A Decade of Inspiring Stories: Book Excellence Celebrates 10 Years of Literary Achievement with Excellence Spotlight

JEFF UTECHT, RAYMOND PERRAS

CATHERINE ANN RUSSELL, ALLA KALUZHNY

JILL WALLACE, STEVE JACKSON

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, November 4, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- As Book Excellence celebrates its 10th anniversary, the international book marketing company is recognizing the authors and stories that have helped shape a decade of literary achievement through its special Excellence Spotlight. For ten years, Book Excellence has supported over 5,300 authors across multiple book genres, helping them gain recognition, expand their readership, and share their messages with audiences around the world.

As part of this milestone celebration, Book Excellence is proud to feature accomplished authors whose work reflects the extraordinary diversity, creativity, and influence of the written word.

From exploring the future of artificial intelligence and leadership to inspiring young readers, to examining the human experience and celebrating the power of poetry, these authors demonstrate that exceptional books do more than tell stories: they spark conversations, challenge assumptions, inspire change, and leave a lasting impression on the people who read them.

MEET THE FEATURED AUTHORS

JEFF UTECHT, AUTHOR OF THE NEXT TURN: WORK, AI, AND HUMAN EXPECTATIONS

Jeff Utecht is an author, international speaker, and leadership consultant who helps organizations understand how people and technology are changing the way we work. For more than a decade, he has worked with leaders across North America, Europe, and Asia, bringing practical insight to conversations about generational expectations, artificial intelligence, and organizational change.

His book, "The Next Turn: Work, AI, and Human Expectations," addresses a challenge many leaders can feel, but struggle to name: people no longer share the same assumptions about what work means, just as AI is changing how work gets done. A younger employee’s expectations around growth, a manager’s definition of commitment, and a team’s use of AI can all collide inside the same workplace. Jeff gives leaders a way to make sense of that friction.

Drawing on his work with businesses, industry groups, and educational organizations, he explores how to set clear expectations, recognize valuable work when effort is less visible, and build trust across generations. His message is direct: as producing work becomes easier, human judgment matters more.

Learn more at: https://nextturnleadership.com.

RAYMOND PERRAS, AUTHOR OF EXCELLENCE: PATHWAYS TO A BREAKTHROUGH TRANSFORMATION

Raymond Perras is a bestselling author, executive coach, and leadership development expert. Certified as an instructor/facilitator, professional coach, life coach, and NLP practitioner, he has over 30 years of experience coaching individuals and organizations to peak performance in both business and sports.

As a professional engineer, he managed many projects involving a variety of disciplines, skills, expertise, and abilities. In sports, his involvement spans over 40 years as a player, coach, and performance coach from minor levels to the pros.

In his work to assist the transformation of numerous clients from average to outstanding performers, he has coached a process that anyone can apply to create awareness, internalize and integrate it, and master the knowledge to make it second nature.

In 2011, he published his book, "AïM for Life Mastery™," which promotes the right stuff, in the right amount at the right time™ as a blueprint for peak performance. It provides the framework, the techniques, and the practices that help you install a new mental program in your daily routine. Peak performance becomes a reality by being mindful, intentional, and present in using a structured, strategic and systematic approach that produces outstanding results.

Raymond has drawn a path to peak performance that enables a person to build the capacity to improve their results and install Effort-Less Effectiveness™. His simple recipe requires hard work but leads to success in mastering your life.

His other book on leadership, "10 Discussions for Effective Leadership," which is also available at Amazon.com, provides support and guidance to leaders who aspire to create a peak performance environment for their teams.

In 2026, he published this book on Excellence. It further expands the concept of the right stuff, in the right amount at the right time™ to implement Effort-Less Effectiveness™.

Raymond lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His performance coaching business provides services to individuals, businesses and sports organizations in Canada and the USA. He continues to research ways and means to increase the value of peak performance to corporate clients and athletes seeking to increase results while reducing stress.

Learn more at: https://www.coachptransformaction.com.

CATHERINE ANN RUSSELL, AUTHOR OF MULTI-AWARD-WINNING CHILDREN’S FICTION

Catherine Ann Russell is a multiple-award-winning children’s book author and the founder of the Basketful Relief Project (BRP).

She has published four children’s picture books and a five-book children’s Christian fantasy adventure series—"The Pearls of Wisdom Series: Stories Inspired by a Biblical Proverb."

Catherine founded the Basketful Relief Project in 2019 to help address infant and child famine crises at home and abroad. Proceeds from each book sale directly support reputable organizations that distribute food and medicine to children experiencing war, food scarcity, or displacement due to catastrophe.

Catherine lives in Lyons, Colorado, with her husband, Ed, and several farm animals, including two burros named Nikki and Norman.

Learn more at: https://catherineannrussell.com.

ALLA KALUZHNY, AUTHOR OF TURNING NEW PAGES

Alla Kaluzhny, MA, SP, LMFT, is the author of the award-winning books, "Turning The Pages" and "Turning New Pages." Her next volume in the trilogy, “Turning Paw Pages,” is currently being published.

