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September 16th, 2025

Addiction, Poverty, and Hope: Stories That Go Beyond Romance with Author Twila Mason

  1. Addiction, Poverty, and Hope: Stories That Go Beyond Romance with Author Twila Mason Teri M Brown 22:32

My guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is Twila Mason, author of the book Piece by Piece.  Twila is an award-winning romance author. She has been writing her own stories since she learned how to read. She is a writer of romance, women’s fiction, poetry, and short stories. Her work explores raw Emotions and the complexities of life while finding the hope within every obstacle.

 

After obtaining a PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology, she switched gears to follow her lifelong dream of putting her fictional stories out into the world. She lives the rural, small-town life in Missouri with her husband, two kids, and menagerie of animals. When she’s not reading or writing, Twila can be found crafting, farming, doing home improvement projects, or going on adventures with her Family.

 

In my book review, I stated Piece by Piece is a friends-to-lovers contemporary romance that takes a hard look at the drug culture – and what it does to families. Aria spends her childhood looking after her baby brother, Ben, because her mother simple cannot. As a drug addict, she is often high, always unreliable, and rarely offers motherly support. When her mother spends the rent Money, Aria arrives home to find the family is now on the street. She turns to an old friend, Luke, who found a way out of the old neighborhood.

 

Although there is an immediate spark between them, Luke and Aria dance around the attraction because neither is ready to commit. We get front row seats as we watch them battle their demons and navigate a new world where peace, hope, and Love have a chance to exist. As completely foreign concepts, neither one really knows what to do when life isn’t a battlefield.

 

That’s not to say everything is easy. Moving past Trauma and finding the right path is not easy. Nor is forgiveness – of others or of self. And what to do when the ones you should love are the ones that keep hurting you?

 

This story is sweet as two young people fall in love. But it is also edgy as we see what happens when drugs and alcohol cause childhood trauma and can easily create a family cycle of abuse.

 

Subscribe to Online for Authors to learn about more great books! https://www.youtube.com/@onlineforauthors?sub_confirmation=1

 

Join the Novels N Latte Book Club community to discuss this and other books with like-minded readers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3576519880426290

 

You can follow Author Twila Mason

Website: https://www.twilamason.com

FB:@twilamasonauthor

IG: @twilamason_author

X: @twilamasona

LinkedIn: @twila-mason-phd-3b824330

 

Purchase Piece by Piece on Amazon:

Paperback: https://amzn.to/4lhAvHY

Ebook: https://amzn.to/4kq9XDg

 

Teri M Brown, Author and Podcast Host: https://www.terimbrown.com

FB: @TeriMBrownAuthor

IG: @terimbrown_author

X: @terimbrown1

 

Want to be a guest on Online for Authors? Send Teri M Brown a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/member/onlineforauthors

 

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*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Teri M Brown Award-winning Author and Podcast Host

Born in Athens, Greece as an Air Force brat, Teri M Brown graduated from UNC Greensboro. She began her writing career helping small businesses with content creation and published five nonfiction self-help books dealing with real estate and finance, receiving multiple awards. In 2017, after winning the First Annual Anita Bloom Ornoff Award for Inspirational Short Story, she began writing fiction in earnest, and published her debut novel in 2022, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, a historical fiction set in Ukraine, which has won twelve awards. Her second novel published in 2023, An Enemy Like Me, takes place during WWII, winning 27 awards. Her latest novel, Daughters of Green Mountain Gap, a generational story about Appalachian healers came out in January 2024 and has already won three awards. Teri is a wife, mother, grandmother,podcaster, and author who loves word games, reading, bumming on the beach, taking photos, singing in the shower, hunting for bargains, ballroom dancing, playing bridge, and mentoring others. Learn more at www.terimbrown.com.