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Q&A with Joanna Rose, author of A Small Crowd of Strangers

“Wonder,” she said. “We are seeking wonder.” . . . Wonder is a lifting in the heart. Wonder is belief in the fleetest moment. Time stops and starts, goes away and comes back from somewhere. Frankie called Bullfrog the Wonder Dog. “He wonders what’s going on,” he said. It is a wonder she and Michael ended up married.

~ from A Small Crowd of Strangers. (Forest Avenue Press, 2020)

In these times of a pandemic/firestorm/unrest, time stops and starts. We are carried along by the news. We’ve stayed inside so long that our friends become strangers and strangers–in the grocery store, at the gas station–become friends. And like Pattianne Anthony, the protagonist in Joanna Rose’s new novel says, we too are seeking wonder, seeking answers. Watching for signs.

Though A Small Crowd of Strangers is a novel, it is easy to find bits and pieces of one’s own life in the unfolding of Pattianne’s. A young woman who seems to fall into life, Pattianne feels at first that if she was led to a place or a person, she must stay there in that city and in that relationship. 

Then, she begins working at a tiny bookstore run by a woman with a huge personality. Pattianne meets stranger after stranger and Bullfrog the Wonder dog, and they become her guides so that she is no longer falling into life but feeling grounded.

I’m honored to host Joanna Rose as she shares more about her new novel, about writing (this whole interview is a lesson in craft!), and about her favorite pandemic pastimes. Plus, there’s a giveaway (courtesy of Forest Avenue press!)

Enter HERE by Wednesday, September 30th.

Now welcome Joanna Rose!

Christi Craig (CC): What a cast of characters in A Small Crowd of Strangers! From Even-Steven, Pattianne’s “sometimes-boyfriend,” to Michael Bryn, the perfect husband (until his Catholicism gets the best of her). There is the interrogator priest and the priest gone rogue, Pattianne’s indifferent mother and Mrs. Taskey, who is everything her mother isn’t. And those are just a few of the people we meet! As each character rises to the page, we feel their pull on Pattianne, giving the story a natural ebb and flow as she is carried along from one place to another to what begins to feel like “home.” Do you build your characters from scratch or do they form from traces of personality in people you see on the street?

Joanna Rose (JR): Early in the story process I start with people I have known, and they are almost always people from my past. I am haunted by my own past and have connections to people I have lost, not necessarily to death but to time. Early in my life, as my parents moved around the country, I formed the habit of letting people drift away. I have spent most of my life interacting with strangers.

Every time we moved I would make up a new past for myself. When I was very young that past was rather absurd; my dog was the original Lassie. I was related to the Queen of England. I had a brother who died of polio. By the time the truth was out it was usually time for us to move again. I was never called out for my lies. Lying was a big problem for me.
 
What I know now is that in making up myself I was putting a wall around myself, and no one could get in. I am no longer in the habit of telling whoppers but that habit of not getting to know people, of assuming I don’t know people, in is a very basic part of who I am.

What else I know now is that I have always been making up stories and characters.

People are a mystery to me. Do I reconstruct them to seek out the roots of this mystery?

My characters come from all different places in my life. Miss Mimi Stein was very loosely based on my own dear Aunt Mimi, who was not Jewish (very Presbyterian) but who never had children, and was beautiful, and gracious, and had a lovely home. She treated me kindly and warmly and with humor – not something I ever got from my own parents.

Even-Steven is an amalgamation of several boyfriends (none named Steven!).

Jen is an exception; she is my own sister in pretty much every way. Smart-alecky and smart and funny, and we’re not close. I feel like I have managed to immortalize my sister’s smirk.  And Pattianne’s parents are my parents in that they were cold and distant.

But I have never known priests like either Father McGivens or Father Lucke.

Michael Bryn was made up out of whole cloth. He was the hardest character to write, and he didn’t even get  his own point of view until a very late draft.

So were Mrs. Taskey, and Mr Bleakman and Josie.

Mr. Patel is based on a really kind man who runs the QuickPrint shop near my house, who always helped me with the copy machine. Mr Patel looks like this man, and he’s kind like this man.

Lakshmi and Maya were easy; I’ve worked with youth for 20 years, and I know how funny and fun and annoying they are.

