Cover Reveal + Interview: Dagger by Steven dos Santos
We are big fans of Steven dos Santos’s first series The Torch Keeper. Today, we are THRILLED to reveal the fantastic cover of his next book, Dagger. Dagger was turned down by an agent back in 2008 because it had a gay protagonist—now, it’s finally being published! Along with revealing this fantastic new cover, we also got to talk to Steven about how it feels to have this book published, diversity in publishing, and why Dagger should be on your TBR come September.
When Ultimate Evil engulfs the entire world, only Dagger can pierce the Darkness—even if the Apocalypse falls on a school night!
Dagger Beaumont is a High School senior who’s been recruited by D.U.S.T. – a covert governmental organization dedicated to battling supernatural terrorism all over the globe.
However, Dagger’s unresolved conflict over his missing brother could be his undoing, as he races around the world battling the Dark Reich, a diabolical organization on a quest to possess an ancient artifact and unleash a mystical plague to enslave humanity. If that weren’t treacherous enough, Dagger must juggle his life as a secret agent with his social life, where he faces romantic rivalry for the guy of his dreams, a mysterious and handsome new student at his haunted boarding school.
But in a high-stakes world where nothing is as it seems, and death lurks in every shadow, love rides shotgun with survival!
Isn’t it GREAT?! Definitely makes me want to pick up this book ASAP.
Here’s what Steven has to say about finally getting this book published, diversity in publishing, and more!
Vee: In a previous interview, you shared that you’ve encountered some roadblocks getting Dagger published. Even though an agent LOVED the book, they turned it down because the main character was gay, and she thought that wouldn’t sell. In light of that, how does it feel to finally be getting this book published?
Steven: Can you say VINDICATED? I’m not going to resort to “Told ya so’s,” or sticking out my tongue, or any crude hand gestures, but it does feel wonderful to finally release my baby Dagger into the world after all these years!
V: What changed to make the publishing of Dagger possible? Was it the industry? Did you pitch it to more inclusive agents/publishers? What happened to make this a reality?
S: Sadly, not much in the traditional publishing industry has changed since 2008, when I first tried getting Dagger published. Though there has been a spotlight placed on diversity in Children’s & YA Lit in the last few years in particular, and things have improved, I still came across the same familiar road blocks when I resumed submitting Dagger for publication more recently. While many publishers claimed they thought Dagger was a very fun and exciting story, cinematic, etc., they didn’t feel it was a “right fit” for them. Fortunately, I discovered Evernight Teen, a publishing house that truly does embrace diversity and is not afraid to take “risks” in publishing stories that feature diverse protagonists.
V: What parts of Dagger are you most excited to share with readers?
S: Dagger, who is the main character, was very fun to write! He’s a little cocky, enjoys witty banter, while at the same can be a badass kicking evil’s butt all over the globe. Think James Bond/Mission Impossible meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer and you can get a good idea of the tone of the book. There’s a lot of action, adventure, and romance in Dagger, and I can’t wait to introduce him and his charming personality to readers!
V: Let’s talk about the cover! How do you think it fits with the theme of the book? And what was the design process like?
S: OMG! I was completely blown away by the gorgeous job Artist Jay Aheer did on the cover for Dagger! She truly captured the mystery and intrigue of the book. I particularly like how the cover resembles a map on old parchment, and the little sketches of iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, etc. highlight all of Dagger’s globe-hopping perfectly! Even Dagger himself is rendered like a painting you might find in an ancient palace ceiling somewhere. And the targeting scope on the logo ties in the whole spy theme quite nicely. Working with Jay was a pleasure. She’s very open to suggestions and we had a very pleasant back and forth exchanging ideas that made it seem effortless (at least for me since I didn’t have to draw anything, lol). I hope I’m lucky enough to have her work on my next cover!
Dagger will be released in September by Evernight Teen (this link will be LIVE soon)! You can add Dagger to your Goodreads list and Enter the Goodreads Giveaway here.
For more information on Dagger and other news, you can visit my website and like me on Facebook (here and here). I’m also on Twitter, and you can find me on Tumblr and Instagram.
And if you want to help support Dagger’s release on Social Media, join the Thunderclap Campaign and help spread the word!
