Robin Antalek's Blog

Please welcome Elizabeth Searle to the blog.  She's a fantastic writer, a contributor to a new anthology from Other Voices Books, Men Undressed and the author of Girl Held In Home from New Rivers Press. Her voice is fresh and funny and satiric and somber.  Elizabeth Searle has it all -- and I'm thrilled to have her here.

REALITY FICTION': Ripped-From-The-Headlines by Elizabeth Searle
Headlines have always grabbed me-- and recently in my writing I have grabbed them back.  Following my Headline-happy heart , I have found new adventures and a new level of attention in the realm of what I call Reality Fiction.   [image error] photo credit : Barry Weiss
Like it or not, 'reality' rules.  Reality TV leads in ratings and nonfiction titles lead in sales.  I have always loved news stories, especially scandalous ones.  As book columnist Jan Gardner noted in the Boston Globe-- tying together my stage work TONYA & NANCY: THE ROCK OPERA and my newest novel-- I 'find inspiration in lurid crimes'.
And especially in the headlines which accompany the crimes.  I grew up on TV News: Walter Cronkite dined with my family every night.  I think in headlines.  The title of my new novel GIRL HELD IN HOME takes the form of a headline.  The libretto to my rock opera is filled with 'lurid' headlines-- 'Gillooly Colluded' and 'War Between the Skates!'--chanted by the chorus as they tell the tabloid tale of ice skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.   photo credit: Mark Karlsberg
GIRL HELD IN HOME --out now from New Rivers Press-- was also inspired by a real crime.  In our own neighborhood in Arlington.MA, in 2001, a woman was 'held' as an unpaid servant' in the home of a family that controlled her visa.  In my version of her story, a teenage boy discovers her situation and falls in love with the 'GIRL HELD IN HOME'.  In GIRL, I imagined my story based on a real incident.  In my libretto for TONYA & NANCY, I used the real stranger-than-fiction facts and real newspaper quotes from the 'characters'.  The show drew national media on Good Morning America, CBS, NPR and more.  I found myself interviewed on ESPN Hollywood (surely a first for a literary fiction writer!).  GIRL HELD IN HOME, fresh off the presses, has drawn attention too from its ties to an all-too-real crime.  I've been given the chance to discuss on radio and elsewhere the shocking fact that many women facing immigration issues are 'held' in this way.So for fellow fiction writers looking for a Reality Fix, you may need to look no further than the latest headline to grab you.  Grab it 'back' and you may find your resulting work making a few headlines of its own. 
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Elizabeth Searle's new novel, GIRL HELD IN HOME, is based on a real crime and her stage show, TONYA & NANCY: THE ROCK OPERA, which drew national media attention, is based on the Harding/Kerrigan skate scandal.  Elizabeth's previous books are A FOUR-SIDED BED, re-released in a new paperback version in 2011, CELEBRITIES IN DISGRACE (produced as a short film in 2010) and MY BODY TO YOU.  An excerpt from GIRL HELD IN HOME appears in the new anthology MEN UNDRESSED: WOMEN WRITERS ON MALE SEXUAL EXPERIENCE.

http://www.elizabethsearle.nethttp://... HELD IN HOME BOOK TRAILER:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfgh_l...
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/gf...
http://literallyplop.wordpress.com/ca...
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books...

Please welcome Rosebud Ben-Oni to the blog with a hilarious post on her not-so-secret obsession for a certain Hong Kong Heartthrob.   Rosebud is a contributor to the anthology: Men Undressed: Women Writers and the Male Sexual Experience (Other Voices Books)  http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9781936873081-0  described as fictional cross-dressing this anthology explores male sexuality from a female perspective and features a powerhouse collection of women writers so freaking talented, I'm thinking of starting a fan club.  If that description doesn't want to make you click the link immediately, then I don't know what will. 

