Bound Lines and Book Spines

 By Kristi Cruise This picture was taken six years ago. And in true cliché fashion—it feels like just yesterday. But not because time is passing normally. Because lately, time feels like it's collapsing . Every week feels like a month. Every month feels like a chapter I used to live over the course of years. My life has been moving at warp speed —and I don’t say that casually. It’s as if the universe is compressing a decade of growth into a single, breathless season. And the truth is... I think I’m in it. A full-body upgrade. An awakening. A timeline collapse. All of it. Some days I feel like I’m grieving and birthing at the same time. Like I’m being dismantled and rebuilt in the same breath. Old stories falling away like ash, New identities not yet fully formed—just flickers and fog. But still, I create. Still, I show up. Still, I write and teach and love and mother and try. Because this isn’t just ordinary living anymore. This is a  full-spectrum existe...

By Kristi Cruise Maybe They Hope It Will All Implode Sometimes, deep down, I wonder if the world is quietly rooting for me to give up. That one day I’ll burn out, break down, or just finally say, “You know what? I’ll just be a full-time mom and devoted housewife.” And truthfully? Part of me would love that. The softness. The simplicity. The slow beauty of ordinary days strung together with snacks and laundry and always being there when someone needs you. But the truth is… that life would require two of me . And there’s only one. So I keep going—not because I don’t want the slower life, but because I feel called to something more expansive. Something messier. Something braver. And I’m doing what I believe is best for my children: Showing them that women can do both . That we can juggle family and creativity, dishes and drama. That the house may be messy, but the impact is lasting, or at least I hope.  I want them to see me create. To know I didn’t just talk about books—I...

By Kristi Cruise I can feel it in my bones. I’m writing like someone who finally found the door in. Not the voice I’ve trained or tempered. Not the “professional” tone I’ve polished to perfection out of fear of being too much or not enough. But my real voice. The one that’s always been waiting just beneath the surface, hands pressed against the glass, whispering.  It’s strange and beautiful. I used to think I was being authentic, sprinkling vulnerability like Celtic sea salt. But this? But this isn’t high-mineral-content seasoning. This is the whole damn meal. And for once, I’m not cooking it to be liked.  I think my throat chakra has been blocked for most of my life. Not by accident, but by survival. By the fear of being misunderstood or rejected.  I made “articulate” my armor. And as a trained, professional journalist, I was so good at it, and I forgot I was even hiding. Because the stories I told were never mine. But not anymore. Author Kristi Cruise Now the wor...

  Why I Do This (Literacy Innovation) Work By: Kristi Cruise If we’ve just met, you might know me as the woman behind the books that flip, a.k.a. the "book lady," the literacy activator, innovator, the one with the golden Keys. Maybe you saw me on the news once a million years ago. Perhaps you’ve heard about Living Libraries, a reading yoga that helps kids focus on literacy, or my first literacy rodeo known as Promising Pages. Or maybe you’ve stumbled here by divine accident. Whatever the case is, I want you to know something: This work more than a brand. It’s my life’s breath. I don’t do this because I love books (though I do). I don’t do it just for the kids (though they’re everything). I do it because I believe, in the depths of my being, that a better world is possible — and I’ve seen how story can be the spark. I’ve seen what happens when a child who’s never loved reading opens one of our books and smiles. I’ve felt the stillness when a class tries a LiYo Litera...

  Do the Thing That Scares You By: Kristi Cruise There’s a moment—right before a big leap—when everything inside you wants to play it safe. To shrink. To scroll. To procrastinate. To organize your closet, and I'm not talking metaphorically, instead of pressing “send” on the email or "publish" on a book that could change everything. I know that moment. I live in it more often than not these days.  I’ve done a lot of scary things in my life. But I’ve also learned: If the idea excites you and terrifies you, it’s probably the exact thing you’re meant to do. Years ago, I left a job I deeply loved after months of soul-searching and pain. I remember saying to my mentor when I finally decided to move on:  “The universe will whisper… then talk… then shout… and if you still don’t hear, it’ll hit you over the head with a two-by-four.” Some of us (hi, me 🙋🏼‍♀️) seem to require a few good knocks with that metaphorical plank. But I’ve learned that the sooner I surrender—the s...

When You Feel the Shift Before It Has a Name   By Kristi Cruise A woman from my gentle yoga class at LifeTime Athletic texted me something extraordinary this week. We don’t know each other well—I'm just her yoga teacher, but I can tell that if I did personally know her, we would certainly be friends. But still, something moved her to send this: “Today was the first time I heard someone say they felt a positive shift coming... There was a tangible feeling in the air. The feeling was gratitude, love, peace, unity. What is the name of the white light Earth measurement?” She was asking about the Schumann Resonance —the Earth’s natural electromagnetic frequency, often called its “heartbeat.” It typically pulses around 7.83 Hz, but people who are paying attention can feel when it spikes. When it rises. When something, globally and internally, is shifting.  Kristi Cruise teaching yoga at Life Time Athletic     And maybe... you’ve felt it too.     I’ve bee...

