White line drawing of various wildflowers and plants on a black background.

Blog

Dona Layton Dona Layton

An Excerpt from THE TAKING

April 30, 2025

My home is New Hampshire. I made it the main setting of my novel The Taking (Roundfire Books, January 1, 2025; Paperback; IBSN: 978-1-80341-550). But there are other brief parts of the book that are set in different spots in New England, including Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where I went to live for a year, after I'd finished a season working as the production stage manager at a summer theater.

At the end of that summer, I was restless, and it felt like a letdown to go home, and I needed an adventure. A friend of mine had a friend who owned a summer house in Mashpee, Massachusetts on the southern shore of Cape Cod.

Read More
Dona Layton Dona Layton

Behind the Story of My Immigrant Italian Family

April 26, 2025

A few people have asked me if I’ll write a sequel to my debut novel, The Taking. When I wrote the book, I thought that maybe I might write a sequel to it someday. The Taking is a suspenseful story with paranormal elements about a young girl and her father who don’t always get along but who are all that each other has, and together they must confront the unknown. But I had a different idea for my next novel, and that’s what I’m focused on now.

Read More
Dona Layton Dona Layton

New Hampshire UFO Chiller, The Mysterious Case of Betty and Barney Hill

April 19, 2025

I’ve been interested in UFOs and aliens my whole life. I wrote an emotional and chilling novel that explores that mystery called The Taking. The Taking is a suspenseful story with paranormal elements about a girl and her father who must confront the unknown. The universe is so vast and teeming with planets that I can’t imagine there isn’t extraterrestrial intelligent life out there. I had my own experience once, when I was a young kid.

Read More
Dona Layton Dona Layton

A Suspenseful New Novel That Explores the Unknown

There have always been stories about encounters with strange beings from other planets. In these stories, human beings are singled out by the strange creatures, who change the humans’ lives forever. At least this is true according to the unsettling legends of unidentified flying objects and alien abductions, stories which have influenced the suspenseful new novel, The Taking by Dona Masi.

Read More
Dona Layton Dona Layton

How I Went the Distance with My Book

Thank you for being here. I’m Dona Masi. I’m a writer, editor, and the author of the new novel The Taking. I spent a long time writing The Taking and pitching it for publication, until about one and a half years ago when I landed a publisher. Now it is a soon to be published book available on Amazon for preorder before the publish release in December, 2024.

Read More
Cover of the book 'The Taking' by Dona Masi featuring a black and white illustration of a girl walking in a mysterious forest with tall abstract trees and a red unidentified object in a dark starlit sky.

Coming January 2025

The Taking

An unnatural silence and a feeling that you are all alone in the world.

A Debut Novel By Dona Masi