Don’t you just love the cover art for Christmas in Dogtown?
Suzanne wrapped up her short story with a pretty bow!
I’m dying to tell you about this holiday story so let’s get to it!
Christmas in Dogtown
by Suzanne Johnson
Genre: Sweet Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Story Vault
Date of Publication: December 2012
ASIN: B009RBKTSG
Number of pages: 30
Word Count: approx. 11,000
Amazon / Barnes and Noble
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Synopsis
A woman who spent years escaping her rural past learns that Dogtown, Louisiana, hides more family secrets than just the recipe for boudin blanc…..
Resa Madere’s on the verge of losing it all. The boyfriend’s gone. The job’s history. Her beloved house is on the brink of foreclosure. She’ll do anything to save it—even spend a long Christmas holiday working in St. James Parish, Louisiana, helping her uncle run the family meat business. But the community of Dogtown, which has been home for seven generations of the Madere and Caillou families, has deep roots and deeper secrets. For Resa, going home is one thing.
Getting out might not be so easy.
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My Review
I love short stories. Christmas in Dogtown is wonderful.
Right from the beginning you are connected to Resa. She’s lost her job and been dumped by her boyfriend.
When her Uncle Emile calls asking her to come help him at Madere’s Meats in Paulina for the holidays, she figures why not. It would pay a few house notes and she’d be with her family for Christmas.
Life seems to be conspiring against Resa. She just wants to go back to New Orleans, but her family and fate may have other plans.
Resa has to decide what she really wants.
I live on the Gulf coast and am always on the lookout for stories with a southern voice.
Suzanne had me at boudin!
I had a roommate years ago who grew up in Houma, Louisiana. Every Christmas she’d go see her family and come back loaded down with Boudin sausage and gator balls.
Her mother and father made the best boudin. My eyes would water, my mouth would drool, and I’d stuff myself as full as the pork casings!
The gator balls are not what you think. They are punched out plugs from the tail meat of a gator. You can grill them or steam them. They are a lot like scallops and melt in your mouth.
Resa is a perfect cover girl for bayou life. She can clean and cook gar with the best of them.
For those of you who don’t know, a gar is actually a fish, an alligator gar, named as such because they get as big as some of the gators and resemble them when you see them rise to the surface.
I was told that the best way to cook and eat a gar is to nail it to a 2×4, roast it, then throw away the gar and eat the 2×4. In Dogtown, it sounds like they have a better recipe.
The fun begins immediately when Resa arrives in Paulina, called Dogtown by the residents. All 50 of them. Her family is up to their old tricks, trying to set her up with Chandler Caillou, a childhood friend.
When she opens the door to her little trailer, she’s face to face with him and he sure has grown. I knew before I read it that she was thinking, maybe she should rethink her protests about the matchmaking.
You’ll like Chandler too. At first you think he’s shy, but he’s really just self-contained. He’s certainly not a wuss. Afterall, he’s the towns gator man. His job is to catch and remove the troublesome beasts when they eat someones pooch or become too bold.
I found myself wishing Resa and Chandler would fall in love. I wanted my happy ending. They seemed perfect for each other.
But there’s a huge secret in Dogtown. I didn’t see it coming, and it makes me so happy. It leaves this story open to be developed into more stories. Don’t get me wrong, there is an ending. But there’s also an opening to follow this town and it’s folks.
I hope the author pursues this short story and gives us more. Dogtown opened it’s doors and made me feel warm and welcome. I want to return someday.
5 Stars
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Excerpt
“You are stupid,” Resa told her reflection in the tiny, scratched mirror of the WhiteCastle’s rose-pink bathroom. “Stupid, ridiculous, and absurd.”
She’d been wrestling with her curly black hair for a half hour, and the brown eyes that stared back at her from beneath freshly plucked brows and carefully applied eyeliner looked more jittery than sexy. “And idiotic.”
First, it had been almost a week since Chan had asked her to the Saturday night community dance, popping the question almost shyly as they hacked at the bodies of gigantic dead fish. They’d both been covered in blood and smelled like they’d been rolling in bait, which should have tipped her off that anything in Dogtown reeking of romance, well, reeked.
Second, her potential date had left immediately after asking her out so he could catch an alligator that had eaten somebody’s poodle in one of those backwater houses near the swamp. He burned rubber out of the Madere’s driveway after making sure he had enough duct tape to wrap around the gator’s jaws. Adequate duct tape was not an attribute she’d ever sought in a man.
About Suzanne Johnson
Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance (under the name Susannah Sandlin) from Auburn, Alabama, on top of a career in educational publishing that has thus far spanned five states and six universities—including both Alabama and Auburn, which makes her bilingual. She grew up in Winfield, Alabama, halfway between the Bear Bryant Museum and Elvis’ birthplace, but was also a longtime resident of New Orleans, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football, cheap Mardi Gras trinkets, and fried gator on a stick. She’s the author of the Sentinels of New Orleans urban fantasy series and, as Susannah Sandlin, the Penton Legacy paranormal romance series.
Website / Blog / Twitter / Facebook / Goodreads
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Have a wonderful holiday ya’ll!
A Gulf Coast Christmas
