About Taniko K Williams

My journey into the written word started when I was a child, having been homeschooled for much of my younger years, I suddenly found myself thrust into the frightening world of the public school system. Struggling to adapt to this strange environment, I found myself quickly isolated from my peers. Facing verbal torment and physical bullying, I sought haven within the depths of the library, seeking not the books that filled it shelves, but the audio tapes, whose spoken words swept me away to worlds beyond the schoolyard.

It was the writings of Enid Blyton who pulled me into books, as the library had only the first books in her secret seven series on audio. Desperate to continue my journey alongside the seven, I reluctantly took home what would be the start of my descent into the world of books. From that moment on, not a minute went by that a book was not in my hand, and later as digital publishing took the world by storm, a tablet where I could keep not a single book, but hundreds at my fingertips.  

It was not until later in my younger teen years that I delved into writing my own short stories, which soon found their way onto sites such as Reddit and Live-journal, along with others that have long since disappeared into the unknown void of the internet. Then a single extremely critical review on a story brought my younger selfs growing confidence and dreams of being an author to a grinding halt. It would be years before I even considered putting any of the myriad of worlds in my head into written word again.

Then, out of the blue, at age 26, I found myself filling page after page of a small notebook with a story that simply would not leave me be. That story was Striving for the stars, a book which fast became a series and my debut as an author of young adult novels.

It is my dream, that one day, just as Enid's books ensnared my mind and drew me into her world of imagining, that my own stories shall do the same to others.