What I see as I consider them all is this: I start out with a character like me and a couple people whom I give characteristics that are like people I know. Brushstrokes of reality just to get me started. But as I create the story they become who they need to be in the story, and my work is in fleshing them out. I have to pay very close attention to what they do in the story, and I have to understand why they do it, and not only I terms of story dynamics. They all have to be real in their own stories even if their own stories never emerge. They develop from the story itself.

It’s the same with place. I have to make it up, but for a reason.

I have even never been to Montclair New Jersey, but I lived near there quite a bit as a child, and I loved the name Claire  – St Claire was kind of a female St Francis, who was a big hero to me from very early on. I had a little paperback book called The Lives of the Saints, and while I was too young to read many of the stories, which are mostly pretty gory, I did learn that St Francis could apparently talk to animals, and somehow I learned that St Claire was a female St Francis.  One of the first churches we went to was St Francis Church in Edison new Jersey. This might be a good time to say that while I was never a believer when it came to God in the clouds or Jesus and miracles or guardian angels, I loved going to Mass. The Latin chanting, the music, the priest in his beautiful robes. So I learned that St Francis talked to animals, and they to him. I actually equated him with Shari Lewis. When I got a Lamb Chops puppet for Christmas I was disappointed that she didn’t talk. My mother explained that Lamb Chop only talked to Shari Lewis. I remember thinking Aha! Just like St Francis.

Is this a good reason for making Montclair the beginning of the story?

These beginnings are sacred to me: my love of the drama of the liturgy and my love of animals and the natural world. So it made sense for Montclair to be the beginning of the story.

CC: I’d love to know a little more about Bullfrog, the unassuming hound-dog like companion that Pattianne calls her “spirit guide…St. Francis’s Brother in Christ.” He’s made famous in gracing the cover of your book. Were you anticipating that he would make the cover design?
 
JR: Bullfrog. That’s an easy one – he was my first dog (as a grown up.) We’d always had dogs when I was a kid, and a few of them were basset hounds. When I was about 20 I got this basset mix puppy, whose name was Bullfrog but whom I renamed Frisco,  after the little mountain town I was living in then. He became my hitchhiking  buddy – I was the girl on the side of the road with a dog, thumb out, just me and him. There were some dark years there. I had him until he was 17.

When he died I cried for a year. I’ve had other dogs – I’m on numbers 5, 6 and 7 now. But he was the first creature that I had to take care of, and taking care of him meant taking care of myself. Get home at night. Make sure there’s some food around. Like Pattianne and Bullfrog, alone against the world.

And I do find animals, dogs in particular, to be spirit guides. I am kind of crazy for dogs.

Frisco has been gone for 40 years, and here he is again. I find his presence both in the story and on the cover compelling. There is my past, haunting me.

And no, I never thought of Bullfrog being part of the cover. Gigi Little, the artist who created the cover, came up with that. I love it. She looked at a few old fuzzy Polaroids I have of him, and she got him perfectly, which thrills me. The cover speaks to a gentler, funnier side of the story.

CC: One of the things I love most about your book–about Pattianne, really–is the way she takes in the world around her, often in bits and pieces. Small bits and pieces…a bobbing Adam’s Apple, the short painted fingernails of a woman who drinks too much, “Cuticles, too, bright red.” Sometimes we never get a full glimpse of a character, but we get just enough details from Pattianne’s perspective that we know that character. Putting those kinds of telling details together in such a way isn’t easy. But I know you write poetry as well as novels. Does your craft in poetry play a big part in how you craft your novels?

JR: My poetry owes much to the tendency of the ordinary. I love the drama of objects and the physical world.

When we pay close attention to the sensory world we are strangers in a strange land. This may be the influence of Alice in Wonderland, which was my favorite book as a child, and quite possibly still is. I still read it every so often.

I love how the concrete world can be stepping stones through a story.

Sound is also important to me. Mark Twain said “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”   I understand this to go beyond content. The sound of words can build create or ease tension and can affect pace.

A longer line in poetry goes by a little slower. A short line speeds things up. Same with sentences, and clauses within sentences, in prose.

And vowels and consonants have specific sounds that resonate in the body. Harsh sounds like Ks and Ts cause tension. Low vowel sounds like Os  or short Es can create calm or dread. High sounds like long Es or long Is can create a sense of excitement or panic.

