SUMMER READING release day celebration!!!

 

JENN McKINLAY: 

It's here! It's here! SUMMER READING is here!!!

I started writing this book in 2021 so I feel as if I've been working on it FOREVER (said ever so dramatically). No offense to my darling book baby but I am seriously more than ready to yeet you out of the nest. Fly, little bookie, fly!!!

Am I nervous? Of course. But so far the response to book baby has been just wonderful. With starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal and heady praise from Publisher's Weekly, I feel as if I accomplished what I set out to do with this novel. 

What did I set out to do, you ask? Okay, you probably didn't, but I'm me, so I'll tell you anyway :)  First and foremost, I wanted to craft a romcom around witty banter (I live for witty banter between a hero and heroine and heroine and friends and hero and friends and heroine and family and hero and...you get the idea). I also felt the need to examine how our families shape us, both good and bad on purpose and by accident. It was important to me to have characters with audacious dreams that they decide to go after one hundred percent. And I wanted my characters to grow enough to see themselves through each other's eyes and understand that what makes them different is also what makes them amazing. I feel as if I achieved that and I am so very grateful for the support and encouragement I received along the way, which includes you, Reds and Readers! 

Below is an excerpt if you're keen and I'm including a buy link HERE because of course I am!

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     I hurried into the house and quickly fashioned him a cocktail just like mine. I might have been a bit more careful with his, not that I was trying to impress him or anything. Okay, yes, I totally was, which was ridiculous because for all I knew he was married or had a girlfriend. Never mind that he was obviously a book person and I wasn’t. I pushed all of that aside and went back to the porch. 

     “Here you go.” I handed him the drink. 

      I watched as he lifted the glass to his lips, which were puckered ever so slightly. I glanced away. Staring is rude, you know, and I imagined that ogling a librarian was even worse than that. Sort of like checking out a nun. I picked up my own glass and took another sip. The hint of vanilla was subtle but it mellowed the tartness of the lemon perfectly. I really thought I had a winner here. 

     “This is good,” Ben said. He glanced at me and nodded. “Really good.” 

     “Not too girly?” I asked. “I don’t want to be re-inventing the appletini.” 

     He laughed. “It’s not as macho as a scotch, neat, but the lemon provides a nice punch. So, I’d say it’s no more girly than a mojito. It’s the name that’ll clinch it. You need a very gender neutral name.” 

    “I was thinking of calling it Liquid Sunshine,” I said. I frowned. “That will never fly with the XY chromosomal set.” 

     “Probably not,” he agreed. ‘You need something more manly like Scorched Earth.” 

     “Sounds delicious,” I said. “I’m imagining subtle notes of ash.”     

     “And dirt,” he added with a laugh. It was a good laugh.

BUY NOW

Why cell phones are like cigarettes.

 


JAN BROGAN - I was at the grocery store finishing up my weekly shopping and I got to the check out line, which was about three people deep.  I scanned the tabloids for trashy headlines, then pulled out my cell phone to check for texts and email messages.

The action itself stirred a memory.  Hmmm....What was it? 

My husband and I were driving to the ferry to Martha's Vineyard.  Just over the bridge, we pulled into a gas station.  My husband filled the tank, paid, and got back behind the wheel. Before he started the car, he checked his cell phone.  "Why am I checking this?" he asked himself aloud. He tossed the phone into the back seat and answered."Because it's here. That's the only reason."  


Then, worst of all, I spent the afternoon at The  Center at Westwoods, which was having a massive festival of mindfulness classes.  I took one in "cathartic breathing," and another in Kundalini yoga.  By the time I left, I was totally relaxed - so "in the moment," that I could be breath itself. What did I do as soon as I got into the car, even though it was a Saturday, and I had no urgent demands.


I checked my cell phone.

Now, I knew exactly what the memory was.  This reminded me of when I used to ski.  After a fabulous day of exercise and terrific mountain air,  I used to go into the lodge and light a cigarette.  What did I just do?  I sabotaged  an afternoon's effort at inner peace with a compulsive  scan of spam and other email attempts to sell me something. Rather than being where I was, I was searching for somewhere else.

