Literature and Poetry Reviews, Home of the Virtual Poetry Circle
Congrats to my recent winners:
The Healer of Fox Hollow by Joann Rose Leonard goes to Nan.
As Always, Jack by Emma Sweeney goes to Laura Hile of Jane Started It!
I hope everyone enjoys their books. If you like short stories go on over and enter the Enchantment by Thaisa Frank giveaway before it ends on Aug. 1, 2012.
On Friday, July 20, I reviewed a short story collection from Thaisa Frank of Heidegger’s Glasses-fame, and the collection entitled Enchantment was by turns fanciful and dark. Check out my review.
These stories made me think, and when I was contacted by the author about doing a discussion on the blog of a short story, I was excited to offer Savvy Verse & Wit as a forum for that discussion.
In September, I’ll be holding a discussion of “The Mapmaker” story in the collection, which is actually a series of stories. I’m hoping that the 4 of you who win a copy of the book will join us.
I’ll post the discussion post Tuesday, Sept. 18, which should provide others with enough time to get their own copy of the book and for those of you that win it to at least read the one short story.
To enter the giveaway, you must be willing to participate in the September 18th discussion of “The Mapmaker.” And, in September, we’ll let one lucky discussion group member pick the October story for discussion.
Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment on this post by Aug. 31. US/Canada residents, who are age 18+ only.
The Healer of Fox Hollow by Joann Rose Leonard is a story of change, struggle, and perseverance in the great Smoky Mountain town of Fox Hollow between the 1960s and 1970s (around the time of the Vietnam War). Layla and Ed Tompkin live a hard life, carving it from the mountains that surround their home without a feminine hand to guide or support them. Layla spends parts of her day during the week with the Yeagleys, who tend to take the Bible and its teachings literally, while her father works to keep them clothed and fed. After a tragic accident, Layla is rendered mute and must find her way once again in the face of adversity.
“Looking at the gaunt, unshaven face of her sister’s husband, sapped of its usual outdoor burnish and as vacant as an abandoned house, Avis could barely breathe. She retrieved a hankie from her pocket, pressed each eye and gave her nose a vigorous, head-clearing blow. In an attempt to squeeze her crumbling composure back together, Avis clutched the balled-up fist of one hand with her other and began again.” (Page 15 ARC)
Layla’s accident renders her different from her fellow classmates and neighbors and her father’s decision to keep them out of church on Sunday, further separates her from the community, until she is seen as a healer. The community is very willing to turn to her in times of ailment or crisis, even when they have their own community doctor available, but they continue to see her as an outsider. It’s almost as if the community is using her, and she’s almost too willing to help. However, as Layla grows up and becomes a woman, it is clear that she becomes more conflicted about her role in the community and while she enjoys providing comfort, even she is not convinced of her powers.
Leonard’s prose is folksy, which is appropriate given the community she is describing and the situations she is portraying. Layla is a quiet and unassuming girls swept into a role that she has little control over until she becomes an adult. Given the choice, she relies on the teachings of her father to weigh the pros and cons of her decision and choose what is best for her upon her high school graduation. In a community where God plays a large role and where struggles are the norm, Layla must face her fair share and more of these troubles, but through her gifts, she discovers the power of empathy and connection as a way to heal herself and others.
As Layla comes in contact with the severely injured and broken — soldiers of the Vietnam War — she must contend with feelings she never thought would be hers to feel or to dream about. Leonard does well portraying the maturation of Layla while maintaining her naivete about certain things, and she easily demonstrates the psychological and physical pains of soldiers from the Vietnam War. However, when Damian appears into Layla’s life, it is out of the blue and would have been better choreographed in another way, especially given his connection to the community doctor’s son, Brian. Despite this minor flaw of a “convenient” meeting and what it stirs up in Layla, The Healer of Fox Hollow by Joann Rose Leonard is heartfelt tale of adaptation, survival, and love filtered through the heat of the sunset over the Smoky Mountains.