CC: What are you reading these days?

JR: Ack! I always have several books going at once. I eat up UK crime novels (Anne Cleeves, PD James, Elizabeth George) and am always looking for new ones. I love the way language is so different from character to character, and the landscapes of the north of Britain. They usually stay on my bedside table for when I wake up and can’t go back to sleep in the middle of the night. That’s when I need a good plot to carry me along.

I usually have beefy non-fiction book going. I just finished The Architecture of Happiness (Alain de Botton) which is actually about architecture. Now I’m reading The Gene (Siddhartha Mukkergee).

I had to stop everything to read the new Anne Tyler. And dear friends gave me the new Carl Hiasson, which means I won’t get any work done on Sunday.

And poetry: Norman Dubie, Jack Gilbert and Brigit Pegeen Kelly tend to float around the house these days. And I love poetry essays. Right now I’m reading What Light Can Do (Robert Hass)
David Biespiel has a new memoir called A Place of Exodus: Home, memory and Texas. This one I’ll probably save for when I can dive deep into it. Like take it away for a rainy beach weekend. He was one of my poetry mentors at the Attic Institute and this is prose but his sentences are each small journeys.

CC: Favorite Pandemic Pastime?

JR: Watching re-runs of Perry Mason and Big Bang Theory.

Going for long walks in Lone Fir Cemetery. It’s a big and it’s easy to veer wide around d other walkers. It’s a pioneer cemetery, and I read the gravestones and it helps me remember that there are entire lives that have come and gone during other times, troubled times and peaceful times alike. Gravestones are beautiful. I’ve always loved going into cemeteries anyway, and now it feels particularly powerful to be among the dead. 

And while it’s not really a pastime, I like getting up at 3 AM. As do many people I have trouble sleeping now. I finally gave trying up at one point and just started getting up and going downstairs and puttering about. I find it a particularly good time to read those beefy non-fiction books I mentioned  I find it soothing to be up then. Since the shut-down the streets of my urban neighborhood are depressingly still. The busy little cafes are closed, and the shops are closed. No music from the bars, no outbursts of rowdy laughter. At 3AM all that stillness feels normal. I look out and see lights on in here and there and know there are other people awake and it’s comforting. It plays hell with my productivity though. I would like to cultivate the habit of napping.

JOANNA ROSE is the author of the award-winning novel Little Miss Strange (winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Prize, and finalist for the Oregon Book Award). Her poetry, essays and short fiction (as well as other pieces that don’t fall into any of those categories) have appeared in Oregon Humanities, High Desert Journal, VoiceCatcher, Calyx, and Bellingham Review, among others. Her essay “That Thing With Feathers” was cited as Notable in 2015 Best American Essays. She works with youth in Portland Public Schools and cohosts the long-running critique group Pinewood Table. When she’s not at the beach she lives in Portland OR with her husband and, at any given time, several dogs.

A Small Crowd of Strangers (Forest Avenue Press) is part slightly sideways spiritual journey, part coming of age: a middle-aged librarian from New Jersey accidentally gets married and ends up in a convenience store on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island playing Bible Scrabble with a Korean physicist and a drunk priest.

DON’T FORGET: Enter the book giveaway by Wednesday, September 30th, for a chance to win a copy of A Small Crowd of Strangers!

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Q&A with Jackie Shannon Hollis, author of This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story

“This is what I did. This is what my girlfriends did. With dolls, with little sisters and brothers, with children we babysat. We pretended. We practiced. We prepared. Our mothers said to us, ‘When you grow up.’ ‘When you have your own children.’ No question. We would grow up. We would have children of our own.”

~ from This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story

From the title and from the quote above, you might think Jackie Shannon Hollis’ new memoir, This Particular Happiness (Forest Avenue Press) is simply about one woman’s decision not to have children. But this book is so much more.

As women, we revolve around expectations passed down through generations: we will get married; we will have children; we will live happily ever after watching those children grow into adults, marry, have babies of their own. Those expectations may serve one woman well but may cloud the journey of another woman walking the same road.

Jackie Shannon Hollis’ new book digs into beliefs taken on so easily and grapples with the weight of them. When she meets and marries a man who does not want to have children, she must take a closer look at the vision of her life as she had planned it and redefine who she is outside of those expectations.