It's been a long time since I was a cigarette smoker - almost thirty years.  But I remember that it was a default.   As soon as you got in the car, onto the barstool, or into your friend's living room, you lit up.  Smoking a cigarette was what you did when you weren't doing anything else.  It was what you did rather than just experience a moment. 

Hmmm....what does that remind me of?

I don't think I can give up my cell phone the way I gave up cigarettes (especially since I just ordered the IPHONE 5). And they don't yet have a "patch" to help ease you off your addiction. But I'm going to try to gain a little more control over it.

Maybe leave it in the car whenever I go on errands?  Or perhaps a single cell phone-free day each week? 

How about the rest of you out there....are you finding yourself checking for messages when you aren't expecting anything important?  Anyone else inhaling their telecommunications a little too often or a little too deeply?



Gram, Liz Mugavero, and Linda Rodriguez have won copies of Killer Show, please contact me at janbroganbooks@gmail.com so I can get your addresses and have a book sent to your homes.

On Props

JAN BROGAN _ As the Boston Globe noted yesterday, our governor of Massachusetts has taken to props. He wore a black fleece emblazoned with the initials for MEMA "Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency," when he toured the town of Greenfield in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene -- even though he took no real part in the recovery action and surely, it was too hot for a fleece in August.

Apparently, it's the same fleece he wore during snowstorms. And he's also been known to put on firefighter jacket when the publicity moment felt right.

It's nothing new for a politician to try to convey an image. Scott Brown wore his barn jacket and drove a pickup truck when he was campaigning, and I think Ronald Reagan might have started it all with an informal sweater.

Tina Fey in her memoir BossyPants (which I heartily recommend) reveals that she first wore her glasses in the the SNL News segment because forgot to put in her contact lenses, but the glasses were so popular, they became du rigeur.

That got me to thinking about props. They're for everyone really. We already talked Tuesday about the high priced yoga pants I indulge in for yoga (although I hadn't yet told you about the mat, the yoga bag, or the Ugg sandals that complete the experience) and now I'll admit I have certain clothes I only wear when I'm on Martha's Vineyard - all of them longer, looser, and maybe a bit more hippyish. I'll spare you and not go into all my tennis gear - which goes well beyond sneakers and racquets.

But I even have props for writing - and that's outright silly. But yes, I have special typewriter earrings for when I'm doing speaking engagements or book signings, and a Shakespeare coffee mug for when I'm writing at my desk. (it was a gift, but still, is that pretentious, or what?)

At any rate, I think we all have our props. My question is: What are yours?

Writer's Challenge V

"It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction."
— Jonathan Franzen

JAN: My son told me about this quote and I just had to hunt it up and use it. Because its so TRUE. Email is my downfall.

Email and Hurricane Earl. I'm writing this Friday, in advance of Earl, in case we lose electricity or cable connection. I also had guests come today, so I confess, I've been vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, moving deck furniture and bikes into the basement, filling containers with water and restocking at the supermarket and the liquor store before we are all ordered off the streets at 2 p.m Also found the evacuation center and if I'm going to be honest, must admit I stopped by the beach to check out the big waves.

Pretty cool.

Anyway, upshot of the deal is that I haven't written a word today. In part that's also because I've done as much as a I can on both my novel and my non-fiction book proposal until I get home -- which is Tuesday. But tomorrow, if there is electricity post-Earl on Martha's Vineyard, I vow to go back and fuss with my synopsis just to keep my head in the writing game.

OKAY, IT"S TOMORROW: SATURDAY.

Earl was such a bust, the winds didn't sweep away the whiffle ball inadvertently left on the deck. But I did get to write first thing this morning today. I did it by writing in my bedroom before I even came down for coffee with my house guests. Every just thought I overslept.

I am so dying to get home to my office, my printer, and my research materials, that I just called and made my car reservation earlier off the island.

How's it going for everyone else?? Are you thwarted by weather, Labor Day weekend celebrations or have you already moved onto September and the post-summer work ethic?

YOU NEVER KNOW DAY

Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man’s son doth know.
**********Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 3.

HANK: This vacation time of year, my thoughts turn to love and travel. Why? Because just this time of year, 14 years ago, I met Jonathan.

