Through Chehab’s masterful writing, she humanizes the Palestinian conflict as one family struggles to survive under harrowing circumstances. Hemmed in on all sides, the Hamdans struggle as they live under occupation by the imposed Israeli embargo. Omar Hamdan, beloved father and husband and a devoted family man, begins digging an underground tunnel from Gaza to Egypt to smuggle in every day necessities. As if that isn’t enough, the Hamdan’s daughter, Hanan, is diagnosed with leukemia. The family is determined to save her. Hanan’s mother, Fatha, virtually falls apart at the news and begins drinking. Hanan’s brother, Khaled, can’t accept it and even thinks he’s to blame for some of the problems that come up. Is it possible for them to smuggle the very sick Hanan through the tunnel to the Egyptian hospital that can help her, not once but multiple times, without getting caught?

Gail Chehab’s first novel, The Echo of Sand, won the First Series Award for the Novel at Mid-List Press. Her latest novel, The Tunnel, was a finalist for The Arthur Edelstein Prize, a semifinalist for William Faulkner-William Wisdom Competition, Salem College’s International Literary Prize, and for the Ruth Hindman Foundation and University of Alabama Short Story Contest. Based on this novel, Chehab also received a fellowship from the Summer Literary Seminars in Lithuania and Kenya, and was awarded second place in The Roanoke Review Fiction Contest, in which the first chapter of The Tunnel was published. Chehab’s works have been featured and recognized by numerous publications and literary organizations, which include Ohio State University’s The Journal, The Briar Cliff Review, Carve Magazine, Cutthroat Magazine, South West Writers, Santa Fe Writers Project, Chautauqua Literary Journal, New Millennium, New York Stories, San Diego Book Award, and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association’s awards. In between writing, Chehab has undertaken various missions to Central America to provide free medical care to hundreds of working-horses and street dogs. She also volunteers at a therapeutic riding center where she assists children and adults with disabilities. She peacefully resides in the Cascade Mountains with her family.

Bonnie ZoBell: Omar Hamdan’s tunnel to smuggle black market goods into the Gaza Strip is so wonderfully detailed—the dankness and darkness, the danger they pose if Omar or any of the his traders are caught. Are these tunnels still in existence? What would have happened to the builder of one of these or anyone caught inside during the Arab Spring? What about now?

Gail Chehab:  The tunnels in the Gaza Strip are a fluid situation. Periodically, they’re closed or destroyed, but new ones are dug as the tunnels are a source of livelihood for the residents of Gaza. They’re used to smuggle a wide range of goods, including livestock, food, medicines, clothes, car parts, and building supplies. Some are said to be used by militant groups to bring in arms and money. Recently, Egypt imposed a maximum penalty of life in jail for people who dig and use cross-border tunnels.

BZ: The story of Omar’s daughter Hanan is so poignant to begin with, the discovery that she has leukemia. But coupled with the fact that she lives inside a war zone and not near any hospital that can help her unless she can be smuggled to another country, is almost too much to bear, especially after you developed her so well and allowed the reader to grow fond of her. What are the survival rates of children with leukemia in the U.S.? How much does it go down in a third-world country? Was it hard for you to write this?

GC:  Survival rates depend on the type of childhood leukemia. For example, the five-year survival rate for children with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) is now more than 85 percent overall. The five-year survival rate for children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is now in the range of 60 to 70 percent. Five-year survival rates for children with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is between 60 to 80 percent. Of course, the outlook for each child is different, depending on a number of things such as prognostic factors.

There are no statistics available of the survival rates in developing nations. However, I assume the survival rates are much lower as treating leukemia, or any cancer, is very expensive and requires advanced medical technology, which is not usually available in developing nations.

Writing The Tunnel was the most difficult and rewarding experience of my life. The story is based upon a personal journey taken with my family to battle leukemia. I wrote the story when someone I loved was being treated for a bone marrow transplant. Isolated for many months in a hospital room, I wrote feverishly to keep my sanity. When we left the hospital, I kept writing and revising the novel. Every word was important as it was my therapy and a way to heal. I experienced migraines and nightmares as the words brought my true emotions to the surface. Now that the book is finished, I realize that it was a very important book to me. It enabled me to process a very traumatic period of my life and most importantly to raise the awareness of childhood cancer.

