Southern-California based author and journalist Steve Baltin has lived a life most writers dream of. With bylines in Rolling Stone, Billboard, Playboy and more, he has had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview many music legends.

His latest book, Anthems We Love: 29 Iconic Artists On The Hit Songs That Shaped Our Lives, examines anthems from The Temptations to My Chemical Romance and answers the question: what transforms a song into an anthem?

Interviews with these artists reveal their creative processes, making the reader feel as though they were sitting in the room during a writing session or backstage at a show. While it offers a behind-the-scenes look at the songs, it mostly shares how the song grew in popularity and how fans made them personal. Songs are meant to transport someone back to a certain time - a wedding, a high school graduation, a first love - and reading about how these artists watched their songs grow into something beyond their imaginations is fascinating.

“If you’ve ever bounced along to TLC’s ‘Scrubs’ in your car on a girls’ night out, acted out a three-act play in your head to My Chemical Romance’s ‘The Black Parade,’ or swooned to Barry Manilow’s ‘Could It Be Magic,’ and wondered, How did these anthemic songs come to be? - join the club!” singer-songwriter Deborah Gibson wrote as praise for Anthems We Love. “Steve Baltin so brilliantly takes you deep into an insightful journey of these songs from inception to recording and beyond… So many fascinating artists and songs that are woven into the soundtrack of our lives in a new and unique way that will leave you hungry for a next edition. This book resonates with me as a songwriter, but more importantly, it hits home for the music fan that lives in all of us!”

In the foreword written by fellow journalist Cameron Crowe, he shares his belief that most great anthems start as a want to please everyone, and when that backfires, a song emerges that was meant for one person but instead resonates with the world. Having a song that means so much to someone is widely discussed, whether they are sharing the song with their friends or seeing the song performed live while standing next to a group of strangers, but hardly ever have the artists delved deep into what it was like for them to watch fans make those songs their own.

“I have done thousands of interviews over the years and one of the most common refrains, no matter how big the artist, is songs are like children,” Baltin said in a press release. “Anthems is what happens when those songs have grown up. All 29 of these songs have gone into the world and been a huge part of people’s lives, whether they’ve been played at weddings, funerals, births. And my favorite part of writing this book was hearing from the artists how they’ve been moved - and even shocked - by the way these songs have become part of the fabrics of listeners’ worlds in ways the artist could never have imagined. Anthems proves that when a song leaves the nest, it becomes the world’s.”

In the superhero universe of A LA BRAVA, Latinas of different upbringings fight against female injustices.

The creator and founder of the series, Kayden Phoenix, comes from the film industry and has a background in screenwriting and directing. One of the first things she noticed in her field was the character generalizations that didn’t reflect her own background, and gave her the idea of wanting to bring a Latina superhero to the big screen.

As a third generation Chicana based in Los Angeles, her first real superhero was her mother. She was the inspiration behind the first in the series, Jalisco, named after the place her grandmother was born. This Mexican Latina superhero is a blade-wielding folklorico dancer that uses her culture as her weapon.

The second in the series, Santa, is also heavily influenced by her family. Inspired by her family members with military backgrounds, this SJW Latina superhero is a brawler that takes down the ICE detention centers.

Loquita, a Boriqua/Cubana Latina superhero, is a teen detective in the supernatural world. Loquita is an ode to Phoenix’s childhood memories of ghost stories told at family gatherings.

Ruca is a Chicana Latina vigilante dispensing justice. Her story pays homage to Phoenix’s hometown and the overplayed stereotypes of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.

Bandita is the last in the series, who is a Dominican Latina, gun-slinging cowgirl based in modern-day New York.

For each story, a very real social justice issue is depicted. From femicide and government detention centers to suicide, human trafficking and domestic violence, Phoenix makes sure that Latinas are not only represented but heard.

“I hope that [readers] get a good story, because you are reading a book and learning about a new superhero,” she said. “And then also maybe to create change themselves; whether it’s the social justice issue that they’re learning about or just something in the community that they care about themselves.”

