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Author's Note

About dialects . . . .

Authors often struggle with the best way to handle dialect. In this case I found I really couldn't write the book without reflecting the unique speech patterns of the particular Appalachian region around which I framed this book. Once that sort of decision is made, it's a matter of how much to play with the spelling, how much to try to convey with the rhythm of the words . . . how much to just plain make up because it's fiction, after all.

I tried to compromise. I hope the end result is something that adds to your experience of the book.

* * *Nn

Doranna Durgin spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art, and then with novels. After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, she spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains, with which she fell in love. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures.

Doranna, who won the Compton Crook Award with first novel Dun Lady's Jess, lives in upstate New York with two irrepressible Cardigan Welsh Corgis (Kacey & Jean-Luc Picardigan). You can contact her at:

dmd@doranna.net

or

PO Box 26207

Rochester, NY 14626

(SASE please)

or visit http://www.doranna.net/

Join the Book-Facing Legion at:

http://www.doranna.net/legion.html

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Framed