Meet (One of) My Leading Men! Plus Free Giveaways

I won’t lie: I was torn about which of the leading men from my Dr. Rowena Halley series to introduce first. Then I started to agonize over the fact that I have several. The current gender imbalance in my series seems severe.

But then I was like: why worry? Just enjoy! But be warned: there may be spoilers ahead!

Last time I introduced my main character, Rowena Halley. This time around I thought I’d introduce her on-again, off-again Russian fiance, Dmitry Kuznetsov.

But first! Now seems like an opportune moment to mention all the anti-romance giveaways I’m participating in. Especially since Valentine’s Day is coming up, and Rowena is dealing with a lot of heartache. You can pick up a free Advance Review Copy of Campus Confidential, the first book in my series, in all these giveaways, plus dozens of other free mysteries and thrillers.

campus confidential front cover with baskerville

In case you don’t have a copy of the free ARC of Campus Confidential yet, here’s what it looks like, so that you can pick it out of the lineup.

Unlucky in Love square-banner2

The Unlucky in Love Giveaway is for mystery fans who are tired of all this romantic, happily-ever-after nonsense.

Gritty Thriller Giveaway

The Guns Before Roses: Gritty Thriller Giveaway is full of, you guessed it, gritty thrillers.

A Hard Dame is Good to Find Header

And last but definitely not least, my very own A Hard Dame is Good to Find Giveaway has dozens of crime and thriller stories featuring female protagonists.

So now that you know how and where to stock up on all your mystery, thriller, and suspense reading needs, let’s get to meet Dima! He’s a small presence in the beginning, but he’s going to play a bigger and bigger role as the series continues.

Dmitry Vladimirovich Kuznetsov

Dima was born in 1979 in Moscow. His mother is Galina Ivanovna Kuznetsova, a medical doctor who dabbles in philology, especially the study of poetry, as a hobby. His father, Vladimir Dmitriyevich Kuznetsov, was a Red Army officer who was killed in Afghanistan in 1980.

Dima is, as you would expect, tall and fit, with light skin and brown hair and eyes. Like most Russians, he has a vaguely biracial appearance, with Northern European coloring and more than a hint of Central Asian bone structure. Since as a romantic lead he has to be good-looking, I imagine him as looking something like the actor Danila Kozlovsky.

danila kozlovsky 1

Danila Kozlovsky looking intense

danila kozlovsky with puppy

Danila Kozlovsky with puppy

Like most Soviet/Russian men, Dima started his mandatory two years of military service at the age of 18. He served his initial term from 1997 to 1999, and was just finishing it up when the Second Chechen War broke out. This, plus the lack of economic opportunities, led to him re-enlisting, this time as an OMON officer. He served in OMON until 2004, much of the time in Chechnya.

During his time in Chechnya, Dima witnessed (and perhaps participated in?) a number of heinous human rights abuses. Thoroughly disenchanted with OMON, the war, and the current regime, he resigned from OMON and became a journalist, getting his journalism degree in night/correspondence school while working as both a journalist for the opposition newspaper Nezavisimaya Pravda (Independent Truth), and a security guard or bouncer in order to bring in some extra cash.

Dima met Rowena in early 2005 when he was asked to give evidence regarding the mistreatment of Chechen civilians. They immediately began dating, and became engaged (he proposed, FYI and FWIW) in 2007. Dima’s precarious status as an opposition journalist was a major impetus for Rowena to return to the US and start grad school, with the goal of providing some form of stability and safety for the family.

Although Dima is a fictional character, aspects of his biography are taken from real life sources. Nezavisimaya Gazeta is loosely based the real-world opposition paper Novaya Gazeta, and bits of Dima’s story are inspired by current and former Novaya Gazeta and Kommersantъ journalists Anna Politkovskaya, Yuliya Latynina, Arkady Babchenko, Zakhar (Yevgeny) Prilepin, and Oleg Kashin, all of whom get name-dropped throughout the books. For example, Zakhar Prilepin was also an OMON officer before becoming a journalist, Yuliya Latynina’s family was threatened, Yuliya Latynina and Arkady Babchenko have both had to flee the country, and Oleg Kashin was severely beaten for his activities. Also, Dima’s reference to “a few insignificant injuries and minor threats to my life from my Ukrainian brothers before I was able to convince them of my journalistic credentials” in Permanent Position, the second book in the series and my current work in progress, was inspired by Arkady Babchenko’s own experience of being captured, beaten, and subjected to a mock execution by Ukrainian forces in 2014. Furthermore, the threat of being assassinated like Anna Politkovskaya hangs over his head.

Dima only appears by hearsay and a few cryptic emails in the first few books in the series, but is constantly on Rowena’s mind. Rowena’s brother John thoroughly disapproves of him, and hopes that he’ll disappear from her life completely. But when true love is in the mix, all bets are off…

Here are those giveaway links again:

A Hard Dame is Good to Find Giveaway

Guns Before Roses: Gritty Mystery and Thriller Giveaway

Unlucky in Love Giveaway

Meet My Main Character, Rowena Halley

Hi All! Today I thought I’d introduce everyone to the main character of my new academic suspense series. But first, if you haven’t already picked up a free Advance Review Copy of Campus Confidential, the first book in the series, you can get get it and dozens of other free thriller and suspense books in the Mystery and Suspense Giveaway, which will be running until January 31.

