A Life Through Books

Dona Nobis Pacem. God Grant Us Peace.

 

Voiceless Donnell and defrocked priest Nathan are outcasts and strangers at the turn of the century. Despite his handicap, Donnell has made a life for himself as a businessman and owner of a saloon. His heart goes out to those whom life has dealt an unhappy hand. When Nathan arrives in this former gold-rush town, horsewhipped and ill to the point of collapse, Donnell is the only one to offer help.

Barely ordained before being accused of unnatural desires, Nathan has been sent to travel a faux road to Damascus as penance. He did not expect to survive the trek, and longed for the peace he might find when his body gave up the fight.

He never expected to meet someone like Donnell. Despite his lack of voice, Donnell is the teacher Nathan has hungered for all his life, and the lover he never dared seek out. Triumphing over a lifetime's worth of threatened damnation will not be easy to overcome, but Donnell's not giving up. The passion they share is what both men have always craved, but never found. When they're discovered, standing together is the only thing that will save them both.

 

 

In a fit of optimism, some enterprising settler twenty-odd years ago had named this patch of land "Shady Grove." The name hadn't stuck longer than the first summer, arid heat scorching the life out of anything the daft fellow had tried to plant, and carrying away his wife and children.

After that, or so the story went, the settler had cursed his homestead with the new name of "Hell."

When gold was found not far west in a puny stream, the name changed yet again to "El Dorado." Though that lasted no longer than the rush of miners who picked, panned and mined away most of the precious metal.

When the gold was mostly gone and civilization caught up with the roughneck men who'd blazed through in search of riches, there came bankers, lawyers and doctors, along with their pretty wives and dainty daughters. Amongst themselves, they'd formed a quaint city council, elected a mayor, nominated a marshal, and rechristened this hole in the ground as "Nazareth."

Those whose tongues weren't corseted by the niceties observed in polite society still called the former boomtown "Hell."

As for Donnell, he called it home, and had since the day he was born, a silent infant who'd opened his mouth to wail, but made almost no sound, not then and rarely ever afterward. The best he could manage was a sort of scale of breathing -- a whistle, a shush, a sigh. He'd never spoken a proper word. At least his hearing was top-notch.

Music was Donnell's voice instead, tickled out through the ivories of the old upright piano he'd paid a considerable sum in gold dust to have shipped from Chicago. Within the safe haven of Treighton's saloon, Donnell had placed that piano facing the street, where he'd have a fine view through the mosquito netting over the window when he played.

He could arrange Treighton's however he wanted, no questions asked. Owner's rules and that owner would be him.

Music wasn't his only skill. He was a favored son of Lady Luck, and the cards danced to his tune. Those who thought a mute man was simple, and an easy cheat at faro, often found themselves losing big.

He'd given up the game after winning Treighton's, though. No sense in pushing his luck too far.

A man who'd call himself satisfied with his lot in life, Donnell caressed the piano keys, a jingling tune flowing smooth and sweet as quality whiskey under his mastery of the music. He let the corner of his mouth quirk upward with dry humor. Many were they who'd claimed the son of a whore, muteness aside, would never make anything of his life. They'd been wrong, too.

Did they accept his good fortune with grace? Hell, no. The "proper" folks of Nazareth scorned him still, and always would. Too good for the likes of him and his saloon.

Thank God for sinners, eh?

* * *

A sudden clamor rose from the dusty, uneven street outside, usually quiet and deadly dull during the morning hours while laborers and leftover miners toiled, polite society occupied themselves with polite works, and gamblers slept off their night's fun. Attention captured, Donnell peered through the mosquito netting over his window.

Soon enough, the source of the commotion came into view. Donnell raised one eyebrow, intrigued. A tall, lean man, far too thin for his height. He was dressed in the tattered remnants of a once-respectable shirt, now missing its collar and cuffs, and formerly sturdy denim trousers, with no hat on his head nor shoes on his feet nor a coat on his back. Bleached-out hair stringy from lack of washing and long enough to be caught up in a queue hung over his face and tangled across his eyes.

