{"id":41,"date":"2008-12-19T21:18:26","date_gmt":"2008-12-20T02:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theproviso.com\/faq\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T18:43:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T23:43:53","slug":"faq","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/extras\/faq\/","title":{"rendered":"FAQ"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q: What order should I read all these books in?<\/p>\n

A<\/strong>: Any which way you want to. They\u2019re all standalone, but, you know, it is<\/em> a universe.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
SERIES ORDER<\/th>\nCHRONOLOGICAL ORDER<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Proviso, #1<\/td>\nBlack as Knight (1420-1422)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Stay, #2<\/td>\nA Babe in Winter (1423-1425)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Magdalene, #3<\/td>\nDunham (1776 – 1786)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Dunham, The Past<\/td>\n1520 Main (1929 – 1931)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Paso Doble, LaMontagne #1<\/td>\nPaso Doble (1996)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
We Were Gods, LaMontagne #2<\/td>\nBlack Jack (1996 – 1998)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Black Jack<\/td>\nThe Proviso (2004 – 2009)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Lion\u2019s Share<\/td>\nStay (2009 – 2011)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1520 Main, The Legend<\/td>\nWe Were Gods (2010)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Twenty-Dollar Rag<\/td>\nMagdalene (2011)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Black as Knight, Kenard #1<\/td>\nLion\u2019s Share (2016)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A Babe in Winter, Kenard #2<\/td>\nTwenty-Dollar Rag (~2022)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Q: So if Knox is Hamlet, whom do Giselle and Sebastian represent?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Giselle and Sebastian together function as Horatio.<\/p>\n

Q: What was the deal with the dirty money?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Let\u2019s call it the play-within-a-play, \u2019kay?<\/p>\n

Q: Half the characters in Hamlet<\/em> are missing.<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Of course they are! It was complicated enough, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n

Q: Fen\u2019s name. Explain that.<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Shakespeare based Claudius on a Jute chieftain named Feng. Drop the \u201cg\u201d and there you go. His name is actually James Fenimore Hilliard.<\/p>\n

Q: These characters\u2014you\u2014aren\u2019t anything like what I thought Mormons were like.<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Tribes aren\u2019t a monolith, and we all struggle with the same things everybody else struggles with.<\/p>\n

Q: So, um, you do<\/em> realize that Sebastian and Eilis are first cousins, right?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Yes. And? Go see the PLoS Biology<\/a> Journal and The Straight Dope<\/a> on that topic. Think what you like.<\/p>\n

Q: Okay, but you can\u2019t get married in Missouri if you\u2019re first cousins, can you?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> There are plenty of other places to choose from. Eilis and Sebastian got legally<\/em> married in Giverny, France, in Claude Monet\u2019s garden.<\/p>\n

Q: Where did Knox get his name?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Dead Poets Society<\/em>. Knox Overstreet, the incurable, unrepentant romantic who wouldn\u2019t take no for an answer and got the girl.<\/p>\n

Before I published The Proviso<\/em>, someone who hadn\u2019t read it looked at me funny and said, \u201cThat name just screams country-club trust-fund brat.\u201d That\u2019s because he is<\/em> a country-club trust-fund brat. \u201cYabbut it sounds pretentious.\u201d Like \u2026 okay? Which part of \u201ccountry-club trust-fund brat\u201d did you not get? I was thoroughly flummoxed at why this was an issue. It is exactly<\/em> what I meant it to be. \u201cBut you don\u2019t know anything about being rich.\u201d It\u2019s fiction!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That happened almost 20 years ago. I still don\u2019t know what he was smoking, but he\u2019s said stupider stuff since.<\/p>\n

Q: You have a lot<\/em> of characters. Where\u2019s the family tree so I can see who\u2019s who?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Here you go!<\/a><\/p>\n

Q: Do you have a list of all the books referenced?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Not all of them, because I\u2019ve probably been influenced by books I don\u2019t remember reading, but this is a good start<\/a>. Some that particularly informed The Proviso<\/em>:<\/p>\n

A Man in Full<\/em><\/a>, Tom Wolfe
\nThe Gate to Women\u2019s Country<\/em><\/a>, Sherri S. Tepper
\nThe Fountainhead<\/em><\/a>, Ayn Rand
\nAnd, of course, Hamlet<\/em><\/a>, William Shakespeare<\/p>\n

