“Brilliantly-written and highly entertaining”: What the reviewers are saying about “Campus Confidential” (Plus back story and giveaways)

Hi All! It’s only a month away from the official release date of “Campus Confidential,” and the excitement is starting to build! At least I’m very excited about it. And it looks like other people are starting to get excited too.

As well as giving out Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) to regular readers (e.g., you guys), I’ve also been sending it out for professional reviews–you know, the kind of thing you see in the “Editorial Review” section on a book’s Amazon page. The reviews have started coming in and they’ve been quite positive! So to whet your appetite if you haven’t read the book yet, I thought I’d share them with you today.

campus confidential front cover with baskerville

And if you don’t have the book yet, you can get a free ARC in the Thrillers & Mystery Giveaway going on now.

Here’s the review from The Prairies Book Review:

Brilliantly-written and highly entertaining, a must read…

Campus Confidential introduces the gutsy Doctor Rowena Halley, a new PhD professor who gets a temporary teaching job at poverty wages in New Jersey. While the job doesn’t help her with her quickly dwindling finances, it puts her in the path of some very dangerous people. Stark writes with the self-assurance of a veteran author: her writing is witty with a healthy dose of dark humor, her characterization shines, and the dialogues are unusually clever. The narration flows effortlessly, and readers will find it hard to put the book down once they start reading it. With her easy-flowing narrative and the intelligent prose laced with a tinge of wry humor, Stark proves herself as a superb storyteller. A series to watch for.

And here’s the review from Readers’ Favorite:

Campus Confidential is a suspenseful work of dramatic fiction penned by author Sid Stark. Pairing wry humor with gritty realism and small-stuff drama, our heroine is Rowena Halley, recent recipient of a Ph.D. and a keen teacher of Russian. She accepts a terrible job with the knowledge that any kind of job is difficult to get. In connecting with her new students in New Jersey, life goes from bad to worse pretty swiftly. As if her family dramas weren’t causing trouble enough, Rowena’s own life may actually be in danger, insignificant as it is. The very idealism that helps her get out of bed in the morning could be the cause, and small stakes might be about to turn high in this rollicking college drama.

This was an unusual book in all senses, but it really worked and entertained well as it progressed. Dr. Rowena Halley is an idealistic woman living in a far from perfect world, and that in itself makes her a relatable heroine for readers far and wide who have aspirations beyond the actual reality of living in today’s world. Author Sid Stark plays on these ideals like a master at the keys, painting every moment with wry humor as Rowena’s life goes from low to new low. I found the actual suspense elements to be a tad far-fetched, but it kept the humor going and the farcical nature of the novel is sure to please audiences. Overall, I’d recommend Campus Confidential to readers seeking a quirky new twist on everyday drama.

***

I’m particularly glad that both reviewers picked up on the humor, which is a key feature of the story, even though it deals with “dark” or “serious” themes. One of the things I’ve been going for from the moment I first came up with the idea of the series is a kind of chiaroscuro style, where genuine difficulty and tragedy is juxtaposed with farce. Part of the inspiration was a set of events at my campus last year, in which students died in separate tragic incidents and it was basically hushed up, while the university made a huge fuss, including having counselors from the Wellness Center on standby in case students felt threatened or upset, about an anonymous blog post that criticized it for perpetrating systemic inequality.

To be clear, systemic inequality *is* a big problem there, but that was not the issue: it was the inflammatory nature of the blog post’s speech and the concern that it might make students feel bad. The hushing up of murder (yes, there was a horrifying murder on my campus last year, along with various other student deaths) and the over-the-top response to a slightly inflammatory blog post exemplified a certain strain of ridiculousness in modern academic culture for me. My long-held desire to write a tell-all book about higher education from a faculty member’s perspective crystallized, and soon “Campus Confidential” came pouring out…

I’ll probably write more about that in the future, but in the meantime, I’ll leave you with this week’s selection of giveaways:

Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense

The Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense Giveaway is running this week only. Over 100 free novels, short stories, and previews

The Cold War, Hot Books Giveaway has sixteen super-hot spy and suspense stories about the former USSR!