Thanks so much for allowing me to share the cover for Dagger with you!
Review: Street Dreams by Tama Wise
by Nathaniel Harrington
Street Dreams (Bold Strokes Press 2012)
From Goodreads:
Tyson Rua has more than his fair share of problems growing up in South Auckland. Working a night job to support his mother and helping bring up his two younger brothers is just the half of it. His best friend Rawiri is falling afoul of a broken home, and now Tyson’s fallen in love at first sight.
Only thing is, it’s another guy.
Living life on the sidelines of the local hip-hop scene, Tyson finds that to succeed in becoming a local graffiti artist or in getting the man of his dreams, he’s going to have to get a whole lot more involved. And that means more problems. The least of which is the leader of the local rap crew he’s found himself running with. Love, life, and hip-hop never do things by half.
Trigger warnings: homophobic slurs and the threat of homophobic violence, domestic violence, recreational drug use, racism.
My rating on Goodreads: 4/5 stars
Before I start, I should note that I’m approaching Tama Wise’s Street Dreams (Bold Strokes Books, 2012) as an outsider to the community in which the book is set — indeed, the disconnect between Tyson (as a poor, gay Māori man) and the white gay community to which I belong is one of the central components of the book. I am neither Māori nor from even New Zealand — I’m a white settler from the United States whose family is not poor, both my parents are still alive, and I’m not especially into hip-hop or knowledgeable about it as a scene.
Bearing all that in mind, and understanding that there are undoubtedly things I missed about the book as a result of my extremely privileged position relative to its main character, I’d like to talk a bit about why I liked it. This review will contain some minor spoilers, but I’ll try to keep big stuff out.
For starters, there are the usual suspects. While the book isn’t only a coming out story, Tyson’s coming out is a large part of it, and I think it’s really, really well handled and very relatable. Wise perfectly captures the anxiety, the struggle to find the right moment:
Tyson stared, his mind sitting on the edge. The words hung on his tongue, waiting to be uttered. Rawiri was too busy watching the silent television to notice.
I also thought Tyson’s crush on Marc was very well-handled, both narratively and as a representation of what a straight crush feels like.
But there are other books that do these things well, so I’m going to move on to talking about four things Street Dreams does that I think are different and make it worth a look.
- Home as a source of strength: a lot of LGBTQ YA has a somewhat strained relationship with home (from Rafe feeling stifled in Boulder in Openly Straight to the community-wide homophobia in Ask the Passengers to active homophobic violence). Characters want to somehow escape their homes and families and go where the grass is greener and they can redefine themselves. Street Dreams does the opposite: while Siege (the leader of the local hip-hop crew mentioned in the blurb) is emphatic about wanting to “get out” of the community, Tyson’s anxieties stem from a desire to stay in his community, help support his family, and find a place for himself locally. He might not want to live in his family’s house any more, but he doesn’t want to leave South Auckland. Stories where being LGBTQ and finding a comfortable place for yourself at home (in a broader sense than having a supportive immediate family) aren’t mutually exclusive are important, especially when they’re set in a greater variety of locations than generic American suburbia.
- The intersection of race and sexuality: this is really important and not something LGBTQ YA about white teens can adequately address. Tyson concisely summarizes some of his anxieties about this in conversation with William, who runs a local gay support group:
“I guess guys like me ain’t gay.”
“When you say guys like you, you mean Māori guys?”
Tyson scowled at that, but refused to pick at that particular sore. He shrugged, fighting to find the words to explain it. He hated having to explain himself. “I mean guys like me. Guys who like the stuff I do, and yeah…brown guys too. Like I said, I guess guys like me ain’t gay.”
Tyson has to deal with the disconnect between all the images of gayness that he’s been presented with — all white, with a certain quantifiable “look” — and himself. Representation matters. Also worth mentioning is the scene where Tyson goes to a local gay club and is told by a guy he approaches that “I don’t do brown”: racism is alive and well in the LGBTQ community, and not just in whitewashed representations thereof.