Donnell leaned forward, instantly captivated. He'd never seen the equal of those eyes, their color distinct even at this distance. Aqua blue, the shade of summer skies, dulled by hunger and pain, but no less remarkable.

In point of fact, were he to be cleaned up and provided with a few good healthy meals, Donnell guessed this young man would easily steal anyone's heart away. Not least of all his.

Not that anyone knew about his preferences. It was safer that way. He came in for scant questioning about his lack of female companionship, as most thought if his tongue didn't work then neither would his cock.

Donnell abandoned those thoughts and focused on the beautiful -- yes, beautiful -- young man instead, a far more pleasant diversion. He'd no stubble on his cheeks or chin, both badly sunburned. Young, then. Tall and gangly enough that at a guess Donnell would have put him in his late teens, no more than twenty, not so far Donnell's junior.

A man could make quite a lot of himself in twenty years plus change. He could raise himself a fine establishment like Donnell's, or he could end up staggering filthy and starving down a dusty, badlands street with children and bad-tempered dogs jeering him every barefooted step of the way.

Donnell frowned when the young man staggered, swaying alarmingly before righting himself. That didn't seem to be clumsiness, but rather weariness. Perhaps illness?

"Drunk," Bettina sniffed, peering past Donnell. She might work in a saloon, but she had no patience with men who behaved badly when they'd had too much of the grape and grain. She didn't scold like the holy men, no, she tore strips off their hides and nailed them to the wall, and they loved her for it.

Barely hearing her, Donnell continued to track the man's progress. Seeming to ignore the rabble jeering at him, he came to a stop and stood up as straight as he could, attempting to brush dust, mud and worse off his clothes, smoothing them down. He dragged his hair out of his face with hands that shook minutely and gazed up the length of the street still to go.

The quiet despair in his eyes struck a chord in Donnell's heart, reverberating with a sense of hollow misery. Here was a man who'd fallen as far as he could go, with a trail of heartbreak behind him that stretched out for as many miles as he'd walked.

Donnell sat back and drummed his fingers on his knees. Poor bastard.

Enough kind souls had helped Donnell in his day. He owed this poor fellow no less.

 

About the Author

Willa Okati (AKA Will) is made of many things: imagination, coffee, stray cat hairs, daydreams, more coffee, kitchen experimentation, a passion for winter weather, a little more coffee, a whole lot of flowering plants and a lifelong love of storytelling. Will's definitely one of the quiet ones you have to watch out for, though he -- not she anymore -- is a lot less quiet these days.

 

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Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress

 

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USA v Raj is a MUST READ, INSPIRING TRUE STORY now available in paperback with a motion picture by BOLLYWOOD HOLLYWOOD PRODUCTION coming summer 2026. This tell-all memoir dares to share the truth behind one of the biggest federal false arrest and imprisonment scandals of the decade. This is a story about federal government corruption and a broken judiciary that turns innocent people into convicted criminals with their unchecked power and weaponized obsession with winning at any cost. This is also an innocent man's story of gratitude, steadfast faith, and endurance to persevere until the end of a war waged against him. Imagine being an immigrant from India who worked hard and lived by integrity for 50 years to achieve his American dream. Then, imagine waking up one morning to an indictment that leads to a three-and-a-half-year period of unlawful detention and torture. The pages within retrace my journey to become a renowned surgeon, interventional pain specialist, and activist for just causes and my fight to survive my false arrest and 1301-day imprisonment, which led to a unanimous acquittal by a jury at trial. May you be encouraged as this story leads you through the many twists and turns of a grueling experience marked by trials, tribulations, and, ultimately, triumphs.

HOW COULD THIS INJUSTICE HAPPEN IN AMERICA?

YES, THIS HAPPENED IN AMERICA. NEXT COULD BE ANYBODY, YOU INCLUDED.

The very bedrock of U.S. justice has been turned upside down, where the belief that you are INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY has become you are GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT. I have just one question for the guardians of justice: How will my own government return back the time and milestones they stole from me, my wife, and my daughter? Such injustices happen in banana republics not in America, the most powerful and oldest democracy in the world. WE MUST DO BETTER.