I had been invited to share a house with a group of friends in Nantucket. I was six months (or more?) out of a deadend reationship (another story) and said--no thanks. And then I reconsidered. Of course, why not go? So I packed up my books and my bike and my tennis racket, and headed to Nantucket on the ferry.I was so--unready to meet someone, I didn't even bring any makeup. (I will pause while you howl with laughter.)

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, another person sharing the house had invited Jonathan. And the other person didn't know I was coming.

I arrived from Boston. Jonathan arrived from Boston. I took one look and thought--yikes, get me to drug store make-up counter. (I didn't go, by the way. I thought--this is me. Take it or leave it.)

We haven't been apart since then.

But we don't celebrate the anniversary of the day we met. Every year, we celebrate the anniversary of the day BEFORE we met. We call it "You Never Know Day." Because you never know what wonderful thing is just around the corner.

How did you meet your true love? By chance, by choice, by fix-up, by proximity? And how do you know it was the real thing?

JAN: Although my older brother and I hung around a lot together, when I followed him up to Boston University he told me not to expect to hang out with his college friends. I had to make my own friends.

A year later, he decided that he really didn't like my friends, especially not my boyfriend, who he claimed spoke in "monologues." So he fixed me up with one of his friends, Bill. He didn't tell me he was fixing me up, he just brought Bill back to his apartment one night when I was there cooking him dinner, and we went to a party afterward, Then he pressured Bill until he called and asked for a date. And yes, I knew immediately it was the real thing.

My brother passed away young - at 26-years old. Ironically, since I stayed in Boston, I've spent my entire life hanging out with his college friends.

HALLIE: Mine was a fix-up too. I was a junior at Barnard when I ran into an ex-boyfriend on the corner of Broadway and 116th Street. He asked how I was and I said "fine." In truth I was between men but this ex was an extremely odd duck and I didn't want to give him any ideas. He must have been far more perceptive than I gave him credit for, because a few hours later I got a call from his roommate inviting me to a college hockey game. I went and had a great time. Took me a lot longer than my husband to realize it was "the real thing." But 40+ years later I'm utterly convinced.

ROBERTA: Sorry to hear you lost your brother so young Jan--sounds like he was the best kind of friend! I met John at a singles tennis night at the racquet club in the next town. We got matched up for mixed doubles and had a good time. But when he called to ask for a movie date, I couldn't remember who he was. (I attribute that to being blinded by my infatuation with an inappropriate guy who was quite enamored of himself.) After about six months of playing doubles with John (as friends), I began to realize just how special he was. So I invited him to dinner one night. "Who's coming?" he asked. "You," I said. And we've been together ever since.

HANK: Aw, Roberta, that's so sweet.

RO: Well, I knew right away Bruce was the one. He took a little convincing though. To the tune of 13 years before we actually got married. He was the boss when we first met, and um, otherwise engaged. I left the company and got on with my life and then we hooked up again in - of all places - Las Vegas, where we were both attending a video convention. At a show filled with fading B actors, wrestlers and adult movie stars, we were two of the more normal people there. It was fate. Then we dated for 10 years. (Why rush into anything?)

HANK: I was at a signing the other night--talking about AIR TIME (on sale tomorrow, whoo hoo, stop by here then to hear more and WIN BOOKS!).

Anyway, in AIR TIME Charlotte McNally has to decide if she's found the real thing--both in her reporter life (tracking down the source of phony designer purses), and in love. (And in the dedication: flight attendants.)

A woman came up to me afterwards, and told the story of how she'd always always always known she wanted to be a flight attendant. She got the job, passed the tests, and boarded for her first flight. And sitting in seat whatever--turned out to be the man she later married. And they just celebrated their twenty-fifth.

You never know.

How about you all?