8 Reasons why I Adore Hong Kong Heartthrob Louis Koo Tin Lok(And You Should Too)

 Louis Koo, aka Mr. Cool, aka The Man with the Tan, aka the Mullet Man, aka...okay, you probably don't know him. Although this actor-(questionable)-singer-(definite)-brand-hawker is not as well known in the West as other Hong Kong actors like Andy Lau or Daniel Wu, there are many a reason you should go out (NOW) and rent a Louis Koo flick.
(1)  While his romantic comedies vary from as memorable as a McChicken sandwich  like Love on the Rocks
 to just plain bad  in Why Me, Sweetie?  (which is worth seeing just as a lesson in overacting), most of his collaborations with auteur Johnnie To Kei-Fung especially in his role as Jimmy-Jai in Election   and Triad Election  were the beginnings of Louis Koo, the Actor. Although some moviegoers say his acting is mechanical and lacking in range , the public voted him as Most Beloved Actor in the 2006 Hong Kong Film Awards  for Traid Election, a feat in itself considering his character hacked up a rival gangster's lackey, put his limbs through a meat grinder and then fed it to dogs chained to other gangster lackeys locked in small cells. Then, once that message is served, he has dinner with the surviving gangster lackeys.

(2)  Speaking of Johnnie To films, there are two types of people out there: those who believe Throwdown couldn't have been made without Lous Koo and those who think he was miscast as the jaded-then-repentant Szteo Bo, whose finally-"seeing-"while-going-blind journey has all the appeal of spam floating in dishwater. But I would argue here he's most convincing here , especially when he takes a beating for Cherrie Ying after winning big-- and losing it all-- in a gamble den.

(3)   Louis Koo is all over Mainland China though he can't speak a lick of Mandarin. In fact, his very name has come to mean "bad Mandarin."  Did you see that commercial
 where he's caressing a tire with a creepy yet sexy smile on his face, singing the merits of lun toi instead of lun tai, which mean two very different things ? This reminds me when I tried to thank a friend's Auntie for a delicious Lunar New Year dinner in poetic, magniloquent Mandarin, but ended up saying something akin to, "Fishing dog, my friend, apple you bye bye."

(4)  It's so much fun trying to guess which is The Real Louis Koo in the first few seconds in this announcement  from Madame Tussauds, just in time for the 2011 Lunar New Year. The accompanying music will get your heart rate up nonetheless. You can find more about his iconic-status-in-the-making at his blog (in English) here
.

Shanghai bodega Inflight Magazine Inflight Magazine    (5) Say what you want about acting, but as evidence in this photo  I took in a Shanghai bodega, as well as these random ads from an in-flight magazine from Shanghai to Beijing, Louis Koo makes a mullet look good.
(6) So he can't sing-- this song for better or worse, is still catchy. And at least you can see the passion in his face here in this group live
 performance, as he does a complete 360 and walks around (pleasantly) in order to reach all the screaming (mostly female) fans out there.

(7) Though he really doesn't want you to watch his early movies , many of which are prospective fodder for MST3K, I highly recommend the following: Street of Fury
 (triad drama featuring Tsui Kam-Kong with dreads); Super Car Criminals  (you know it's going to be bad if it has early Michael Wong Mun-Tak, although Simon Lui Yu-Yeung's facial expressions are priceless as he seduces a woman in an exercise room);  The Suspect  (although directed by the now eminent Ringo Lam , poor Simon Yam Tat-Yah looks so uncomfortable here) and God.com  (so much is so wrong you just have to see it).  And one could argue he has the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon  going on, as even early on he has shared the screen with some icons like then-newcomers Daniel Wu in Born Wild,  Bullets Over Summer  with Francis Ng who can make any melodrama moving and lastly, the triad staple Century of the Dragon  which also stared Heavenly Kind Andy Lau Tak-Wah and with a plot not unlike that of Infernal Affairs (which Lau also stared in).  Oh, and don't forget to see the very good-looking, very incomprehensible For Bad Boys Only .

(7)  His "Before I was Mr. Cool" laugh at 0:35  will haunt your dreams. 



Rosebud Ben-Oni is a playwright at New Perspectives Theater; she is currently developing a new play with the company. Recently, her short story "A Way out of the Colonia" won the Editor's Prize at Camera Obscura: A  Journal of Contemporary Literature and Photography, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has recent and upcoming work in Anobium, Review Americana, Existere, Arts & Letters, and Men Undressed: Women Writers and the Male Sexual Experience. 

In celebration of National Reading Group Month The Summer We Fell Apart , along with some other really fine titles from Harper Collins, is on sale for $2.99 in e-book form.  YIPEE!  Time to load up the kindle! http://www.bookclubgirl.com/book_club_girl/2011/10/my-entry.html

The lovely Kim Wright has received many accolades for her debut novel and now I'm please to announce it's out in paperback.... I invited Kim back to the blog for a guest post... and she wrote an honest eye-opening account of how writers really read....

