Dear Readers, I first sat down with Dawn Reno Langley back in January 2025, when she was getting ready for the Sunshine State Book Festival in Gainesville. That conversation is finally out as Episode 80 of Jolene’s Book and Writers Talk, and a lot has happened for her since then. Two more books, for one thing. And one of them is the most personal thing she has ever put out there.
Dawn has been writing since she was nine years old. Antiques and collectibles guides, children’s books, novels about elephants and civil rights and families in crisis. More than 30 books. Now she has written about her own life, and it is not an easy story. I admire her for telling it.
Her Newest Book: Love, Leashes & Letting Go
Title: Love, Leashes & Letting Go: A Memoir
Author: Dawn Reno Langley
Genre: Memoir
Published: September 14, 2026, Rewired Creatives Books, 420 pages
The day Dawn Reno Langley used her thirty-three-year-old husband’s phone, she found what she was never supposed to see: a hidden list of every woman he’d slept with—including her close friend and the lonely neighbor down the street.
She was seventy-one. He had been twenty-seven when they met. For years she’d believed she was finally safe in a relationship built on trust, never realizing the manipulation and emotional abuse that had been tightening his control over her life. Instead, she discovered a gaslighting polyamory that had turned her marriage into a slow, deliberate con—one designed to keep her small and unhappy.
This raw and unflinching memoir traces what happens when a woman stops trying to save what was never real and finds the courage to break free from a toxic relationship. Dawn flees with her soul dog, Izzy—the one being who saw the truth all along—and begins the brutal work of rebuilding a life she never planned to live alone. Covid, a near cardiac collapse, losing her academic career, and the devastating pet loss of Izzy in her arms become the emotional crucible that nearly breaks her.
But this is not a story of defeat. It’s about trauma, grief, and the long road back to yourself. Dawn chooses solo female travel over staying trapped, dogsitting her way across Portugal, the UK, and beyond—a journey that eventually carries her around Europe, as she sheds the life she thought she wanted. Along the way, she returns to the yogic practice of Aparigraha—non-attachment—and discovers that healing is less about finding answers and more about releasing the need for them.
Book Links
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHNWLG6K
Author’s Website: https://www.dawnrenolangley.net/
Listen to Our Conversation
Dawn and I talked about when you get to call yourself a writer, how she plots, the book that took her 20 years, and the advice she gives every new author. Here is the episode:
A few of my favorite moments:
- Writer or author? If you finish a project and send it out for someone to read, you are a writer. Once somebody else accepts it for print, you are an author.
- Pantser or plotter? Both. She lets herself wander through the first draft, then goes back and plots every single point.
- The book that took 20 years. The Mystic was inspired by an accident in her own family and set in the Massachusetts town where she grew up. Even there she had to do her research, because the corner store she remembered turned out to face a different street.
- When does historical fiction start? I asked because my First Coast Romance Writers friends and I think the cutoff should move up to the ’70s. Dawn’s rule is 50 years, and in her words, “I’ll stick to it.”
- Her best advice. Never send out a first draft. Rewrite at least three times, and get readers who are not your friends and family, preferably other writers. She has more than 30 books out and still does it.
You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or read the episode notes on my Substack: [PASTE THE SUBSTACK LINK HERE].
The Art of Rivers Series
The Art of Rivers is Dawn’s historical series about Beth, a white painter, and Graham Jackson, a Black police officer, beginning in 1950s Massachusetts. Each book is named for a river.
Book One: The Mystic (Black Rose Writing, May 22, 2025). Beth Robbins’ world falls apart when her husband is caught up in a hit-and-run and then disappears. One of the officers on the case is Graham Jackson, the only Black officer on the force.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DVVJJNPV
Book Two: The Sunflower (Rewired Creatives Books, August 10, 2026). It is 1960, and Graham and Beth are in Mississippi, where their marriage is against the law. He works undercover on the Kennedy campaign while she teaches art fifty miles away, and they cannot be seen together.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H6V49PD7
Also by Dawn: Analyzing the Prescotts
Analyzing the Prescotts (Black Rose Writing, January 4, 2024) started out as the creative half of her PhD dissertation. A psychologist in Raleigh, North Carolina, takes on a family in crisis after the father leaves to live as a woman, and each family member tells the story in a different voice. It was a Maxy Awards finalist for literary fiction.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CM4SLKWG
About the Author
Dawn Reno Langley is a novelist, essayist, educator, mosaic artist, Fulbright Scholar, and TEDx speaker with more than 30 books to her name. Her first published piece, an essay about the Cuban Missile Crisis, ran in a local newspaper when she was nine. She went on to write children’s books and a long list of nonfiction guides to antiques and collectibles, including Native American and African American art, before turning to novels like The Mourning Parade, a Faulkner-Wisdom finalist.
She holds an MFA in fiction from Vermont College and a PhD from the Union Institute and University, and she taught in the MFA program at Southern New Hampshire University for a decade. She founded Rewired Creatives, Inc. in 2016. These days she writes full-time from wherever she is in the world. Her website lists the Algarve, Luxembourg, and London among her favorite places.
Author Links
Website: https://www.dawnrenolangley.net/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dawn.r.langley
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/proflangley/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DawnLangley
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-reno-langley-ph-d-0a120114/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/713705.Dawn_Reno_Langley
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dawn-Reno-Langley/author/B016JF3SY4
More to Read
How Creatives Can Save the World (Dawn’s TEDx talk, 2022)
The Story Behind the Stories (her About page, with a timeline of her writing life)
Have you ever had to start over later in life? Or has a book helped you through a hard season? Tell me in the comments.
Till next time…
Jolene
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