(A big week coming on Jungle Red: Tuesday, big contest! Wednesday, Megan Kelley Hall with the secrets of promotion. Thursday, Marilyn Brant on seeing mystery authors as others see us. And Friday, coolest of the cool Seth Harwood!)

cynthia riggs

Cynthia Riggs is a 13th generation Vineyarder -- that's Martha's Vineyard - the setting for her terrific mysteries. Cynthia also runs a charming B&B on the island, in West Tisbury, which I got to visit once when I was lucky enough to be invited to one of her summer writers group sessions. If you've never visited the Island in real life, here's your chance to visit in your imagination. Cynthia's 8th in the series, Death and Honesty, is just out from St. Martin's.

JAN: Victoria Trumbull, your 92-year old protagonist is described as "indomitable."
And I've read that she is modeled after your mother. Tell us the joys and challenges of having a "senior sleuth" dig up the dirt on Martha's Vineyard.

CYNTHIA: One of my aims in writing about a 92-year-old sleuth is to attack rampant ageism. It's as bad as sexism, maybe worse. After a certain age one is considered half-witted and is consistently called "dear." Even Malice Domestic, which should know better, lumps its senior sleuth writers on cutesy panels. Victoria Trumbull, modeled after my mother, who lived to be almost 99 (for credibility, I had to make Victoria much younger), has some physical frailties, but mentally she's all there. She's had years of experience to draw on. She's no longer afraid to say what she thinks.

JAN: How does Victoria get involved in solving so many murders?

CYNTHIA: The police chief has come to depend on her because Victoria is related to most of the people on the Island, knows who's not speaking to whom, knows where they live, which is useful on an Island that prides itself on few or no street signs, and knows where the bodies are buried.

JAN: I love the plot line of your new book, Death and Honesty - a corrupt assessors office skimming off the top of wealthy landowners taxes. (Especially since I used to pay real estate taxes in West Tisbury) Tell us how you came up with the idea and how you developed or researched it.

CYNTHIA: A friend of mine, a wealthy landowner, ran afoul of the town's assessors, who treated him shabbily. I promised him I'd get even. I changed him into a former hooker to hide his identity, and changed the three male assessors into three elderly and venal Harpies -- they're named for the three Harpies of Greek mythology. Whenever the Harpies appeared in mythology, there was a dreadful stench, so one of my assessors wears too much perfume.

JAN: The critics rave about your evocative descriptions of Martha's Vineyard. What are the advantages and limitations (if any) of the island setting.

CYNTHIA: I was born on the Vineyard and have deep roots here. So it was natural to use the Island for my setting. Because I'm writing fiction, I take some liberties with places, but for the most part a reader visiting the Vineyard can follow Victoria's trail. I use real places, like Bert's Barber Shop, where Victoria gets her hair cut. The real Bert's displays the Victoria Trumbull books in a prominant place on top of an ancient console radio. I'm careful to avoid insulting real people and places. Knowing a setting intimately makes it easy to write about it. I'm not apt to get roads and topography mixed up.

By the way, we capitalize the word "Island" when referring to Martha's Vineyard (see both Island newspapers). We do not capitalize the word when referring to Nantucket or Manhattan.

JAN: Living on the Island, are you ever worried about stepping on anyone's toes with your fiction - say the local assessor's office, or is everyone a good sport about it?

CYNTHIA: I've reached the stage where I'm not afraid of stepping on toes. I think the assessors, as a matter of principal, don't read my books. After a book comes out, three or four people will come up to me and ask shyly if it's possible I patterned so-and-so (a sympathetic character) after them. No one claims credit for my villains. However, a lot of readers claim to recognize most of my characters, even ones entirely made up.

JAN: You also run a B&B in your family home, The Cleaveland House. Tell us about your writing schedule and how you can get any writing done in the summer months.

CYNTHIA: My writing and the Cleaveland House B&B work together just beautifully. I cater to poets and writers, who understand when I tell them I'm going upstairs to write. (And they buy my books.) I have only three guest rooms, so it's easy for me to deal with bedmaking and laundry, and I serve a simple continental breakfast. I start writing at 10 am and continue until about 5 pm, taking time out to pick up the mail, make beds, weed the garden, and think of what comes next in the story. Some guests read my manuscripts for me and make suggestions. Some end up in the books. All my guests are interesting.