BZ:  Your characters are well-drawn and -differentiated. You do a good job of showing their flaws even though we grow to care a lot about them. Khaled and his struggle became very poignant to me. Could you talk about him a little?

GC:  Khaled is a fourteen-year-old boy who has the incredible opportunity to save his sister’s life with the possibility of becoming her bone marrow donor. However, this blessing turns into a burden as he no longer feels like a super hero, but a super demon. What if he is a match and the transplant doesn’t work? What if his sister dies with his bone marrow inside her? At fourteen, Khaled struggles with the idea that he not only has the ability to save, but also to kill his sister. Being a bone marrow donor at any age is one of the most rewarding experiences, but it can also carry some very heavy psychological issues, particularly for related donors.

BZ:  The family deeply loves Haman. It’s heartbreaking to watch them go through this nearly impossible situation with her illness. The whole story is really about the human beings in it, though you also do a great job of highlighting this war and making it clear how serious childhood leukemia is. Any advice to other writers about how to manage this balance? How does one stay focused on the characters at hand while still making the points you want to make about the world without hitting the reader over the head?

GC: Great question as there is a delicate balance to humanizing a story and bringing in the environmental factors that affect our lives. When I started to write the Hamdan’s story, I knew I couldn’t write only about cancer. It would be unrealistic as we all have things occurring simultaneously in our busy lives. Cancer does not wait for us to say, “Okay, I’m ready now,” and it doesn’t knock and ask if it can come in. It just happens along with everything else, including school, work, and vacations. So how did I develop the characters and balance all the details? I looked at writing like painting in oils on canvas. You start to lay the basics or the understory, which is the cancer, and then start to build layers with a lot of rich detail that makes the story more complex. In The Tunnel, I had the premise of cancer, but I needed something more. The subject of war came to me when I was living in San Diego. At a children’s hospital, I met families who had a lot going on in addition to their child having cancer. I met single mom’s supporting their families, and caring for their child with cancer. I met military personnel who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan while their kids were being treated for cancer back home. They had so much on their plate, but I was struck by their determination, hope, and faith not to give up. I think they clearly understood that life happens and it won’t slow down for our tragedies so we have to push forward. In truth, I didn’t think I could write a story just about cancer. It had to be layered with love, fear, and even death.

BZ:  The Hamdans are so family-oriented and concerned about each other, and we see virtually no arguing or teenage angst as we would in most American families—maybe a little in Khaled when he’s having trouble accepting his sister’s disease and wants to feel independent enough that he can help. Do you think this is a difference in cultures? Or is because they’re living under such awful circumstances with a child who is terminally ill they just can’t afford to have fissures in the family?

GC:  I believe that family squabbles become minimal when a loved one is very sick. Families tend to come together and put their personal differences aside when experiencing grief. In different cultures, love will always be love and death will always be death.

BZ:  What are you working on now?

CG:  Thanks for asking, Bonnie, as I’m very excited about my next novel, which should be finished by the end of the summer. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Cuba with my elderly mother on a People-to-People tour. We were touched by the warmth of the Cuban people, the depth of culture, and the painful separation of families. This unforgettable experience influenced me to write On the Island of Sugar and Secrets.

At fifteen, Elliot Chan is one of the abandoned. After his mother left him to save street dogs in Crimea, he is chosen for his immense talent to the play the cello at Carnegie Hall. Yet the opportunity for greatness turns to terror as Elliot is placed under investigation for a horrific crime at his Carnegie Hall debut. Along with his grandmother, they flee to Cuba to find her first husband, a lost love, after being separated by 50 plus years of embargo. But Elliot must risk a great deal—in fact he has to leave behind everything he loves—in order to save himself. On the island, Elliot’s exiled grandfather, a former dissident turned hustler, manufactures medicine producing animals that seem like science fiction. He fights his captivity by acting crazy as deception is more powerful than the gun. Fear turns to wonder as Elliot disappears into a netherworld of spies, fugitives, mojitos and smoking hot women. From Canada to Carnegie Hall to Cuba, it would take another revolution to make up Elliot’s adventures. Captured by a tragic beauty, he is certain he ceases to exist and then miraculously reinvents himself. The Island of Sugar and Secrets is a testament that explores the generosity of love and a journey that maddens, toughens and restores a teenage boy who grows up.