- Support from the gay community: there are counterpoints to the above, though, especially William and (however imperfectly) Jason, another support group attendee who accompanies Tyson to the club. I suspect William’s words of wisdom may be Tama Wise’s personal message for young Māori men: “…if it’s a guy you want, you will get one in time. You don’t need to rush things, even if it feels like you don’t have all the time in the world.” Some of the rhetoric is a little It-Gets-Better-ish, but sometimes we all need a reminder that “you’re not the only one”, and in light of Tyson’s struggle to reconcile himself with his ideas about what it means to be gay, this is especially important.
- Class (/settler colonialism): Wise doesn’t pull any punches here, either. The Rua family is struggling financially. Tyson’s job is on the night shift, meaning he gets up and goes to work when the rest of his family is going to bed and returns when they’re all getting up to go to work and school, and it takes a real toll on him. His best friend Rawiri is dealing with domestic violence. Tyson’s community is poor and predominantly Māori in a country dominated by white settlers — of whom his crush, Marc, is one (and a rich one, at that).
Street Dreams covers a lot of ground. I should probably note here that there are both a masturbation scene and a sex scene in the book, although neither is especially explicit — the book overall isn’t much more explicit than, say, Grasshopper Jungle, and spends a lot less time focused on the main character’s genitals.
The writing does sometimes feel a bit stilted and thesaurus-y. Some of that may be an attempt by Wise to capture actual South Auckland Māori speech patterns, and if anyone from the area reads this and wants to chime in, I’d be happy to hear one way or another. But that’s my only real criticism, and the only thing keeping me from giving this book 4.5 or a full 5 stars.
On a broader concluding note: I agree up to a point with the rhetoric of “we need more than coming out stories”, in that I want to see books with LGBTQ characters in a wide range of situations and settings, fighting dragons, solving mysteries, and whatever else. But I also firmly believe that as long as there are people who struggle to come out, as long as there are people who have to wonder how telling people they’re gay (lesbian, bi, trans, what have you) will affect their relationships with family, friends, and community, the coming out story will continue to be relevant.
On top of that, while some readers may feel overwhelmed by coming out stories, I think it’s worth remembering that the “coming out story” as a subgenre has been (like most of LGBTQ fiction) dominated by stories about white people. Street Dreams is a welcome and important change of pace, and I hope that we will see more books like it, written by members of communities that have thus far not been well-represented in LGBTQ YA.
Dumbledore Gets Married in Ireland. Sort Of.
by Jennifer Polish
So Dumbledore and Gandalf got married.
At the suggestion of J.K. Rowling.
And all the fandoms rode off into the proverbial sunset.
But that’s not the entire story.
In the same episode of Doctor Who that Shakespeare was portrayed as bisexual (I punched the air myself before remembering I was watching it with a straight cis guy who was glaring at me), the Doctor proclaims – after saving the world with the iconic spell Expelliarmus! (please don’t ask how) – “Good old J.K.!”
Which is largely what the queer interwebs have been saying of late: Good old J.K.!
Because who doesn’t enjoy watching the Westboro Baptist Church be kicked where it hurts most on Twitter by a world-famous author?
.@justaoifethings Then they could get married IN IRELAND! pic.twitter.com/yXedPavZfp
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 23, 2015
.@WBCsigns Alas, the sheer awesomeness of such a union in such a place would blow your tiny bigoted minds out of your thick sloping skulls.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 26, 2015
Headlines abound about the author of the Harry Potter series “blasting” the Westboro Baptist Church. In case you missed it, after they threatened to picket Dumbledore and Gandalf’s Irish wedding (!!!!), Rowling tweeted back at them: “Alas, the sheer awesomeness of such a union in such a place would blow your tiny bigoted minds out of your thick sloping skulls.” Following up on this, she tweeted again, to explain why she snapped back at the extremist group: “I don’t care about WBC. I think it’s important that scared gay kids who aren’t out yet see hate speech challenged.”
And yes, yes it is! So… good old J.K.!
But I worry. I worry that we are too eager to give straight cis folks cookies for offering us such basic support: Rowling had absolutely nothing to lose from responding to WBC’s tweet in the way that she did. And since she has the platform that she has… why wouldn’t she?
I know not everyone would. So yes, what she did is great. And important. Yes. It’s always amusing to watch WBC be embarrassed, and more importantly, Rowling is absolutely right about it being essential for young queer kids to witness “hate speech” being challenged.