Do you hear the voices? Listen if you dare . . . You’ll get both the heebies and the jeebies in this unsettling new title.

Gail Galotta was raised in Chicago with childhood summers in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

If you’ve tried to plan, push, or hustle your way out of stress and anxiety and found yourself back in the same exhausting cycles, this book is your invitation to stop blaming yourself and start understanding yourself.

This book is your companion for the first phase of the Freedom Formula. It is the roadmap to guide you out of survival mode and into the clarity and resilience you need to create lasting change.

Tell us about yourself and what you do—a concise bio focusing on relevant experience, background, and achievements.

Author Introduction

My work centers around a simple but powerful idea: many of the patterns people struggle with are not evidence that something is wrong with them. They are adaptations created by a nervous system that has been trying to help them survive stress, pressure, and difficult experiences.

I am a somatic healing practitioner and the creator of the Freedom Formula, a framework that helps people move out of survival mode and into a life that reflects who they are. My work blends nervous system science, somatic practices, emotional processing, and mindset work to help people understand why they feel stuck and what it truly takes to create lasting change.

Before stepping into this work, I earned my law degree from Harvard Law School and spent years in high-performing environments where discipline and achievement were highly valued. From the outside, my life looked successful. Inside, I was quietly struggling with many of the same patterns my clients now describe: chronic stress, emotional eating, anxiety, and the exhausting habit of showing up for everyone else while ignoring my own needs.

Understanding the role of the nervous system changed the way I approached those patterns. Instead of seeing them as failures, I began to see them as intelligent adaptations. That realization not only transformed my own life, it became the foundation of the work I now share with others.

For more than sixteen years I have helped people understand their patterns with compassion, reconnect with their inner guidance, and build lives that feel meaningful, aligned, and sustainable. My book, You’re Not the Problem, grew out of that work and out of a deep desire to help more people experience the relief that comes from realizing they are not broken.

 

Your Author Journey

Writing You’re Not the Problem was not simply a professional project for me. It was the natural result of more than sixteen years of personal healing, study, and working with people who were trying with everything they had to change their lives.

Before I began this work, I believed what most high-functioning people believe: that if something in your life is not working, you should try harder. I knew how to work hard. I had a Harvard Law degree, a career that demanded discipline, and a life that required constant responsibility as the mother of six children. From the outside I looked capable and successful. Inside, I was exhausted and deeply disappointed in myself because certain patterns in my life would not change no matter how much effort I applied.

Understanding the role of the nervous system was the beginning of a completely different way of relating to myself. I started to see that many of the behaviors we judge most harshly in ourselves are actually adaptations that once helped us survive stress, pressure, or emotional pain. When we treat those patterns as enemies to eliminate, we stay locked in the same cycle. When we understand them and provide the conditions for change, something very different becomes possible.

My writing process reflects the same philosophy I teach. I write from lived experience, from years of working with real people, and from the growing body of research on trauma, nervous system regulation, and emotional processing. Much of the book began as conversations with clients, reflections on my own journey, and the questions people asked again and again when trying to understand why change felt so hard.

My hope in writing You’re Not the Problem is simple. I want readers to feel the same relief that changed my life when I finally understood that the patterns keeping me stuck were not proof of failure. They were intelligent adaptations. Once we understand that, we can begin the meaningful and sustainable change.

 

 

Share your path to becoming an author, including your writing process.

I wrote my first book when I was about seven years old. I don’tt remember every detail, but I do remember the main character. Her name was Soap Girl. She was a sudsy superhero who couldn’t be caught. Whenever someone tried to grab her, she slipped right out of their hands.

After that early masterpiece, writing took a back seat for many years. I wrote essays in school and later memorandums and contracts in my legal career, but I did not begin to write in a meaningful way until my late thirties.

