centuries of upheaval, and the European tradition of putting pen to paper that gave those stories permanence. These traditions intersect in their shared mission to keep our heritage alive by maintaining an unbroken connection to our ancestors and their enduring values of family, unity, and strength.
This is why I write with such fierce protectiveness around authenticity. Too often, our stories have been filtered through other voices, told by outsiders looking in, shaped to fit narratives that serve everyone except us. I refuse to let that happen in my work. When I write about Caribbean life, when I explore our history and our present, I do so from the inside out, with the rhythms of our speech, the complexity of our experiences, and the nuanced understanding that comes from living within this culture, not just observing it.
This means resisting the temptation to sanitize or exoticize our experiences for broader appeal. It means honoring both the pain and the beauty, the struggles and the triumphs. It means writing characters who speak with our cadences, who grapple with our specific challenges, who carry both our wounds and our wisdom.
Every story I tell is an act of cultural preservation and resistance. When I blend magical realism into contemporary Caribbean fiction, I’m not just using a literary technique; I’m honoring a worldview where the spiritual and material worlds dance together, just as my ancestors understood them to. When I center strong Caribbean women in my narratives, I’m carrying forward the legacy of the countless women who kept our families and communities whole against impossible odds.
This cultural value shapes every creative decision I make because I understand that I’m not just an author, I’m a keeper of stories, a bridge between the voices that came before and the generations that will come after. That’s a responsibility I will never take lightly or compromise, regardless of market pressures or commercial considerations.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. When do you feel most at peace?
This is perhaps the most existential question anyone can ask of a human being, isn’t it? What is peace, really, in a world that seems to conspire against it at every turn?
Do I find peace by turning off the TV because world events are anything but peaceful? Do I stop shopping because prices are outrageous, and the simple act of buying groceries has become an exercise in economic anxiety? What does peace even look like in 2025? Is it fellowship, gathering with others who share our burdens?
Or is it isolation, retreating into solitude where the chaos can’t reach us? Is peace found in charity, in giving ourselves away to causes larger than our individual suffering? Or is it in hoarding, protecting what little security we can grasp in uncertain times?
These questions circle in my mind because peace has become something I must actively construct, rather than simply stumble upon.
I find my deepest peace in the space between memory and creation. When I’m writing, the stories of my ancestors flow through me onto the page. In those moments, time becomes elastic. The outside world, with all its noise and demands, fades to background static. There’s just me, the words, and the voices of those who came before, speaking through me to those who will come after.
It’s the peace of purpose fulfilled, of being exactly who I was meant to be before the world started adding its requirements. When I’m crafting a scene set in Jamaica, channeling the rhythm of Caribbean speech, weaving magical realism into everyday moments, I’m not fighting against anything; I’m flowing with something ancient and eternal.
But peace, I’ve learned, isn’t a permanent state. It’s not something you achieve once and keep forever. It’s something you create, moment by moment, choice by choice. Sometimes it’s as simple as turning off the TV. Sometimes it’s closing the laptop and sitting with my thoughts. Sometimes it’s calling family and letting their voices remind me of what matters most.
Peace, for me, is remembering that beneath all the roles I’ve had to play, all the responsibilities I’ve had to shoulder, there’s still that child who believed stories could heal the world. She’s still there, still believing, still creating peace through the simple act of giving voice to the voiceless.
Maybe that’s what peace really is: not the absence of chaos, but the presence of purpose strong enough to anchor us in the storm.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lyndaredwards.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lynda_r_edwards/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynda-r-edwards-181ab07
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lyndaredwards/
- Other: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20186706.Lynda_R_Edwards