Alla dedicated her career to working with children, serving as a special education teacher in the former Soviet Union, and after her move to the United States as a preschool teacher, and a children’s social worker for the Los Angeles County.

Alla is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She holds two master's degrees in Marriage and Family Therapy and Spiritual Psychology, with an emphasis on consciousness, health, and healing. She is a graduate and a volunteer of the University of Santa Monica, and a graduate of Hypnosis and The Clearsight Institute.

As a student of Spiritual Psychology , Alla recalled the memories of her past lives. By applying these principles and drawing on her knowledge, tools, and expertise in self-healing, she began to heal these memories through her writing.

In her books, she explored past lifetimes that first appeared as fleeting, painful, and often tragic memories disguised as difficult circumstances throughout her life. Alla is retired and views her writing as a healing instrument that supports her mission to heal herself, heal others, and help readers in their spiritual and personal development.

Learn more at: www.allakaluzhny.com.

JILL WALLACE, AUTHOR OF ZEBRA. FRIENDS BY FATE. ENEMIES BY DESTINY.

Jill Wallace was born in Zambia, raised in South Africa, and has spent half of her adult life in America. South Africa, though, has never ceased to roll like Transvaal thunder through her veins.

A former international air hostess who crossed six continents aboard 747s, Jill lived many lives before becoming a novelist: modern dancer, PR woman, immigrant, film extra, stepmother, realtor and widow. She published her first novel at 58 and discovered, quite magnificently, that dreams are not especially interested in birthdays.

Her award-winning novel, "ZEBRA: Friends by Fate. Enemies by Destiny.," is her most deeply personal work.

Inspired by the life and experiences of her late husband and soulmate, Athol Wallace, "ZEBRA" tells the story of Jock, a white boy, and Papin, a Zulu teenager, whose extraordinary friendship begins in a mountain resort during the height of apartheid South Africa.

They become blood-brothers in a country determined to define them by the color of their skin. Society soils that innocence and rips them apart. A decade later, their friendship is tested to the zenith when fate brings them together again. But, on opposite sides of a bloody battlefield.

Through their story, Jill explores the human spirit under pressure: friendship, prejudice, loyalty, war, and the choices people make when the world tells them whom they are permitted to love.

"ZEBRA" became an Amazon #1 New Release and has received recognition from Readers’ Favorite, Book Excellence, Maincrest Media and the RONE Awards.

Jill writes stories in which ordinary people are driven into extraordinary darkness and must discover within themselves the light that will lead them home.

Her work carries the landscape, history, and heartbeat of the country that formed her, and the belief that our humanity is always greater than the labels placed upon us. Readers agree her books are indeed Untamed. Unexpected. Unforgettable.

Learn more at: www.jillwallace.com.

STEVE JACKSON, AUTHOR OF CROSSING THE BRIDGE: POEMS ON LOVE, CONNECTION AND THE JOURNEY FROM ONE HEART TO ANOTHER

Steve Jackson is an internationally published poet. His poems have appeared in The Salmon (Ireland) and in a multitude of literary magazines around the world.

His first and second books, Wade in the Water (2005) and An Affair in the Valley (2014), were published by the Los Angeles Poets Press founded in 1982 by Richard Weekly and Jerry Danielson with their aim “to bring buried works to the light, to the surface of the earth, and to the hearts of the receptive.”

In 2020, the Book Excellence Organization built a website for Jackson and turned his second book (An Affair in the Valley) into an Amazon Best Seller.

His third book of poems, The Harbor (2019), was published in New Delhi, India by Dr. Karunesh Agarwal, managing editor of Taj Majal Press and Cyberwit.net whose missions are "to bring the world’s best poetry to the world."

Jackson’s fourth book, Crossing the Bridge (upcoming), was in part inspired by Book Excellence. The book’s aim is to “reach beyond borders and comfort the reader.”

Jackson describes his books as attempts to illuminate qualities of peace, love, and fearlessness twining people together where the earth with her peoples resembles a ship on a voyage, a ship born to carry her people home.

Learn more at: www.stevejacksonpoems.com.

CELEBRATING A DECADE OF LITERARY EXCELLENCE

Together, these authors represent the creativity, dedication, and diversity of voices that Book Excellence has championed throughout its first decade. While their backgrounds, genres, and perspectives differ, they share a common purpose: to use the written word to inform, inspire, connect, and make a meaningful difference in the lives of others.

ABOUT BOOK EXCELLENCE

Book Excellence is an international book marketing company dedicated to helping authors and publishers increase their credibility, visibility and book sales. Through our programs, we have helped over 5,300 authors with their book marketing and supported publishers including Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, McGraw Hill, Simon & Schuster, Wiley and more. Through working with our company, authors and publishers have been able to double their book sales, garner attention from film producers, receive distribution in book stores and increase their visibility and media attention, and more!

To learn more about Book Excellence, visit: www.bookexcellence.com.

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