About the Author:
Wisconsin born JOANN ROSE LEONARD was Texas-raised and has chigger bite scars to prove it, theatre-trained and frostbitten at Northwestern University, and worked as an actress in New York. She studied mime in Paris with Marcel Marceau while dubbing films into English to earn her daily baguette; raised 9 kids (2 human, 7 goats) in State College PA, where she was founder and director of MetaStages, the youth theatre program at Penn State University, and, with her husband, Bob, a retired professor and theatre director, has relocated to CA to be nearer their sons, Jonathan (DJ Child, an award-winning music producer and founder of the multi-media company, Project Groundation) and Joshua (actor/filmmaker including The Lie, Higher Ground and The Blair Witch Project.) Joann is author of The Soup Has ManyEyes: From Shtetl to Chicago; One Family’s Journey Through History, “From Page to Stage,” a chapter in Holt Rinehart Winston’s Elements of Literature and two collections of multicultural plays, “All the World’s a Stage Volumes I & II” (Baker’s Plays). In her research for The Healer of Fox Hollow, Joann discovered that the truth the novel is based upon is infinitely stranger than the fiction she wrote.
For more info on Joann and her work, please visit her Website.
This is my 51st book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.
***To win a copy of this book, you must be a resident of the United States or Canada and be over age 18.
Leave a comment on this post by July 21, 2012, at 11:59PM EST.
As Always, Jack by Emma Sweeney is an epistolary memoir in that letters from Sweeney’s father to her mother are shared with several sections of explanation from Sweeney, herself. After just 11 days together, Jack and her mother corresponded for a year and a half through letters as he went off to help stabilize the Pacific following WWII. He wrote 45 letters to her mother over seven months in a oddball courtship that showcase her father’s wit and humor as well as his constant devotion.
In many ways the correspondence allowed the young lovers to get to know one another more intimately without the awkward face-to-face interactions. They learned about their religious beliefs and their thoughts on infidelity when she tells Jack of her boss’ infidelity with one of the dental assistants. Emma found her father’s letters to her mother after her mother’s death in the back of a drawer, but she never knew him in person as he died before she was born.
“I never told anyone of my discovery that day. We lived in a big house, and, with twelve brothers and sisters, my things had a way of disappearing. I put the letter and the photograph in the small cedar box I kept hidden under my bed.” (page 4)
Jack was a funny man who liked to play cards and talk to his Bebe as much as he could, begging her for photos and tales of her trips to Florida from Coronado, California. He made jokes, he took on personas, and he laughed at himself. He wooed her with humor and honesty, and through his devotion, he garnered her love, which she eventually confessed in a letter to him, or at least that is what Jack says in one of his letters back to her. What’s missing is her mother’s side of the letters and some explanations as to what Jack is referring to on occasion, but there are notations about dates and times in the letters that clarify some of the timeline.
However, this memoir is not only about the love that endures even through space and time, but also the discovery of a daughter of her true father and mother at time when they were youthful and full of hope. As Always, Jack by Emma Sweeney is in a way a love letter from a daughter to a father.
About the Author:
Emma Sweeney is the author of several gardening books as well as a literary agent based in New York. She formed her own agency in 2006 and has had five New York Times bestsellers, including the #1 New York Times best seller, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. She is a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives and the Women’s Media Group, where she served as its president in 2003. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in English Literature. She divides her time between New York City and Rhinebeck, New York.
If you’d like to win a copy of this book, please leave a comment on this post with an email address. Deadline to enter is July 20, 2012; This is open GLOBALLY.
This is my 49th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.
Congrats to Anna from Diary of an Eccentric, comment #11 selected by Random.org.
She said, “Happy 5th! You know I was with you when Savvy was born, and you know I enjoy the poetry circle and the National Poetry Month tour. If it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t read any poetry. Sad I know, but it should make you happy that you’ve had an impact on my reading.”
As the winner, she gets free access to 2012′s Best of List, 1 book of poetry from those I reviewed this year, and 1 book up to $25 from my local bookstore, Novel Places. Congrats!
Congrats to Kristin of Kritters' Ramblings
Congrats to Kristin; I hope you enjoy the book. It looks to be a good summer read.
If you’re looking for some good reads, check out the giveaways for Guardians of the Gate and The Last Romanov. Plus there is the steller 5 year blogiversary giveaway.
Stay tuned for the 3rd part of the Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms read-a-long dicussion.
