1. There are little homages to some of my favorite poets tucked away in the book. Some are obvious—Walt Whitman is mentioned outright—but other, more subtle references are in there too. You will find one in Cat’s surname and her father’s first name, for instance.

2. Too many curling fingers! Before my editor alerted me to it, there were about ten moments in the book when characters’ fingers were curling in to fists. It was after the ARCs were done when the repetitions were discovered. We went through and edited most of them. If you read the finished book and find there are still more than one or two curling fingers in it, please don’t tell me, or I might curl my fingers into a fist and shake it at the sky.

3. Annie Dillard says it takes ten years to write a book. For me, looking back, perhaps that is true, because I can see elements in STONE FIELD that I have been pondering and writing about for a long time. One of four unpublished novels I wrote before STONE FIELD explored similar themes, as well as life in the same troubled area and time period. One of my early published short stories for younger kids in Cricket magazine explored it from yet another angle. So though the actual writing of STONE FIELD took closer to 1-2 years, the development of it in my mind took closer to ten.

4. STONE FIELD’s book birthday is the day after my daughter turns 21. I dedicated the book to her and meant it to be a birthday surprise, but the ARCs arrived unexpectedly when she was home from college on a visit and she discovered my gift early. I like the thought that my two first-borns arrived in the world almost exactly 21 years apart.

5. This has been a well-kept secret until now, but I think the time is right to reveal it: STONE FIELD is a palindrome. You can read the whole book forward or backward and it will read the exact same way. It was a difficult feat, I can tell you. And my poor editor! She almost had a breakdown. But I am very proud of this little known fact. (We are playing the Four Truths & One Lie game, right?)

Christy Lenzi first stuffed a note into an aspirin bottle and threw it in the creek when she was eleven, hoping her words would reach someone out in the big world. Eventually her notes got longer and turned into books. One of her favorite things to do is to ride her motor scooter, Roxanne, down a winding road at sunset. Christy lives in California’s Central Valley with her family.

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About Stone Field:

In a small town on the brink of the Civil War, Catrina finds a man making strange patterns in her family’s sorghum crop. He’s mad with fever, naked, and strikingly beautiful. He has no memory of who he is or what he’s done before Catrina found him in Stone Field. But that doesn’t bother Catrina because she doesn’t like thinking about the things she’s done before either. Catrina and Stonefield fall passionately, dangerously, in love. All they want is to live with each other, in harmony with the land and away from Cat’s protective brother, the new fanatical preacher, and the neighbors who are scandalized by their relationship. But Stonefield can’t escape the truth about who he is, and the conflict tearing apart the country demands that everyone take a side before the bloodbath reaches their doorstep. Inspired by Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Stone Field is a passionate and atmospheric story of how violence and vengeance pervert the human spirit, and how hatred can be transcended by love.