Although her main reasoning for creating this series was representation, she was informed during the middle of the series that A LA BRAVA is the first Latina superhero team in comic book history.

She wanted to make sure representation was found in all forms of the comics, including the designers. Several artists were a part of the story’s creations, from penciling and inking to coloring and lettering.

“I have so many amazing artists,” Phoenix said. “They’re all Latina artists. I’m so lucky I found them, all on Instagram and Twitter.”

After putting a call out online for Latinas artists to help a Latina writer create Latina superheroes, Phoenix received nearly 100 portfolios. Since then, she has been able to create a team of artists that specialize in all forms of illustration.

The importance of the A LA BRAVA series is much more than a typical superhero story. They tackle real-world problems with real-world solutions, and do so with a still-underrepresented community. This series is meant to spark conversation and bring forward a new kind of hero.

After an admirable career as a civil service firefighter and veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Alan E. Losure was enjoying the retirement life. However, on a fall day in 2017, his daily three-mile walk went a bit differently.

In his mind, Losure saw a vision. A man was sitting at a table, inside of a log cabin, writing. An oil lamp stood on the table next to the man, and using that light Losure was able to see what the man was writing.

“I just felt like I was an invisible part of his story, and it haunted me,” he said.

He went home and told his wife, but decided to try and ignore the vision. When it simply could not be ignored, he typed it out. He was encouraged to publish it, which had never even crossed his mind. Five years later, he has published 14 books and counting.

His stories tend to be set in the 1890s, in his hometown of Gas City, Indiana. The inspiration came from a building in town that sported its founding year - 1892 - and he found himself at the local library researching as much as possible.

“This is a unique time when automobiles began to slowly become a part of our daily lives, before airplanes; when the streets were made of dirt rather than asphalt and people rode horses instead of riding in Hondas,” he said.

Although he doesn’t use the names of real people that he comes across in newspaper clippings on the library’s microfilm readers, he does use real photographs that he feels match the characters perfectly. He typically searches for cabinet cards on eBay and purchases them so he is in possession of the original copy.

Losure said that his stories play like a movie in his mind, and when he doesn’t see anything else, he feels the story is complete. Despite not being an active viewer or reader of murder mysteries, that is typically the genre he writes. The historical aspect of his stories come from his love of history, which was his favorite subject in school and became a lifelong passion.

Typically the titles of the book come to him before he even begins writing, while the covers of his books also come to him as a vision, which he draws out and sends in for illustration.

His wife, Susan, plays a major role in publishing his works. Not only is she his biggest supporter, but she is a wonderful proofreader. This genre also isn’t her first choice as a reader, yet she happily shares his latest work with her fellow churchgoers.

“It's something I never in my life expected to do, and that makes it wonderful because it is a surprise,” he said.

His latest book, The Curse of the Hanging Tree, tells the story of Stanley, an intellectually disabled teenager who is savagely lynched for a crime he did not commit. Word of a terrible curse spread through the town as those involved with Stanley’s death met with a terrible death of their own.

Is the curse responsible for the strange occurrences that continue? Is there another force that may be involved? It is now up to Marshal Justin Blake and his deputies to solve this lingering murder mystery and put an end to the death and destruction that continues to torment the good people in present-day Gas City.

While Jamie Gehring was writing her memoir, Madman in the Woods: Life Next Door to the Unabomber, she never once identified the book as part of the true crime genre.

Gehring grew up in Lincoln, Mont. next to a self-sustaining hermit that she only knew as Ted. Despite his odd behavior, Ted was the man that gave her painted rocks, stayed over for dinner and even held her as a baby. Imagine her surprise when, 17 years later, her neighbor was identified as Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

“It's such an interesting, outside perspective to have experienced something like that,” Gehring said. “For me, personally, it just really motivated and pushed me to not only really understand our interactions and our lives and how they intersected but also knowing him and wanting to really understand what created him.”