How Writers Read
Recently someone asked me if the publication of my first novel, Love in Mid Air, changed how I read.  It's an interesting question.  Because the long process of putting a novel together, taking it apart and putting it together again and again, does tend to make one hyper-aware of how stories are constructed and the many choices an author makes along the way.In a way this knowledge does spoil – well, I shouldn't really say that. Knowing how writers put together stories doesn't exactly spoil your experience of reading, but it changes it.  I ballroom dance as a hobby and recently I was watching a young girl in my studio proudly model her new ballgown, which had been purchased from a taller girl and altered to fit her.  She looked magical as she twirled and glided in a sea of blue chiffon.  But the seamstress, standing beside me and watching too, kept muttering about how a certain seam puckered or wondering if the hem was too deep.  Sometimes when you understand the construction of something too well, you can't stop seeing that construction and a bit of the magic does get lost. Like, for example, last year I was at my mom's beach house and in the back bedroom is a big bookcase crammed with books my mother's friends have brought to the beach in summers past, read, and then left for future visitors to enjoy.   I grabbed a paperback at random – apparently a favorite, judging by its humidity-swollen pages, broken spine, and sunscreen-smeared cover – and carried it out to the sand with my beach chair.  It was the lightest of all light reading, but for some reason, the book bugged me.  I felt that I could see every decision the writer made along the way, just as the seamstress could see the faulty stitching on the ballgown.  The foreshadowing was so heavy that when I finally flipped to the predictable ending I was so irritated that I walked to the edge of the ocean and flung the book in.  I still don't know why I did it.  Ordinarily, I'd have too much respect for both books and marine ecology, but I was just coming off a long stint of revision and it irked me to come across a writer who had – at least in my opinion – taken the easy way out. As I turned back to my chair I saw my mother and all of her friends sitting under their beach umbrella, mouths gaping.  All I could think to say was "I REALLY hated the way she ended that book."But it can work the other way too, that knowing more about writing can elevate your appreciation for a book that's been well crafted, and taking my own hits in the publication process has definitely increased my respect for anyone who survives it.   I was never a harsh reviewer, but now I can hardly bring myself to publically critique another writer.  Whether their book was my personal cup of tea or not, I know how hard they worked to write it, and to get it published.  So what's the overall change in my reading since I've published?  While on one level I enjoy books a little less, I now bow more to the effort each one required from its author.  Which is why, even if a copy is slowly drifting out to sea, I send it off with a little prayer of "God Bless."
Here's Kim's website: http://loveinmidair.com
And a  link to purchase Kim's delightful book  http://www.amazon.com/Love-Mid-Air-Ki...

 Michele Young-Stone is a writer's writer.  Her debut: The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors has been a top Publishers Weekly pick as well as an emerging author pick at Target. Her characters: beloved, tender, flawed and damaged, the overwhelming sense of place and her gift for language that lifts off the page are trademarks of someone who was born to write. All I can say when I think of this marvelous writer is: More, please. Please welcome Michele to the blog -- pick up her book if you haven't already done so -- and, as always, I'll see you in the comments!


Don't judge me.
It's gospel: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…" (John 8:7)
I grew up with a mom who, seriously, cast no judgment on anyone.  If I told her that someone was having sex or using drugs, she'd say, "I feel really bad for her."  She'd pray for them and hug them even harder the next time she saw them.  Most of the parents I knew would've said, "Stay away from her," or "It's because her parents are such a mess," or something along those lines.
I know that we all—to some extent—judge other people, but I really try not to do it.  The cliché about walking a mile in someone else's shoes is a cliché because it's true. 
It's so easy to judge others instead of looking at our own quirks and failings.  And even if you take a good hard look at the things in your own life, and you discover that you've done something less than admirable, say, "I'm sorry," and to quote one of my favorite Disney movies, Meet the Robinsons, "Keep Moving Forward." 
Life is too short to wallow and be filled with regret. 
And don't judge your friends.  Hug them even harder the next time you see them.  Say a little prayer for them.  Do something nice!!!  Put some positive vibes out there. 
The characters in my novel have been described as, "endearing losers," and they are.  Whenever someone tells me about how tough they've had it, I say, "I'm right there with you.  Life can be hard."  Yet another cliché:  "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."  Chin up.  Smile.  You'll feel better.  I promise.
Michele Young-Stone is the author of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, a Target Emerging Author pick and a Publisher's Weekly top-ten debut.  Her next two books are under contract with Simon and Schuster.  She is currently working on her third novel—The Saints of Los Vientos.
Michele lives in Virginia with her husband and son, a very sweet dog and some ornery fish.      