The fate of Anastasia Romanov is one of life’s great mysteries, and today would have been her 111th birthday. She was the last of four daughters born to Tsar Nikolas Romanov and his wife Alexandra. Following the tragic execution of the Russian Royal family in 1918, officials were never able to recover the remains of Anastasia. There have been numerous tales of her supposed escape from Russia, fueling speculation that a daughter of Russia’s last sovereign ruler survived the revolution that destroyed her immediate family.
About The Last Romanov by Dora Levy Mossanen:
She was an orphan, ushered into the royal palace on the prayers of her majestry. Yet, decades later, her time spent in the embrace of the Romanovs haunts her still. Is she responsible for those murderous events that changed everything?
If only she can find the heir, maybe she can put together the broken pieces of her own past-maybe she can hold on to the love she found. Bursting to life with the rich and glorious marvels of Imperial Russia, The Last Romanov is a magical tale of second chances and royal blood.
Doesn’t this sound like an excellent read? You can win a copy by commenting on this post about what fascinates you about Anastasia Romanov or if you’ve read other books about her that you’d recommend to me.
Deadline to enter is June 22, 2012, at 11:59PM EST for U.S. and Canadian residents only.
Since staring this blog five years ago, its been a fun ride with crazy blogging events, book talk, giveaways, and more. I thought in honor of five years, I’d talk about my favorite parts of this blog.
1. Virtual Poetry Circle: Even though I don’t get many responses week to week, I still get a kick out of sharing new poems that I find to post and share with others. These poems can be from poets.org or from collections I’ve read the previous week or even long ago. I try to vary the content from classic to contemporary, narrative to rhyming, and more. This is always the fun part for me, “which poem will it be this week?” My index finger drumming my chin. If there’s ever a poet you want to see featured, don’t hesitate to send a poem along or just recommend the poem by name.
2. Interviews: As a little girl, I longed to interview some of my favorite authors, and now I get to do that for real. Most recently, I had the chance to interview a long-admired poet, Molly Peacock, who gave me the idea for the virtual poetry circle, and some local advocates for books and literacy like the Chair of the Gaithersburg Book Festival Jud Ashman. It’s great to see what connects those who write books and those who promote them — love of the written world.
3. National Poetry Month Blog Tour: This project takes a lot of planning and a lot of work to line up poets and authors, publishers, and bloggers. Most people worry that they don’t have the “qualifications” to read and review poetry, but the only qualification you need in my book is the “joy of reading.” If you love to read and you love to see how authors of novels create a scene or character, poetry should be a breeze. Think of the poem as an unfolding blossom, opening up to the light with each word and each line opening to the sun. Once you’ve reached the end, there is a full picture to behold.
4. Community: I started blogging around the same time as Anna, but soon fell into a wider group, led at that time by Dewey. Even though she’s no longer with us, I know that her spirit lives on in the community — a community she loved and loved to see grow . . . and grow it has, exponentially. I’ve got some old friends from that time, and I’ve made some new ones. I love meeting these people in person at book festivals and conventions; it has been such a joy to share the love of books with people online and off, especially since my husband is not a big reader.
For this year’s blogiversary giveaway, You must tell me how you learned about Savvy Verse & Wit AND whether you have a favorite feature/post or read a book I recommended.
Prize pack will include:
a. free access to 2012’s Best of List
b. 1 book of poetry from those I reviewed this year (your choice)
c. 1 book up to $25 from my local bookstore, Novel Places.
Deadline to enter will be June 30, 2012. Open Internationally.
Winner Melissa of Melissa's Eclectic Bookshelf
Winners Ti of Book Chatter and Anita Yancey
Winner Anna of Diary of an Eccentric
And now an announcement from Graham Parke:
I’d originally planned to have a monkey draw two random numbers out of a hat (then use the inverse hexadecimal value – because you cannot trust monkeys, not at the prices I’m willing to pay) but apparently there are laws against monkey labor. There are permits involved. It’s a whole thing. So instead I asked a friend to think of two random numbers while dressed in a monkey suit, without telling him what the numbers were for. This seemed sufficiently random to me, although it later occurred to me how worrying it was that my friend would actually do this without ever asking why. There might be a thinly veiled cry for help in there somewhere…
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A big thank you to all the bloggers and readers who supported the Unspent Time launch event (especially those who bought multiple versions of the weird little novels that wrecked a thousand reasonably useful minds.)
