Hello my friends

Tune in tommorow for a special YOUTUBE LIVE at the link below

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SUNDAY, JUNE 25TH

1PM EST

I will be sharing my life updates on living in Italy and becoming an author.

Please share this post with friends and family. I appreciate your support in ordering my book.

Ebook is available June 28th

Paperback July 14th

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Dreams are stories and images that our minds create while we sleep. They can be entertaining, fun, romantic, disturbing, and sometimes bizarre."

In the linked poems that make up her debut collection, The Colour Wheel of My Dreams, Juli-Anne Royes Russo explores the complexed emotions that come with voluntarily leaving the country of her birth, Jamaica for America, and searching for a place to call home. Throughout the collection, Juli-Anne's dreams process loss, brutal winters, cultural isolation, woman of colour, and racism while living in America. She reflects on the longing to leave her small conservative post-colonial island for freedom, to the country where "dreams do come true."

Hello my friends

Finally my project for 2023 is now out on amazon for pre-order. It took a bit longer but it is here! Thanks to my beta readers who reviewed and made great suggestions, from them, I decided to use one of my paintings for the cover.

During the winter upon discovery of an art studio tucked away within the medieval old part of Tolfa is Artiamo run by art teacher Silvia Di Silvestro. I was drawn to a stone dwelling warmed by a central fireplace. The intoxicating smell of oil paint and mixed berry tea or tisana as its called in Italy had me inside quicker than I realized. Welcoming smiles of ladies set up with easels and dressed in their painting smocks, all sense of intimidation thinking that I could learn to paint at my age went out the door.

I have always wanted to paint but never had the time or resources to take painting classes. I often watch the videos of my friend Maureen who paints on a daily basis and wondered where she got the time. “A few minutes each day” she said. Which got me thinking, if I organized my time it could happen. Just a few times per month. And that’s what happened. Thanks Maureen for the inspiration.

Travels around Jamaica and Italy have my sense of color on overdrive. In Jamaica its green. All kinds of green. In Italy especially in the spring, I go mad with the explosion of colours.

So this winter I decided to go for it. Another thing on my bucket list. To combine a few paintings with my poetry. Thanks to Silvia I could fulfill this dream in time for publication. This project was not about perfection but living in the moment. Embracing all experiences of creativity. Writing poetry and painting do go hand in hand. It draws out all the senses.

My debut book THE COLOUR WHEEL OF MY DREAMS stems from the dreams of nostalgia of the country of my birth that were particularly enhanced in the winter time while living in New Jersey. Each year the winters just seem to get worse. And with each year the colours of the tropical flora of Jamaica would get brighter and brighter to match the pain of my nostalgia. I had no choice but to fill a journal with words that came to my mind. Actually several journals. This book is a compilation of poetry that I wrote from 2007 to 2023. It tells of my journey from childhood in Jamaica to wanting to come to America and then the decision to leave and live in Italy.

It is my story and experiences which written with an unaltered voice to suit any particular audience. It even has a bit of Jamaican dialect, known as patois.

I hope that you will purchase while it is at the pre-order stage. First as an ebook to give you a chance to read and hopefully leave a review on Amazon.

The paperback will be out in July which I truly look forward to having in my hands.

Please order at the link below.

ORDER HER

Thank you so much for your continued support. I always look forward to your replys and look forward to any questions that you may have.

All the best

Juli-Anne

Hello my Friends,

I am pleased to let you know, after 3 years of going back and forth trying to decide if I should release my writing to the world, this year I finally found the courage to do it.

THE COLOUR WHEEL OF MY DREAMS is coming soon

Writing is something I knew I wanted to do in my second half of my life and when I moved to Italy. But as with anything it takes some time to learn a new craft. I can't say that I have mastered it but I have made a great amount strides in the last 3 years.

The first thing that I had to do was catch up on my reading. I love books and I love to read. Reading takes me to places that I haven't been to before. Over the years my reading fell off and during the lockdown years I now had the time to start reading again.

Another consequence of the pandemic was the silence and slow pace which now had me doing a lot of thinking. I thought a lot about the journey of where life took me. The dreams that were fulfilled and those that were not. What it means to be a Caribbean immigrant in America and the nostalgia with leaving home. I often dreamed of living near the sea and especially during those New Jersey winters all I could think of was being under the Tropical Sun.

Sometimes dreams can come true. I believe by putting out into the Universe the things you want and if it is meant to be it may happen.. I wrote daily in my journal for years and the theme was constant; sun, sea and community. However instead of the aquamarine of the Caribbean sea, I ended up near the Mediterranean blue - no complaints here!

I continue to manifest seeing the aquamarine sea and hope in the future there will be regular visits.

Hope you will check out my book when it is launched.