Bean Four, Gracie's Time, is almost here! Ready for a little time travel?  It should be available in ebook by the end of August, and in paper soon after that.  How about that gorgeous cover by Jay Aheer?  If you look very closely, you'll see the "Bizarre" man down on the lower right.  That's because although there's a new cast of teens and the "base" year in the book is 2018, the original cast is very much with us--with their roles slightly adjusted.  You'll see.  And I think you'll like.

Haven't read the other Bean books?  Don't worry--this one stands alone just fine.  

Gracie Ingraham's a sophomore in high school when the Cuban Missile Crisis convinces her time-traveling parents that the safest place for their daughter would be far in the past.  But her dad's the mayor of Stormkill, and can't take her himself.  And her mom, a beloved local art teacher, feels too much responsibility for her students to leave.  Grace is left to navigate her first trip in time with  a smooth-talking, Corvair driving neighbor.  

So maybe that's why she ends up in 2018.

Here's her arrival at the Stormkill train station in early February of that year:

I went to the future! That made me feel shivery-sick inside. I didn’t mean to do it, though! I really didn’t! If you didn’t mean to, maybe you wouldn’t get in trouble. 
But wait a minute. If I really had Traveled far enough forward for things to have changed thismuch, it was proof that the world had survived! That thought should have had me celebrating, but I was way too busy being lost.
My clothes were all the wrong colors. Everyone else was wearing grey and blackand I had on green and orange plaid slacks under my corduroy jacket. Nobody seemed to notice. Maybe I didn’t look strange enough to make people stare. I wandered back over to the coffee stand and saw a copy of The New York Timesfor sale. It looked the same—sort of. But the photos were in color! And the date said February 12, 2018. So that’s where I’d landed. I wanted to read the news stories, but I didn’t get any further than the price. It was two-fifty, even more than coffee.
I sat back down on one of the ugly chairs to think. Commuters hurried through the station—a parade of padded coats that looked like quilts with zippers on them. Some people wore black leather jackets and dungarees—that’s what I called jeans until I came here. The glowing green numerals on the clock over the coffee stand across the room said 9:25.
I decided to see if I could think my way into Traveling home again. I didn’t even care if someone saw me doing it. I was tired from having stayed up half the night before, listening to my parents worry and plan. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I focused on Mom and her pretty apron, about the kids I was just getting to know in my new classes. I didn’t have a real best friend, but there was Debbie Gold, who liked to sew as much as I did, and she had a big brother on varsity football. Everyone said he was much smarter than he seemed. He had a great laugh…
“It’s the time and the place. Go on back, Gracie,” I whispered to myself over and over, but I didn’t Travel. I fell asleep instead…
And then someone was shaking my arm. I jolted awake in the too-bright train station to a man about my grandfather’s age. He was skinny, and he didn’t look much taller than me. His round glasses had clear plastic rims, and his reddish-blond beard was partly white. I could tell he was a priest from his black shirt and white collar, but he was wearing it with jeans and one of those padded coats I swear I will never get used to, even though I have one myself now. 
“Gracie?”he said. “Gracie Ingraham?” 
“Yes?”
His voice was a whisper. “I’m Father Higbee. I’m—a Traveler, like you. I saw you on your way. You seem to have taken an … unexpected turn.” His eyes were a pretty greenish-blue. They looked kind. And worried.
“You saw me coming?  Are you a Master Traveler?”
 He smiled and put a finger to his lips. “We don’t call them that anymore, but yes. You must be simply terrified. I’m here to help.”
“Are you going to bring me back home?”
Father Higbee’s eyes got even more worried, and the corners of his lips turned down. He looked even sadder than my parents had the night before. “This is complicated stuff, Gracie. Very.” He pointed at my suitcase. “Yours?”


What happens next?  You'll know by Labor Day!

And I'll be back in the USA by then.  I'm writing these words from Amsterdam in The Netherlands, on a houseboat in the old Jewish Quarter, a now-very-gentrified section of town that is still fascinating, especially for someone like me who loves to dream about traveling in time.  We're here until the end of next week.   

Amsterdam is very much the father of New York City, and it has the same multicultural open arms--but a European sweetness instead of our toughness.  I like it.  As long as you stay away from the hordes near Centraal Station and the Red Light District, it is a very livable city. Every evening that the weather is good enough, Ken and I climb onto the roof of the houseboat and watch the traffic on the canal.  Our favorites are the you-drive-em boats with confused tourists trying to avoid being squashed by the giant Lovers Canal Tours behemoths.  It's probably not nice to laugh at them...