Written in a structure that mirrors the way we often reason things out, we walk alongside Hollis through past and present, as she studies one moment in relation to another, beginning to see how everything she has experienced is connected, not by the thread of desire to have children but by something much deeper and more vital to the core of her being: the desire to be happy, to love, and to be loved.

I’m thrilled to host Jackie today for an interview about her book, community, and the gift of travel. There’s also a book giveaway! Enter your name HERE by Tuesday, October 8th, for a chance to win a copy of This Particular Happiness.

And now, welcome Jackie Shannon Hollis!

Christi Craig (CC): Your memoir unfolds in a fluid way, moving back and forth in time, and several chapters work as stand-alone essays. Where did you begin in writing This Particular Happiness and when did you know it would become a memoir?

Happiness: Jackie Shannon Hollis

Jackie Shannon Hollis (JSH): I remember the exact moment. I was with my writing group. I brought in what I thought would be  an essay about being childless. I was in my mid-fifties and the essay was intended to explore what it was like to be at that point in my life when the possibility of pregnancy was long past, but the experience of being childless kept unfolding.

As often happens when I am writing these nonfiction pieces, I struggle with the awarenesses that context and personal history are such an important part of our current story. It’s hard to contain a story just in the present because I feel the need to understand how the present experience is informed by the past. As the group was critiquing my piece, they asked questions. “But why didn’t you have children.” “Why was it so important to you to stay with your husband when he didn’t want children and you did.” Well here was the whole entangled story to unravel and explore. I knew right then I wanted to write this longer story. 

CC: One of my favorite passages is in the chapter “A Path to Somewhere New,”where you write, “A friend said, ‘I look at your beautiful garden, your house, even the way you dress. It seems like something is trying to rise up in you.'”

She gently points you toward your creative self and writing, but really, what she says is indicative of how life works. As we go in search of who we are or what we are capable of, the pieces of the puzzle often lay right in front of us, if we are only willing to see them. Your book is testament to discovering those pieces and putting them together. It’s a book that will leave an impression on any woman struggling to move beyond the expectations society places on her. What impression has writing your memoir left on you? Or maybe a better question is, How has writing your memoir changed you?

JSH: Christi, I am so pleased that you were drawn to this chapter because, for me, this was a turning point in my life, for exactly the reason you express here. And it can get lost in the idea that this book is solely about childlessness. I see This Particular Happiness as being about the discovery of self and an exploration of meaning. I think most women go through this at some point, whether they have children or not, a turning point where we look at what we are doing and ask the questions: Is this what I want, or is it someone else’s want? How do I carry the expectations of others? How do I move forward when I know I am turning away from what is expected of me?

Writing this memoir deepened the sense that this path I am on is where all the various threads of my life were leading me. I feel a sense of confidence in myself that comes of no longer being secretive about the fact that I longed for a child, and the times where that longing still rises up. And I feel a confidence that comes from having chosen this different path, one I am happy about and likely would not have found had I followed the expected.

CC: Several years ago you wrote a beautiful guest post for my blog, “Writers as Witness,” where you talk about being in community and the rhythm of writing. What has been the greatest gift in sharing with other writers this journey to self, story, and publication?

JSH: The community of writers IS the gift of this whole experience for me (and I must say my community of non-writers had been delightfully excited about my writing all along and especially about this book).  

Happiness: Writing group gathered at table with pen and paper

I am part of a writing group that meets weekly. We call ourselves The Dreamies. We’ve been together for many years. We know each other and know and respect the unique angle each of us take in critiquing a piece of work that one of us brings in. My memoir was shaped in this group. I cannot thank them enough for their ears and eyes on my pages, and for listening to revision after revision of chapters I was struggling with.

Three of the five other writers in the group have previously published books and their guidance has been so important to me, both in the querying and submitting to publishers, and now in bringing the book out for publication. This is a long and vulnerable process and it helps to have people who have had similar ups and downs offer support, encouragement, advice, and reality checks.

I’ve wanted to have a book out there for a long time. For a while, I’d made peace with the possibility that this might not happen. Now that it is happening, I don’t feel like I am more or less for having a book published. I still feel like me. And yet, I do feel a new kind of confidence that goes with having made it to this point. And there is a certain external validation that comes of having a solid book to hold in my hands.