Borrowed Hours and Unseen Outcomes: The Writer’s Gamble By Kristi Cruise There’s a question that haunts almost every writer I know: Is this really going to be worth it? Not just the story. Not just the manuscript. But the hundreds of borrowed hours we pour in when the world is sleeping. The ideas that wake us in the middle of the night. The revisions that steal our weekends. The emotional rollercoaster of dreaming big and doubting everything the next minute. I’m there. Right now.  I’m knee-deep in a book I’ve rewritten more times than I can count. I’ve labored over every sentence, every twist, every clue tucked in between the pages like a treasure for the reader to find. It’s a tough one to write—surreal, genre-bending, and designed for two very different audiences. (Think Barbie movie meets literary time-bending camp chaos.) Not to mention the layers of meaning disguised as humor, the hidden keys, the clues left like breadcrumbs, or cookie crumbs... I’ve created entire wor...

Why I Chose to Lead With Diverse Characters and Bilingual Text—Even as a White Woman By: Kristi Cruise It didn’t just happen once. It happened over and over again. During my years leading Promising Pages, organizing free book fairs at Title I schools across Charlotte, I would hear the same question again and again from kids: “Where are the books that look like me?” The question was never asked with anger—just quiet hope. A longing. A recognition that something was missing. And I saw it too. Of the 20,000 books we might collect and give away in a month, maybe 200 featured characters of color, and that's if we were lucky. That’s 1%. One. Percent. And while the nonprofit I helped build did everything in its power to collect and distribute EVERY BOOK we could find, we were always short on the ones that mattered most to so many children: the ones that reflected them .  I’d get calls from teachers weekly, asking us to hold back any diverse books for their classrooms. I always d...

 📚 Books with Color, Inc., NP #3 By: Kristi Cruise Let me take you on a quick ride through the third nonprofit I somehow found myself founding… Kritsi Cruise and Lawrence Gordon Yep. Third. (And I swore I’d never do another. Never say never.) But there I was in my most comfortable burgandy outfit and glasses in October of 2020, masked up at a coffee shop with fellow indie author, nonprofit warrior and social good phlantropist Lawrence Gordon  meeting for the very first time. We spend most of the time talking about how ridiculously hard it is to build a platform for your book(s) when you’re also running a mission, raising funds, raising kids, and—oh right—trying to sleep once in a while. We realized something: We weren’t alone. And we didn’t want to do it alone anymore. That day, Books with Color was born. Within a year, we had our 501(c)(3), and our mission was clear: connect diverse authors with classrooms—for free—so their stories and characters could show up where t...

 📖 The LiLi Key and What It Means to Me By: Kristi Cruise Before I ever wrote The LiLi Key , I created two other special books that helped me see what was possible when stories meet purpose. One was a thank-you book for David Longo, the generous CEO of CBI (Carolina Business Interiors), who gifted my first nonprofit free warehouse and office space “in perpetuity.” I had met him after a Chamber nonprofit pitch competition in 2011, and his support lifted us out of my garage and into a space we never could have imagined. We quickly grew to gift over 20,000 donated books a month to children in need. (And it's even more today!) As I think back on it even now, 15 years after at act of monumental kindness, it was one of the kindest and most generous things anyone had ever done for me in my entire life. Not only did he empower a non-profit, but he also believed in me. I will never forget it, nor will I ever forget him. The world is a far better place because of David Longo.  Cruise...

  There’s a Better Way to Read: Why I Created LiYo Literacy Yoga Fusion® By: Kristi Cruise It came to me like a lightning bolt. The same kind of sudden, full-body knowing that struck when I first dreamed up what would become Promising Pages years earlier. But this time, it was 2021—the heart of the COVID lockdown—and the spark was different. Schools were closed. Kids were home. And from what I could tell… many of them weren’t reading. So I sent my first book, The LiLi Key , out into the world. We mailed hundreds of copies—all over the country, from Hawaii to Guam to living rooms tucked into small-town America. All I asked in return was a book report. Some kind of reflection. A sign that the story had landed. And it did. In fact, something incredible happened. The feedback came pouring in—not just from kids, but from parents, too. Children were reading longer, deeper, and with more focus. A follow-up survey showed something astonishing: kids were reading 50% more —just from...