BZ:  Great talking with you, Gail! Can’t wait to read this next one.

Marivi has authored 16 other books, some of which include Spooky Mo: Horror Stories 2014; Suddenly Stateside: Funny Essays on Pinoy Life in America 2014; Baby Love: A Pinay’s Practical Guide to Pregnancy 2004; Sexy, Sassy, Singularly Happy : the savvy girl’s guide to enjoying the single life 2005; Philippine fright: 13 scary stories 1996, The Hunt for the Hippocampus 1996; The Subway Cyclops 1996; and The Case of the Crime-catching Camcorder 1996. Besides NAL Penguin publishing The Mango Bride, Grupo Planeta released a Spanish edition, Hace una Eternidad en Manila (2014), and Anvil Publishing, Inc. will release the Filipino edition this July.

Bonnie ZoBell: Welcome, Marivi. The writing in The Mango Bride is really lovely, filled with so much history as well as the details of day-to-day life of the main character, Amparo Guerrero. I notice there is a span in the years when you won the two awards mentioned above for the book. How long did it take to write?

Marivi Soliven: Thank you for reading my novel and for those kind words. I’m so glad you enjoyed it. The novel took five years to complete, from draft to publication, but I actively worked on it for only about three years.

I’d never written a novel before, just a lot of short stories and flash fiction. To get over my fear of the long form, I joined NaNoWriMo 2008. At the end of November, I’d written 50,000 words but only 26 of them – all in the first sentence – were any good. So I tossed everything else out, kept the basic story line and started over with Judy Reeves‘ writing group in 2009. I wrote a chapter every week for two years. By December 2010, I had a finished manuscript and a working title: In the Service of Secrets.  Jill Marsal took me on for literary representation in February 2011, then landed a book deal with Penguin in April. While the manuscript was out on submission I entered it in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, which is the Philippine counterpart of the Pulitzer Prize. The novel won the grand prize a couple months later under the old title. After Penguin took it on, we renamed it The Mango Bride. Then there was a long lull.

Even though the book contract was signed in April 2011, I didn’t actually begin working with my editor on revisions until early 2012 (she was finishing up other manuscripts). I spent a year revising/responding to copy edits and proofreading, until finally the book was released in April 2013. The Mango Bride was actually released in Manila a full month ahead of its US release date. The Asian Sales manager there figured that would help build buzz among the Filipino/ Filipino-Americans in the U.S. It kind of did because then the owners of the largest bookstore chain in the Philippines flew me home to Manila for a month of book events.

BZ: There’s a lovingness in the descriptions of the Philippines, from the writer describing her setting and from the way the characters talk about it themselves. I can’t imagine how painful it must be for the women (and some men, too) who are all but banished from Manila because of what is considered immoral behavior there. They come to live in the U.S., where these behaviors are more accepted, and yet live the rest of their lives homesick for their homeland. Does this happen as much as it used to? What are the chances of most of these women ever returning home, or do they just never fit in again once they’ve left?

MS:  The Mango Bride was my love letter to Manila and to the Bay Area. I grew up in Manila then studied and subsequently taught at the University of the Philippines.  Much later, I lived in the Bay Area for seven years, so I know those places intimately.

I have no idea how frequently people flee to America to escape scandal these days, but can say with reasonable certainty that apart from the desire to make a better living, one of the reasons Filipinos leave home is to make a fresh start. Americans do it whenever they move to another state for a new job, but since you do so within the same country, you don’t have the same experience of exile.

Regardless of the reason for their leaving, many Filipinos still want to return to Manila in their old age. Women who migrate for marriage and who subsequently go through a divorce face a different challenge. Apart from the Vatican, Philippines is the only country in the world that bans divorce, so there isn’t a second act for a Catholic Filipina divorcee who goes home and eventually wants to remarry and continue practicing her faith. As far as most Filipino men are concerned, she’s used goods. That sounds really crass, but there it is. You can read more about the situation in this recent article in The New York Times called “Divorce Ban Shows Catholic Church Power in Philippines.”

BZ: You do a wonderful job depicting the different classes in the Philippines in Mango. We see what I assume are the fairly upper-class in the Guerrero and Madrigal families. Fascinating how these families operate with so many servants at their bidding. And then there is Beverley, born out of wedlock, who barely exists, she has so little.