The wonderfully talented Michele Young-Stone author of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors invited me to guest post on her blog today!  Follow the link here: http://micheleyoung-stone.blogspot.com

And if you haven't yet read her fabulous book (it's out now in PB and in Target) add it to your reading list and prepare to do nothing else!

Happy to be asked to be a part of this reading series... if you come on the night of May 16th there will be cookies.   Promise.

I have never wished to go back in time until I came across this photo.  Happy Friday.

Meg Pokrass is a mistress of flash fiction, her new book, DAMN SURE RIGHT has been praised by Frederick Barthelme, Kyle Minor, and my friend Jessica Anya Blau, among others.  Meg is a rare voice in the crowded room of fiction: honest, brave, funny and tender: she says it like it is without apology or explanation and I think that is what makes her work so breathtaking.  Meg has written a guest post about the writer in public.  It is one thing to write your truth, it is entirely another to say it out loud. Please join me in welcoming Meg... see you in the comments!



The Serious Writer and her Pussy

The serious writer has embraced the word "pussy". Other words for this part of the female anatomy are repugnant, carnivorous. 

A pussy has a life of its own. A secret life. One can smuggle drugs inside a pussy. 

As a serious writer, in mid-life, she must master speaking the word "pussy" with confidence and authority. She practices doing so out loud for her next book store reading. The serious writer is starting a book tour to promote her new novel which is bursting with 'pussy'. 

She practices reading in front of the mirror, engaging her slightly furrowed brow... medium voice...

"'I love your pussy,' Ian says softly to Trina, his hooded eyes at half mast," the serious writer reads to her refection in the mirror.

"'I love cock', Trina offers, imagining his range of movement." 

Her dialogue is raw. Edgy. The serious writer is known for this. 

"'You're huge, Ian... my my my...' and she is touching it through his cords. She is feeling its neck, perhaps its beak... but doesn't want to frighten Ian by admitting to her deepening fear...her hunger," the serious writer reads. 

"'My god. You're damp,' Ian says, stroking her muff, her moistened ball of hair, the underwear covering Trina's pussy," the serious writer says, her voice tiring.

(The serious writer is sick of the adjective "wet". She is experimenting with other adjectives. She wonders if a man would really say 'damp'... Not just any man... but Ian, the vegetarian with an occasional weakness for farm raised fowl.)

She looks at her face in the mirror. It is a successful face, one that has accepted three Gertrude Smallwood awards. A face that should not have any trouble with the word 'pussy' for fuck's sake.

"Pussy," she says it again. She says it, right to her face. Meg Pokrass is the author of Damn Sure Right, a book of 88 flash fiction stories from Press 53. Of "Damn Sure Right,"  Frederick Barthelme says "Meg Pokrass writes like a brain looking for a body. Wonderful, dark, unforgiving". Meg's flash fiction, poems and animations have appeared in The Rumpus, Wigleaf, Gigantic, Used Furniture Review, Joyland, PANK, Big Muddy, Gargoyle, The Pedestal, Keyhole, Moon Milk Review, Annalemma, Mississippi Review, FRIGG, Smokelong Quarterly, elimae, Bananafish, Ramshackle Review, A-Minor Magazine, Monkeybicycle, Everyday Genius, 3AM, Foundling Review, Mud Luscious, Juked, Eclectica, Word Riot and various upcoming anthologies of flash. http://www.megpokrass.org  

I'm thrilled to have Katrina Kittle as a guest on the blog.  The author of Two Truths and a Lie , Traveling Light and the latest, The Blessings of the Animals , the award winning Kittle writes passionate stay-up-late-at night stories with vivid, wonderfully poignant characters.  She has the uncanny ability to write about the quiet moments in life that fill our days with wit, passion, humor and empathy.  The moments that make us human.  In the following post she writes of the inspiration for The Blessings of the Animals .  It will endear you to Katrina, an animal lover, gardener, cook, teacher and writer even more... and if you haven't read the book yet, I predict you will very, very soon.  As always, I'll see you in the comments!