But. But.
What about when I was a young queer kid? When I was growing up reading Harry Potter, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Ron wouldn’t just own up to his sexual tension with Harry, why Ginny didn’t coax Hermione through her fear about falling in love with Luna? Or, for that matter, why no one – no one – in all of Hogwarts was portrayed by Rowling as anything other than a straight cis (mostly) able-bodied white person (except for a few token people of color)?
Sure, it’s great that Rowling is so “out” about queer rights now. And sure, she’s said that Dumbledore is gay now.
Maybe I’m just bitter.
But where were my out witches and wizards while I was reading Harry Potter, good old J.K.?
Because I was a young queer kid, too, and only queer fan fiction (you know, like the ones you’ve threatened law suits over) got me through.
Good old J.K. indeed: but for some of us, it’s a little late in coming.
Cover Reveal + Interview: Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
We are HUGE fans of Robin Talley’s debut novel Lies We Tell Ourselves. Today, we are THRILLED to reveal the gorgeous new cover that this fantastic book will soon be getting! We also got to talk to Robin Talley and her kick ass editor T.S. Ferguson about the cover redesign, representation, and Robin’s forthcoming projects.
Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley (Harlequin Teen, 2014)
Lies We Tell Ourselves UK Version (MIRA Ink, 2014)
In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever.
Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily.
Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept “separate but equal.”
Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.
Boldly realistic and emotionally compelling, Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brave and stunning novel about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.
Without further ado, here’s the new cover of Lies We Tell Ourselves!
IS IT NOT JUST GORGEOUS AND FANTASTIC AND EVERYTHING YOU COULD WANT IN A COVER FOR THIS BOOK. I will totally be buying another copy just for this cover!
Here’s what Robin & T.S. have to say about the cover, representation, and more!
Vee: We LOVE the new cover. Did you have any input in the new design? And what do you think of it?
Robin: Thank you! I think it’s really quite gorgeous. As for input, I actually didn’t know that there was going to be a new design for the paperback until there was already a draft in the works, so it was quite a surprise! It’s very different from the hardcover design, which I adored.
But what’s great about the paperback version is that you can really get a good look at both Sarah and Linda. I think both of the models do a great job of embodying the characters as I’d envisioned them. I also love how they’re both looking straight at you. I think it makes them both look very smart, very astute, which is fitting with how I see the characters.
Also, of interest to GayYA readers, there’s a small but significant tweak to the back cover copy from the hardcover version, too. This one was my editor T.S.’s idea. The hardcover back copy refers to Sarah and Linda having to deal with “how they really feel about one another.” The new copy changes that to “the fact that they may be falling for one another.”
To me, as a queer reader, the original copy was plain as day about the fact that this is a girl/girl story ― but apparently that wasn’t the case for all readers, because we heard from quite a few people who were surprised to realize Sarah and Linda weren’t straight. So T.S. made that tweak to the new copy so now there will be no mistaking it.
I’m really pleased about that, because I want to make sure this book is accessible to teens and other readers who may be specifically seeking out stories with QUILTBAG characters. There are still few enough of these stories out there that I think we need to make sure they’re easy to find.
V: What was most exciting to write in Lies We Tell Ourselves, and what did you find most challenging?
R: To tell you the most exciting part to write would actually be a spoiler, so I’ll just say that it’s the last line of chapter 26. (No skipping ahead if you haven’t read it yet!)
The most challenging part of writing this book was getting into Linda’s head. The way she thinks, especially at the beginning of the story, defies logic and understanding. I didn’t realize how big a job I was taking on when I first decided to have her narrate half the story. I doubt I’ll ever write from a point of view like hers again ― in addition to being incredibly difficult, it was also pretty devastating to try to spend time inside her mental space, but that’s what I had to do to make it through her chapters.
V: The Queer YA community has been interested in “happy f/f” recently. Without spoiling the book, did you make a conscious decision to let your characters end the book on an up note?
R: Not really. With some books, I know how they’ll end from the very beginning of the writing process, but Lies was not one of those. It took several months of working on the story before the ending began to take shape in my mind.