Anyway, here’s the results, thank you all for joining in, winners will be contacted and forced to accept prizes, let me know if you ever come across bits in the novels you like, stay healthy and sane,
“We played for about half an hour before I realized we were actually playing two different games. What I’d thought of as ludo was actually a game called gin rummy, and what Warren was playing seemed to be a mixture of craps and table tennis. Once we started playing by one consistent set of rules, though, the fun was really over.” Graham Parke, No Hope for Gomez!
Monarch Beach by Anita Hughes looks like another great summer read, and it will be published on June 19. The debut novel tackles what it means to cope with love and betrayal as Amanda Blick thinks she has the perfect marriage only to discover her cheating husband is having an affair with his sous-chef. She takes up her mother’s offer to get away with her son Max to St. Regis Resort in Laguna Beach. While she should be relaxing and getting her life back on track, life throws her another curve ball as a divorcee enters the picture and showers her with attention.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to review every great book out there before publication, but these are the moments I live for — writer’s willing to share their writing spaces with my readers, and today, that’s just what Anita Hughes is going to do. Please give her a warm welcome.
I am very fortunate when it comes to choosing a favorite writing spot. I live in what is arguably one of the most beautiful places in the world. Six years ago, my family and I moved into a villa on the grounds of the St. Regis, Monarch Beach. It is an interesting place to raise children – the year is marked not just by the school calendar – but by the Easter Egg Hunt on the Grand Lawn, the Monarch Butterfly Release every Saturday during the summer, and the carolers who come to the hotel each Christmas.
Living at the St. Regis also gives me more beautiful places to write than any author could ask for. For months, when the idea for my debut novel MONARCH BEACH was percolating, I sat at the table in front of CRUST, the resort café, gazing out the window. This became my regular spot and the staff at CRUST knew not to ask if I wanted a coffee or chocolate croissant. I only wanted to soak up the ambiance, and let the story form in my head.
When I was ready to put the words down on my laptop, it was time to change locations. I didn’t want to be influenced by my surroundings; I only wanted to be guided by my thoughts. I looked around my villa to find the ideal writing spot. I considered the sofa in the living room that faces the bookshelf. But I always found myself gazing at the lovely covers of my book collection, and couldn’t concentrate on my own burgeoning manuscript.
Thanks, Anita, for sharing your writing space with us.
Photo by Sheri Geoffreys
About the Author:
ANITA HUGHES attended UC Berkeley’s Masters in Creative Writing Program, and has taught Creative Writing at The Branson School in Ross, California. Hughes has lived at The St. Regis Monarch Beach for six years, where she is at work on her next novel. Please check out her Website.
Win a copy of Monarch Beach by commenting on this post how you react to obstacles. Giveaway is open internationally. Deadline June 15, 2012.
Silent Kills by C.E. Lawrence:
Everyone Has What He Wants: The killer picks her up in a Manhattan nightclub. Another trendy victim of the latest downtown scene. Young. Fresh. Healthy. Perfect. The police find her body in a Bronx park. Pale as a ghost. Peaceful in death. Her life has been drained away. Slowly. Methodically. Brilliantly…No One Survives What He Takes: NYPD profiler Lee Campbell has seen the gruesome handiwork of the most deranged criminal minds. But this is something new. Something unbelievably twisted. A blood-obsessed lunatic who chooses his victims with deadly, loving care – and forces Campbell to confront the demons in his own life. No matter who wins this game, there will be blood…
Today, author C.E. Lawrence is going to share some of her writing tips about plot, particularly for mystery novels. She shares tricks about providing backstory and clues for readers to get them invested in the story.
For US/Canada residents, there will be a giveaway following the guest post; so stay tuned. Without further ado, here’s C.E. Lawrence:
Back a few thousand years ago, a proto-human went out hunting. Maybe he was a Neanderthal Man, maybe an member of Australopithecus – maybe even an early Homo Sapiens. He found a herd of proto-antelopes, or gazelles, or maybe water buffaloes. He managed to isolate and kill one, using a sharpened wooden spear, and brought it home.
But along the way, many things happened – he had to ford a river, almost drowned, was stalked by a tiger, bitten by a spider, or a poisonous snake. In other words, in accomplishing his goal, he faced conflicts and obstacles.
