Episodit
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My guest this week is Roxana Motiwalla Trabulsi (Of Mud and Honey, Ten16 Press. January 2023). Her debut is based on her parent’s struggles in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in Yemen as the country morphed into a Communist regime, her father was jailed as a political prisoner, and her mother and siblings were placed under house arrest. We discuss the emotional toll and responsibility of writing your own family’s history and how signing with a small press proved the perfect venue to not only tell the story of a little-known country but also gave Roxana the flexibility to publish the book while her parents were still alive. She also shares serendipitous contacts she made through her Internet research and finding the perfect editor who supported her vision.
Born in London, United Kingdom, but raised in Dubai, Roxana now lives just outside of Boston in Massachusetts, where she writes and teaches English Literature at a school for children with learning differences. A graduate of Northeastern University, she worked as a marketing professional for an audio company for several years. She and her husband moved to Tokyo soon after they were married and have lived there twice in the last twenty years. She sits on the board of the local farmer’s market where she has not only contributed to creating a sustainable community but has also been able to bring new and diverse programs such as a self-sustainable seed library to her town. Ultimately, she revels most in her role as mum to her three children. She loves all things farmers market, travel, yoga, art and design, and of course, reading. She lives with her husband, her teenage son, and their four-year-old cockapoo.
To learn more about Roxana, click here.
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This week’s guest is Brynn Barineau (Jaguars and Other Game, Orange Blossom Publishing, November 2022). After writing two YA novels that didn’t find a publisher, Brynn tried her hand at adult fiction and, writing from her then-home in South America, penned a gender-flipped three musketeers story based in 1809 Brazil when the Portuguese royal court fled Napoleon’s army and relocated to Rio. It’s filled with sword fights, diamond smuggling, court intrigue, and best of all, female friendships as three women work to exonerate their friend who’s been accused of murder. So even though Brynn grew up equating writers with rock stars, she’s become one and is already on sub for book two.
Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Brynn Barineau has a master’s in international communication from American University and background in international education. After college, she moved to her husband’s native Rio de Janeiro with too many sweaters and not enough Portuguese. Brynn began writing as a way to process life in a new country. Her fiction is rooted in the power and possibilities of relationships across cultures. She’s now back in Atlanta rediscovering her hometown with her Brazilian-American family.
Jaguars and Other Game is her debut novel. Kirkus Review called it an “addictive tale with drama, history and delightful protagonists,” and national best-selling author Lynn Cullen raved “this atmospheric debut had me turning the pages to cheer on the clever trio.” Jaguars and Other Game was a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards in multicultural fiction.
To learn more about Brynn, click here.
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Our guest this week is Patricia Hudson (Traces, Firesign Industries, Univ of Kentucky Press, November 2022). Patricia’s historical fiction debut centers around 3 forgotten women—the wife and two daughters of Daniel Boone, the famous explorer and an early “social influencer” who gained fame for opening up the Kentucky area after the Revolutionary War. Patricia, a former free-lance writer, set out not just to record the what of these women’s lives but also the why behind their stories and to do so, joined a low-res MFA program, both to get help writing the novel but also for its networking component. We discuss what it’s like to go to market with a university press and how she’s found hand-selling to be her best marketing tool.
Patricia Hudson, a one-time university reference librarian, has been a freelance writer for 30 years, specializing in history and travel topics. She was a contributing editor at Americana magazine for more than a decade, and a regular contributor to Southern Living magazine. She’s the coeditor of Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia, and author of The Carolinas and the Appalachian States, a volume in the Smithsonian Guide to Historic America series. Her library background paved the way for her work on a variety of research projects for other writers, including Alex Haley. She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her husband, photographer, Sam Stapleton, and two rescue dogs.
To learn more about Patricia, click here.
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This week’s guest is Kathy Maresca (Porch Music, Touch Point Press, October 2022) In her debut novel, set in 1950’s Gainesville Florida, Kathy utilized stories from her Seminole family history to tap into a story of racial inequities, Southern culture, country music, and religious hypocrisy. Her research included not only books and museums, but also her own memories of working at Six Gun Territory, a local theme park, and absorbing the rhythm of Native American dances. When it came to marketing, her most effective tool turned out to be contests, where she used her awards to publicize her book. Her least effective? A blog tour which failed to correctly target her ideal reader.
A native Floridian, Kathy Maresca grew up with a grandmother of Seminole heritage. Kathy served in the Air Force, working at the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel and then in special operations at Hurlburt Field, Florida. She edited for the University of Florida and taught English, journalism, and drama. While she was teaching, Kathy became ill with trigeminal neuralgia. She then earned a master’s degree, became credentialed as a rehabilitation counselor, and served as the Director of Patient Services for the Trigeminal Neurgalgia Association.
