Author of romantic thrillers, adult fantasy, and practical spellcraft
Trina Spillman/Selene Greenleaf
Trina Spillman, who also writes under the pen name Selene Greenleaf, is an award-winning author, chef, and social entrepreneur whose work blends storytelling, food, folklore, practical magic, and real-world healing.
A professionally trained chef and award-winning culinary creator, Trina has performed cooking demonstrations at major events, including the South Beach Food & Wine Festival, and on television, including NBC 6 South Florida Today. She also co-founded the charitable organization, The Need to Feed, which focused on feeding those in need, a mission that reflects her lifelong commitment to service, community, and making healthy foods more accessible.
Her newest book, The Dollar Store Gourmet, brings that mission into the kitchen with practical, budget-friendly recipes created from affordable ingredients commonly found in dollar stores. Designed for families, seniors, rural shoppers, and anyone trying to stretch their grocery dollars, the book reflects Trina’s belief that delicious, satisfying food should be accessible to everyone, regardless of budget or location.
As Selene Greenleaf, she writes practical witchcraft and plant-magic guides, including Witchcraft Essentials: A Modern-Day Guide to Spells, Herbs, and Crystals, Cupid’s Craft: Love Spells for Valentine’s Day, and the forthcoming Plant Magic Encyclopedia: Rituals & Remedies. These works are designed to help modern practitioners bring intention, herbal wisdom, and everyday ritual into their lives.
Writing as Trina Spillman, she is also known for A New Dawn, her engaging Setting the Record Straight series, and her award-winning novel, The Fablecastle Chronicles. Her fiction spans romance, magical realism, contemporary thrillers, and folklore-inspired storytelling, often exploring power, transformation, justice, and the hidden truths beneath familiar stories.
Whether she is creating budget-friendly recipes, teaching through live culinary demonstrations, crafting magical guides, or building immersive fictional worlds, Trina’s work is rooted in one central belief: words, food, and intention all have the power to heal, awaken, and transform.
Trina Spillman, who also writes under the pen name Selene Greenleaf, is an award-winning author, chef, and social entrepreneur whose work blends storytelling, food, folklore, practical magic, and real-world healing.
A professionally trained chef and award-winning culinary creator, Trina has performed cooking demonstrations at major events, including the South Beach Food & Wine Festival, and on television, including NBC 6 South Florida Today...
Great meals don’t have to come from expensive ingredients or fancy grocery stores.
The Dollar Store Gourmet shows you how to turn simple, affordable dollar-store staples into satisfying meals your family will actually want to eat. Using easy-to-find ingredients like canned goods, pasta, rice, frozen vegetables, beans, sauces, seasonings, biscuit...
A catastrophic explosion rocks a New Orleans convention hall, leaving chaos in its wake. Attorney Ian McCullough rushes to find his partner, a presidential nominee caught in the blast, and instead uncovers evidence pointing to a conspiracy at the nation’s highest level. Each step closer to the truth puts Ian in greater danger, as powerful forces...
Maggie McCullough is a star reporter for the Daily Mirror. In her monthly column, Setting the Record Straight, she revealed the truth behind the fables you may remember from your childhood. Those interviews brought her to the attention of someone in another dimension—someone claiming to be Lucifer. Join Maggie and Andrew Wolfgang, her boyfriend...
A NEW DAWN opens with a bang and never lets up, launching readers into a high-stakes race as its heroes work to unravel the dangerous mystery of Operation Boomerang. From the outset, the novel delivers suspense, intrigue, and a fast-paced plot that keeps the pages turning.
The cast of characters forms a rich tapestry woven into a web of intrigue. While the narrative touches many lives, the main hero, Ian, stands out immediately as someone the reader can trust. He’s the kind of character you instinctively root for—and one who truly deserves a win. As he gathers other ethically minded individuals around him, even brief glimpses into their pasts are enough to make the reader care deeply about their fates.
