E-T’s Best local author’s new release: “Soul Ties”
Relationship experts, life coaches and lifestyle influencers come a dime a dozen these days. And for their audiences to find practical advice and authenticity presents another challenge. But local audiences know Camilla Potts because she was voted the Enterprise-Tocsin’s 2022 Best Local Author for her previously released work, “The Calm After the Storm.” Now available is the latest work from the mind of a writer whose life experiences provide the credibility that readers crave. “The title of my new book is called, ‘Soul Ties: Are Your Relationships Benefitting You or Breaking You?’” Potts said. “When I used to hear the term ‘soul ties’, I used to think that it was referring to someone that you were having sex with. But it is anyone that you have developed a bond with. This could be a spouse, a family member, a friend, or a coworker.”
“Soul Ties” is a self-published devotional through Turning the Page Publishing LLC. It is structured as a daily journal reinforced by Scripture designed to take the reader on a journey that involves taking inventory of the people around them and the quality of their relationships. “There is no way that a person can say that they have a relationship with God and not allow this relationship to guide all other relationships,” Potts said. “The book is open and honest and it might step on a few toes. I don’t think that there is an audience that I can’t reach through this book. It talks about parenting, marriage, being looked over at work, and dealing with friends who may not give as much to a relationship as you do.”
Potts is a ninth-grade Mississippi Studies and World Geography teacher, which is one of her many life experiences that provide context and content to “Soul Ties.” Through her own journey, Potts has worked in fast food, substitute teaching, factory settings, health care, and hospitality industries. Along the way, “Interacting with people and navigating your relationship with them has been the common theme. You come to a point in all of it where you decide is this something that is beneficial or something that I need to let go of,” Potts elaborated. “Even when it comes to family, we can’t choose our DNA and we might find better support and encouragement from people outside our families than we do from those within.”
Creating a work like “Soul Ties” is the best part of the process for Potts. She said that she has always had a lifelong love of writing and expressing herself. The finished product is one that had to be planned around everything else going on in her life. “To be honest, this was about a two-year process in the making,” Potts said with a slight hint of embarrassment as she held the book over her face in laughter. “Being a wife, a mother, and a teacher, I had to find time between cooking, helping with homework and just dumping my daily load of conversation about the classroom to my husband.”
The next step for Potts is to market the new release with a book signing scheduled for Saturday, July 30 from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m. at 612 N. Sunflower Avenue in Indianola. Potts’s book can be found on her website at camillapotts.com as well as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and lulu.com. Purchased directly from Potts, the book costs $17. Purchased from Amazon, Lulu, or Barnes and Noble, “Soul Ties” is $21. Potts is already working on a new project tentatively title: “Happily Ever After: What They Don’t Tell You About Marriage.”
