The Long Story: Part 1

It’s been a while, I know. There’s a reason (or several). But it’s a long story.

I will be spending 2026 (and probably beyond) shifting everything I’ve built over the last 15 years of publishing from DelSheree Gladden to DelSheree Spinner, even though I know this is a somewhat crazy thing to do.

Advice writers are constantly given—and which I have given to many writers as well—is to build your brand early and be consistent about maintaining it. So, why am I essentially demolishing my brand when I know it goes against advice almost everyone would probably give me?

I will attempt to explain over the next few posts. There are layers to this story, of course, two of which need to be mentioned right off the bat.

I was raised is the Mormon/LDS faith. I got engaged at 17, to someone I had only known a few months and who was 4 years older than me. I got married 6 months later at age 18. This was considered very normal in the culture I grew up in. My parents did not counsel me to get to know this person better, wait until I was older, focus on my education, etc.

I also grew up with a very manipulative and emotionally abusive mother who made it clear that she didn’t like me. Although I recognized that she treated me differently than my siblings, it was still all I knew and I thought it was normal behavior for a mother to have such obvious favorites and to pit her children against each other.

You’ve probably all heard the adage that you’re drawn to what’s familiar when it comes to relationships. I think that’s particularly true when a person believes the negative behaviors they’ve experienced are what everyone deals with as well. Add to this the belief that marriages are eternal and divorce is a sin that will likely ostracize you from your religious community.

I married someone who was very similar to my mother, and I believed I had no other option than to stay and make it work even when I started to see the signs that our relationship was not healthy. My mindset started to shift in 2015 when I made the incredibly hard decision to leave the church I had spent my whole life up to that point trying to believe and live. Leaving opened me up to redefining who I was, what a healthy relationship looked like, what I wanted for myself and my kids, and what it meant to be happy.

The next few years of learning, growing, and seeking help through therapy opened my eyes and led to another leaving. This time my marriage.

I’ll spoil the ending and say that I have no regrets and I am so happy in my life now, but two major life changes in the course of only a few years will undoubtedly come with complications, one of which was having to put writing on the back burner.

The rest of those life changes and complications I’ll talk about over the next few posts.

In the meantime, please be patient as my website and book catalog are a mishmash of Gladden/Spinner and some of my books may be temporarily unavailable or mixed up on retailers. As I begin the process of republishing, some books will stay largely the same, others will not (I’ll explain why later), and there may be shifts in how and what I write as I get back into it.

What won’t change is that I believe so much that storytelling is important. It connects us. It engenders empathy. It turns strangers into friends and supports. Even if my books and writing look a little different moving forward, my commitment to telling stories that say something true and meaningful won’t.

What do you love most about storytelling?