Vera

by Justin Allen, Jennifer Allen

Michigan's Upper Peninsula is the perfect place for Vera Daniels to escape from the wreckage of her violent divorce. Remote, gorgeous and wild was what she wanted in her adventure. What she got was horror that she couldn't have imagined.

116 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 26, 2020

About the author

Justin was born in Boise, Idaho in 1974. He grad­u­ated from Boise State Uni­ver­sity with a degree in phi­los­o­phy, was named one of the school’s Top Ten Schol­ars, and invited to present the vale­dic­tory address at the com­mence­ment of the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences. Soon after, Justin moved to New York City, where he enrolled in Colum­bia University’s Writ­ing Pro­gram, spe­cial­iz­ing in fic­tion and sin­cerely hop­ing to become the next Jack Ker­ouac. While at Colum­bia he wrote what he has later come to call his ‘Bar­bar­ian Story,’ and turned it in for judg­ing by his work­shop class. He expected to weather a fear­some bar­rage of scorn, and was hap­pily sur­prised at how well they took it.

While work­ing on that story, Justin was first intro­duced to Uruk, a pre­his­toric hunter from the jun­gles of sub-Saharan Africa, and the hero of his first novel, Slaves of the Shi­nar. It took him fully six more years, umpteen rough drafts, buck­ets of tears and tor­rents of blood, to fin­ish the novel and get it placed with The Over­look Press. Dur­ing that time he also met and mar­ried his true-love, Day Mitchell, trav­eled with her to Tahiti, New Zealand, Kenya, Belize, Nicaragua, and a myr­iad of other, equally won­der­ful locales, and began work on two new nov­els, The Amer­i­can and Tomor­row­land, and a book of travel essays about the Amer­i­can National Parks.

Along with his writ­ing, Justin also has a pas­sion for clas­si­cal bal­let, tak­ing class as often as six times a week, and per­form­ing occa­sion­ally with such com­pa­nies as Dances Patrelle (for whom he has also worked as admin­is­tra­tive direc­tor), and Eidolon Bal­let in Con­cert. He first began danc­ing while a stu­dent at Boise State Uni­ver­sity, and first per­formed with Idaho Dance Theatre.

Justin is roughly six feet tall, weighs some­where around 185 pounds (often more, to his cha­grin), has dark-brown hair and eyes, and suf­fers from near-sightedness, motion-sickness, and a ten­dency to get angry at air­port per­son­nel. His wife, a licensed social worker, is try­ing to help him over­come this last item, but finds the going hard.

In 2001, Justin and Day adopted a house­plant and affec­tion­ately named her Phil. Wor­ry­ing that Phil was grow­ing up alone, last year they adopted again, and are proud to be the some­what neg­li­gent par­ents of a sec­ond plant, Phil Jr. They live in New York City.