On our visual world

JAN: At Illumination night on Martha's Vineyard, everyone in Oak Bluffs decorates their Gingerbread houses with candle or electric-illuminated paper lanterns. On the last note of a sing-along concert at the Tabernacle, all the houses light up at once. Its a beautiful event that transports you to back to earlier, more innocent days.

As usual, this year, the massive crowd strolls down the streets oo-ing and aw-ing. But what was different was bottlenecks in pedestrian traffic as every single person, it seemed, stopped and photograph each house.

Even me -- which is weird, because I'm not a visual person. But I've got a new digital camera that I finally understand, so I used the night-setting to capture every little detail. Even as I was doing this, I was wondering what the hell I was going to do with ALL these photographs -- aside from including a few in my blog, of course.

Still, I snapped and snapped, as if to give purpose to the experience. And then I realized what was going on. In the old days of photography, you had a 24 or 36 frame roll of film. You had to be judicious in what you decided to photograph. Now that there's no film involved, there's no discrimation. Everybody just photographs everything

Because I'm both non-visual and a Luddite, I take the photos and they sit in my camera for months until I finally upload them to my computer where, for the most part, they remain, useless.

But everyone else, it seems, is incorporating photos into the communication of even the most minor events. For example, last week, we were cooking crabs that my daughter and her boyfriend, Mike had caught. He grabbed his digital camera, snapped the crabs before boiling and immediately emailed the photo to his parents in Houston. So clearly digital photography is altering all our lives. For good mostly (see link below to Roberta's terrific video) but as writer, I naturally worry about its long term effects. Eventually will we no longer need words to describe the world because everything little thing is communicated visually and instantly? Or am I an alarmist to believe there has to be a verbal loss for all this visual gain?

RO: Whoa, that's a lot to chew on. Yes, every picture tells a story, don't it? There is this absolute conviction some of us have that everything we do should be in a reality tv show, or least memorialized digitally. Now that I have a blog and a website, I find myself snapping away and asking others to take my pic. I didn't even have a photographer at MY WEDDING I'm so averse to pix! But people are more likely to spend a few seconds looking at something than they are reading something. So I'm guilty too. Maybe when I've written a few more books I'll have fewer pix on my website!

To your point about a verbal loss, I would hope that the picture serves as a headline, not a substitute for content. I know that's naive. Anyone who remembers the pic of Michael Dukakis in the tank knows that, But I can hope.

JAN: And in the-picture-as-headline-department, let me rave about Roberta's video - her trailer for her new book, Deadly Advice. Being the non-visual type, I'm tough on book trailers. I usually think they are too long and purposeless, but Roberta is making me rethink. This video is brief and intriguing Of course, that goes for the very concept behind her books -- advice columnist protagonist. Who can pass over the advice column in the paper? Who can't be drawn to Roberta's mysteries?

CHECK OUT her trailer either by clicking below for a QuickTime version or at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdYZMWzdxy4

And give me your thoughts on this increasingly visual world. Has anyone else but me noticed that no moment goes unphotographed anymore?

On Beaches

Jan: I grew up with a house on the Jersey shore - a great house with a waterview and only a block from the beach. I also spent an entire summer working at an ocean front beach club -- checking badges (a Jersey thing) by day and serving seaside cocktails (also maybe a Jersey thing) by night.

So I think I know beaches. And while I I love the white sand and great body surfing of the Jersey shore, my favorite beach is on Martha's Vineyard. The one above. It's called Long Point and its in West Tisbury. I like it because it has both a terrific ocean beach (that you can see) and a fresh water pond (not pictured) and when you go from the ocean to the pond, the pond feels incredibly warm. At the same time, it's refreshing, because it's washing the salt off.

You go to the Jersey beach for action, you go to Long Point for peace. At sundown, the view across the pond and marshes is incredibly tranquil. I used to picture it in my head during plane takeoffs to try to get me to stop hyperventilating. Sometimes it even worked.

There are downsides to the beach, the first being, you have to be a member of the Trustees For Reservation -- which is actually a terrific environmental organization -- or pay the day fee. And you have to get there before 11 a.m. or after 3 p.m. because its very limited parking. But that also means, the beaches are NEVER crowded. And although I don't think there's an actual rule about it -- no one ever brings a boom box. All you ever hear are children laughing (okay, sometimes crying) and the waves.