That was the time in my life when I began trying to understand who I truly was. I started journaling every day and filled countless notebooks as I worked through a lifetime of self-disgust, disordered eating, anxiety, and a deep sense that I somehow was not enough. Those journals became the place where I asked hard questions, told the truth about my patterns, and slowly began building a different relationship with myself.

As I eventually trained and began working as a somatic practitioner, helping people understand and shift long-held patterns of stress, anxiety, overwhelm, self-sabotage, and coping behaviors, writing naturally became part of my work again. I started creating programs, teaching materials, and integrative workbooks that supported the process I was guiding people through.

Over time, that work evolved into what I now call the Freedom Formula, a roadmap that helps people move out of survival mode and into a more authentic and aligned life. I always wanted to find a way to put the entire system in one place so people could really sink their teeth into it and move through the process at their own pace. The book gave me the space to do that.

I had started a few books over the years, but something in me always knew the timing was not quite right. Then one day, a coach asked me a question that let me know it was time. She asked, “What is the one thing you want every single one of your clients to know more than anything else?”

The answer was immediate. You’re not the problem.

The moment I said those words, I knew the book had to exist. Realizing you are not the problem opens the door to compassion and curiosity, which are the cornerstones of change. I started writing the next day.

My process was fairly simple. I wrote most days, often beginning in my journal and then moving into the manuscript. Many of the ideas that appeared in the book started as journal reflections that eventually grew into sections of chapters or sometimes entire chapters themselves.

What surprised me most about the process was how challenging it was. There were days when I spent an hour deciding on a section title or three full days working on the opening paragraph of a chapter or a metaphor I wanted to get exactly right. I am not a perfectionist, but there was something about this project that felt sacred to me. I wanted the words to land in a way that helped the reader feel safe and understood.

Originally, I did not intend for the book to include so much of my personal story, but my editor would not let me hide behind the teaching. She pushed me to share my experiences honestly and refused to let me skip over the parts of my life that shaped the work. I am very grateful she did.

There are moments when I feel like I’m in one of those dreams where you get on the bus and suddenly realize you forgot to get dressed, standing there exposed and hoping no one notices. Fortunately, I can handle the vulnerability now, which is something I never would have imagined a decade ago. In the end, the openness made the book far better. It allowed me to speak to readers not just as a teacher, but as someone who has walked the same path.

My hope is that when readers finish the book, they feel the same sense of relief I once felt when I finally understood that the patterns keeping me stuck were not proof that I was broken. They were intelligent adaptations, and they could change.

 

The “Why” -Your personal reason for writing the book—this helps make pitches more authentic and compelling.

The “Why”

I wrote You’re Not the Problem because I am deeply tired of watching good, capable people blame themselves for patterns that make perfect sense.

For more than sixteen years I have worked with people who want to change their lives. They want to stop overworking, stop emotionally eating, stop people pleasing, stop the constant anxiety and pressure they feel inside. Almost every one of them begins from the same place. They believe the problem is their behavior and that the solution is more discipline, more willpower, or trying harder.

That approach always fails.

The reason it fails is simple. Behavior is not the root of the problem. Behavior is the visible expression of deeper adaptations the nervous system has made in response to stress and earlier life experiences. When we try to change behavior without understanding those underlying mechanisms, we end up fighting ourselves.

One of the most painful things I see in my work is how quickly people turn that struggle into self-blame. They assume they lack discipline or character when in reality they are brilliantly adapted human beings whose nervous systems have been trying to protect them.

Once someone sees their patterns through the lens of adaptation rather than failure, compassion and curiosity naturally begin to replace self-attack. From there, meaningful and sustainable change becomes possible because the work shifts from forcing behavior to understanding the system that created it.

I also wrote the book because the world we are living in right now is profoundly stressful and often out of sync with our natural human rhythms. The anxiety, overwhelm, and exhaustion many people feel today are not signs that something is wrong with them. They are normal responses to environments that place constant demands on our attention, productivity, and emotional capacity.

Rather than numbing those experiences with medication, distraction, or endless coping strategies, I believe we need a much deeper cultural understanding of how the nervous system works and how human beings can find safety, heal, and grow. This book is part of that larger mission.