Mrs. Spillman clearly has a strong grasp of government operations and the complex systems that keep them running, lending realism and credibility to the story. Her settings are vivid and immersive, filled with evocative five-sense details that ground the action.
One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its exploration of found family. The core group is made up of people who have each endured significant loss, yet they come together to support one another, drawing strength, purpose, and love from those connections. Themes of love, acceptance, and healing run throughout the story, adding emotional depth to the action.
There was one storyline near the end that I wished had been more fully resolved, though it’s possible the author intends to revisit this character in future installments.
A New Dawn is a roller coaster of twists, turns, and plunges, with enormous stakes and a constant sense that failure is not an option. Overall, this is an ambitious and engaging novel with compelling ideas, memorable characters, and a strong emotional core. I look forward to reading more of Mrs. Spillman’s work.
I was given an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
A NEW DAWN is a political thriller that is taut and filled with tension as the main characters race to save the nation. You will be on the edge of your seat reading how Ian and James, and their friends, navigate a difficult path to save each other's lives and to prevent disaster in the USA. Ms. Spillman has created sympathetic characters whom we will quickly start rooting for. If you like tension and high stakes, you will enjoy this suspenseful novel!
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Roni Denholtz, Award-winning Author
A New Dawn by Trina Spillman is a thriller that resists containment. Unpredictable, unruly, and propelled by a relentless momentum, it unfolds at breakneck speed while remaining anchored in emotional truth. From the outset, the novel makes no apologies for its ambition or its intensity; it knows precisely what it is and commits fully to that vision.
At the center is Ian, a protagonist defined not by exceptional skill or heroic bravado, but by his ordinariness. He is neither an action figure nor a prodigy, but a regular man thrust into extraordinary circumstances. This choice proves to be the novel’s greatest strength. Ian moves through the narrative guided by love rather than ego, lending the story a moral gravity that elevates it beyond genre convention.
The relationship between Ian and James is rendered with striking maturity and restraint. Their bond feels lived-in, grounded, and rare within the thriller landscape, providing emotional ballast amid the chaos. That the novel places LGBTQ+ characters at its core is not treated as a statement but as a given—an approach that feels both refreshing and necessary, signaling a meaningful shift in the genre’s possibilities.
The pacing is relentless, almost breathless. Spillman’s ambition is evident from the opening pages, and the narrative rarely pauses for the reader to catch up. At times, this velocity can be disorienting, even challenging, yet the novel never loses sight of its emotional center. Its heart remains intact, beating beneath the confusion and urgency.
The conclusion is both stunning and unexpected, subverting the expectations of the genre while remaining emotionally resonant. A New Dawn lingers after its final page—not simply as a thriller well executed, but as one that dares to be human.
Somewhere along the way, the food world got far too pretentious for ordinary people trying to get dinner on the table.
We started acting as if cooking well meant shopping at expensive markets, buying ingredients most people cannot pronounce, and spending half a paycheck on a dinner that still leaves everyone hunting for a snack an hour later. There is nothing wrong with beautiful food or elaborate meals, but that is not how most people cook on a Tuesday night when the bills are due, the pantry...
Disclaimer: This article presents historical facts alongside speculative analysis. Connections drawn between JFK's assassination and Israeli nuclear policy remain unproven and controversial.
The Historical Record: Kennedy vs. The Bomb
Kennedy's Unprecedented Pressure Campaign Between 1961 and 1963, President John F. Kennedy engaged in what declassified documents reveal to be an increasingly tense confrontation with Israeli leadership over the Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev Desert.
It feels carved into stone, whispered across centuries, passed down as a warning rather than information. People lower their expectations. They postpone travel. They glance at the calendar with suspicion.
But dates do not carry misfortune.
Stories do.
The number thirteen unsettles systems that prefer order. Twelve is tidy. Twelve months. Twelve hours. Twelve disciples. Twelve feels complete.
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