Local Author Profile - Linda Riesenberg Fisler

April’s been a busy and exciting month for award-winning author Linda Riesenberg Fisler of Middletown.

“Blind Influence,” the first book in her suspenseful, politically-charged Blind series (“It’s kind of like Jason Bourne meets the Good Wife in the West Wing,” she says) was just released on audiobook by Skyboat Media of California, a leading audiobook publisher whose featured authors include Orson Scott Card, Deepak Chopra and and Ursula K. Le Guin among others. With narration provided by Stefan Rudnicki, a Grammy and Audie Award winner, and Gabrielle de Cuir, the frequent vocal choice among best-selling authors and celebrities, Blind Influence is poised to entertain Linda’s fans on yet another platform.

Not one to rest on her laurels, Linda’s been at work on the fourth book in the Blind series with release expected later this year. Like its predecessors (Blind Persuasion is Book two and Blind Alliance is Book three), the fourth novel attempts to answer the question : “Can three people change the course of history averting the dysfunctional divide we face today?” No doubt Linda’s fans will eagerly await the answer as her characters -- a U.S. Senator, an MI6 agent and a star female attorney in Washington, DC -- continue to navigate the corridors of power amid the dangerous, the deceitful and the deadly.

To Linda, a Southwest Ohio native, writing is as natural as breathing. In her formative years she wrote stories to entertain friends. She dreamed of becoming a screenwriter. Her strong urge to create persisted during her twenty-six year career at Proctor & Gamble, where marketing, computer programming/software development and consumer research (on toilet paper and baby diapers, no less) filled her days.

This screenwriter-at-heart never stopped creating, however. Undaunted and with big dreams, Linda composed a script for “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and sent it by registered mail directly to Gene Roddenberry [TV screenwriter/producer best known as the creator of the original Star Trek TV series]*. In her biography Linda recalls that Roddenberry “graciously signed for the script and gave it to Eric Stillwell,” [at the time a script coordinator]** who then wrote Linda a rejection letter.

However, Linda continues, “it wasn’t until the year 2014” that she realized that “Mr. Stillwell provided all the information needed to resubmit the script successfully... After knocking her head against the wall several times, Linda decided it was time to revisit the novel series she began writing in the 1980s. Enter the Blind series!...”

Ever-determined, Linda spent her free hours generating “over a foot-tall stack of scenes” that eventually became her debut novel, Blind Influence. Brimming with adventure and political intrigue, the novel eventually garnered awards from the Paris Book Festival, the Great Midwest Book Festival and the Hollywood Book Festival. Blind Persuasion, the second in the series published in 2016, received a Paris Book Festival award. Blind Alliance debuted in 2017.

With visions of mystery and suspense still dancing in her head, Linda is at work on the fourth novel in the Blind series. Her ultimate goal is to see her novels become a series on Netflix or a movie series. In the meantime, her fans can keep up with her latest literary endeavors on the Blind Series Network, a podcast that features Linda reading and discussing her novels.

An award-winning artist who teaches oil painting at the Middletown Arts Center, Linda has also written books about art and time management (including one specifically for “the creative entrepreneur”). She produces and hosts another podcast, "All Things Creative", in which she interviews creative minds from various genres.

Today Linda maintains that she’s “attained her goal of living a creative life” and “is grateful for her supporters/fans who enjoy her creative efforts.”

Fans of Linda the author can follow her on the following:

The Blind Series Network--   https://www.patreon.com/LindaRiesenbergFisler (Podcast)

Available on  iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify (in the near future), Google Play and many others that pick up that feed.

http://blindseries.lindafisler.com/   (book-related website)

* Gene Roddenberry information from Wikipedia

** Eric Stillwell information from Wikipedia