It offers readers the complete Freedom Formula, the framework I use in my work, so that people who may never sit in a session with me can still understand their patterns, reconnect with their inner guidance, and begin adapting again in ways that move them toward their truth, their wholeness, and a life that feels like their own. When enough of us begin doing this work in our own lives, we will collectively create a more trauma-informed, somatic-literate world, and the difference that will make is profound.

 

Maya Lin never wanted to become the headline.

Anh Sphabmixay is a Colorado-based author who writes heartfelt stories centered on connection, kindness, and the beauty found in everyday moments. Inspired by her loving family—including her imaginative daughter and beloved Yorkie, Abbie—Anh creates stories that celebrate emotion, wonder, and human connection.

Loneliness gnaws and chews like the relentless prairie wind. Dakota homesteader, Digger Dancy, props his feet in the oven and waits for the storm to end. His brother, George, barges into the soddy in a swirl of blowing snow. George announces he will abandon his claim to seek a wife. He can’ t stand the loneliness. Digger slaps a stack of old newspapers on the table and convinces him to place an ad for a correspondence bride in the Montana Matrimonial News. Doctor Gamla, the almost-doctor and midwife, treats George’ s frostbite, and offers a cure for his melancholia. She tells of two sisters living in tar-paper shacks along the Mad Dog River. The brothers cannot imagine how Doctor Gamla’ s cure will change their lives. Nickelbo’ s whole world is wheat. The homesteaders talk about crops, worry about the weather, complain about prices, and dream what they’ ll buy after the harvest. Asa Wainwright busts sod with a grasshopper plow. Ingrid Larson dallies over planting to avoid her sister’ s wedding. Drunken Oscar Borgom gets lost in a storm on the way to the outhouse. Through it all, Doctor Gamla delivers babies, treats ailments, and offers advice. “My cures work if you can stand them."

What is the hardest part of writing your books?

For me, the hardest part is keeping consistent with the daily effort of sitting in the chair in front of my computer screen. I do better at sometimes rather than others. Once I am writing, the time flies by. I’m happier when I write. There’s something wonderful about the endorphins created by creative work.

 

What are your most played songs?

I get caught up and distracted by the words of songs. I usually write in silence, but if I do play music, it is always without words or at least in a language I can’t understand.

 

 

Do you have critique partners or beta readers?

I met two writers at the Taos Master Class in Fiction in 2010. Since then, we often read each other’s work when nearing publication. The foundation of the same class teaching gives credibility to their critique and I greatly appreciate sharing my work with them online. I also have a sister who teaches writing. She is of great help to me—and is not hesitant to share her honest opinion!

 

 

What book are you reading now?

For me, I am always reading more than one book at a time. I just finished THEO OF GOLDEN and loved it. My next is a Jessie Stone book by Robert Parker. I also keep a non-fiction book or two going. At present it is a biography of Winston Churchill. I have a daily reading regimen of spiritual books as well. At present I am reading a biography of Saint Catherine of Siena. “Be who you were meant to be and you will set the world on fire,” is one of her famous quotes. Another book that is most encouraging is the DAILY ARTIST WAY by Julie Cameron. I don’t have enough time to consume all the books I want.

 

 

How did you start your writing career?

 I started getting the writing bug in my mid-40s. A local poetry group welcomed me into their midst and taught me about lyrical language and using sensorial details. This was a great foundation for all other writing. Because I love history and cherish my Scandinavian heritage, I combine the two in writing frontier fiction set in my home state of Minnesota. MONTANA MATRIMONIAL NEWS is set across the border into North Dakota where my great uncles homesteaded.

 

 

Tell us about your next release.

I loved my characters of MONTANA MATRIMONIAL NEWS so much that I hated to let them go after the book release of November 2025. I am now working on another book set in Nickelbo, ND, in 1890. Characters from MONTANA MATRIONIAL NEWS show up as secondary characters. The working title is PRAIRIE WIND, CARRY ME HOME.