Ariana: Polly or Veronica? Which was your favorite character to write? Why? Phyllis: I liked the differences between them actually. Veronica is so sweet and unworldly. Polly is going through fazes. She is unsure yet plows ahead; she can be cruel which surprises her....
Behind the Titles: A Closer Look at The Truck Driver’s Daughter by Denise R. Weuve Featuring ELJ Publications’ April Jones and Lisa Marie Cole April: I love the opening poem in this collection, "When My Mother Danced." It's a poem about the narrator's grandmother and...
Behind the Titles: A Closer Look at Splattervision by Peter Florek Featuring ELJ Publications’ April Jones and Lisa Marie Cole April: I heard an astounding statistic the other day about how much T.V. the average American watches, which was somewhere in the ball...
Behind the Titles: A Closer Look at A Pile of Crosses by Steven Ostrowski Featuring ELJ Publications’ April Jones and Lisa Marie Cole April: ‘A Way to Keep You Here’ is a story about Luke, a younger brother, being asked by his sister Joni to steal their...
Ariana: How did you put together this particular collection of stories? How would you describe the overall theme? Steven: I went through a bunch of stories I’d published here and there over the years, and gathered the ones I thought might work as a collection. In this...
Behind the Titles: A Closer Look at The Mistake Tea Can Sometimes Make by Brittany D. Clark Featuring ELJ Publications’ April Jones and Amber Hollinger April: I simply love novelettes. They are long enough that you get to really live in a character's world, but short...
Behind the Titles: A Closer Look at EveryHerDies by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens Featuring ELJ Publications’ April Jones and Amber Hollinger April: This collection is, to borrow a line from the introduction, a series of "prose poems [that] speak to the indelicacy of...
Behind the Titles: A Closer Look at Twenty Something by Tatiana Ryckman Featuring ELJ Publications’ April Jones and Amber Hollinger April: The opening piece is so good. "Getting to Know You" is about a man and woman sitting on a couch watching the opening screen. She...
Behind the Titles: A Closer Look at 5th Generation Immigrant by Lee Busby Featuring ELJ Publications’ April Jones and Ian Bodkin April: Let’s discuss this collection’s title. Titles are the first introduction that a reader has to a piece. As a writer, I have the...
Behind the Titles: A Closer Look at Every Word Was Once Drunk by Ian Bodkin Featuring ELJ Publications’ April Jones and Lee Busby April: How do you feel about the usage of an introduction? This isn’t a common tactic used in poetry collections, so at first I was a bit...