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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Ryan Gregory has published "Blood on Canvas: Between Bells," a work of sports fiction that approaches professional boxing through the eyes of a coach rather than a fighter, according to the author’s publisher.
Gregory writes from inside the sport. He founded Cache Valley Boxing in his hometown of Logan, Utah, and organized the area’s first registered boxing event in 2019. His qualifications include USA Boxing Silver Level Coach status and Licensed Contestant Manager credentials, accumulated across approximately twenty years of coaching at both the amateur and professional level, per the announcement.
The book is described by its publisher as a departure from the familiar underdog arc that typically defines boxing stories. Instead, it follows a coach managing fighters’ egos, ambitions, and the business pressures that operate behind the scenes of the sport. The publisher’s description frames the novel as an attempt to show the mechanics of professional boxing, the decisions coaches are forced to make, and the gap between the sport’s public image and its day-to-day reality.
"My goal has always been to bring reality to the often fantasized world of boxing," Gregory said in a statement accompanying the release. "This book is my attempt to entertain readers while pulling back the curtain on how the business truly works, based on real events from my own experience."
"Blood on Canvas" was published through Page Publishing and is available through bookstores and major online retailers, including Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.
Studio CarryOnHarry sees the coach’s-eye framing as the more interesting bet here: boxing fiction usually sits in the fighter’s corner, and a story told from the person throwing in the towel is a different kind of authenticity claim to test against the page.
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W. H. Märchen has a new science fiction novel out, "Are You the One?", centered on Yaiouel "Yo" Elijah Johnson, a young man from Greenville, South Carolina, who becomes consumed by a mysterious cosmic hum only he seems to perceive. Studio CarryOnHarry received word of the release this week.
According to the announcement, Yo’s fixation grows into a search for what he calls a "theory of the universe" — a fractal model in which human consciousness mirrors a cosmic neural network, with past universes seeding new ones and minds echoing across galaxies. The novel sets that search against a backdrop of social fracture, with Yo’s perception positioned as a possible, if improbable, route back to collective connection.
Three companions join him along the way, per the announcement: Amelia, described as psychologically astute; Zahir, a spiritually grounded presence; and Tony, an ex-Navy drifter carrying his own unresolved history. The publisher describes the book as blending coming-of-age structure with existential questions about consciousness, loss, and survival.
Märchen spent roughly 25 years at the National Institutes of Health, working across research projects with scientists from multiple disciplines, and is a partially disabled U.S. Navy veteran holding degrees in electrical engineering and a master of science. Per the release, Märchen initially developed the story as a creative pursuit while recovering, and that his scientific background and respect for diverse faith traditions shaped the book’s handling of its spiritual and existential material.
"This book emerged from my desire to explore how science, spirituality, and human connection intersect," Märchen said in the announcement. "I wanted to ask whether our deepest perceptions of reality might be pointing us toward something we’ve overlooked."
"Are You the One?" is published through Page Publishing and is available at bookstores and through Apple iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.
A book pitched as hard science grounded in one man’s real research career, wrapped around a premise this cosmic, is an unusual combination — Studio CarryOnHarry is curious whether Märchen’s NIH background gives the novel’s speculative physics more weight than the average genre entry, or whether that’s beside the point for a story this interior.
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