Although her book was originally laid out as a set of short stories, Gehring knew she wanted to make it much more personal. More than five years later, she had researched every aspect of Kaczynski’s life, including illness as a baby, advancements in school and isolation he chose throughout his childhood and teenage years. Much like an actor immersing themselves in a role, Gehring immersed herself in the life of Ted and his family to get a better understanding of how the man behind the monster came to be.

There were a few instances where she would take a 24-hour period of time to lock herself in a hotel room and fully immerse herself, allowing her to feel not only Kaczynski’s pain but the pain his family had to endure. Her empathy is present in the book, because as a mother and as a sibling, she can understand what it felt like to be related to someone who was lacking that same kind of empathy.

“It was a rollercoaster of emotion because I would write something particularly in that scene with [Kaczynski’s mother] Wanda and her baby and having to leave him in the hospital, and then a couple of months later I would write a scene about the additional research I had done finding out that he poisoned my dog,” Gehring said. “I'm feeling empathy and then I'm feeling this intense anger as well.”

Gehring was able to develop a strong relationship with Ted’s brother, David Kaczynski, who she first met during the production of the Netflix documentary, “Unabomber - In His Own Words”. She was transparent with him from their first email interaction, saying that she was writing about how her childhood was affected by Ted and how she’s learning to cope with that as an adult. He was transparent with her in return, offering her reference material and stories of his own as well as reading the first draft of her memoir.

“He really thanked me for trying to connect with Wanda because her voice can no longer be heard; she's passed away and for me to spend the time really trying to tell her story as well was really important and was very appreciated by David,” she said. “He was so incredibly supportive and complimentary, not only of my writing style, but also of the story I was telling. Getting his approval, somebody who's this close to the story, was a huge moment for me as a new author.”

Despite getting the approval of those closest to the story, there were still a thousand moments of thinking ‘never mind’ while writing Madman in the Woods. Not only did it take a lot of emotional energy to write about several disturbing topics, but having to learn just how close it was to the safety of her own family was hard to fully grasp. There was also the thought in the back of her mind that there would probably come a time when Ted would read the book and have something to say about it.

The most important aspect of the book is the conversation it starts. For true crime fans, this is much more than some previously unknown facts about the man that went from mathematics professor to domestic terrorist. This is about those that knew him and were also affected by his actions.

“It makes you realize the ripple effect of somebody's violence,” Gehring said. “Because of the duration of his violence, so many lives were affected. The nation was terrorized for 17 years.”

Gehring feels like the finished product of Madman in the Woods is everything she wanted it to be. It is much more than a true crime story; it has nature writing, complex themes of grief and connection, and personal essays of life outside of being Kaczynski’s neighbor.

There is one takeaway she hopes readers get, especially those who have similar stories.

“That is one thing that I really do find empowering and appreciate about the process, that I've been able to give more voice to my experience,” she said. “There's plenty of other people out there that have experienced some type of violence and it's affected their lives, and maybe that will inspire them to tell their own story, whatever that looks like.”

Many residents of Oklahoma believed that the Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995 was the deadliest act in their history. When the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was demolished, as well as dozens of cars and more than 300 nearby buildings, 168 people perished and several hundred were injured. The FBI’s official website states, “No stone was left unturned to make sure every clue was found and all the culprits identified.”

The same cannot be said for the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

According to author Susan E. Atkins, Oklahoma State Representative Don Ross had to correct reports that the 1995 bombing was the worst disaster in Oklahoma history. Atkins, a Tulsa resident for 30 years, a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and professor at the University of Tulsa, had never heard of the 1921 race massacre. For almost 100 years, this tragedy was swept under the rug, and that infuriated her.

Atkins dove into as many scholarly sources as she could find about the massacre. Historically accurate, well-annotated books were right at her disposal, yet history books were notably absent of any trace of this piece of history. This inspired her to write a historical fiction account of the massacre called Never Again!