Speaking of humor, check out the April Fools’ Humor Giveaway!

Page Turning Mystery:Thriller

The Page Turning Mystery/Thriller Giveaway has dozens of free full-length books, all free!

Karma Not-So-Chameleon: The Moral Arc Underpinning “Campus Confidential” (And New Giveaways!)

Hi All! It’s a lovely spring day and I’m feeling a tiny bit better (for those who don’t know, I have a serious long-term illness) than I have been, so it seems like a great time to play some cheery music. Namely, this insidious earworm:

You can thank me later for filling your head with this song all day

Fun fact: I moved to Russia in the early 90s, where I got to experience Western decadence such as MTV for the first time! Yes! Clearly I will have to share that little story at some point. “Karma Chameleon” was one of the songs that MTV Europe’s 80s hour played on heavy rotation. I’ve had a fondness for it ever since.

Anyway, enough with the musical interludes. Since I, like my heroine Rowena, am a professor with a doctorate in literature, it should come as no surprise that my books are full of structure, themes, motifs, wordplay, allusions, and everything else you might think of in the way of literary flourishes. So today I thought I’d show you, my special readers, a little of the chassis and undercarriage of “Campus Confidential.”

Only a little over a month till the release date!

For those of you who haven’t read it yet, “Campus Confidential” is about a newly-minted PhD and contingent faculty member who gets caught up in both the usual sorts of bad things faculty deal with–bullying, poverty, self-doubt, lack of job security–and some special bad stuff involving crime and violence. Although crime and violence are certainly plenty prevalent on college campuses. A large percentage of Rowena’s experiences are taken more or less directly from real life.

That being said, while a lot of the details of “Campus Confidential” are based on some pretty gritty realities, the overall structure of the story is that of a fairy tale. Rowena is the fairy tale heroine taken away from her home and thrown into a bad situation. Like many fairy tale heroines, her heroism is not in her strength of arms but in her strength of moral character. Repeatedly throughout the story she encounters people who are in some way her social inferiors, who show no immediate ability to help her on her quest, and who may be actively annoying–e.g., rude students, street harassers, difficult bosses, and so on. Every time, she wrestles with how to treat these people, and every time she decides to give in to her better nature and treat them with kindness and understanding.

Rowena thus moves through the narrative generating more and more good karma (here’s that video again, in case you missed it the first time around): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmcA9LIIXWw

In the final denouement, her good karma comes back to save her, just as it does a fairy tale heroine. “Campus Confidential” is a heroic narrative, albeit of a particular sort. It’s a modern-day fairy tale, in which the heroine is living in the “real world” and embedded in real-life current events, and yet also has a toehold in a magical, spiritual realm where dreams sometimes come true and karma is very, definitely, real.

And now, as promised, brand-new giveaways for April!

Come join the collective, comrades! Sixteen super-hot spy, suspense, and sexy romance books, all connected to the former USSR! Check it out here.

Laugh it up with the April Fools’ Giveaway!

And it’s the last week for the First in Series Giveaway! 115 free series starters!

Mysteries and Cats: What’s not to love? Plus this week’s selection of book giveaways

Hello everyone! Spring is officially here, so it seemed like a great time to write about something warm and fluffy–namely, my heroine’s cat. Because every mystery/suspense book should involve a cat, right? Therefore, without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Fevronia the Cat.

Fevronia may be feline rather than human, but she’s the most consistent presence in Rowena’s life throughout the series. Rowena adopts her in Spring 2014 after her fiance Dima breaks up with her, and hauls her along on all her adventures.

Fevronia has long tan/golden hair, yellow eyes, and a difficult personality. She is named after St. Fevronia of Murom, but she is far from saintly. Here’s a typical episode involving her, from the second book in the series, Permanent Position (forthcoming):

John trudged into the bathroom. A moment later there was a hoarse shout that, if he ever asked me, was definitely not a feminine shriek.

“God DAMN it!” The bathroom door banged open and John came tripping out, trying to shake Fevronia off of his calf.

“Your fucking cat attacked me! She jumped out from behind the toilet and fucking chomped down on me like a motherfucker!”

