Meet Marian L. Thomas

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marian L. Thomas.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Marian. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Born in Illinois, I wouldn’t say that my first career choice was writing women’s fiction novels. I saw myself working for a local newspaper, reporting news in a journalist fashion. In college, I wrote for the college paper as a sports editor but later became the news editor. My writing path took a detour when I drafted my first completed manuscript and called it Color Me Jazzmyne. Today, storytelling is my passion. I’ve penned six women’s fiction novels.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The biggest struggle about being an author is putting yourself out there. For the most part, the writing part is easy, but sometimes, readers want an up-close and personal interview into your life, and that’s where the war between staying in a writing cave and interacting with readers becomes a battle.

Tell us about your work – what should we know?
I’m an author. I write women’s fiction books, but that doesn’t mean that men can’t read them too. A few of my books such as The Caged Butterfly focus on the story of transformation and identity. It is an emotional and shocking foray into family secrets, personal triumph, and deep-rooted sorrows. However, the book is also is a fictional account of what it means to be Black in America. In The Caged Butterfly, each of the three main characters are connected by blood but occupy different times in their family’s history. Nevertheless, they each find themselves still exploring the same question in their interconnected stories: What does it means to love the skin you’re in.

One of the characters, Timmy Taylor, is known as one of the greatest white jazz pianists in New York. He never questions his whiteness until he learns that his mother is a Black woman. As he copes with this new reality, including learning about the “one drop rule” that now classifies him as Black, Timmy must learn to embrace the truth and overcome the betrayal of knowing that everything he believed was true about himself was a life.
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The Caged Butterfly explores issues of race in ways that Black Americans have had to grapple with for centuries. The cultural assumption that being white is better is something the characters in this book tackle and ultimately most overcome in order to live their authentic lives. After all, we are all just trying to do the same in life…live our authentic lives.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
I’ve been writing books since 2009. Not a book that you see today, has become a part of the book industry as a result of something I did on my own. My biggest cheerleaders have been my mother and my mother-law. My support and strength to step out of my comfort zone come from my husband. My friends that stay up at midnight and listen to me pitch a story to them or read a chapter that I just wrote, they are my teammates.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.marianlthomas.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marianlthomas09/channel/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marianlthomasbooks
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/marianlthomas01

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