Anyway, EVERYONE has a favorite beach. Come tell us about yours.

On a wish and a dare...

HALLIE: I know Rosemary is going to beat us all to smithereens with this question, but what’s the most daring (or foolhardy) thing you’ve ever done? And getting married doesn’t count.

I am one of the most careful people I know. Even after I moved to New York, it was months before I could make myself cross the street on a red light. My nightmares as a kid involved being in the school hallway without a pass.

One of the dumbest things I ever did was hitch a ride home from with my best friend Carlynne Lampert (where are you, Carlynne?). We were maybe fifteen years old, and about a mile from home when we stuck out our thumbs. The car that stopped was a white Ford Fairlane with a Spanish-speaking family of four in it. We squeezed in and they dropped us four blocks from Carlynne’s house. The mother lectured us in Spanish before dropping us off.

“Nothing happened,” I later insisted to my mother. What were we thinking? It was just our lucky day that nothing did.

JAN: The foolhardy list is endless. Especially in my teenage years when it was a miracle that I wasn't the next Karen Ann Quinlan. I also hitchhiked, not just for transportation, but for sport.

But in terms of daring, where I actually THOUGHT about what I was about to do, there are two: Singing solo at the annual Follies production (a spoof of the news.)in front of one thousand people.The second is jumping off the bridge on Martha's Vineyard into the ocean on state beach. (remember the Jaws movie?) If you go there, you'll see a zillion kids doing this, but I am severely acrophobic, so this meant wrestling my biggest fear down to the ground.

RO: Jan's thrown down the gauntlet and now the pressure is on..
I'm tempted to say the most foolhardy/daring thing I've ever done is to send my book to an agent, but I don't think that's what Jan's looking for. In retrospect some of my African adventures have been...adventures. I did get frostbite climbing Kili, I did briefly take the controls of a small plane flying from Nairobi to Arusha. I/we did roll into a Tanzanian town after dark with no place to stay. But none of those things felt daring at the time.

OK, I got it...Bruce and I were in Zihuatenajo (I have a thing for Shawshank Redemption.) I think we were actually on the beach where Andy and Red meet at the end of the movie (Barra de Potosi?)and we had a few beers with this local guy who seemed very friendly. We told him the next day we were heading north to Michoacan to see the butterfly migration but connections were difficult. He offered to drive us - a short cut (!) and we said yes. It was eight hours of bad road and I bumped around in the back of a tiny rustbucket that had to be 20 yrs old. Pretty stupid..I don't know what we were thinking. He could have killed us and they never would have found our bodies.

ROBERTA: okay, if getting married to a guy with two kids doesn't count as daring/foolhardy, I don't know what does! But I'll play...after college, I decided I needed to really leave home. So I loaded up my Chevy Vega with a tent, a Coleman stove, a hatchet, and my clothes and set out for Boulder from New Jersey with a girlfriend. (Actually the hatchet was a gift from my dad at the last minute--can you imagine how much he loved this plan??) Along the way, my friend decided she was going to marry her high school sweetheart. Although she wanted to stay with me until I was settled, I was too pissed to take her up on that offer. And not so crazy about Colorado--too far from the ocean and the mountains felt claustrophobic. So I drove to California by myself, found a campground in Santa Barbara, and lived in my tent until I found a roommate and a waitressing job. Whew, I wouldn't do that today!

HANK: So, Rosemary, did you see the butterflies? Let's see. I hitchhiked from Oxford, Ohio to Cincinnati to hand out campaign info for George McGovern. My college roommate and I were picked up by a nice man who looked like someone's father--he yelled at us all the way to Cincy about how stupid we were and gave us bus fare to get back to school.

And it wasn't on purpose, but I was flying in a tiny plane from Boston to Vermont to cover a story on some alleged cult that was abusing their cult children. We were going to touch down, meet a local videographer, run to the court, get the story, leap back into the plane and get to Boston in time for the 6pm news.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and so much fun to fly. SO I was looking out the window, watching the ground below, and feeling kind of glamorous.

