This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today, we are joined by special guest Karen Stiller, author of holiness here, and the author and editor of many other books, magazines, essays, and more. She currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario. Karen, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. And if you want to add anything to my very basic introduction

of who you are, tell us a little bit about your life, your hobbies, whatever you want to share with us.

Okay, thank you. Well, it's a very, very cold day in Ottawa while we're recording this. So I haven't been up for my daily walk that I love to walk. I have three adult children, one of whom still lives with me, my 24-year-old son, and his giant dog. We have a bull mastiff named Russell, who I love very much and actually let up on my bed last night, which I'm sure I'll regret.

But he's a great dog.

So we're dog lovers.

I'm a reader and a writer and a cook.

I love to do hospitality.

That's an important part of my life. I took up line dancing

last year, which was very fun and like surprisingly fun, surprisingly difficult, surprisingly a

workout, but super fun with fun. So yeah, that's off the top of my head. Man, Bull Mastiff is my favorite dog.

Really? I've never had family members that will let me get one. So now I'm totally jealous. We have a corgi husky mix named Kalmar.

And that's as close to a big old bull mastiff as I'm going to get. And it is, he is definitely not that.

So, man. Jealous already, he is definitely not that.

So, man, jealous already.

Yeah, they're great dogs.

They really are.

We grew up, well, our kids grew up with a bull mastiff at our cottage.

There was this marina and this dog would always walk up and just eat their ice cream off their cones.

So it was like, high on our list of must have dogs.

And so I'm really happy.

I'm happy my son got one.

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