MS:  I grew up in a household similar to the one the Guerrero clan inhabited, but because I love cooking, I hung out in the kitchen with our cooks. It was a habit my mom disapproved of because she believed I was raised for a life of more intellectual pursuits, that only uneducated people should have to do chores (!).

Marcela is inspired by a couple of cooks who worked for my family for decades, and Yaya Esther was our nanny through half our childhood. She lives in Switzerland now (another interracial marriage) but she bought a copy of my novel as soon as she heard about it. Señora Concha, Doña Lupita and Carina Madrigal are composite characters inspired by my mom, the women in her family and her friends. Luckily my mom has a sense of humor about these things . . . and I dedicated the book to her clan to avoid getting disinherited. Aldo’s shenanigans, though not widespread, were not unheard of, and much of the dialogue within the Guerrero clan was drawn from conversations I overheard growing up.

BZ: The whole mail-order bride thing, which is so foreign to our culture, is just a horror to think about. To imagine that marrying a man you hardly know is better than the life you could live without him is scary. I just went and looked this up online and found the “Philippine Brides” section on RoseBrides.com and am flabbergasted to read:

“The Filipino bride has a lot to offer and her devotion to her man and to family makes her really desired as a mate. She is the family’s treasurer, keeping the finances in order and the household well-run. The typical Filipina is a supporting, thoughtful, and strong woman, who is quite capable of running the family unit, juggling household and wifely duties, and participating as a good and loyal partner. Filipinas also tend to be happy people, full of smiles and being fun-loving in most cases.”

As if they are all alike! And yet on that site alone, there are over four hundred women trying to meet husbands. In one post by a 32-year-old woman, it says she’d be interesting in meeting men between the ages of 30-75.

All of this makes my heart break even more for Beverly, whose life you paint so well. We saw what her life was like before and after—appalling in each case. Do you think Beverly represents something that goes on a lot? Do you think she’ll ever get out of there, or is she stuck?

MS:   Troy Espera, a broadcast journalist, produced a couple of news clips about The Mango Bride, including this one shown on YouTube called “Of Mango Brides and Mail Order Brides.” He researched the “industry” and found that in a ten-year period, the number of marriages contracted through mail-order matchmaking services rose from 4,000 in 1999 to 15,000 in 2010.  Back in 1998 I spotted an ad for one of these mail order matchmakers in the classified section of the East Bay Express (we were living in Oakland at the time). The website suggested that Filipinas were historically inclined to love American men because of Douglas MacArthur’s “I shall return” promise in World War 2. Bleaagghh.

When I began writing the novel a decade later, I googled “mail order brides” and found video testimonials of middle-aged men endorsing the service, some of them dandling what looked like Filipina teenagers on their laps. It was obscene.

The problem is that when you marry an American, the INS issues a conditional green card that grants the immigrant spouse legal residency for two years. After that period is over, the couple returns to the INS for an adjustment of status interview. If the couple is still married, the husband can then apply for his wife to gain permanent residency. If the spouse happens to be the abusive sort, imagine the kind of mayhem that could ensue during that conditional two-year period, and the immigrant spouse would just have to suck it up. If your legal guarantor in this country is also your tormentor, you are screwed. This is why the Violence Against Women Act now offers expanded protections under the U Visa. In my day job as an interpreter, I helped with so many domestic violence calls that I decided to tell these survivors’ stories. Most of the call scenes in my novel are drawn from actual calls I’ve translated over the decade I’ve worked in this day job.

After the novel came out, so many readers wrote me about having endured similar abuse that I took it as a sign that I needed to go further with Beverly’s story. Consequently, I spent much of last year working with Susan McBeth, who runs Adventures by the Book, to stage the Saving Beverly Fundraising Dinner Adventure, an event that benefitted a San Diego nonprofit whose law clinic gains legal residency for immigrant survivors of domestic violence. We held it at the Joan Kroc Center for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego last October, and the event was co-sponsored by the California Western School of Law (where The Mango Bride is now required reading in its Women and Immigration Law class). We raised nearly $10,000 that night, enough to save nine women.

BZ: You’re also flawless in terms of moving back and forward in time and back and forth between countries. I was never confused. Any tips about this to offer other writers?