Laughing would be very, very wrong. “It’s a game she likes to play,” I said, keeping my face as still as possible. “Here, let me get her off you.” I knelt down on the floor and got Fevronia to transfer her grip from John’s calf to my forearm, which she promptly latched onto like a furry fanged limpet.

“She likes to hide and then jump out and get you,” I explained. “And she likes to grab you and hang on, but she doesn’t normally draw blood. Well, not a lot. It’s just a game. Well, sort of a game.”

***

Fevronia is a compilation of various cats who have graced my life. She’s a golden tan like Maya, who started off life on the mean streets of Milan and then moved with us to the US:

And like Maya, she’s fairly shy but enjoys hiding in or under things and then surprising you. In Campus Confidential Fevronia hides under the bed and taps Rowena with a soft paw, which was Maya’s big thing; by Permanent Position she’s upgraded to leaping out from cabinets and attacking people (Maya never did anything like that).

Fevronia develops more and more attitude, and, let’s face it, more and more aggression, becoming rather like sweet Prince Andrei, pictured above, who was delightfully affectionate–when he wasn’t chomping down on you with all his force. And then there was the peeing and vomiting…PA earned his nickname of “The Prince of Darkness” quite honestly. He also came through when I really needed a mouser, though; will Fevronia come through in the same way for Rowena?

And finally, Fevronia is long-haired, like Zelda (pictured above). She also likes to come up and meow and demand to be petted, only to turn on you, like Ella (pictured below). So she’s basically a cat’s cat. Rowena’s family thinks that Rowena needs more friends than just a cat, but when you have a cat like Fevronia, what else do you really need?

And now, as promised, this week’s selection of book giveaways!

The Eye Spy Giveaway includes a chance to win a gift card to the ebook retailer of your choice!

The Page Turning Mystery/Thriller Giveaway has dozens of free thrillers!

The First in Series Giveaway has over a hundred free books, all the first in a series!

Tall, Dark, and Dangerous: Meet My Main Character’s Dark Double (Plus This Week’s Selection of Book Giveaways)

Hello everyone! It’s been a little while since I’ve posted an update, what with one thing and another. Actually, I was waiting for a good selection of book giveaways to start 🙂 Read down to the bottom to find out what’s going on in that department this week.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d introduce everyone to an important figure in my Dr. Rowena Halley series: Rowena’s older brother John. John gets a walk-on role in the first book in the series, Campus Confidential, but plays a leading role in the second book, Permanent Position, which is currently in progress.

You can pick up a free Advance Review Copy of Campus Confidential in the First in Series Giveaway going on now!

So what’s this about the tall, dark, and handsome–I mean dangerous–thing? Read on and find out!

John Ivanhoe Elladan Halley

If it makes you happy, feel free to imagine him as looking sort of like Alec Baldwin

Born 1977. Started at The Citadel 1995. Graduated and commissioned as an officer in the Marine Corps 1999. Deployed to Iraq 2003 with 2^nd Marine Division; participated in Battle of Nasiriyah March 2003. Deployed to Camp Fallujah 2005 and 2007. Deployed to Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province; supposed to pull out in October 2014 (when Campus Confidential is set) but got delayed; only goes on leave in spring 2015 (when Permanent Position is set).

John was originally named Ivanhoe Elladan Halley; like Rowena his first name is from Ivanhoe and his middle name is from The Lord of the Rings (Elladan was Arwen’s older brother). He officially took the first name “John” as an adult, but kept Ivanhoe Elladan as his middle names, although he doesn’t share them his friends and colleagues very often! He chose the name “John” because it’s common and unremarkable. It’s also the first name of Dick Francis’s Sid Halley, whose full name is John Sidney Halley, so along with my own pen name, that’s another nod in that direction.

John is in some ways Rowena’s “dark side.” Like her, he grew up in an alternative community, but he rebelled as hard as he could when he was a teenager, enrolling in The Citadel and then becoming a career Marine. However, as they both come to realize over the course of the series, they have a lot in common: both are idealists committed to institutions that may or may not be serving their best interests.