With six pages of bibliography, Never Again! brings a fictionalized account of what occurred between Black man Dick Roland and white woman Sarah Page, beginning inside an elevator of the Drexel Building on May 30, 1921. On May 31 and June 1, 1921, thousands of drunk, armed and newly deputized white citizens invaded Tulsa's thriving Greenwood District, murdered an estimated 300 Blacks, tortured thousands more and incinerated 35 city blocks of homes, businesses, churches and other institutions.

“The Greenwood community was known as ‘Black Wall Street’, but the Tulsa Tribune, which was a big player in this whole thing, were just fanning the flames of what a cesspool of drugs and [sex workers] Greenwood was,” Atkins said. “They just totally ignored the fact that there were brilliant doctors, lawyers, fine jewelry shops, churches, and all of it was burned to the ground over the course of two days.”

Atkins created two fictional characters to help move the story forward to present day, including Hattie Johnson Rogers, daughter of Roland and Page, and her best friend, Lucy Ann Barnes. They meet when entering Booker T. Washington High School, and become lifelong friends who eventually become part of the conversation of fighting for reparations. The book speaks of the real 2005 case appeal that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear, and how real people Representative Don Ross and Senator Maxine Horner helped commission a report to get real answers.

As of May 2022, the plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking reparations for the massacre are finally moving forward. An extensive curriculum was introduced to Oklahoma school districts. President Joe Biden became the first sitting president to visit the area. A free, public exhibit is offered by the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. Progress has been made, but is not finished.

“I truly want people to be able to learn about this story and history,” Atkins said. “What people forget about something like this is that the wealth that could have been passed on to subsequent generations, and wealth could have accumulated through generations. [Those who survived] fled, never to return. It was a tragic loss for the city of Tulsa and the community of Greenwood.”

For best-selling novelist Ibi Zoboi, her writing journey began during her adolescence.

She kept her stories to herself, jotting them down on the blank pages of notebooks left over from the school year. She didn’t read many books herself - the culture of borrowing and returning books in a classroom or library either did not exist yet or did not exist in her struggling community - but instead immersed herself in magazines, which were more accessible and cheaper to buy.

It was easy for Zoboi to fall in love with writing. Poetry first, then journalism. Her poetry became short stories. Those short stories became novels. Whatever she was writing, she knew she wanted the audience to fall into the young adult category.

“I decided to write for young people simply because I love speculative fiction,” she said. “I thought I could try my hand at fantasy and sci-fi, and those were the first stories that I started to write.”

Her latest novel, Okoye to the People, finds the Dora Milaje General going on her first trip to America with King T’Chaka. She has been tasked with joining other African leaders as a special envoy to the World Humanitarian Aid Council, but is thrown into conflict when she finds herself in a New York neighborhood that is struggling with gentrification.

As she gets to know the young people of Brownsville, Okoye uncovers the truth about the plans of a manipulative real-estate mogul pulling all the strings - and how far-reaching those secret plans really are. Caught between fulfilling her duty to her country and listening to her own heart urging her to stand up for Brownsville, Okoye must determine the type of Dora Milaje - and woman - she wants to be.

Zoboi found herself really connecting to the story of the Dora Milaje, who were based on the Dahomey, an all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa. As an immigrant of Haiti, she loved reading about and seeing photos of these women who learned how to protect their children and their villages.

She also immersed herself in the Black Panther comics, learning as much as she could about the Dora Milaje and Okoye.

“There’s a lot of gaps in the story and history of the Dora Milaje, so I had to rely on what’s already there,” Zoboi said. “Every time somebody writes about the Dora Milaje, they create a little something new. I had to rely on who she is as a character; as a character she’s fiercely loyal, so this book is about her loyalty versus her heart and her needing to help the kids that need it most.”

Okoye may or may not be the one who saves the day at the end of the novel, giving the reader the chance to question who they are as heroes and how they can create and affect change. Sure, there are superheroes, but what about everyday heroes?

Creating the story for Okoye to the People reminded Zoboi of a Rudine Sims Bishop quote that she tries to live by in her storytelling:

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”

The young adults who read her novels may not feel seen or may not see themselves, so Zoboi hopes her books help them find that window, mirror or sliding glass door.