MS: Color code your chapters. In the original manuscript, after the stabbing scene that opens the novel, the plot progressed in a strictly chronological order, from the 1960s in a Mad Men-like Manila to 1995 in Oakland. It ended with the same scene that opened the book – Marcela taking the knife from the plate of mangoes. My genius editor discerned that even though the novel began with Marcela and Concha, the real story lay in Amparo’s and Beverly’s separate journeys to America.

So I printed out the entire manuscript and, being anal-retentive, color coded each chapter according setting (Manila or California,) adding a third color for new or transitional chapters. Then I just sort of rearranged the chapters on the living room floor. The colors helped me figure out where I was spending too much time on any one location. Besides converting the chronological order into one that switched between past and present, I ended up excising several Manila chapters and writing a couple of transitional chapters plus an epilogue. My editor strongly recommended I add an epilogue because, American readers like closure.

My editor was pretty surprised when I mailed back my revised manuscript. She said she’d never seen a color coded table of contents.

BZ: Who is your favorite character in The Mango Bride, and why?

MS: Hard to say. That’s like asking a mom to name her favorite child. Writing dialogue for the Señora Concha and Doña Lupita was loads of fun, though. When Filipino readers told me they have aunts or familial matriarchs who sound like those characters, I knew I’d done a good job.

BZ: What are you working on now?

MS:  The second novel. I drafted that one in NaNo 2011 and worked on it on a Hedgebrook retreat in 2012. Since then I’ve made very little progress because The Mango Bride keeps getting in the way. I went on this 17-city 3-country book tour when The Mango Bride launched in 2013. Then last year’s Saving Beverly fundraiser was so successful that a friend decided to stage a sequel in San Francisco, so now we’re putting that together on June 4 at the Philippine Consulate.

I figure writing novels is sort of like having kids. The first one is a lot of work but then you can’t catch a break after it’s released because then you have to split your time between publicizing that first novel and gestating the second and working the day job. Then there’s my actual child, who was a manageable 5-year-old when I began writing the Mango Bride. Now she’s 12 and has her own drama going on. Maybe I should just write her into the second novel. Oh wait, I kind of already did.

Aside from publishing in Word Riot, 63 Channels, Antithesis Common, Poor Richard’s Almanac(k), Blink-Ink, Pig in a Poke, Chick Flicks, Up the Staircase, Shoots and vines, and many others, her own novels, story and poetry collections, and a writing guide include On Air (which was a National Indie Excellence Book Award finalist), Of Zen and Men, In His Genes, Blue or Blue Skies, Dealing with Men, and Interference from an Unwitting Species.

Since I recently had the pleasure of reading Blue and Blue Skies: A novel of love, honesty, & other disasters, I’ll be focusing the interview on this book, a fascinating tale of five friends, all pursuing serious goals and dreams, many of them artistic, and what happens when the dreams, the friendships, and the love conflicts. Don’t miss Robin’s book trailer of this novel below.

Bonnie ZoBell:  Welcome, Robin! I love the first line of Blue or Blue Skies: “Before our group formed, before we fell in love with the wrong people, and before success ruined everything, it was just me admiring this painting of a sand castle slowly being consumed by the tide.” It’s definitely a successful first line because it immediately makes me want to know about the group, the wrong people that are fallen in love with, and what kind of success you mean. Did you always have your first line, or (like me) did you go through a thousand others first?

Robin Stratton:  I love so much that you asked this question! Originally the first line was “What caught my eye was this painting of a sand castle slowly being consumed by the tide…” It was the very first line I wrote, and it was just about the only line that didn’t change, despite all the massive rewrites for the next 18 years. Then, when I thought the book was done, I sent it to a professional editor who said she loved the intro scene, but that the first line was wrong because there needed to be a hint that this story was going to be about a group of friends. Changing that line was hard because like I say it had always been that line… I might go so far as to say it was my favorite line in the whole book! So my knee-jerk reaction was to not do what she suggested. However, she’s a NY Times best-selling author whose latest novel had just been voted one of People Magazine’s Top 25 books for the year, so who was I to disagree? I fiddled around with that first line for about two months, trying out so many different approaches, but maintaining the imagery of the sand castle, which of course foreshadows the fate of one of the characters. Finally one day the part about falling in love with the wrong people just popped into my head, and I knew that was IT.