By the way, if you find yourself here and you need a canal tour, go look up Those Dam Boat Guys.  Those are little boats that can get into the smaller, more interesting canals, and the captains call themselves Pirates.  A little hipster-cute, but fun.

Last night, Ken and I took in the last night of the Grachten Festival--a big group of percussion students from the local college playing Gamelan-style jazz on a huge barge in a canal about a mile from our place.  Total fun.  About two thirds of the way through, some local showed up in his little boat which was outfitted with a large stuffed lion head with a mechanism to make it open its mouth.  He cruised around the musicians a few times, silently roaring.  That's Amsterdam in a nutshell. (Heavy on the nut)

"Okay," I said, shaking my head.
"Why not?" said the Dutch woman next to me. 

Or as Zak would say, "Bizarre!"

​Hey.  I've got a new book!  Watch this space. 

So, yeah, like I said on Facebook, it's really happening!  A few days ago, I signed the contract on Gracie's Time. That book is going to be Bean Four! 

So what's the creepy map doing on my blog?  Well that scary document is a relic from the Cuban Missile Crisis, where Gracie's Time starts.  It's 1962, almost Halloween, and fifteen-year-old Gracie Ingraham wants nothing more than to get to know her friends at Stormkill High a little better, listen to The Tokens, and maybe get a ride in the hot new Corvair the cool bachelor down the street just bought.  

But her parents have other plans.  Gracie's dad is the mayor of Stormkill and a local history professor who idolizes President Jack Kennedy.  But he fears even the man he respects the most in the world won't be able to keep his daughter safe if the nuclear bombs fly--and it looks like they just might.  He's not convinced about fallout shelters, but he's got his own secret weapon: he and his wife Alda are Travelers, people who can go back in time.  They are certain that their daughter has inherited the Traveling gene.

So why not a trip back in time to the days before there were any such things as nuclear bombs?  Problem is that Gracie's parents can't just disappear. Her mom's a beloved local art teacher.  And the mayor of Stormkill--well, his sudden absence would be hard to explain.  Gracie, who has never time traveled before, will have to go alone!

Problem is, newbies make mistakes sometimes. And Grace ends up in Stormkill, 2018.  There's a whole new cast of young characters in this book, but if you want to know what happened to Bean, Zak, Claire, and Amp, the answer is here.  There's an abandoned mansion--but also iPhones, Instagram, and active shooter drills, which as Gracie learns, are  even scarier than duck-and-cover.  There's also a love story.  And a demon.  I think you're going to like this one.

IN OTHER NEWS, I've been writing poetry like crazy, too.  Just finished the April poetry marathon with the good folks over at The Waters, and I'm having a great time revising and sending out new work.

And then there's the poetry reading in Northern Jersey--Bergen County to be exact.  I'll be reading at the RIngside Pub, which is at 379 Bloomfield Ave, Caldwell, NJ.  7 PM on Saturday, May 25th!! The beer will be cold and the poetry hot--Rick Mullin and Hilary Sideris are often my partners in spoken word crime, and I can't wait to get onstage and ham it up--er, do a Very Serious Reading.

Actually, I'll have copies of Unforgetting, my latest poetry book, and some new work to try out on the crowd.  You'll come, woncha?

So yeah, there's a lot going on! 

And I think it's time to move away from my desk and repot those weary house plants I dragged outside yesterday.

Onward and upward!

No, this is not my book, but I wish it were!  And it's not just because I'm partial to other Christines.  In Forgiven are the Starry-eyed, Christine Doré Miller takes on an issue young women need to understand: intimate partner abuse.  Chances are, you know someone who's dealt with it--or maybe that someone was you.  First love feels amazing, but it also leaves you vulnerable.  Miller's heroine, Andrea Cavanaugh, learns the hard way.

Naive sixteen-year-old Andrea Cavanaugh is elated when Josh, a charismatic, bright-eyed piano prodigy, becomes her first boyfriend. But the closer she gets to him, the more she realizes that he is not the boy she first fell for. In its poignancy and emotional darkness, Forgiven Are the Starry-Eyed takes you deep into the delicate and devastating web of shame that spirals from the depths of dating violence when dreamy teenage love turns dark. Andrea must find not only an escape, but a belief that she is even worthy of freedom.