My penultimate semester of college, I was in a creative writing class. I was also<\/em> in a Shakespeare class studying Hamlet<\/em>, which, by the way, I loathe<\/em> because it\u2019s just stupid because they\u2019re all stupid. I was also<\/em> working graves at a gas station 50 hours a week, so I did a lot of sleeping in my car. In an east-facing parking lot. In the morning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n

So I\u2019m in my little blue Honda CRX hatchback one morning, stretched out as far as I can go (not far), trying to doze and \u201cWalkaway Joe<\/a>\u201d by Trisha Yearwood comes on the radio. I start wondering about that story from the mother\u2019s point of view. I was not a mother at that time, so this was all a thought experiment. I wrote \u201cJohn 3:16<\/a>.\u201d My creative writing prof, who was the executive editor of my university\u2019s lit rag, loved<\/em> it. He said, \u201cLook, I can\u2019t teach you anything, so you\u2019ve got an A in this class, but I\u2019d consider it a personal favor if you’d come to class and turn in the assignments so I can see what you come up with.\u201d It was mindblowing<\/em> to get that kind of approbation from someone that weathered, experienced, and lofty, so even though I\u2019d been working all night and this class was at eight a.m., you better believe I was there and turned in everything assigned.<\/p>\n

Then my dad died. I didn\u2019t go to class for a while, obviously, but I also didn\u2019t bother to inform my profs I would be gone or why because after 8-1\/2 years of this college bullshit, I was just done<\/em>. My lit prof caught me after class my first period back after the funeral and gives me condolences and I was like, whu? He said he read obituaries and my name is not common and it was listed in the obituary. Oh. Okay. Thanks. We were still on Hamlet. I didn\u2019t dare say I think it\u2019s stupid because I still need to graduate.<\/p>\n

But then, as Knox does, he got his hooks into me. Like, WTF kind of a douchebag are you, anyway? And how horrible am I<\/em> that I came up with this asshole and further, I want to explore him further? But because I was in my antihero phase, I followed that trail wherever it was going to go. My capstone advisor was a Latin prof (why? don\u2019t know) who was fascinated<\/em> by my novel writingness and she didn\u2019t care what I wrote for my capstone project as long as I documented the creative process. The process<\/em> was what she was after. So, I was in the throes of fleshing Knox out and my mind went all sorts of places and then settled on Hamlet because it\u2019s stupid and so is Knox.<\/p>\n

That was in 1994. I haven\u2019t stopped thinking about this country-club trust-fund brat since.<\/p>\n

Q: Where did you get the name Vachel?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> The Wolf & the Dove<\/em><\/a> by Kathleen Woodiwiss (use the \u201clook inside feature\u201d to go to chapter 1, 5th paragraph down). Vachel de Comte was one of the villain\u2019s henchmen and I remember, as the story went along, learning he was a bit of a victim and feeling sorry for him. Bryce is also named from a character in that book.<\/p>\n

Q: In Stay<\/em>, the Big Bad Senator refers to Vanessa as Ford\u2019s mistress. Is the secret out by then?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Rumors had started to swirl that Sebastian was Ford by the time The Goddess and Her Lover<\/em> got wide press. That, Wild, Wild West<\/em>, and Rape of a Virgin<\/em> all feature women who are quite visibly in Sebastian\u2019s close circle. One\u2019s a coincidence. Two is a pattern. Three is a fact.<\/p>\n

Q: I want the original (first edition) The Proviso<\/em>, but it\u2019s out of print and all the used copies are a gazillion dollars. Can I order one?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Sure. Email me<\/a>. Expect to wait a while, though. Because it\u2019s out of print, it has to be specially ordered.<\/p>\n

Q: Why do you keep issuing new editions?<\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Why does anybody retcon anything, especially their own work? I shouldn\u2019t, I know. It\u2019s kind of like replaying an argument where you go home and think, \u201cOMG I shoulda said X, Y, and Z!\u201d<\/p>\n

