Winter Garden resident finds new dream as an author

Jaylene Rodriguez-Garau had achieved the American dream.

She was 27 years old living in Miami working as a television reporter for the local NBC station, married to her high school sweetheart and they owned a home.

She checked all the boxes that made her a success.

Yet, she didn’t feel fulfilled in life and wasn’t sure what was missing.

“Nothing is scarier than when you achieve everything you’re supposed to achieve, and then you feel empty,” Rodriguez-Garau said. “At the same time, I didn’t know what I was missing.”

Rodriguez-Garau said she always had believed in God but never had a personal relationship with God. 

At 40 years old when she and her family moved to Winter Garden eight years ago, that all changed. She became hungry for learning more about God, and it changed her life.

Her faith journey inspired her to write “Creating Our Eden,” a Christian novelette that she self-published. 

Inspiration strikes

Rodriguez-Garau used her lived experiences to draw inspiration for plots, settings and more in her novelette. 

Although being a reporter was not as fulfilling as she hoped, she’s grateful for the experiences she had, mostly reporting on crime and fires. She sees her journalism career as preparation for her becoming an author. She even used her experiences covering house fires to write in detail the crucial turning point in “Creating Our Eden” that forces her main character to reflect on her life.

“I do love storytelling, but I was always covering heartbreaking stories, and so now, as an author, I decided I’m going to write heartfelt stories with happy endings,” she said. 

Rodriguez-Garau grew up in Hialeah, a suburb of Miami, and is a daughter of Cuban immigrants. She was a part of the first-generation of children in her family to attend college. 

“There is pressure sometimes with that, because you want to make their sacrifice worthwhile, and so you chase after all those things: the college education, you buy your house and all that kind of stuff,” Rodriguez-Garau said. “But on the flip side, they teach you about hard work.”

Photo by Liz Ramos

Inspired by her upbringing, Rodriguez-Garau incorporated her background into the background of her character, Becky Ruiz.

She said it was important to her to share her Hispanic heritage in the novel as Hispanic characters are not always the main characters in stories. 

Like Rodriguez-Garau, Ruiz is a child of Cuban immigrants and a lawyer living in Winter Garden having achieved her American dream. But a house fire causes Ruiz to lose everything, revealing that her life actually was broken as her marriage was in shambles and she wasn’t truly happy. She had to decide to either rebuild her life by restoring all the material items or take another approach by going on a journey in faith. 

The city of Winter Garden became an inspiration as well, to the point Rodriguez-Garau said the small town almost becomes a character itself in “Creating Our Eden.” In the book, Ruiz spends time in Winter Garden in December, which is Rodriguez-Garau’s favorite time of year, seeing all the holiday lights shining on Plant Street. 

“It is so quiet and just charming and comforting,” she said of Winter Garden. “It’s almost like a character in the book, in a sense, because she’s meeting her best friend but the surroundings are also soothing to her and just comforting because it’s their favorite place.”

Rodriguez-Garau decided to include Winter Garden in her novelette because of the memories she has created with her friends and family in the city she said could be in a Hallmark movie. 

“When I first came to look for a house in Winter Garden, I actually stayed in downtown Winter Garden at the little bed and breakfast, so that was my first introduction,” she said. “My best friend from college lived here, and she was like, ‘Stay in downtown Winter Garden.’ There’s a special place in my heart for it.”

She said it was the perfect place for Ruiz to begin re-discovering herself and determining how to approach the rest of her life after tragedy. 

Road to being a writer

Rodriguez-Garau never saw herself being a fiction writer.

She was used to reporting the facts as a journalist. She later became a first-grade teacher before becoming a stay-at-home mother when her daughter, Sarah Garau, was born.

She always wanted to write but never had the time while her daughter was growing up. Now that Sarah Garau is 15, Rodriguez-Garau said she had more time on her hands to focus on writing.

In 2020, Rodriguez-Garau said she had “a little stirring” in her heart, and in prayer, she felt God was telling her to write a fiction book, and she could start envisioning some of her characters but she didn’t take it seriously. Then in 2023, her aunt called her to say while praying for Rodriguez-Garau, she could see her niece writing. It was another sign from God to write a book, and Rodriguez-Garau listened.

She started taking online classes and talking to friends who had written fiction. 

Photo by Liz Ramos

“Honestly, eventually I just surrendered (to God) and I would approach the computer in prayer because I was way in over my head,” she said. “I could see the characters. I could see the scene. It was wild. At that point when I surrendered, within six months, the book was already done and available on Amazon.”

Holding her published work in her hands, she beamed with pride. 

“I could have never imagined I would be writing Christian novelettes and be a Christian author,” she said. “I didn’t dream that by myself. I dreamt the first dream (of being a journalist). That was my dream, and I had never thought of this, but I do feel this is my God-given purpose. I get emotional when I think about it because His plan was so much better than my own. When you follow His purpose, it’s different. It’s way different and you feel that sense of contentment, joy and peace I had never felt before.”

Impact on others

Rodriguez-Garau hopes her novelette can inspire others to begin their faith journey. Religion sometimes can be overwhelming at first. She said she didn’t receive her first adult Bible until 40 years old and felt intimidated. 

“I wish there was a book at that time that would have introduced what a relationship with God looks like in a way that would have been easy for me to digest,” she said. “That is a huge reason why I wrote the book.”

She included reflection questions in the back of the book to help people reflect on their own faith journey. 

“I want them to be able to read a book that is engaging and hopefully entertaining, but also, I hope it will be life changing so they can reflect on their own. It’s almost like a fiction book that meets non-fiction as well.”

Rodriguez-Garau also wants her book to have a tangible impact on others so she has 100% of the proceeds from the sales of “Creating Our Eden” go to Love Made Visible, a Winter Garden nonprofit equipping churches, agencies, individuals and families to care for children who are in foster care. She learned of the nonprofit while attending services at Mosaic Church. When she saw the videos of the impact the nonprofit has on children in Central Florida as well as Guatemala and Ethiopia, she knew she wanted to contribute. 

Rodriguez-Garau is putting her faith once again in God to see what happens in the future. 

“I believe that whoever God wants to read this book, they will, and I did the same with the donation,” she said. “I just trust that it will be put to good use.”