Friends, meet the newest author at Evernight Teen (my patient and lovely publishers), Christine Doré Miller!  I asked her how she came to write this, her first novel.  Here's what she told me:

Andrea's story has been inside of me for a long time now and I can't even express how good it felt to let it breathe and exist outside of my head once I started writing it down. I was inspired by a lot of things, some from my own experiences as a survivor of teen dating violence and some from the stories of many other teens who have suffered abuse at the hands of an intimate partner, whether it be emotional, physical, verbal, and/or sexual.

A new study shows that 60% of teens in the U.S. have experienced some form of abuse from a person they were dating. This is a staggering statistic, especially considering it's not an issue that is often talked about. It became my mission to spark a dialogue on this topic through a novel that could be crafted from the voice of a modern teenager. I spoke to many teens and adults alike, some who experienced dating violence themselves and some who witnessed it. Both groups felt helpless and isolated by the shame that spirals from this type of abuse, even if you're on the outside looking in, so I created Andrea Cavanaugh to be a voice for this topic. She is a fictional character but her struggles and experiences are quite real and represent things happening on a daily basis.

If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, or if you have questions about abuse, please call 1-866-331-9474 or visit www.loveisrespect.org


                                                                                *********

Buy Links: 
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2W9JEa6 
Evernight Teen: https://bit.ly/2UTGp9Y
Nook: https://bit.ly/2IKkGuW
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2UF9noY
Smashwords: https://bit.ly/2Gz485m

That thing over on the right is the last Super Moon, as seen from our yard in Rockland County.  It feels like there have been a lot of super moons lately--or am I just imagining that?  I saw  a comment on Facebook about how the words "the moon" in conversation are almost always preceded by "Oh, Wow!  Look at..."  I think that's true.  If you notice the moon enough to comment on it, it's probably huge.  Or blood red.  Or really bright. 

I'm in a Super Moon moment right now.  I just sent in a manuscript to my usual young adult publisher.  Don't usually admit that in public, because I believe it jinxes things, so as I nervously wait for the direction of the acquiring editor's thumb, all I can do is stand slack-jawed, gazing at the sky.  Oh, wow.  I finished another book.  And we shall see what comes of it it.  Cross your moonlit fingers for me, OK?

Suddenly there is--gasp--time.  I could actually READ a book (I've done some of that these past few days).  Or perhaps revise some of the backlog of early-draft poems I've built up and get them submitted (doing that, too).  There's a book I just read by a friend of a friend that I want to review: Passing Through Humansville by Karen Craigo.  It's a really terrific collection of poems, and now that I've actually blown the dust off my blog, I think I'll get that review taken care of this afternoon.  Ever read a book by another writer working your side of the street, LOVED it and NOT been jealous?  Karen's book is good enough to disarm writerly jealousy. There's a Super Moon moment for sure. Oh, wow. 

I've also been planning another poetry reading in NYC with my friends Rick Mullin and Hilary Sideris.  Those two and I had a great time at KGB Bar in downtown NYC a couple of years ago, and I'm looking forward to a Saturday afternoon in May when we can put on another show.   KGB's a really fun place, full of Soviet-era nick-nacks, dark and broody, and very literary indeed.  Watch this space.

It's Ash Wednesday today, and being as Ken and I work for the Presbyterians now, I'm not going to go get a dirty face, even though I'm still officially an Episcopalian.  (I've fallen out of the habit of making New Year's resolutions lately also.  I'm much more of a play-it-as-it-lays kind of girl. ) But I do like liturgy and annual traditions, so perhaps my Lenten discipline this year will be to keep this blog a bit more active.  It's good to write about writing, and it's good to do the kind of essay that blogging requires. 

I was going to say something about the atrocious state of American politics right now, but maybe that's too much discipline.  Next time.

So onward and upward.  And do cross your fingers about that manuscript for me, willya?

And so I'm past the first flurry of the new poetry book dropping.  I've got the friends and family autographed copies out.  I've got my first few Amazon reviews.  I have what amounts to a launch on Sunday afternoon, November 4th at 3 PM with Carmine Street Metrics, down at our favorite Tiki Bar: Otto's Shrunken Head on 14th St. 

Fact is, I'm a can of ham, and while most folks dread public speaking, I actually enjoy the whole poetry reading experience: picking out the most crowd-pleasing poems, getting dolled up in my boho best, and being  (God, I hope) highly entertaining.  Okay, so I do tremble a little while I'm doing it, and I'm always relieved when the thing's over, but I'm not going to lie and say I don't like standing there in front of the mic. 

Plus, Tiki Bar.  And my husband's driving.  So rum it is--after I read!

