Autor: Anna Simone

Long before her name became synonymous with great storytelling, Nea worked 60-70 hours a week building a marketing firm to support her three daughters as a single parent. To complete her first novel Reaching Back, Nea would squeeze in time before going to the office and during her girls extracurricular practices to work on her hobby—writing her first novel. Born in Houston, Texas, to an entrepreneur, father and a homemaker, mother; as a child Nea dreamed of being a professional dancer. Realizing she didn”t have the right stuff for a dance career, she shifted gears and majored in marketing at California State University, Long Beach. While she was married, Nea ran several successful businesses utilizing an innate understanding of branding and customer service. A voracious reader, Nea had often privately considered writing but never took the first step to putting her thoughts to paper until the day she received a call from her friend Dana Nelson. Dana called to tell Nea, that when she had been in prayer, God had sent a message through her, for Nea. The message was simply „She should write”. Realizing the message had to be from God, Nea was inspired to start writing the novel Reaching Back. That night she sat at her computer and wrote the first thirty five pages exploring what would have happened if …. Reaching Back was acquired by BET Books, who published it in 2002 where it became their first book reviewed as „literary” fiction. The book was reprinted over 14 times in the first printing. In 2013 the Unabridged version of Reaching Back was re-released under the Gravel Road Imprint. Following on the heels of Reaching Back”s success, Simone wrote ReBorn the sequel which skyrocketed to become a New York Times bestseller in 2007. ReBorn was also released under the Gravel Road Imprint. In 2008, Simone took a hiatus from writing to concentrate on raising her children and collaborate with her partners to form Equal Hue Productions and adapt Reaching Back into a made for television mini-series to be aired in four parts. She returned to writing in 2012 to pen the long awaited conclusion to the trilogy, „The Substance of Things”, taken from Hebrews 11:1. „Now Faith is the Substance of Things Hoped For and the Evidence of Things not seen, ” Simone feels it is the obvious conclusion to the trilogy based on a writing career that was launched and sustained by faith. Now Simone is busy at work on her fourth novel, „A Memory of Love”. Simone lives with her German Shepherds, Shane & Bobby. She splits her time between her home in Los Angeles and Atlanta, GA. Her favorite past time is following the careers of her daughters.