Books
Nurse-Turned-Author Jayme Byrd Blends Memory and Invention in New Book “Secrets of Lissa”
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk
Jayme Byrd has published a new book, "Secrets of Lissa," tracing a young girl’s path from childhood into adulthood through a mix of real memory and invented detail. The book is published through Page Publishing.
Byrd spent four decades working as a nurse, according to the announcement, alongside raising a family across multiple generations as a wife, mother and grandmother. That professional background, spent listening to patients and observing how people carry hardship, shapes the perspective behind the book, the announcement states.
The book’s own description, listed under fiction in Google Books’ catalog, frames it plainly: the story is based on true events, but names and characteristics of the people in it have been changed, and while the saddest scenes reflect reality, other scenes were, in the author’s words, "enhanced to make my life seem better than it was." The listing poses the same question Byrd raises in the press materials: if you wrote your own life story, wouldn’t you want it told with a little more color?
The narrative centers on a protagonist selectively choosing which historical moments to present faithfully and which to reshape or soften, and asking readers to sit with the difference. Byrd is quoted in the announcement saying she wanted to "honor my journey by telling it authentically while also giving myself permission to make it beautiful," adding that life is worth celebrating "even when—or especially when—we’re recounting the hardest parts."
"Secrets of Lissa" is listed for sale at bookstores and through the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, and Barnes and Noble.
Studio CarryOnHarry finds the premise more interesting than the average memoir-adjacent debut: a writer naming, in the text itself, exactly where she’s chosen to depart from what happened. That’s a more candid contract with the reader than most first-person narratives offer.
From the Editor — Harry Johal
"Stories are the way we make sense of our lives, and the way we make sense of other people’s lives." — Kazuo Ishiguro
I was sitting with my coffee this morning, half-listening to the radio, when something a guest had said months ago drifted back. About how we’re all editors of our own lives, whether we admit it or not.
Then Ishiguro’s words came to mind: "Stories are the way we make sense of our lives, and the way we make sense of other people’s lives."
And that’s exactly what Jayme Byrd is doing in "Secrets of Lissa."
Forty years as a nurse—that’s forty years of listening. Of watching people carry things they couldn’t put down. She knows how a life actually feels from the inside. The weight of it. And then she sits down to tell her own story and does something most people won’t: she names the line between what happened and what she chose to make beautiful.
That’s not dishonesty. That’s honesty about how memory works, how survival works. We don’t just remember our lives—we *live* them again through the telling. And Byrd’s saying: yes, the hardest parts are real. The saddest scenes happened. But over here, I softened this. Over here, I added color. And I’m telling you exactly where I did it.
Most memoirs pretend they’re pure record. Byrd is saying something braver: I’m making sense of my life, and I’m making sense of *myself* in the process. The real story isn’t whether every detail is factual. It’s what it costs to survive, and what we owe ourselves in the retelling.
That’s the quiet revolution in this book. Not the invention. The honesty about it.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
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Jana M. Castle has published a new children’s book, "Small Packages Big Impact," through Page Publishing, following a family led by a character named Jonathan on what the publisher describes as a mission marked by laughter, chaos and heartbreak.
According to publisher listings, the book is a 32-page paperback aimed at young readers, published in February 2026. It is also available as an eBook, with the eBook edition noted for enhanced typesetting intended to make longer reading sessions easier on the eyes.
The story follows Jonathan and his family through a series of emotional ups and downs, according to the announcement, with the narrative built around themes of surrender, faith and finding unexpected blessings in difficult circumstances. Castle has described her writing as motivated by a wish to share stories that "uplift, encourage, and draw readers closer to God," according to the release.
The author’s background is described in the announcement as rooted in Christian faith, which the publisher says shapes the book’s spiritual perspective throughout.
"Small Packages Big Impact" is available through major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple iTunes Store and Google Play, as well as through Page Publishing directly.
For Studio CarryOnHarry, the detail worth noting here is the format: a faith-themed children’s book aimed at family reading, rather than the adult inspirational fiction that dominates most self-published faith titles crossing this desk.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
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An author writing under the name A Walker in His Shoes has published "Heartbeat of a Schizophrenic and Other Ailments," a book that draws on personal experience with mental illness to explore what the author describes as the intersection of mental health challenges and spiritual awakening. It’s published through Fulton Books and is listed by the publisher as a poetry work.
According to the announcement, the author traces his path to the book back to his childhood as, in his account, the youngest member of a broken family who learned early to listen rather than participate. That habit of quiet attention, he says, carried into his studies at the University at Buffalo, where coursework in the English department’s engagement with questions of the soul left him grappling with ideas he wasn’t fully prepared for. The announcement states that this period coincided with the onset of the mental health struggles that became the basis for the book.
"Through my journey with schizophrenia and other ailments, I came to realize that my breakdown was simultaneously a breakthrough," the author said in the announcement. "This work is my effort to express that contradiction—to acknowledge the pain of adversity while recognizing human perseverance."
A listing for the book describes it as an account of mental illness colliding with spiritual awakening, framed around blurred lines between logic and intuition and around the memory of unrequited love. The publisher describes the work as offering recognition to readers who have navigated similar struggles, though that’s the publisher’s framing of the book’s effect rather than a claim this desk can verify firsthand.
The book is available through Fulton Books’ website and through major retailers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, and the Apple iTunes Store.
Studio CarryOnHarry is generally cautious about books that use serious, specific diagnoses like schizophrenia as a literary or spiritual metaphor, and we’d want to know more about how the author himself frames that distinction before treating the book as either memoir or metaphor.
Studio CarryOnHarry Perspective
The detail about English coursework on questions of the soul deserves attention because it names something many readers won’t have considered: the particular vulnerability that can emerge when academic study of meaning collides with an unprepared mind. This isn’t about blame toward universities or literature itself, but about the real tension between intellectual exploration and psychological readiness—a question that rarely surfaces in publishing discourse.
In practical terms, this matters when someone encounters dense philosophical or spiritual reading during a formative period without adequate support structures. A student might find themselves wrestling with existential questions through Romantic poetry or philosophy, internalizing those frameworks deeply, at precisely the moment their own mental health is destabilizing. The intensity that makes great literature powerful can become destabilizing when internalized without grounding.
The article doesn’t clarify whether the author experienced symptoms before or during his coursework, or how directly the coursework may have shaped—rather than simply coincided with—his crisis. That timing distinction matters considerably when framing a breakdown as also a breakthrough, because it changes whether the spiritual language is retrospective interpretation or part of the original episode.
The most useful way to read this origin story may not be as "literature caused his breakdown" or "his breakdown revealed truth that literature teaches," but as evidence that how we frame our formative struggles depends heavily on what language and tradition we find available to us after the fact. His English education gave him the vocabulary to make meaning from chaos—which is genuinely valuable. Whether that vocabulary matches what actually happened is a separate question.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
Are you an author with a new release? We’re always looking for books to cover and authors to interview — tell us about yours here.
Press Releases at Studio CarryOnHarry
Powered by SgAiSolution
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