I was consciously thinking, though, that these characters, especially Sarah, had been through so much ― I couldn’t just leave them where they were. I wanted to put them on a path to a better future and a better world.
V: One of the main characters in Lies We Tell Ourselves is bisexual, but the book doesn’t use the word. You’ve spoken about your increasing awareness of bisexual erasure and the importance of calling bi characters bi — and done a great job of IDing Sarah as bi via social media. How has becoming more educated about the specific issues surrounding bisexual representation influenced your writing, and how do you think the community can get this information out to writers who are writing bisexual characters today?
R: I actually think both of the main characters in Lies would identify as bisexual if they were familiar with the concept as we know it today. In fact, they sort of come close ― at one point in the book Linda tries to get a copy of Alfred Kinsey’s book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, which came out six years before Lies takes place. That book would’ve introduced them to the idea of bisexuality, but ultimately they aren’t able to get a copy, and they wind up reading depressing lesbian pulp fiction instead.
In the 1950s ― and, sadly, still today in many places ― there was a concerted effort in place to prevent children and teenagers from having access to honest sex education. Linda and Sarah aren’t familiar with the term bisexual or even with gay or lesbian. They might’ve heard homosexual or queer, but they would view those terms with revulsion and never want to apply them to themselves. (And they likely would’ve assumed those terms could only apply to men, anyway.)
So far, though, all of my other books are set in the present day, and I’m making a concerted effort in them to be as specific with labels as I can. My next book, What We Left Behind, is probably too label-heavy for its own good, since identity is a major theme of the plot. But for my next book after that ― As I Descended, a lesbian retelling of Macbeth coming out in 2016 ― the main character, Maria, has had relationships with both boys and girls, but in my drafts of the book I never had her actually specify a label for her sexual orientation. I assumed her relationship history would speak for itself.
As I’ve spent more time in the YA social media world, though, I’m starting to better appreciate how important it is for labels to be spelled out ― not just for sexual orientation, but for other aspects of identity. So I’m trying to make a more conscious effort to specify exactly how my characters see themselves. Not all of them will have labels that they’re comfortable using yet (as was the case for me in my teen years). But I’m revising As I Descended to have Maria explicitly describe herself as bi in the text.
When I was in high school in the 90s I never expected to read about a character who was in the same place as me in terms of identity. I can imagine, though, how amazing it would’ve been if I had encountered a story like that. And today’s teens actually have the opportunity to see themselves reflected on the pages of the books they choose to read. I want to contribute to that as much as I possibly can, and I hope other writers will feel the same way.
V: We are so excited for your upcoming book, What We Left Behind. What can you tell us about it?
R: I can tell you:
- That it’s coming out in October
- That the lead character identifies as genderqueer (and the co-lead identifies as gay)
- That it’s set during the first semester at college for the main characters, who are a pair of high-school sweethearts
- That almost every significant character is somewhere on the QUILTBAG spectrum
- And that it’s my favorite book I’ve ever written, with characters who are so close to my heart I sometimes forget they aren’t real. I can’t wait to let them loose into the world. I hope you guys love them too!
—
V: We just LOVE this cover for Lies We Tell Ourselves. What do you hope this new cover will communicate to readers about the book?
T.S.: I hope readers will see this cover and immediately understand that this is a historical novel about two girls, one black and one white (with all the implications that go along with that premise). But more importantly, I hope this cover is striking enough and beautiful enough for potential readers to pick it up, read what it’s about, and get pulled in from there.
V: One of the things we love about this redesigned cover is the prominence of a POC. (And the FACE! Are we past the era of weird hip shots and cut off heads? One can dream.) Was that a deliberate decision to push back against some of the troubling cover trends in YA?
T.S.: The decision to show a black girl on the cover was most definitely a deliberate decision to push back against these cover trends. I was lucky enough that my entire team backed me in this decision from the very beginning of our cover discussions for the hardcover. I said “I think it’s important to show a black girl on this cover, especially given the theme of the book. No silhouettes, no birds, and if we can only show one of the girls, it has to be Sarah.”
When we started discussions for this paperback redesign, that sentiment held true. While we wanted the cover to be a bit more commercial than the hardcover, and hopefully reach a wider audience, we never discussed taking Sarah off the cover. Having her there was a must!