Kathy recently finished her second novel, Sky Kiss, and is working on a prequel to Porch Music. She has been a Guardian ad Litem and has taught classes for a prison fellowship ministry. Kathy lives in North Carolina with her husband, Keith. They enjoy traveling and spending time with their toy fox terriers.
To learn more about Kathy, click here.
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Our guest this week is Georgia Day (Of Sand and Bone, Rhapsody Press, November 2022). Hear how a recurring nightmare, complete with a haunting, portentous image, led Georgia to the story that would eventually morph into her speculative fiction novel. Set in a unique world of undulating sand and daily life-and-death struggles, her two female protagonists set out on a journey and Georgia went on her own journey as well, creating a world where everything from the environment to the origin stories and myths to the animals that share the space had to come from her own imagination. Her reading from this lyrical yet unsettling dystopia half-way through the interview will enchant you as will her future goal of growing Rhapsody Press as a joint co-op venture with her father, a fellow writer.
Georgia Day holds a B.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas and has dreamed of being a writer her entire life. She is an avid reader, movie buff, and travel enthusiast. Her first novel, Of Sand and Bone, was named a 2023 National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist in the category of Literary Fiction. She lives in the United States.
To learn more about Georgia, click here.
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This week’s guest is Amy Watson (Closer to Okay, Alcove Press, October 2022). Amy and I discuss clinical depression (she and her husband both live with this) and how her goal in writing her debut was to give voice to this little-understood condition and ways to cope with it. Listen for the serendipitous path that led Amy to her agent and eventually to her publisher, how her biggest marketing success came from inclusion on a book box site she didn’t even solicit, and how gratifying it’s been to hear from readers about both her book’s rawness and its authenticity.
Amy Watson is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas. A wife, a mother to two boys, and a full-time office manager. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, baking, knitting, and watching football. Closer to Okay is her first novel.
To learn more about Amy, click here.
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Our guest this week is Linda Moore (Attribution, She Writes Press, October 2022). You’ll smile at Linda’s analogy of how introducing your book to your audience is a lot like offering them chocolate chip cookies and about how men are still getting it wrong in terms of the harassment present in academia. And if you’re interested in marketing to book clubs, you’ll enjoy our lengthy discussion about how Linda approached this often-neglected marketing opportunity, eventually guesting at over seventy clubs in the last 16 months, both locally and via Zoom appearances.
A recovering gallery owner, traveler and writer, Linda Moore uses her experiences in her writing. After studying and earning degrees at the University of California, Stanford and University of Washington (whew!), she spent time as a hospital administrator until she turned her love of art into a business and opened an art gallery. Drawing upon a year studying at Complutense University of Madrid in Spain, she focused the gallery's art on contemporary Hispanic art, especially from the southern cone of South America (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile). She continued traveling after she closed the gallery and has been to all seven continents multiple times and has visited over 100 countries. She lives with her husband in San Diego and takes refuge when she can in beautiful Kauai where they have a cottage.
To learn more about Linda, click here.
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This week’s guest author is Karen Heenan (Coming Apart, indie published, October 2022). Our discussion ranges from what happens when the characters in your 1930’s stand-alone historical novel have more to say (your book turns into a trilogy), what to do when as agent asks you to rewrite your novel in another author’s voice (you part ways) to the unexpected and fascinating tidbits you learn when diving into research (ever heard of ‘bootleg coal-mining?’). We end with a discussion of indie vs. trad publishing where Karen maintains agents are no longer the gatekeepers; readers are. And all they care about is whether your book is any good.
As an only child, Karen Heenan learned young that boredom was the ultimate enemy. Since discovering books, she is never without one in her hand and several more in her head. Karen lives in Lansdowne, PA, just outside Philadelphia, where she grows much of her own food and makes her own clothes. She is accompanied on her quest for self-sufficiency by a very patient husband and an ever-changing number of cats. One constant: she is always writing her next book.
To learn more about Karen, click here.
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The podcast this week features Wendy Adair (The Broken Hallelujah, indie published, October 2022). Once Wendy had her core idea, snippets of facts as well as sources seemed to appear serendipitously, including the old trunk of a loved one. And we delve into genre – how she set out to write a women’s fiction novel that morphed into another often overlooked genre as well, what it was like to discover a new readership to market to, and the freedom and creativity she’s found in publishing her own work. And if you’ve been on the fence about audiobooks, her experience with that medium may help you decide to take the plunge.