BZ:  You do a wonderful job with these five main characters. Even though we hear the story mostly through the narrator, we also get a strong sense of Daryl, Terry, Meredith, and Jeff. Where do these and others of your characters come from? Did you have them all figured out ahead of time, or did they come to you as you’re writing?

RS:  As a dirt poor writer, I wanted to feature the classic struggling artist who was willing to do whatever it took to make his dream come true. So Daryl was sort of like me – he sacrificed heat and food and a nice apartment because he refused to get a “real” job the way all his friends did. Like him, I was poor – lived with my parents, drove my grandmother’s 1971 Pontiac, and watched all my friends grow up, marry nice men, move into lovely homes and have kids– so I based him on me. Terry is the Man Who Has It All—he’s a famous rock star—to provide contrast and show that at the end of the day, happiness doesn’t depend on riches or fame, it has to be a choice, it has to come from within. The other characters emerged as the book was being written, and I came up with the idea of having character dreams collide – in other words, if one character got their dream, the other character wouldn’t.

BZ:  While I feel very at home in the narrator’s voice and liked seeing the world through her eyes, Daryl is definitely a favorite character, too. He’s so complicated and perverse as to seem extremely real. Do you think people who are great artists are always a bit off in order to be able to see the world better and make their art? Do you think you’re a little off, Robin?

RS:  I wanted to show how an artist can have a dream that takes over his life, and how that impacts the lives of those who love him. You have to admire his dedication, but yeah, you find yourself thinking he’s a bit of a social misfit. When I was still living at home and not doing anything but writing, yes, I thought I was a little “off.” Like I say, all my friends had gone the traditional route: job, husband, house, children. I used to wonder why I didn’t envy them because I was so lonely and so isolated – but I knew I was being true to my passion, and for several years, really, that’s all I had to make myself feel “okay” about my decision to be a writer, no matter what.

BZ:  One of the strengths of your book is how in depth you go with each character. Some of them do fall in love with the wrong people, just like we do, and they face complexities within themselves that aren’t always easy to write about but that you handle with aplomb. Could you talk about one or two of these characters that were either a challenge or that you particularly related to?

RS: I had fun crafting the narrator because she was so different from me. She was everything I wanted to be – she’d fallen into fame, had a gorgeous home, was recognized when she went out, and her publishing company sent her on cross-country tours. To me, that was the dream. But as the story progressed, a sadness in her emerged, and I hadn’t anticipated that. It took years for her to fully develop. Her character changed the most over the 20-year period it took for me to write the book – her role originally was to be this unremarkable character reporting on the achievements of the remarkable people who surrounded her.

BZ:  The plot here in Blue Skies is pretty intricate. I’m always curious in other writers, whether they have it all outlined ahead of time or figure out the plot as they go.

RS:  I had a good idea of how this would end, but how to get to that point, you know? That’s always the question. Lots of the story lines fell in to place; some moments of conflict came as suggestions from my writing partners. The logistics of the ending came to me after I watched a documentary about the McCarthy Hearings and how divulging certain information could have disastrous consequences.

BZ:  You’re also very good at tension. I could hardly put this book down, and I’ve read the same thing in other interviews about and reviews of Blue and Blue Skies as well. What is your secret?

RS:  Oh thank you!! Yes, that’s what people say, and it’s my favorite comment from any reader. I love when they email to say they’re furious because they were up all night reading and now they’re at work and they can’t keep their eyes open.    Suspense is so important to me – the ability to keep readers turning  pages – that is the ultimate accomplishment. With that in mind, I studied how other writers accomplished it. One of my mentors, believe it or not, was Sidney Sheldon. He had so many things going on, he kept hitting the characters with one thing after another, so that I’d lie in bed thinking, Okay, I am going to read just one more chapter and then I am definitely going to bed – and the next thing I’d know, the sun would be coming up. I always make sure to end my chapters on what I call a “whoa! note.”

BZ:  What are you working on now? Don’t you have another book coming out soon? Could you tell us a little about that?

RS:  No novels, but with the help of my poetry group, I am compiling enough poems and short stories to make a third collection, and I’m really excited about that. I just started a short story last night that I hope to enter into a contest on NPR.

BZ:  I appreciate your coming by, Robin! So interesting to hear what other writers are up to.