Carmine Street Metrics are a cool bunch of folks, too.  I'll be sharing the bill with Midge Goldberg and Bob Crawford, terrific poets both. I'm looking forward to seeing old friends and new at the shindig, and I'll have books to autograph.  The East Village is not a tough place to park on Sunday afternoons, usually.  If you're even a little local and you're reading this, I hope you'll join Midge, Bob, and me.

In other poetry news, I still haven't gotten into Rattle's Poets Respond (one of these days, dammit).  Got a few packets out here and there, though.  Stay tuned.  Did place a poem called "I Was Awakened By A Nearby Lighting Strike" in a new and good little online 'zine called The Lark. And the gorgeous Peacock Journal is back in action and was good enough to take three more of mine. 

I'm about halfway through the first draft of a yet-unnamed spin-off from The Bean Books.  I'm really loving writing it.  It's a time traveling departure: first person and contemporary.  But there are characters from the original trilogy, now grownup...so yes, you will get to see Bean and Zak again.  And Amp.  My main character is a refugee from the Cuban Missile Crisis who time traveled in the wrong direction and ends up in 2018, effectively going from duck and cover to active shooter drills in school.  Which sounds a lot darker than the book actually is.  This one is a bit of a tear-jerker in places, though.  It has younger characters: high school 9th and 10th graders, and could easily be read by tweens. More on it as it develops.

Anyway, you can get a copy of Unforgetting at Amazon, Kelsay Books, or autographed one directly from me by messaging me on Facebook or using the Store page on this blog. 

So that's what's up in the haunted house by the creek lately.  Hope your autumn is crisp and golden and that you're bearing up under the onslaught of depressing news by eating well, reading well, and taking sun-dappled walks in the October woods. 

First things first: AMAZON HAS UNFORGETTING READY FOR PURCHASE!!!   Also, I have an author's box of books heading for me if you want an autographed copy, so let me know.  But that'll be a week or so... If speed and convenience is your thing, clicky click HERE!!

Life is rich.  There's a lot going on.

In fact, sometimes it feels like I drank a metaphorical milkshake a little too fast and gave myself  karmic brain freeze.  But it's all good.  Cast your eyes over to the right.  That's Bella, ladies and gentlemen.  She is a spirited two-year-old gal, newly freed from the burdens of maternity, her five kittens all launched, settling in to her new home on The Potter Ranch.  I love her ridiculously much.  She is going to be a handful.  My browser history lately: cat toys, feliway spray, how to introduce kitties...

Our lovely Bentley cat (a getting-older Bengal mix boy) is afraid of her.  Oh, Bentley, don't growl at Bella.  She doesn't play.  But considering that it hasn't even been a week, the supervised sniffing and exploring is going well.  No one has even hissed yet, although there was one run-for-the-roses through all three stories of the house in which we needed to intervene.

So I'm doing the Jackson Galaxy thing, submitting poems, social media-izing my new poetry book, and working on a new YA that I think will end up being sort of a Bean 4.  It's a fourteen year-old girl from the Cuban Missile Crisis days whose time traveling parents try to send her to the past to get her out of harm's way.  Except their little circle of time travelers aren't as skilled as they boast of being, and our heroine ends up in 2018 instead--going from duck and cover from The Bomb to duck and cover from active shooters.  Some of the adult characters are from the Bean series, except they are in their sixties now.  It's a challenging but fun book to write, and a lot less dark than it sounds. 

In other news, it stopped raining.  So I think I'm going to stop blogging and see if it's not too hot to make it around Congers Lake.  Ken's upstairs with Bella, Bentley's on the snooze in the TV room (the warmest place in the house when we have the AC on, natch), and it's time for some sunlight on my shoulders.

Poems and novels and cats, oh my!

Wow.  I really need to get to the nail salon. 

But other than that, there is cause to rejoice!  I just turned in page proofs on UNFORGETTING, my third collection of poems, due out any minute from Kelsay Books.

I write more fiction than I do poetry lately, but poems are still my first love.  The ones in this book were written over the course of the last five or six years, and they are about my family, mostly.  I realized as I spent time with my mom, who is now 94 and bravely dealing with non-Alzheimer's dementia, that the stories we remember about our lives are pretty much everything.  Mom is trying hard to hold on to her stories--and when she can't remember them, she does something that's very much like what I do when I'm writing fiction: she embellishes.  She invents. 

Yes, it's dementia, but it's also her creative approach to it.  I call it UNFORGETTING, and that's what the book is about.