Wendy Adair is a former public relations professional who worked in academia and upon retirement, became a published author. Her debut women’s fiction novel received the 2023 IPPY Bronze Medal for Wartime Fiction and she was a finalist for both the 2023 International Book Award and the Page Turner Award. She is currently at work on a trilogy of cozy mysteries set in a college town featuring a multi-generational family of women amateur sleuths.
To learn more about Wendy, click here.
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This week our guest is Gloria Mattioni (California Sister, Atmosphere Press, September 2022). Gloria, originally born in Italy, wrote six previous books before penning her women’s fiction debut, a story loosely resembling a traumatic incident in her own life. The memoir form proved too painful to write and a screenplay hid the interiority needed to understand the sisters, but a dual POV novel proved to be the perfect structure for showing the emotional journey of the characters. Gloria crowd-sourced 40 hand-picked creatives for feedback and once she finished the book, was clear and specific about the time frame, the cost, and the support she needed from a publisher. And it paid off – she’s won 11 of the 12 writing competitions she’s entered.
Gloria Mattioni is the author of the multi-award-winning novel California Sister and an award-winning feature writer contributing to mainstream publication around the world. She also published the narrative non-fiction Reckless - The Outrageous Lives of Nine Kick-Ass Women, Dakota Warrior-The Story of James R. Weddell, and four previous books in Italy. She's been, among other things, an investigative reporter, human rights activist, animal rescuer and magazine editor. She was born in Milan, Italy, but moved to Los Angeles in 1992. She still lives in California with her husband and part-time live-in granddaughter, conjures six impossible things every morning before breakfast, and travels much.
To learn more about Gloria, click here.
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Our podcast guest this week is Nancy Yeager (When We Were Friends, Red Adept, October 2022). This was Nancy’s debut women’s fiction although during the time she worked on it with both a book coach and a developmental editor, she wrote and released six historical romances and six contemporary romances. This novel (one inspiration was a Steve Miller song) was complicated by not only two POV’s but also two timelines, one of which unspooled backwards. But her biggest challenge was the scramble at release time – due to a scheduling snafu, her launch window was only six weeks long and involved not only the standard marketing steps but also the task of recruiting a different street team for this new genre. Luckily, Nancy’s a quick study and she pulled it off.
Award-winning author Nancy Yeager writes commercial fiction, historical romance, and contemporary romantic suspense. When she’s not writing, she’s often pursuing fitness goals like completing 90-day fitness challenges and aspiring to achieve the perfect crow pose. She also spends her time drinking too much coffee, not enough red wine, and just the right amount of bourbon. She lives in Maryland with her husband and some very spoiled rescue cats. WHEN WE WERE FRIENDS is Nancy’s first book of women’s fiction.
To learn more about Nancy, click here.
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This week’s podcast guest is Anastasia Zadeik (Blurred Fates, She Writes Press, August 2022). Her novel, which won the prestigious 2022 Sarton Award for Contemporary Fiction, examines the role memory—whether suppressed, purposely hidden, or misremembered—plays in a person’s life and how one of the worst days of her life gave her the insight to tell the story. We talk about how she found the perfect home with a hybrid press, embracing Facebook ads (she actually enjoys the creativity behind them) and what criteria she used to decide on which contests to enter. And don’t miss our discussion of blending genres – her readers tell her she’s written a psychological suspense when all along she thought it was women’s fiction.
Anastasia Zadeik is a writer, editor, and frequent performer of narrative nonfiction in a hushed bar. She serves as the Director of Communications for the San Diego Writers Festival, as a writing and performance coach for the literary nonprofit So Say We All, and as a board member for the International Memoir Writers Association. Her debut novel, Blurred Fates, won both the 2023 Sarton Award and the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her second novel, The Other Side of Nothing, will be released in May 2024.
When she isn’t reading or writing, you can find her hiking, practicing yoga, or hanging out with her husband, Tom, and their empty-nest rescue dog, Charlie.
To learn more about Anastasia, click here.
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Our guest this week is Suzanne Moyers (‘Til All These Things Be Done., She Writes Press, September 2022). We discuss her historical fiction debut, loosely based on her grandmother’s life story and how sometimes research isn’t onerous but fascinating when you find a fact in the past that provides context to a plot point or an old photo that sparks inspiration for the world-building necessary to bring a bygone era to life. Suzanne’s rich trove of research led to a series of fascinating blogs and Facebook posts that’s resulted in thousands of views, shares, and bestseller status and her continuing foray into both Amazon and Facebook targeted ads led to her selling out her first print run two months after her book’s release. Now her interest in both metal detecting and Victorian times is helping her write her second novel.
