Two Authors Launch Platform For Writers To Thrive

When I used to teach creative writing, I would describe it to students as sitting alone in a room in the dark, staring at white pixels and a blinking cursor until a story or blood came out. Joking aside, writing is a solitary activity that can leave authors feeling isolated and unmoored. The fact that the world of publishing is a more twisted nightmare than H.P. Lovecraft accidentally taking too much Benadryl doesn’t help. There is a desperate need for a platform that connects writers in a trusting community.

Enter Theresa Maria Villarreal and Jackie Garcia-Morales, two literati who have spent the last two years building a network through their Storyteller Foundation. It includes a podcast, The Storyteller Shelf, as well as their new platform, Storyrise. The former is an easygoing discussion show where authors, editors, and publishers (mostly in the children and YA sphere) share their advice. The latter is a cheap (only $5 a month) and accessible hub to connect writers with illustrators, beta readers, designers, and other writers.

“We saw there was a need for a writing app,” said Villarreal in a Zoom interview. “Authors are tired of having to go to different platforms to put their work in. And now it's like a fully functioning, well-developed site that's not just for writing. It's got a community section. There's a staging area. You can format an eBook, paperback, or hardback.”

Villarreal is the indie author of the Adventures in Oculus series who has lived almost her whole life in the Houston area. She met Garcia-Morales as the latter was scouting for books for a Penguin imprint she worked at, and the two became immediate best friends. Garcia-Morales is a New Jersey resident but does have a book coming out from the University of Houston’s Arte Público Press about her and her mother’s childhoods in Puerto Rico. In 2025, they started their podcast, and with the help of Villarreal’s husband, a web engineer, they launched Storyrise earlier this year.

Storyrise tackles multiple areas where authors often run into trouble in the modern era. One is scams. Anyone who has self-published a book has likely gotten a phone call from someone pretending to be a publisher offering placement for a fee. The more unscrupulous ones also contact the writer’s family. A hub like Storyrise where authors share experiences can help them be on guard for such fraud. Garcia-Morales in particular has had a terrible time with it in the past.

“To be quite frank with you, I'm even being subjected to a couple people impersonating me as an agent and going out there trying to solicit money and get private information from people who are trying to publish,” she said in the same Zoom Interview. “It just makes my heart break. We're trying to move all of the education we've learned speaking with authors who have been through the journey so that people are not lost. Because the truth is we cannot stop the scammers, but we can help educate people so that they can recognize them and they don't fall prey to these because they're out there. Writing is a tough process. You're emotionally vulnerable as you're creating.”

The platform is also taking on the AI scourge. Lots of cloud-based writing platforms and tools are being used to train large language models and other AI. With the indie publishing market being flooded with AI-generated books and covers, it’s left many authors searching for privacy settings.

The Storyrise platform includes a function similar to Google Docs that is much more limited in how it allows that work to be shared. There is a premium on privacy and making sure that work sent to beta readers is not exploited by AI training and piracy.

“We really try to keep it where the author has full control over their work,” said Villarreal. “We want to protect the author, so that they don't lose their work from someone stealing their work and spreading it online.”

The thing the duo are most excited about is their new contest. Ever since National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) came out firmly for the use of AI in its annual writing push, there’s been a hole where it used to be. Getting so many writers together to push for daily output one month out of the year may not have produced many finished, published novels, but it did help writers flex their creativity through community accountability.

Villarreal and Garcia-Morales will be launching NovembeRISE this year, with the theme being Love at First Write (romance). The competition will include writing sprints and community judging, turning into a full contest as well as a way to empower the writing drive.

“We really believe passionately in connecting people and providing them with community, because we know that there are some wild statistics out there that say 3 percent of people who start a book actually finish a book,” said Garcia-Morales. “The missing link there is the fact that there's a lack of support and a lack of encouragement. So our app is designed to help you a safe place to write, and then also to find those people that can help support you and validate you and correctly guide you onto your publishing journey.”