Until I looked over at the pilot. And realized he was FALLING ASLEEP. I mean, his eyes were closed. CLOSED.

Me. And a sleeping pilot.

I have never talked so much and so animatedly in my LIFE. It was like Scheherezade, keeping the guy interested. To keep myself alive.

I also sang the entire song White Rabbit, (pulling out all the stops, and with new lyrics I had written for the occasion) with a whole band in front of a pretty big crowd. I literaly almost fainted afterwards when my adrenaline plummeted or something.

HALLIE: I knew you guys would show me up to be the piker that I am in the daring-do department. Jan and Hank, next time we get togehter you guys are singing a duet of White Rabbit.

On Fantasy

"But I never let a fantasy get away, because I always stop to analyze it." Shelley Duvall

Charlie Bakst reading Yesterday's Fatal on a beach in Italy.

Jan: I'm not talking about sexual fantasy (sorry guys), but writer fantasy. It goes like this: You are walking through a crowded airport, or through a crowded beach, and all of a sudden you come across someone reading YOUR book.

The perfect fantasy, of course, is when you have no idea who the reader is. He/she is just one of the many fans you never knew existed. In this photo, the reader, who sent me the pic, is a friend of mine, Charlie Bakst, but he was reading my book on a beach in Italy -- so I figure that makes up for him not being a complete stranger.

Once, my daughter, who has experienced the highs and lows of my writing career, called me up from college screaming excitedly. It turned out that as she was leaving the cafeteria, she saw the clerk at the register reading my book, A Confidential Source. So although I didn't actually come across the reader myself, I get fantasy points, right?

A couple of years ago, I was speaking at a mystery brunch in on Martha's Vineyard (hosted by Edgartown Books) and Robin Cook -- yes, the best selling medical thriller writer -- made a joke of hoping to stumble across someone on South Beach reading his book. You'd figure for Robin Cook this would be an everyday reality.

So I'm curious about how widespread this fantasy thing is. Is it just Robin Cook and me (I doubt it) or do we all have a verson of this, not just writers, but artists, musicians, teachers and even lawyers??

RO: It's a rush, no doubt about it. I haven't had the book version yet, but some years ago I produced a video called Say it By Signing, for friends and family of hearing-impaired people who sign; also acquired a book on the same subject. Not a huge market, but if my book does as well, it will be champagne all around. I saw the book in the window of a small bookstore in Bar Harbor, and the video was picked up by a nationwide chain (anyone remember the dear departed Nature Company?) I was ecstatic. it didn't even matter that I didn't make a lot of dough on it...I was thrilled. I think it's the Sally Field, "you like me..you really like me" thing.

HALLIE: My fantasy was to find my books for sale at an airport or train station newsstand. One day, my daughter phoned me from the Los Angeles airport to say that she was looking at a copy of OBSESSED right there at the newsstand! Then I found out they change the book displays every 24 hours.

In a related be-careful-which-fantasy-you-wish-for scenario--I was chatting with a woman author I'd met at a conference a few years ago. I told her my book-at-the-aiport fantasy, she she told me this story. Her husband worked for Hudson News (they're the franchise that owns all the newsstands in airports, Grand Central...) and he was able to use his muscle to get HN to order up 300,000 copies of her first paperback novel. She was ECSTATIC. The publisher was ecstatic, too. 100,000 copies were sold. Pretty great, right? BUT (and this is a very big "but") 200,000 copies were returned. This was very bad news for the publisher because they lost a huge chunk of change, and it was the last novel she did with them.

HANK: Here's a fantasy come true: look at this photo of my Prime Time as one of the staff favorites at the wonderful Willow Books in Acton MA. (Whoo hoo. See it? Right in the middle, top shelf?) Now, as for my next big fantasy: please all of you take a moment to send good karma that I make the deadline for Air Time. I'm not even going to tell you when it is...it's all too scary. Back to to reality.

JAN: So aside from the obvious ones -- book gets made into Oscar-winning movie -or making the NYT bestsellers list - I'm curious to hear about other writer fantasies. Also, the comparable career fantasy in other fields! There must be a chef fantasy, salesman-of-the-year-fantasy, and dermatologist fantasy, right?