But most joyous to me is being part of the literary community, being celebrated for showing up, for writing, for continuing to write through difficult times, for risking on the page. This is what the writers I know and honor do for each other. 

CC: What are you reading these days?

JSH: Over the summer I read three ARC’s. Two debut memoirs which captivated me. Codependence: Essays, by Amy L. Long, is an exploration of chronic pain and opiate addiction told from the perspective of someone who understands her addiction and sees it as vital to management of her pain. This Is My Body: A Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession, by Cameron Dezen Hammon, is a very personal exploration of her faith and of love. And I read The Royal Abduls, by Ramiza Koya, which is the next book coming out from Forest Avenue Press. I’m really excited about this book. 

I am just now finishing Sion Dayson’s debut novel, As a River.  She writes beautifully and with a sureness I admire, and the story is powerful.

I also listened to two very brutal and deeply researched and beautifully reported non-fiction books on audio. Missoula, by Jon Krakauer. I’m a bit late coming to this book, which came out in 2016. It’s about the sexual assault cases at the university there and the minimal response by the University and law enforcement. And Columbine, by Dave Cullen. Wow is this a powerful book.

CC: In your memoir, you touch on some of your travels. Where is one favorite place to visit?

JSH: I’ve had the good fortune to travel many places. I’m drawn to any place that offers me a view of other ways of living, new perspectives, different foods and landscapes and languages. But also, Bill and I now travel to the same places more than we go to new places. We go to London and Switzerland, to see friends whom we met on our travels. They have become family, which is something I write about in This Particular Happiness.

Happiness: desert land, The Wave Trail in Utah.

Of the places I’ve been, if we’re speaking of landscape alone, I am still most captivated by the southwest desert of the US — Southern Utah, Arizona. I also write about this in my memoir. In the desert you can see, so vividly, how the land was formed — under water, through earthquake and upheavals. The layers of time are painted into the landscape. The colors, the sense of unmarred history consistently draws me back. It’s a beautiful area to hike and to experience solitude.

Jackie Shannon Hollis, a lifelong Oregonian, resides with her husband in a home her friends call the treehouse. Her education and work as a counselor also pushed her to hold up the mirror to her own self. In addition to thinking she would be a mother, she once dreamed of being a June Taylor dancer or a racecar driver. Her short stories and essays have been published in The Sun, Slice, Inkwell, High Desert Journal, Rosebud, and other publications. Read more about Jackie and her writing on her website.

*Photo of group above by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash
*Photo of desert: The Wave Trail, Utah by Gert Boers on Unsplash

Don’t forget: enter the giveaway by Tuesday, October 8th, for a chance to win a copy of This Particular Happiness.

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Q&A: Stevan Allred,
author of The Alehouse at the End of the World

“Pride,” the pelican said, “is at the bottom of all great mistakes.”
~ from The Alehouse at the End of the World

Fiction is often based on reality in one way or another, which is how and why it appeals to us so. But once in a while you come across a story so fantastical, you forget about the real world for a moment; you get lost in the imagination of it all. You read first for entertainment, but later, upon reflection, you return and read it again for insight. Because certain stories–like Stevan Allred’s new novel, The Alehouse at the End of the World (Forest Avenue Press)–strike a familiar chord, hitting on the absurdities of society, the pride of man, the risks we take for love and companionship.

cover image for Stevan Allred's new book, The Alehouse at the End of the WorldPublishers Weekly calls Allred’s book one that is “sparked with risqué humor. . . . underscored with a strong thematic element of hope.” In pages full of devotion, humility, carnal desire and spiritual conquest, Allred gives readers a delightful tale of one man, his lost love, a congregation of birds who welcome the dead into the underworld, and a quest to save man and bird alike from consumption by a crow.

There are bigger monsters, sure, but I won’t reveal too much. Besides, sometimes the most dangerous are those who look the most like us.

Such a story can only be written by a writer full of wit and craft who himself is willing to take risks, who is unafraid of the strange and unexpected that often comes in giving ourselves over to story.

I’m thrilled to host Stevan to talk about his new novel and excited to offer a book giveaway! CLICK HERE to enter by Tuesday, November 20th, for a chance to win a copy of The Alehouse at the End of the World.

Now, welcome Stevan Allred!

