Rebecca called me while I was shopping at Target to tell me that Dutton wanted the book. When it was ready, Rebecca met with Erika Imranyi at Dutton and gave her the manuscript. We worked together to get the manuscript ready to submit. My agent, Rebecca Strauss, pulled my query letter out of the slush pile, invited me to submit my manuscript and offered me representation after reading it. She’s not the most eloquent of speakers when the emotions are running high but I love the way she gets her point across, and the risk she takes because Joe is there for her, no matter what. I don’t want to give anything away but it’s a scene where Van really sticks up for herself … in a very Van way. And, I have a 105lb black German Shepherd, but he’s from the Catskills, not Slovakia, and he wasn’t a drunken internet purchase.

I love Boston and 70s and 80s bands in general. Van wears her feelings very close to the surface, and I think I do too. Van isn’t me, and there are some vast differences, but I think there are some similarities. Is there any of your personality in the main character Van?Ībsolutely.

We’d just gotten our dog, Argo, and it occurred to me that Van needed a dog too. Years later, I pulled the story out to work on for a writing group. I turned it into a short story about two women, Van and Janie, sitting in Starbucks and discussing Van’s messy love life. Stay started as a writing exercise in a college class.

Stay novel allie larkin