Amazon.com “Top Reviewer” Bob Lind calls Moroccan Roll “an incredibly diverse Moroccan version of Sex and The City. It engrosses you totally. I give it five stars out of five."
Amazon.com "Top Reviewer" Amos
Lassen raves about Steven Stanley's
Moroccan Roll:
"Every once in a while I come across a
book that I know will not satisfy me with
just one reading for whatever reason.
Steven Stanley's Moroccan Roll is one
such book and because I enjoyed it so
much, I want to add it to my list of books
that I read over and over again."
Lyle Goble raves about Moroccan Roll at Amazon.com: "An absolutely great read. Great twists and turns and great characters."
Michael Landman-Karny raves about Moroccan Roll @ BarnesAndNoble.com and Amazon.com
"Frothy, intelligent, satirical, lyrical, diabolical, and tragically and hilariously comedic gay lit/chick lit book brings to mind Armistead Maupin's tales of 1970s San Francisco. Steven Stanley successfully evokes a very specific time and place (1970s Morocco) and interweaves multiple story lines. This book is recommended for all, especially those that are looking for an engrossing book to read on a lazy afternoon."
Italian film journalist Daniela Catelli raves about Moroccan Roll @ BarnesAndNoble.com
"(Moroccan Roll’s) many assets (include) a sympathetic look on people, a clear insight in female and male experiences and feelings as well, a global view on countries and cultures, the bright depiction of its characters, a romantic view of life that wasn't ashamed to give everyone a happy ending, a smooth writing that made a real page-turner of this big book, sending me to sleep very late at night sometimes 'just another chapter, another one and I quit...'. I would really like to read something more by this writer 'maybe a sequel?', who also did a very good marketing job of his dear creature, reaching people all over the world, even me in faraway Rome. And I'm grateful for that."
CeCe Cline raves about Moroccan Roll @ BarnesAndNoble.com
"In Moroccan Roll, Author Steven Stanley delicately describes life in 1970s Morocco, seen through the eyes of several diverse school teachers. As we fall in love with each of the characters, Stanley also brilliantly teaches us about the cultures in Morocco. The last 200 pages are particularly fascinating and unexpected. Stanley's inspiring tale teaches us that although life may not turn out the way we expect, it really is about what we make it. We're looking forward to Stanley's next novel."
Tim Parks writes about Moroccan Roll in the May 22, 2008 issue of The Gay And Lesbian Times:
"Author Steven Stanley has parlayed his four-year experience of teaching and living in Morocco into his debut novel, Moroccan Roll, which is being likened to Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City.
"The book features an eclectic cast of characters, both gay and straight, and their assorted foibles set against this exotic backdrop of Morocco during the 1970s. In true Maupin fashion, Stanley makes this locale as central a character in the book as Maupin did with San Francisco, exploring the way of the life in Morocco, and how it influences the characters that people his novel.
"There is Dave, who is using Morocco as a means to escape from a closeted boyfriend, only to find himself smack dab of the same situation, by falling for a young, straight student. Janna is also utilizing Morocco as an escape route via drug use, which puts a purple haze on the heartbreak she encountered with a Moroccan.
"Also coping with the aftereffects of a love affair gone south is Claudette, which has left her lifestyle of being rich and famous in question. Kevin, too, is hoping to pick up the pieces, after suffering the tragic loss of his first lover. Desperately hoping to open up avenues for her life is Marcie, a Wisconsin girl, who falls head-over-heels in love with the most nefarious playboy in all of Morocco.
"Stanley is a language instructor, actor and ardent theater enthusiast, and currently resides in Los Angeles."
A FEW WORDS FROM THE AUTHOR:
Exciting doesn’t describe the feeling of finally seeing your novel published and available for anyone in the world to read! But it’s finally happened, and I’m thrilled to be able to share Moroccan Roll with other avid fiction readers like myself.
Fresh out of UCLA, I spent four years living and teaching in Morocco in the 1970s. Who would have thought that a French major with vague plans to teach French at the high school level would end up a Peace Corps volunteer in North Africa? But just 10 days after my graduation, I was on a plane to Rabat, and three months later, I was teaching English to Moroccan high school students. Now, decades later, I continue to teach ESL to international students at Cal State Los Angeles. But I digress...
The four years I spent in Morocco were without doubt the most exciting of my life, living in an Arab (and Berber) country, speaking Arabic and French on a daily basis, getting to know the food, customs, and language of Morocco, and getting to know some of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met.
When I returned to the U.S., I began to realize that there was a novel to be written, and four and a half months later I’d finished the very first draft of Moroccan Roll. I took the manuscript with me to Mexico, where I taught for a year, and then on to Ecuador, where I spent another year, and began the editing process. "Cut and paste" meant literally cutting and pasting, as this paragraph was replaced and then another. After my two years in Latin America, I had the "completed" manuscript neatly typed and ready to send off to publishers.
I put completed in quotation marks because that supposedly finished manuscript (which I still have by the way) was so far from finished that I shudder to think of what might have been had Moroccan Roll been published in the early 80s. The book was simply not ready yet.
The manuscript languished until word processing made it possible to revise with ease, and revise I did. I not only polished my prose, again and again, but rewrote major chunks of the novel, especially those dealing with my two gay characters, Dave and Kevin. When I’d written the novel, even though I’d sort of come out in Morocco, I still had my own internalized homophobia, and that showed in my treatment of Dave and Kevin. As I began to see being gay as simply "different" (without any pejorative connotation), I realized that I needed to re-imagine my two gay Peace Corps volunteers. I’m proud of the way they eventually turned out.
Still, the novel languished, and would still be languishing had I not found myself with mornings full of free time the first half of 2007. I thought to myself, It’s now or never, and I did it. I finished the "final" revisions, contacted iUniverse, signed the contract, and submitted my manuscript.
Thanks to a very encouraging and perceptive editor, I realized that there was still a bit more editing, or should I say "pruning," which needed to be done, and I cut about 10,000 words from my 185,000 word manuscript, just enough to tighten the story and keep it moving swiftly.
In Amos Lassen’s review of Moroccan Roll, he writes "Stanley manages to pull the reader because of his storyline and because of the way he writes. There is not a needless or redundant word in the book."
Clearly, all the editing I’d put into Moroccan Roll worked!
CeCe Cline says in her BarnesAndNoble.com review that she fell in love with my characters. I love them too, and they are so much more alive and to me than the people I actually knew back in the days when I lived such an exotic life. I hope that other readers will love them as much as CeCe and I do.
If you get the chance to read Moroccan Roll, please let me know how you like it!
Happy Reading!