1. Because I can.<\/p>\n

2. When I was growing up as an aspiring author (i.e., actively submitting work to be published), writers were being inundated with writing Rulez<\/a>\u2122. These Rulez\u2122 are stupid because they\u2019re unhelpful at best and catastrophic at worst, but they\u2019re still floating around like they were engraved in gold plates, and writer missionaries are going to knock on your door one day and ask you if you know anything about Da Rulez\u2122 and if not, would you like to know more. One of these Rulez\u2122 is, \u201cDon\u2019t use \u2018be\u2019 verbs.\u201d That would be \u201cam,\u201d \u201cis,\u201d \u201care,\u201d \u201cwas,\u201d \u201cwere,\u201d \u201cbe,\u201d \u201cbeing,\u201d \u201cbeen,\u201d and of course the infinitive \u201cto be.\u201d The purpose<\/em> of this Rule\u2122 is to avoid passive voice, but the nuance of passive voice is bypassed for a shortcut that is not at all correlative.<\/p>\n

Anyway, when I was writing The Proviso<\/em> the first time, I was still in Good Obedient Little Writer mode and I was doing everything I could to avoid \u201cbe\u201d verbs. I mean, I hadn\u2019t thought too much about it even then, so I twisted my authorial voice into pretzels to follow this Rule\u2122 and came up with some really clunky sentence construction. The bad<\/em> thing about that was, I knew<\/em> it was wrong when I was doing it. I knew<\/em> it made the work worse, but I went ahead and did it anyway. It bugged me for a long time, but I figured nobody would notice and if they did, I wouldn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

I was wrong.<\/p>\n

A writer whose work I respect said to me, \u201cI\u2019m enjoying your creative use of verbs.\u201d I fucking died<\/em> of shame and regret. Not because I did it, but because I knew it was wrong while<\/em> I did it, and I got called on it. I had<\/em> to correct that. So, okay. No big, rewire a few sentences here and there and call it good, right?<\/p>\n

Nope.<\/p>\n

3. There was one thing that readers did<\/em> give me a lot of flak for, and that was why Eilis didn\u2019t catch on to Sebastian\u2019s alter ego. Ever. This baffled me to bits. Yes, the trope<\/em> demands the character figure it out and do it quickly or else she must<\/em> be stupid, but I\u2019ve never really hit any trope just right<\/em>. In this case, given the circumstances and Eilis\u2019s personality, it would have been intellectually dishonest for me to write it that way. I did not<\/em> fuck that up in any way, but all right, readers are mad I didn\u2019t do the trope right. I decided to clarify my rationale.<\/p>\n

Eilis: \u201cWhy in God\u2019s name would you think any reasonable, intelligent, rational<\/em> person would make that connection? Do you know what psychiatrists call that? Magical thinking<\/em>. People take drugs to keep them from making those kinds of leaps. [ \u2026 ] An artist might<\/em> have gotten it. A stoic, uptight, dehydrated, starving, and exhausted cat herder in the middle of a financial and emotional crisis would not.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. I needed to change Bryce\u2019s wife\u2019s name. \u201cMichelle\u201d and \u201cshe-SELL\u201d rhyme. If I ever made an audiobook, I did not want that to be a thing.<\/p>\n

5. I was writing Lion\u2019s Share<\/em> at the same time and I wanted to retcon Finn into it.<\/p>\n

6. I put a third edition out because I needed a little TLC. I was going through a very long rough patch and this book is a comfort read for me, but then I started tweaking things here and there, clarifying things I thought were a bit muddy, adding fun tidbits, giving Justice more depth. I wanted to re-introduce this 17-year-old novel to new readers and didn\u2019t want to give them substandard work. Yes, it\u2019s the book of my heart, but the first edition is the worst of everything I\u2019ve ever published. That\u2019s to be expected, since it was the first. In my opinion, my best book is Magdalene<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t touched this FAQ in 8 years, so things have changed and I\u2019ve gotten more questions.
\nI\u2019ll add them when I can.<\/p>\n

20260411<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Q: What order should I read all these books in? A: Any which way you want to. They\u2019re all standalone, but, you know, it is a universe. SERIES ORDER CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER The Proviso, #1 Black as Knight (1420-1422) Stay, #2 A Babe in Winter (1423-1425) Magdalene, #3 Dunham (1776 – 1786) Dunham, The Past 1520 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":2591,"menu_order":47,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-41","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":97,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26141,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41\/revisions\/26141"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}