A Horse, A Cat, and a Man (or, the initial inspiration for my novel, The Blessings of the Animals)
I had a horse, a cat, and a man in my life for the same fifteen years.
And, then, within a year, I lost them all.
The horse and the cat died. The man simply decided he didn't want to be married anymore.
The horse and the cat helped me deal with the loss of the man.
The man was brooding and moody, essentially unhappy. Why that is so appealing to a young woman is beyond me, but I fell for it. He also loved books, was an intrepid traveler, and made a mean mocha. He attended every single performance in the run of a show I was in when we met.
The cat —Montgomery—was no bigger than a fist when I stopped at a red light and saw him nearly drowning in a rain-filled gutter. He had the gumption to hiss at me when I opened my car door and plucked him out of the storm. Within seconds of being wrapped in a fresh-from-the-dryer saddle pad, he was unconscious. When he woke, hours later, we fell in love.
He grew into one of those giant yellow toms with boxing glove paws—complete with the extra toes. He understood the concept of tag. He sat on my chest for nine hours when I returned from surgery for a broken nose, dashing away to eat or use his litter box only when the man was with me. When I wrote, he had an unsettling habit of watching my face as I typed as if he were listening to the story being told.
The horse—Degas—belonged to my friend Judy. A leggy elegant bay thoroughbred like the racehorses in Degas paintings, he'd been abused at the track and had an unpredictable, jittery edge. Always seething, he once took another horse by the throat and tried to kill it.
Many a time I sat atop a more seasoned horse watching Judy and Degas whirl around on a muddy trail, hashing out a disagreement about whether we were going forward or back to the trailer.
I didn't question Judy's devotion to him, though. I'd ridden him. The fluid gliding walk, the floating trot, the forward momentum—riding any other horse felt like a dull chore after being on Degas. Plus, his resentful wariness was a challenge. I had a sullen man, after all.
One day, after grooming him, I turned to leave his stall and he grabbed my fleece jacket in his teeth. After my pulse stopped racing, as he held the fleece and tugged, I realized he wasn't trying to bite me—he was saying, "don't go." When he did it again the next day, my jacket was unzipped and I shrugged out of it, to see what he'd do. He held the jacket out of my reach for several minutes, playing "keep away," then dropped it…only to snatch it up again just as I got close.
Between the playful interactions, he'd return to his ears-laid-back, teeth-bared fury. He continued his tantrums on the trail, insisting on being the lead horse, treating every ride like a race, unable to relax.
Then, one day, for reasons known only to him, Degas released the anger of his past. I rode him, a periwinkle sky above us, the woods spicy with the tea-like odor of moist decay, the confetti of saffron and crimson leaves falling down all around us. At a narrow place in the trail, we fell behind Judy and the horse she rode. I expected Degas to fume. He'd been known to bite the butts of horses who blocked him from the lead.
But he sighed. His staccato jerkiness smoothed and slowed. I scratched his withers, the reins long. His hooves crunched an even cadence through the fallen leaves. When Judy called, "You okay?" I was startled to see we'd falled nearly twenty yards behind. Degas' ears were floppy and sideways. He didn't hurry to catch up. He was just ambling.
Judy and I worried that he must be ill. We felt apologetic about our assumptions later when it became apparent that he was simply…happy. After years of fretting and fussing and being enraged, he just let it all go.
Degas became as reliable as any other horse in the barn. He loved to have his tail scratched and would stretch his neck giraffe-like and snap his teeth together, the equine equivalent of a dog thumping his leg when you scratch just the right spot. Like an impish kid, he loved to pull my jacket from a hook and toss it on the ground, then crane his neck and look away, feigning innocence.
I took great solace in Degas when Montgomery grew ill. The cat became aggressive and foreign—jumping on me in my sleep, snarling, seeming not to recognize me, even biting me. He began to have seizures that left him bewildered. Once, sprawled in my lap, he experienced a seizure that lasted a full, tortured minute, during which he urinated all over me and the couch. Another seizure sent him tumbling down a flight of stairs.