V: One of the things we have heard about the lack of POC on covers is that there are few stock photos of POC, so putting images on the cover means a full photo shoot to get something suitable. Did you find this to be the case? And what was the process like of developing this (gorgeous, amazing) cover?
T.S.: I’ve definitely heard that it’s harder to find stock photos featuring models of color, but since I’m not a designer, I’m not sure how true that really is. The process for this cover seemed really simple. Our design team showed me four different concepts to start with, each with different black models featured, and this concept was the one we all fell in love with.
I’m really excited about this direction because, while I usually let the designers do their own thing and then give my feedback, I had given them one very specific direction (in case they needed inspiration), and this was it. My vision was to show the girls side by side against a 1950s/1960s wallpaper, and have the image saturated as if it was an old black & white photo that had been colorized. They really delivered on that vision in such a beautiful way and I’m so pleased with it. I hope readers love it as much as I do.
My Big Gay Sequel
by Casey Lawrence
This past May my first book, Out of Order, was published through Dreamspinner Press’s YA branch Harmony Ink. My first foray into queer YA has been, on the one hand, a whirlwind of excitement, and on the other, a huge let down. My book will never be a New York Times Bestseller, and I’ve made my peace with that. It will never win awards, sit on Indigo shelves, be translated into a dozen languages. This isn’t because my main character is a biracial, bisexual teenaged girl or because my writing style is still growing, still changing from day to day. I think, ultimately, it’s because I didn’t think big enough.
My main character, Corey Nguyen, is a bisexual WOC in small town USA. Her experiences are not like my own, but I still drew on my high school memories to write her story; her high school had a GSA only because she pushed for it. It was small, inadequate, and none of its members supported or relied on each other. The book only has two central LGBT characters, Corey and Kate, and neither of them have any experience being queer. They’re still figuring things out, just like I was in high school.
Out of Order by Casey Lawrence (Harmony Ink, 2015)
So I’ll admit it: with Out of Order, I fell into certain stereotypes. I didn’t even know that some of them were stereotypes, like that f/f romances in YA never have happy endings. But I fell into the traps that have been set up for people like me by years of precedence: Confused Bisexuals. Ambiguously Bi. The One Exception. Turned Gay. All of these things are tropes I didn’t know I was using, clichés drawn on for lack of a bigger understanding.
I’m working on doing better now, but this is something I will always struggle with as an author of queer YA; how far is too far? How can I make this as diverse as possible without alienating a huge segment of potential readers?
Writing a sequel to a book you’re not entirely happy with anymore is incredibly difficult. In my case, I’ve been struggling with it for longer than it took me to write the first one. But there are some things I feel I’m obligated to fix now. Corey deserves a second shot at this, a second chance to break down the barriers that have been placed around her as a bisexual YA character. I want to address the issues that she and I both face every day, but I have to do it without making my book an Afterschool Special. With YA, you have so little space to work with to do all of the big things you want to accomplish.
I’ve changed so much since I graduated high school. I’ve realised that in the real world, when you’ve not grown up with the same group of kids for years and years, queer people flock together. Pride groups and GSAs exist but so do gay bars, LGBT bookstores, online communities. There are good things out there, and bad things too. Bisexual erasure, biphobia, mental health stigma. The events of my first novel have left my protagonist in a unique position; university won’t be a fresh start for her to explore this new world. She has so much baggage to drag along with her, baggage I never had to carry, which is what’s making my Big Gay Sequel so hard to write.
My cast of characters has multiplied and diversified. My fictional world has grown wider and deeper. And yet I don’t feel satisfied. No matter how many gay, lesbian, bi, and trans characters I add, I feel like I should be doing more. That my work should be making some grand statement. That I’m not doing enough.
And so my Big Gay Sequel is slowly becoming my Little Bisexual Follow-Up instead. The thing about sequels is that they need to be able to stand alone, to be just as entertaining and authentic as the first story, and to add something new and fresh. I’m probably never going to win any of the big awards or be a household name. But that’s okay as long as I like what I’m writing and I am satisfied that I’m doing the best I can.
It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be right.
—
Keep up with Casey Lawrence on her Twitter!