There are a lot of poems in it about my own growing up, and about my mother as a younger woman.  Some of the poems started out as side pieces to the fiction I was writing, much of it set in the early 1970's.  I intended the book to be readable as a narrative, too, so the poems have a chronology and a sort of story line.  It's much more ambitious than my other two poetry books, and I'm really proud of it.

Two of the poems in the book were nominated for Pushcarts, and one was actually commissioned by and broadcast on ABC Radio news. 

Now comes the hard stuff: promotion.  I'll let you blog folk know when we're up on Amazon, and when I have copies. 

The gorgeous cover art, by the way, is by my long-time poetry illustrator and best buddy Nancy Quaglia.  It's a picture of the house where she used to live with her family in Piermont, NY.

In other news: the wicked Aletta Thorne has a new release coming out soon, too.  Or at least that's what all the best ghosts say. 

And my fiction-writing self is working on a new YA book, linked by some characters to the Bean trilogy.  I also have some new poems that I'm sending around.  Guess I'm back from vacation!

Have some daisies--and the last of the very-bolted lettuce!  My husband tore out that now-bitter lettuce last night.  But black-eyed Susans have never been lovelier. Thanks to my sister, non-black-eyed Susan, for calling the Bee Shepherds--an gentle bee moving (not killing) service--to remove the nasty yellow jackets from the garden gate, where they had burrowed into the ground and built a nest. We are now yellow jacket free, and the cukes and the cherry tomatoes are coming in, too.

When the third novel in your YA trilogy gets Book of the Month in a poll on Long and Short Reviews after they gave it four and a half stars, that's wicked cool, and deserves a hamburger out.  So Ken and I went and got one, taking The Mom along for the ride and the snack.  To the right is what happens if you give an iPhone to your 94-year-old mom and show her how to use the TinType app.  I actually really love the picture.

I'm still pretty chuffed about that WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? review from LAS.  It's one thing to get a solid review from a friend-of-a-friend or a fellow author who knows you from the Facebooger. But when you get a good review from someone who has no reason to give it to you other than her own pleasure at having read your book, that's a reason to put on your big, black reading glasses and let your husband make rabbit ears behind  your head. 

Go Bean and Zak!  The whole Bean Book Triology is available from Amazon in your choice of media: either Kindle or paperbacks.  And you can contact me through this blog if you'd like an autographed paperback.  Here's the link to my Amazon author page; you can get to all my books from there.

And here's my official badge and everything. WOOT! 

Meanwhile, it's National Poetry Month--and time for me to get back to my writerly roots.  I was a poet long before I wrote YA fiction, and I often marathon online with other poet friends in April, writing a poem a day.  One other thing I'm really happy about is the fact that writing fiction has loosened me up as a poet.  That sounds braggy, and I didn't mean it to--but all the woodshedding I did with editors over the three Bean books feels like it changed the way I look at writing in general. I wasn't going to marathon this  year, but I'm so glad I chose to!  As always, I'm having a great time at The Waters, a fine and dandy poetry workshop and online space to draft and get support.

Speaking of poetry, I just turned in my final round of edits to Kelsay Books for Unforgetting, which will be my next book of poems, due out soon.  I've chosen a piece of art for the cover, and gotten my blurb requests out...Don't have a cover design yet, but if you'd like a sneak peek, here's the painting I'm using.  It's by my longtime friend and cover artist Nancy Quaglia. 

Unforgetting is a book about memory and memory loss. It's very much about my mom as she struggles with memory--but it's also about my own memories.  A lot of the poems in the middle of the book started out as sketches for chapters in the YA books, which are set in 1970 and 1972, so it all kind of fits together.  And the book is also about losing my dad, with whom I had an intense, often difficult relationship. 

Nancy's cover art is a beloved memory of mine.  It's the kitchen door to her old house in Piermont, a yard in which I spent a lot of time with her and her lovely daughters.  I thought a door was appropriate for a book about memory.

...and as I type these words, the sun has just come out here in the lower Hudson River Valley, where I live.  We had CRAZY storms earlier today, and I am grateful that the flooding near me wasn't worse than it was.  So--happy spring!  Happy NaPo!  And hug a writer today!

Bentley the Cat doesn't usually let the world get him down.  Especially since he has spent the past month wiping out every mouse in Rockland County along with every mouse that has ever thought of moving here.  Silly things come into our house and blam. But he was in a moody mood the other night, and I got this snap.  He's upstairs happily absorbing radiator heat in the living room as I type these words in my drafty study with my turtleneck pulled up to my nose. 