Christi Craig (CC): The Alehouse at the End of the World reads like great mythology, with its old gods and new gods, demi-gods and mortals, and a healthy dose of promiscuity in the mix! But what makes this novel unique is that there isn’t only one hero’s journey to save the world. Each character has his or her own trajectory full of risks, mistakes, sacrifice, and love. You have woven all of this—every character’s move—so seamlessly and beautifully together. I’d love to know more about the seed of the idea for this novel. Where—with what?—does such a complex and imaginative story begin?

Stevan AllredStevan Allred (SA): I was between writing projects, stumbling around on the internet, looking for something to write about, when I discovered the story of James Bartley, a man who claimed to have been swallowed by a whale in 1891. So I started with that, the idea of a man swallowed by a whale, and I gave the man a quest, to find his long lost beloved. Where was she? I was looking to write something free of the tethers of ordinary reality, and I already had the whale bit in mind. I figured if readers were still with me after I had my fisherman swallowed by a whale, I could go anywhere from there, so why not to the Isle of the Dead?

The bird gods in Alehouse are all based on birds that I have some fascination with–crows, pelicans, frigate birds, cormorants. I simply elevated them to the physical, emotional, and intellectual stature of humans, and them gave each of them some extraordinary powers. The needs of the story itself dictated, in some cases, what these powers would be. The cormorant is Alehouse’s google–he has all the answers. The frigate bird was my Costco and Home Depot combined–whatever the characters needed on the Isle of the Dead, he could provide.

CC: The pages of your novel are filled with great imaginative detail and exemplifies your skill in world building. Much of the story takes place in the belly of the Kiamah beast with no curve, corner, or niche ignored in your use of landscape. How best do you visualize such a place? Do you draw a map, sketch an outline, build it from your own experience with the outside world?

SA: In the beginning it feels like I’m climbing a rope that I am braiding together as I climb it. That’s a mysterious process, and it requires an act of faith on my part, but as the details accumulate, each imagined detail makes the fictional world a little bit more real to me. Those details often have consequences, and the consequences will lead me to other details.

An example is that I decided early on that the sun rose in the west and set in the east on the Isle of the Dead, and that has consequences for how the rise and set of the sun light up features of the physical landscape. For most of the time I was writing the novel I kept this landscape in my head, but fairly late in the process I had to make a map of the Isle of the Dead, so I could be sure that I had the lighting right.

CC: You’ve said that in writing this novel you learned to step aside and let the story lead you as you wrote it. What’s your secret to letting go of the reins?

SA: I think of the story as a living entity with whom I have a relationship. That’s a bit fanciful, I know, but it works for me. Because I confer a sense of being on the story I can then listen to the story, and pay attention to what the story needs instead of imposing something on it. Sometimes I dance with the story.

All of these things–“living entity”, “listen to the story”, “dance with the story”–these are metaphors for internal processes. I don’t stand up and pretend to dance with my metaphor, but in my psyche, I make room for that playful notion. I have to get quiet for it to work, shutting out distractions. Sometimes that happens because I rise early to write, and move from sleep to desk relatively quickly before the noise of the everyday world kicks in. Other times I get to the quietness I need by walking the dog, or folding laundry, or pulling weeds. Any fairly mechanical task will do as long as it occupies the front of my mind so the back end can go wandering. You invite the solution to appear, and it does. You have to be patient. And grateful–be sure to thank the story for giving you the answer.

CC: What are you reading these days?

SA: I just finished one of the classics of science fiction, Kindred, by Octavia Butler. It’s a terrific time travel novel, and I’ve followed it up with An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones, which I’m really enjoying.

CC: What’s your favorite background noise as you write: music, the rumble of neighborhood traffic, coffeehouse chatter, or…?

SA: I write early in the morning, often before dawn. I like things to be very quiet when I’m writing. Writing in coffeehouses is impossible for me. I love sitting at my desk as the sun rises, feeling the light change around me while I’m burrowed in deep to my own imagination.

Stevan Allred lives halfway between Hav and the Isle of the Dead, which is to say he spends as much time burrowed into his imagination as he possibly can. He is the author of A Simplifed Map of the Real World: The Renata Stories, and a contributor to City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Tales. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.

Don’t forget! Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, November 20th,
for a chance to win a copy of Stevan’s new novel.