The third book, “Through the Meadow: Wrapped in the Rays of the Sun Volume III” is also available on Kindle and will soon be sold in print.

“The books are a series of adventures about an imaginary world and the struggle against a theocracy,” MacKenzie said. “It’s about two princesses fighting for a throne, and it only grows from there.”

In the first book, “Casting Shadows,” the story tells of Princess Nora “who was always second fiddle to her older sister, Jayne. Older and prettier, Jayne received more attention from their father, King Gerald, and was showered with honors and indulgences. Hardly noticed, Nora spent her time fighting with swords, sitting with the servants and cultivating… She never didn’t want to be near the monster that King Gerald turned out to be. Things change drastically when King Gerald dies. Without a male heir, Jayne became Queen of Klenard,” according to her description on Amazon.

The stories are aimed at ages 17 and up and sell well to friends and family, she said.

“I started writing these books right before the pandemic, in 2019,” she said. “I wanted to become an author; I went there totally blind. I just started writing.

She has self-published her work with Amazon. “I knew that if I tried to publish it traditionally, I couldn’t afford it, so I chose to self-publish the books,” she said. “The first time I saw my book in print was exciting, like a dream come true. It didn’t even matter if someone bought it – just to see it and say ‘Oh my God, I just wrote a 700 page book” was enough.

As a child, she invented stories using her stuffed animals and the dolls are characters. “I came across some kind of Ann Frank writing, with a diary, and it turned into writing for a school magazine. Then I started submitting political commentary, fanfiction, everything” , said MacKenzie.

MacKenzie attended Central Connecticut State University and earned a degree in education from Western Governor’s University. “I took writing classes, but what I want to write comes naturally — I just flow with it,” she said. “I guess my style is every man for himself.”

MacKenzie gave a reading and book signing at Howard’s in September 2021. Her second appearance is April 10.

She heard about Howard from a friend. “He said, ‘This shoe store has opened a bookstore, check it out,’ so I called (owner John Noelke) and we started planning,” she said. . “I’m very excited to come back and do this again.”

She has an eclectic list of favorite authors: Harper Lee, Sue Monk Kidd, Stephen King, Hazel Gaynor and Langston Hughes, among others. “Growing up, we also read a lot of science fiction,” she said. “So what I read is all over the place.”

Her son is high functioning autistic and she keeps this in mind when creating her characters.

“He has a lot of action figures and he makes up his own stories for them,” she said. “I try to encourage that as much as I can. For me, it’s about finding the right words and directing the conversation to communicate with him. In my latest book, there’s a character with autistic characteristics , and I base it on some of the things it does

“With autism, it’s a different way of seeing the world,” MacKenzie said. “For example, one of my characters lies down on the ground, to calm down; my son does too. I lie down with him and we look at the sky together. When that happens, I think, “Look what he sees.”

Her stories, she says, are “very colorful and fantastical”. I haven’t decided which excerpts to read from Howard, but I will read the first two books, and maybe a little spoiler for the next one.

When not writing or caring for her family, MacKenzie works on her family’s genealogy and reads extensively. She also converted her late father’s huge collection of vinyl albums into a digital collection. “It’s a long process – he had hundreds of albums, and some are 78s,” she said.

His stories, though set in a courtly world of royalty, touch on real themes that people can relate to – in “There are also global themes.” In ‘Casting Shadows,’ it’s made mention of plagues, vaccine issues…I unwittingly put things in there, sometimes, before they actually happened,” MacKenzie said. “I have so many story ideas.”

She also published “A World So Bright and Dark: The Journal of Lizzie Colleen MacDougal” about a teenager recovering from a traumatic experience. All of his books are available online.

To learn more about and about the author, find her page at www.amazon.com/~/e/B07TS4YPVL, or her website at www.saraelliemackenzie.com.