That night he went back to the campfire, deposited his kill, and settled himself on a boulder to entertain his mate while she cooked the game, telling her of his day. One by one, other members of his tribe gathered in front of the fire to listen. Some of them left their dinners uneaten, or their chores undone, to listen to what he had to say.
What he told them that night was a story. It had a beginning, middle and end, and it had drama, danger, and conflict. And by the end of the evening, he had a sizeable audience.
So what exactly is story?
Story is action, in the here and now – not yesterday or next week or in some imagined future, but now. Readers are most interested in a character they can identify with in some way and who has something at stake – preferably something to lose as well as win – now, before their very eyes. And if you give that character the ability and the will to influence the outcome of his or her situation, you will be on your way to creating a story people will want to read.
A story must have an Event. In a mystery story, this is most often a crime of some kind, and the vast majority of crime stories these days involve a murder of some kind. But again, go ahead and be inventive; a kidnapping can be interesting, and in a spy story, political events can take center stage.
In a crime novel, there may be as many as three or more subplots beyond this main event – usually the solving of a crime – each with their own protagonist.
Subplots are important in a novel, and can accomplish several things at once. A comic subplot can be used to give the reader a break from the tension and briefly lighten the mood. Shakespeare was a master at this – he would cut from the action of the major character in his tragedies to show some foolishness taking place between two grave diggers (Hamlet, which is a kind of murder mystery), giving the audience a chance to breathe before the next onslaught of tragedy.
Subplots can also be used to complicate the main plot – a common variety of this is using a romance or family subplot to raise the stakes for the protagonist when the bad guy kidnaps a love interest or family member.
In The Singing Detective the protagonist is struggling with a crippling skin condition, which, in addition to being a subplot, becomes part of the main storyline as well.
In Silent Screams my protagonist, Lee Campbell, is struggling with clinical depression. His struggle functions as a subplot until his condition begins to impact his job performance, at which point it becomes a complication in the main story.
A subplot can also be used to show another side of a character. In the criminal-as-protagonist film Monsieur Verdoux, Charlie Chaplin’s murderous wife-killer is softened by a romance subplot in which he cares tenderly for his real wife, gentle cripple, and their son.
A subplot should never overshadow the main plot – for instance, a thriller with a romance subplot must still read like a thriller, not a romance novel. Keeps subplots in their place, but have fun with them – they can be a welcome change of pace from your hero’s relentless search for the killer.
Backstory
The term “backstory” refers to anything that has happened in the characters’ lives before the curtain goes up – i.e., before your story proper starts. This can be anything from a death in the family to a drug arrest to a psychotic episode. Literally, anything in your characters’ past can potentially be part of the backstory.
The trick in mystery fiction is to choose the backstory elements that pertain to your story, and that you can use to twist, complicate, or move the plot. For instance, in Silent Screams my protagonist, Lee Campbell, has lost his sister – she disappeared five years ago. I use this to motivate him to solve crimes, but also to complicate the plot: he gets mysterious phone calls from someone – who may or may not be the killer he is chasing – who claims to know something about his sister’s disappearance. This causes him to have an attack of depression and anxiety, further complicating his efforts to find the serial killer.
Skillfully used backstory can be used as a pivotal plot moment: remember the “Luke, I am your Father” moment from Star Wars? That’s backstory, and George Lucas used it at a climactic moment to twist the plot for Luke Skywalker, making his response to Darth Vader even more complex and emotional.
However, do NOT throw in large “info-chunks” of superfluous backstory just because you can. Be wary of anything that interrupts the forward flow of action; remember, only tell the reader what they need to know when they need to know it.
Raising Cain and Raising Stakes
It has been said that a story is not about a moment in time, it is about the moment in time. A traditionally structured story must answer the Passover Question: “Why is this night different from every other night?”
In a crime story, that question is usually answered by the commission of a crime. But see if you can dig deeper – see if you can make relate this question to your protagonist in a more personal way as well. Is the victim someone the detective knew? (The plot of The Maltese Falcon is a play on this theme, of course: Sam Spade needs to find out who killed his partner).
And then, as the story continues, you must continuously raise the stakes for the protagonist – simultaneously making it harder to solve the problem he is confronted with, all the while making it more important that he triumph.