The vet discovered an inoperable brain tumor. I lost something palpable as I watched all evidence of Montgomery's presence slide away—the cat's euthanized corpse immediately looked nothing like him. Some part of my heart left the room that day as clearly as his being did.
No sooner had I planted impatiens on Montgomery's grave but Degas went lame. The horse had Cushing's Disease and was prone to founder—inflammation in his legs. He had to be kept on a dry lot and denied sugary treats like apples or carrots. He developed laminitis, which caused the bottoms of his hooves to swell. He walked in a small, cramped shuffle. His coat, unable to shed, curled into sickly-sweet smelling, sweaty cowlicks.
When he could no longer walk, he'd let me sit crosslegged in his stall, with his head in my lap.
When he had to be put down, I felt as if I'd had a limb amputated.
I experienced that feeling again a month later when my husband told me he didn't want to be married anymore, packed his car, and left.
I was unraveled with sorrow. Flattened. Leveled. But once I put myself back together, like Degas, I was pissed. I carried my anger and betrayal like a pack on my back. I had been done wrong, and it colored everything I did—every interaction I had, every action I took, every word I said.
Months later, exhausted, unhappy, too thin and haggard, I heard someone (not referring to me) speak of a "bitter divorced woman" and felt my limbs fill with ice water. Had I become one? That pack on my back was heavy.
And I thought of dear Degas and that moment on the autumn trail.
I could be the angry victim…or I could be happy. Dragging that damn pack around kept me connected to my ex, kept a direct line open to the heartache.
I dumped the pack. Abandoned it right there on the trail.
Oh, occasionally it would catch up and find me again, secure itself to my back, but each time it did, it weighed less, and each time it became easier to shrug off.
I didn't reduce Montgomery's memory to the final act of peeing and convulsing in my lap—I could remember him for the time he fell into the bathtub with me, for the way he wiggled his way cocoon-like under the fitted sheet to nap, for his junkie-thief ability to locate and retrieve catnip no matter how thoroughly I'd hidden it in the house. I didn't reduce Degas' memory to being unable to stand for three days—I could remember Degas for lifting my ginger ale can and tipping it back, drinking it like a person. Or for the way he loved the blue chicory that grew in late summer and could "get" me every time, jerking his head down to snatch a snack as we strolled in a field. Or for the silly way he liked to paddle in the creek with a front leg, soaking me with his splashing.
So why had I reduced my history with my ex to one cowardly act on a snowy day? 
I eventually came to remember the gifts of my marriage, those times we cherished each other. It was easier to remember our awe as we stood watching a grizzly walk away from our tent in Alaska than to be angry. Or the way, when camping, we'd forget every time and give each other bug-sprayed kisses that made us spit. I could remember my ex for the way he curled his toes inward, monkey-like, when he sat reading, or the way he loved to nap in hammocks, or the filet he could grill to perfection. I could remember him following on foot over a mile to take my favorite photo of me and Degas in the creek. I could remember the flowers he bought me the day we buried Montgomery.
Remembering helped. You never forget the pain, but it helps also not to forget the love.


Katrina is the author of Traveling Light, Two Truths and a Lie, and The Kindness of Strangers, and the newly released The Blessings of the Animals (August 2010). The Kindness of Strangers was a BookSense pick and the winner of the 2006 Great Lakes Book Award for Fiction. Early chapters from that novel earned her grants from both the Ohio Arts Council and Culture Works. The Blessings of the Animals was an Indie Next pick (August 2010), a Midwest Connections pick (September 2010), and chosen by the Women's National Book Association as one of ten Great Group Reads for National Book Group Month (October 2010). Katrina is thrilled to announce that her first "tween" novel, Reasons to Be Happy, will be published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky in Fall 2011.
She has taught high school and middle school English and theatre. She has also worked as a house cleaner, a veterinary assistant, a children's theatre director, a costumer, and as case management support for an AIDS Resource Center.
When not writing, Katrina enjoys gardening, cooking, traveling, acting, and time spent in the presence of animals (especially horses). She lives in Dayton, Ohio with her fat cat and a kickass garden.
www.katrinakittle.com www.facebook.com/KatrinaKittleFanClub http://twitter.com/#!/katrinakittle