A major part of my current “day job” research is on contemporary military prose. One of the fundamental questions that interests me is the effect of war on civilian life. So in order to explore this question and also put some of my research to use, I made a number of the people in Rowena’s life veterans or active-duty service members. Rowena’s civilian status and commitment to pacifism is thus seen against a backdrop of the Forever War and the War on Terror, which is constantly making itself known, along with other major world events.

I made John a Marine mainly because I didn’t know very many Marines, since I didn’t want to be caught in the trap of trying to create a portrait from life without actually turning a real person into one of my fictional characters. But this meant I’ve struggled to come up with realistic details for him, since a major point of the series is its ties to real life and the “real world” of current events. Two good books about Marines that I drew on for details and character motivation are Matt Young’s Eat the Apple and Phil Klay’s Redeployment. I’ve deliberately left a lot of John’s career vague, since I didn’t want to get too caught up in research for things that are only very tangentially related to the story. Of course, if you want to suggest possible career paths for him, feel free 🙂

Like Rowena, John is “Black Irish,” with dark hair and light eyes. But while Rowena is slender and willowy, John is stockier and more muscular, with a buzz cut that reveals that he’s beginning to go gray. Rowena never says whether he is conventionally attractive, but he is subject to near-constant female attention and admiration. Whether this is due to his good looks and charm or his uniform is up for debate, however.

You could also imagine him as looking like William Baldwin, if you prefer

While Rowena is associated with motifs of the Sacred Prostitute, John is the Profane Prostitute, overtly promiscuous and always caught up in ill-advised sexual affairs, normally with married women.

His ambivalent feelings about his status as a sex object is something I borrowed from Phil Klay’s Redeployment. As John says to Rowena in Permanent Position:

“Sometimes I feel like I could have them fuck my uniform, and we’d both be happier. They don’t give a shit about me at all. I’m just a fantasy and a suit of pretty clothes to them.”

“Welcome to being an attractive woman,” I said before I could stop myself.

He laughed. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I? It’s not as much fun as I thought it would be.”

“So stop.”

“I don’t know about that, but I’ll give it a try. I guess. And I guess you’re going to tell me that now I know what it’s like to be you, right? I’m getting in touch with my feminine side, or some shit like that?”

“Mary Wollstonecraft would be so proud of you,” I said.

“Who the fuck is that?”

“An 18^th-century feminist scholar who said that both women and soldiers were defined by their clothes.”

***

I found Klay’s description of the experience of being a male sex object very interesting, but thus far male veterans whom I’ve asked about whether they felt sexually objectified have responded mainly with a squeamish lack of understanding. Rowena, however, has the opportunity to contemplate these issues and interrogate her brother about them, even if it makes him uncomfortable.

While John is a secondary character who only appears occasionally in the series, he’s an important foil for Rowena, acting as her Dark Double, as well as coming through for her when times are hard.

So there you have it! Rowena is, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, surrounded by good-looking men, something I feel ambivalent about. But I guess we might as well enjoy it. Meanwhile, check out this week’s selection of book giveaways:

Speaking of Black Irish…are you feeling lucky? The St. Patrick’s Day Giveaway has tons of books in multiple genres!

Check out the exciting selection in the New Thrillers of 2019 Giveaway!

Get started on a new series in the First in Series Giveaway!

Meet My Romantic Rival! Plus this week’s selection of book giveaways

Greetings from Mt. Ararat!

Or at least so it feels as I sit in my perch above my flooded backyard. We’ve been having a deluge of near-Biblical proportions here. It may not have rained for a full forty days and forty nights, but it’s getting close.

Anyway, my upstairs office is still dry–for now. So it seems like a good time to introduce another of my recurring characters to you. This time it will be my *other* leading man! Yes, I have a love triangle going in my Dr. Rowena Halley series. Last time I told you all about Dima, Rowena’s ex-fiance. This time I want to introduce you to Alex, the American who may be sneaking in there while Dima’s back is turned and stealing her heart.

Keep reading for the dirt on Alex, plus a selection of ebook giveaways.