Suzanne Moyers, a former teacher, was an education editor and writer for over 20 years. A lifelong history geek, Suzanne spends her free time as a volunteer archeologist, mudlarker, and metal detectorist. Suzanne is the proud mom to two amazing young adults, Sara and Jassi, and resides in the greater New York City area with her husband, Edward, and spoiled fur baby, Tuxi.
To learn more about Suzanne, click here.
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This week’s podcast guest is Judith Turner-Yakamoto (Loving the Dead and Gone, Regal House, September 2022). We discuss how she pulled her manuscript just before it was going to press because she realized she needed to “kill someone”, how even though she worked for 20 years as a publicist, she still considers the publishing business a deeply strange pond, how getting comfortable with sharing deeply-personal posts on Facebook has helped grow her readership and brought her speaking opportunities, and how she found her publisher through becoming a finalist for the Petrichor Prize, an annual fiction writing competition.
Judith Turner-Yamamoto’s debut novel LOVING THE DEAD AND GONE, a Mariel Hemingway Book Club pick, won the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Southern Regional Fiction. The North Carolina Society of Historians recognized the novel with the 2023 Historical Novel Award. Shortlisted for the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize, the book was also honorable mention in General Fiction and finalist for the First Horizon Award for Debut Fiction. Judith’s other awards include two Virginia Arts Commission fellowships, an Ohio Arts Council fellowship, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, and the Virginia Screenwriting Award.
Judith’s publications include StorySOUTH, Mississippi Review, Deep South, and many anthologies. Her articles have appeared in Elle, Travel & Leisure, AARP, and the Los Angeles Times, and her interviews aired on NPR affiliate WVXU. A Kentucky Humanities Speakers Bureau scholar, Judith speaks at conferences and book festivals, including the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, Chautauqua Institution, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, and Gaithersburg Book Festival. She lives on the Kentucky/Ohio border where her love of travel and place continues to inspire her writing.
To learn more about Judith, click here.
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Our latest podcast features Jacqueline Boulden (Her Past Can’t Wait, Pine Place Press/indie, September 2022). We discuss EMDR, a new therapeutic treatment that plays a central role in her novel and has been effective in treating people suffering from PTSD, how Jacqueline’s background as a reporter both helped and got in the way when she entered the world of fiction, and the valuable advice and support she’s found in a new sub-group within WFWA that specifically helps debut indie authors navigate the tricky terrain of publishing their own work.
Jacqueline Boulden is the 2023 IPPY (Independent Press) Gold Award Winner
for Best Regional Fiction, Mid-Atlantic, for Her Past Can't Wait. This debut novel
was also named the 2023 Global Book Awards Gold winner for Psychological Thriller,
and finalist in several other contests. Her second novel, Family Ties Family Lies
(pub Jan 2024), also looks at how our past affects our present and shapes our future. Before turning to writing fiction, Jacqueline won several Emmy awards for reporting
and Telly awards for video production. Her TV career took her around the country covering
politics in Washington, D.C., NASA and the space shuttle program in Florida (including the
Challenger accident) and fighting the wind for control of her hat during live shots in hurricanes
and blizzards while working in Orlando and Philadelphia. She lives in upstate New York with
her spouse and their rescue dog, who’s teaching them how to speak Beaglish.
To learn more about Jacqueline, click here. -
The guest this week is Carol Van Den Hende (Orchid Blooming, Azine Press, September 2022). We talk about what happens when a character you weren’t expecting comes onto the stage and demands to be heard, how Carol bought back the rights to her first book so she could stretch herself and become the publisher of her 3-book series, how she’s incorporated her life goals into her writing journey, and how she teaches writers to think of their personal brand as a promise they make to their reader which can in turn help them make choices about where to put their time and energy.
CAROL VAN DEN HENDE is an award-winning author who pens stories of resilience and hope. Her novels Orchid Blooming and Goodbye, Orchid draw from her Chinese American heritage, and have won 30+ literary and design awards, including the American Fiction Award, IAN Outstanding Fiction First Novel Award, and Royal Dragonfly Awards for Cultural Diversity and Disability Awareness.
Buzzfeed, Parade, and Travel+Leisure named Carol’s books a most anticipated read. Glamour Magazine recommended her “modern, important take on the power of love.” The International Pulpwood Queens selected Goodbye, Orchid as a 2022 Bonus Book-of-the-Month and Orchid Blooming as a 2023 International Book-of-the-Month.
Carol’s mission is unlocking optimism as a writer, speaker, strategist, Board member and Climate Reality Leader. One secret to her good fortune? Her humorous hubby and twins, who prove that love really does conquer all.