I’ll be doing character sketches of all my recurring characters in the series, and today I’m starting with Rowena Halley, PhD, the main viewpoint character. So without further ado, here you go:

Rowena Arwen Halley

Born 1980. Grew up largely in Georgia, where she spent much of her childhood in a commune loosely modeled off The Farm in Tennessee. Her parents met while serving together in the Peace Corps and are unrepentant hippies, although they did go mainstream enough to get advanced degrees; Rowena’s mother is a medical doctor and her father is a social worker. Both of them work in a non-profit addiction clinic in Atlanta at the opening of the series, although they later go off to do a stint with Doctors Without Borders.

Rowena is “Black Irish,” meaning she has dark hair and light eyes. In Campus Confidential she mentions a couple of times that people thinks she looks vaguely like Elizabeth Taylor, only taller and with a yoga body. In my mind she looks a bit like the actress Tara Breathnach:

Rowena’s dark hair and light eyes, combined with her exotic-to-Russian-ears name of Halley (“Khalli”), frequently cause her Russian-speaking acquaintances to assume that she is Pashtun. This causes a number of amusing interchanges.

Rowena’s first name is from Ivanhoe and her middle name is from The Lord of the Rings, in keeping with her parents’ 1970s hippie ethos. Her last name is my nod to Dick Francis’s recurring character Sid Halley, which is also the inspiration for my own pen name.

Rowena graduated from the University of Georgia in 2002 with a BA in Russian. She then spent 2002-2008 working for a human rights NGO in Moscow, where she acted as an election observer and gathered the stories of refugees and victims of political repression, particularly those affected by the Second Chechen War. During this time she met and became engaged to opposition journalist Dmitry Vladimirovich Kuznetsov, AKA Dima.

In 2008 Rowena, with the encouragement of Dima’s mother Galina Ivanovna, enrolled in a PhD program in Russian literature at Indiana University. The plan was for her to have steady long-term employment that would ideally allow Dima and Galina Ivanovna to join her in the US. Instead, the engagement was called off by Dima in January 2014.

Rowena defended her dissertation and graduated in Spring 2014. The first book in the series, Campus Confidential, begins in Fall 2014.

Rowena’s dissertation was on the Silver Age (early 20th century) poet Marina Tsvetaeva.

Marina Tsvetaeav

Since I seriously considered writing my own dissertation on Tsvetaeva, this gave me a nice opportunity to engage in a little more Tsvetaeva research. It also provides a connection between Rowena and Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Politkovskaya

(assassinated October 2006), who wrote her thesis on Tsvetaeva; opposition journalists are a major theme in the series and Politkovskaya gets name-dropped from time to time.

Tsvetaeva’s “Magdalene” cycle plays a significant role in the series (translations to come, I hope). Rowena’s association with it is one of the things that mark her as a Sacred Prostitute. The theme of prostitution comes up repeatedly in the books, with Rowena contemplating it as a career and comparing what she does now to prostitution. Rowena is associated both with Mary Magdalene and with other Sacred Prostitutes in Russian literature, notably Dostoevsky’s Sonya Marmemaledova from Crime and Punishment and Liza from Notes from Underground. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is also a recurring theme, so there may be a hint of the wronged Nastasya Filippovna from that book as well.

Fun fact: Rowena’s repeated thoughts of taking up stripping and prostitution are based on my own real-life experiences! Several of my childhood friends became strippers, and, like Rowena, I have a long-running semi-joke with some of my colleagues about taking up stripping as being more lucrative and dignified than academia.

So now you’ve met Rowena! And once again, that link to the giveaway is here.

Hello, and welcome to my website!

I’m Sid Stark, the author of the forthcoming Doctor Rowena Halley Academic Suspense Series. I’ll be adding more things to this website as I get closer to launch, but in the meantime, you can pick up a *free* Advance Review Copy of Campus Confidential, the first book in the series, here. Cover, blurb, and my contact info are also below. Enjoy!

campus confidential front cover with baskerville

Doctor Rowena Halley needs a job. But it may cost her more than she’s bargained for.

During one of the worst years on record in the academic job market, newly-minted PhD Rowena Halley has, against all odds, gotten a job. For one semester. At poverty wages. In New Jersey. But with so many of her fellow PhDs bagging groceries—or worse—instead of teaching Russian, this is the best chance she has.

New jobs come with a lot of stress, everyone knows that. But Rowena has more problems than just learning her way around a new campus and convincing all these Yankees that yes, she really is from Georgia. Tensions in the department are high, her family wants to know when she’s going to get a decent job and a decent man, and her ex-boyfriend is as usual in trouble with the Russian government. It’s when students start coming to her for help that she really gets into trouble, though. Rowena got where she is because she wants to help people and save the world, but if she’s not careful, her idealism may get her killed.

Witty and suspenseful in the vein of the Stephanie Plum novels, Campus Confidential is an insider’s look at the gritty underbelly of academia, where the struggles are so vicious because the stakes are so small. Only sometimes, they’re a matter of life and death.

*Content warning: Adult language*

That link for that free copy again is here.