Alexander James Miller

Born 1977. Graduated from UPenn with dual degree in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Computer Programming and commissioned in the Navy in 2000 as a Cryptologic Warfare Officer. Kept on active duty longer than usual because of the war and deployed to Iraq in 2004 and 2005. Enrolled in the joint PhD program in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard in 2006 and graduated 2012.

Alex was originally inspired by someone I used to ride the bus with in grad school. I never actually spoke to him, but we sat together almost every day. He was a short, rather dweeby-looking guy with dark golden hair and facial stubble that was all almost the same length. He carried a bag that had patches from various Naval deployments on it. I was always curious about his story, so in Alex I decided to create my own, probably more exciting and romantic, version of it.

'Christopher Robin' European Premiere - VIP Arrivals — LONDON, ENGLAND – AUGUST 05: Ewan McGregor attends the European Premiere of ‘Christopher Robin’ at BFI Southbank on August 5, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Dave J Hogan/Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)

Alex looks only very vaguely like Ewan McGregor in my mind. But that’s the only actor I could think of who looked much like him at all. So we’ll go with that 🙂

When Alex morphed into a more important character and a romantic lead, I had to make him taller, better-looking, and more intense and less dweeby in my mind, but he’s still slender and wiry, and with dark golden hair in a fairly even stubble all over his head and face.

Deliberately trying to go for some less polished pictures to convey Alex’s general nature of scruffiness

Alex comes from a privileged upper-middle-class intellectual background. His father was a dean at Temple University, and it was always assumed that Alex would go into academia as well. Like Rowena’s brother John, Alex rebelled against his family’s expectations by running away and joining the military, something that in retrospect he feels very ambivalent about. In Permanent Position, the second book in the series (forthcoming), he describes how he felt after coming home from Iraq (based very loosely on a true story, FYI):

I was really fucked up after I got back from Iraq. Angry at everyone, especially myself. I’m lucky anyone who knew me back then will still speak with me.

That must have been difficult, I texted cautiously. Alex never talked much about his service, other than to say that knowing about it tended to make people jump to unwarranted conclusions about him, and take him as something that he wasn’t.

Mostly my own fault. Of course, the whole thing was mostly my own fault. But when I got back and got out of the service, I wanted to burn my uniform, did I tell you that?

No. You must have had a very difficult time.

S’okay. Other people had much worse times. Especially the Iraqi people we were “liberating.”

It was a difficult thing for everyone.

It was what it was. And when I got back and got out, I took my uniform out to my parents’ backyard and started a fire in our firepit. Because of course we’re the kind of folks who have a poncy outdoor firepit in our backyard. So no pity! So I started up a fire, and my dad came out and saw I had my uniform all laid out next to it, and he was like, “What the hell are you doing, son?” So I told him I was going to burn my fucking uniform, and what I couldn’t burn, I was going to smash with a hammer.

A recurring theme with Alex is people’s expectations vs. reality: he is very aware of the stereotypes about Navy servicemembers and compares himself unfavorably to Chris Kyle, Maverick from Top Gun, and the Richard Gere character in An Officer and a Gentleman. He, on the other hand, claims to have sat out his war writing reports in a broom closet, although judging by his intensely emotional response to his uniform, there may be more to it than that. Stay tuned for more updates!

Like John, Alex also acts as Rowena’s Dark Double sometimes. He is the one who voices a lot of the most vicious critiques of academia and academic culture, saying the things that Rowena can’t bring herself to say. Nonetheless, he finds himself sucked more and more into academic success, partly through his privilege and connections.

***

So there you have it! If you don’t already have a copy of Campus Confidential, the first book in the Dr. Rowena Halley series and the one in which Alex is introduced, you can pick up a free ARC in any of the giveaways listed below. Here’s the cover so that you can recognize it 🙂

The Hard Dame is Good to Find Giveaway is running for a few more days! Dozens of mystery, thriller, and suspense stories, all with female protagonists.

The Thrillers, Mystery & Suspense Giveaway has a wide variety of thriller and suspense books, free for a limited time!

The Best Thrillers Giveaway has thrillers of all subgenres.

The Thrillers, Chillers, and Serial Killers Giveaway has thrillers of all subgenres, including mystery, paranormal, and horror.