Not an easy thing to do, I know. But here are some helpful ideas. I already mentioned giving the protagonist a personal stake in the outcome – for Sam Spade it is solving the murder of his partner; the important thing is that it matters to him personally. The second way to raise the stakes is to widen the importance of the story into the society at large. If an elderly aristocrat is murdered by his nephew at a country house, the number of people affected by that crime are few, but if someone kills a world leader, it may just start a world war (which is in fact what happened in 1914 with the murder of Archduke Ferdinand of ).
Another thing you can do is beat up your protagonist physically or emotionally. It is a cliché of detective stories that the private investigator is ambushed on a dark street and given a thumping by the bad guy’s henchmen. In Friedrich Durrenmatt’s interesting and dark novel The Judge and His Hangman, for example, the protagonist, Detective Baerlach, suffers from stomach cancer. In the middle of trying to catch a criminal, he must deal with the ongoing attacks of pain from his disease. Find interesting ways to accomplish this on your own: if your hero has a weakness, for example, you can play with that in making his life more difficult. Imagine a detective who is afraid of heights, or elevators, or guns.
Combining the personal and the professional can be very effective – maybe your super spy has a problem at home, like the poor beleaguered George Smiley, with his ever unfaithful wife (who he very much loves – her infidelity would be meaningless otherwise). Best of all, if you can give your protagonist an unconscious, contradictory desire which impedes him solving the crime or identifying the traitor, etc., so much the better. A good choice to give a hero is love vs. duty – especially in crime fiction, this can be agonizing. Maybe your detective is a young sergeant who suspects that his commanding officer is behind a string of murders – but he loves this man, who saved his father’s life more than once. Elmore Leonard does something similar to this in his brilliant nouveau noir novel, L.A. Confidential.
Planting Clues
In mystery fiction, one of the things you have to do is plant clues and red herrings. The number of each you decide to include in your story is up to you – but since mysteries involve a challenge to the reader to solve the puzzle, you must play fair. In other words, you want to give the reader a fighting chance to solve the mystery.
Clues help them to do this; red herrings are there to get in the way and confuse them. Ideally, red herrings and clues should look very much alike – only you know the difference. If you want to make a mystery harder to solve, you bury the clues more (sometimes this is called “hiding them in plain sight”). There are many ways to do this: you can plant a clue so that it just looks like a story detail and not a clue at all, or you can put it right next to a red herring so that the red herring jumps out at the reader much more than the clue.
For example, let’s say you have a victim who was killed by her brother, but she also has a jealous boyfriend. You might mention that her brother had written to her a few months ago asking for money – but right before or after you have a dramatic scene with the jealous boyfriend. The fact of the jealous boyfriend will sink in more than the unanswered letter – thus you have buried the clue “in plain sight,” as well as obscured it with a nice juicy red herring.
Story is all these and more. And as long as there are people on this planet, I suspect there will be stories, because we seem to need them as much as we need food and drink and sex. No one knows why this is – Kenneth Burke said that stories are equipment for living, and that’s no doubt part of the answer.
But as long as people need stories, they will need storytellers. That is fortunate for those of us who wouldn’t be much good at doing anything else. So here’s to more stories, and more storytellers!
Thanks, C.E. Lawrence, for sharing your tips with us.
Additionally, one of her short stories is receiving great feedback from the anthology edited by Lee Child, Vengeance; check out the Publisher’s Weekly article.
Click for her featured poem
About the Author:
Carole Bugge ( C.E. Lawrence) has eight published novels, six novellas and a dozen or so short stories and poems. Her work has received glowing reviews from such publications as Kirkus, The Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, The Boston Herald, Ellery Queen, and others. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. Winner of both the Euphoria Poetry Competition and the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award, she is also a Pushcart Prize nominee and First Prize winner of the Maxim Mazumdar Playwriting Competition, the Chronogram Literary Fiction Prize, Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Award, and the Jean Paiva Memorial Fiction award, which included an NEA grant to read her fiction and poetry at Lincoln Center.
Now, for the giveaway, please leave a comment here about what you look for in a novel; what makes a good plot for you?
Deadline for US/Canada residents is June 3, 2012, at 11:59PM EST