To learn more about Carol, click here.
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This week’s guest is Tamatha Cain (Song of the Chimney Sweep, Orange Blossom Publishing, August, 2022). We discuss Tamatha’s love of not only the musical heritage of Jacksonville but also true crime podcasts and how she was able to mash the two together in her dual time-line debut novel which tells the story of a missing woman, an interracial marriage, and a mystery played out over the airways. We also discuss Only Oona, her second book and a biography of debutante, actress, and writer Oona Chaplin, whose absent father was the playwright Eugene O’Neill and whose husband was world-renowned Charlie Chaplin.
As the child of an Indian immigrant and her military code interceptor husband, Tamatha Cain lived in four countries and seven states. She is the winner of the 2022 Florida Book Award, the 2020 Royal Palm Literary Award, and The Experience Poetry Competition. A musician and former bandleader, she graduated with honors from the University of North Florida and has a BA in English. She writes book reviews for the Southern Literary Review and is a member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association, Women Writing the West, and Florida Writers Association. She and her husband live with their weirdly smart little dog in a hundred-year-old bungalow in North Florida.
To learn more about Tamatha, click here.
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In this week’s podcast with L Maristatter (Tiny Tin House, Niffy Cat Press, August 2022), we examine what she did when her manuscript grew to 380,000 words (chopped it up into bite-sized pieces and made it a trilogy), the challenges of writing a novel that takes a clear political stance (including working hard to make it more than a revenge screed), how essential it is for an indie author to not scrimp when it comes to interior design and cover art and her best advice to over-anxious authors: don’t rush to publication but include a 6-month lead-up to release to maximize your pre-publicity.
L Maristatter holds a BA in journalism and an MA in communication. Her short story, “Crying in the Sun,” was published in The Saturday Evening Post online, and the web journal Defuncted published her poem, “Child.”
Maristatter is a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, the Wisconsin Writers Association, the Author’s Guild, and Realm Makers. She lives in the snowy Midwest, where she tries to stay warm, reads terrific fiction, and eats way too much chocolate. She’s on Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter regularly, and TikTok and Instagram when she’s feeling brave.
To learn more about Lisa, click here.
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This week’s guest is CJ McGroarty (Clara in a Time of War, Atmosphere Press, September 2022). We talk at length about the world-building inherent in writing historical fiction, a genre that requires the author to not only pay attention to historical facts and real-life events but also be attuned to more subtle details like language, word choice, and style of dialogue and the existing norms of gender roles and codes of conduct in a particular time period. CJ also shares her thoughts on the value of MFA programs and how in-person events are often the best way to make a connection with lifelong readers.
C.J. McGroarty is a former reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer with an MFA in Creative Writing. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her short fiction has been published in a variety of magazines and journals. Her debut novel, Clara in a Time of War, was released in September 2022 by Atmosphere Press. When she isn’t writing, C.J. gardens, reads, sings, and serves as a tour guide at Historic Waynesborough, the lifelong home of Revolutionary War General Anthony Wayne. She lives in Chester County, Pa., with her husband, Jim, and their cat. C.J. recently completed work on her second novel, The House on Chambers Road, a supernatural mystery set outside Philadelphia.
To learn more about Cynthia, click here.
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Today's podcast features Leslie Kain (Secrets in the Mirror, Atmosphere Press, September 2022). We discuss how she writes out her action story first, in cinematic scenes, then goes back and adds in the emotional interiority and reactions later, making sure to not lose the magical voice which is crucial to bringing the reader into the story. Her background in psychology informs her tale of two identical twins caught up in a dysfunctional family dynamic that leaves them both scarred.
Leslie Kain writes “Psychological Fiction With Heart” ― Often dark stories about messed-up people whose greatest obstacles to happiness lie within them. Leslie was always writing something when she was a kid – fantasies, poems, secret plans; culminating in running away across country at fifteen, never looking back. But in her careers (psychology, Government Intelligence, nonprofits), her writing was limited to nonfiction: professional, research. Finally dabbling in fiction during spare moments above the clouds, her short stories found their way into literary journals and anthologies. She developed personal relationships with her characters, who relentlessly nagged her into longer stories. Her debut novel, ‘Secrets In The Mirror’ has been honored with many awards; its sequel, ‘What Lies Buried’, will be released May 2024. She also recently contributed to the anthology ‘A Million Ways: Stories of Motherhood.’ Kain leverages her education, training and experience in psychology to write stories of inner conflict and emotional transformation. She earned degrees from Wellesley College and Boston University. She now lives in Mexico with her husband and 17-year old cat Sheba.
To learn more about Leslie, click here.
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