So first things first: my cats are not  sad.  My cats are  warm --very warm, thank you very much-- well-fed, loved, and happy.  They don't worry too often.

And neither do I!  That is because Bean 3, WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? is finally out in paperback!  Yes, friends, you no longer need a plastic bag for your Kindle to read WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? in the bathtub. 
You can now turn actual paper pages.  And I can set up a Goodreads givewaway (which I probably will a bit later in the day--film at eleven).

Could I just take a minute to way WAAAAA-WHHHOOO?

Yes, I'm as digital as someone who grew up during the FIRST cold war can be, and I do love me the ebooks.  But when a book comes out with an actual cover and a spine and it makes that lovely card-shuffling sound as you run your thumb over  its pages, that's when it feels real. 

And speaking of shuffled cards, there are plenty of them in WHAT TIME IS IT THERE?   Tarot cards, to be exact.  For that I have an actual professional tarot reader, Hilary Parry Haggerty, to thank.  A long time ago, she was a student in an English class I taught.  Now, she's an ace astrologer and tarot reader, and a darn interesting Facebook pal.  I thanked her in the dedication.  I also thanked poet Risa Denenberg, co-founder and editor of Headmistress Press (and first-rate nurse-practitioner) for advising me on the journey of Samantha Thorne, a character who is important in all three books.  First two paper copies in the box heading toward me now go to those two helpful women!  Hilary and Risa, I hope I got it right.

Bean Three is my favorite of the trilogy.  The paranormal stuff is darker, the 70's stuff is funnier, and there's a new character named Amp whom I really, really love.  There's someone called The Flying, Singing Angel With No Feet.  And there's probably the best soundtrack of any of the Bean Books: the usual Grateful Dead, of course, but also Alex Chilton, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Judee Sill, and The Incredible String Band, to name just a few.  I'll have to do a YouTube thing today, too. 

I have a few reviews in on the Kindle side of the book (and they'll show up on the paper side soon, too), but gosh, I'd love it if some of my analog buddies bought and added to the discussion by leaving a review.

So enough bragging and wheedling!  THE PAPERBACK IS OUT.  Yay!

    My husband says what’s wrong with me is an author’s version of postpartum blues: I’ve just written the last book of my time traveling series, The Bean Books, on Evernight Teen, and I’m feeling adrift, almost let down.  And it’s true—I’m in that weird place where I don’t have reviews yet on Bean Three, What Time Is It There? and that’s kind of crazy-making.
 
    But it’s not just that.  The current #Me,Too discussion has resonated deeply with me. I have a story.  I’ll tell it in a bit—or as much of it as I can stand to.  But first I want to talk about the plot of What Time Is It There? and why a bunch of it is set in my main character’s college radio station. 

     I was fascinated with radio at Bean Donohue’s age—even as a little kid.  The odd geek girl who built a crystal radio in the 1960’s, I  listened to the DJ’s spinning the records as much as I did the Beatles.  I played with a shortwave radio receiver my father had built, loving the BBC announcers and the odd languages I couldn’t even identify.  

     When I got to college at a little upstate New York place much like the one I send Bean Donohue to in What Time Is It There?, I headed straight for the campus FM and got myself a show.  There were almost no other women on the station: an older mostly newscaster, then a few girls who came up behind me.  So an awful lot of my best friends when I was in undergrad school were men. That was weird at first, but I was grateful  for them.  I’d been pretty reclusive in high school—and the friendship of those young guys was refreshingly straightforward and unambiguous.  Or so it seemed to me.  Yeah, I got creeped on some.  But mostly not.  Mostly.

    I knew when I got  my main character Bean into college, it had to be in a book that was both a romance (don’t worry—there’s plenty of Zak in here…just not the way you’d think he’d show up) and the story of a great friendship.  Bean’s best friend in college is a guy.  Amp is a Mormon, like a long-lost dear friend of mine from college days—a music and God-obsessed hippie Mormon, one who's beginning to doubt his parents’ faith.  His real name, which no one uses, is Briggs Higbee.  Amp works on the campus station with Bean, and he may be my favorite character—ever.  I really want you to read the book so you can meet him.

    See, I’ve been thinking and thinking and here’s what I’ve come up with: men and women aren’t generally friends.  It takes a special kind of guy to put aside the power dynamic and truly befriend (not just fall in love with, although the two things can be very happily related) a woman.  If men and women knew how to be friends, I believe harassment and assault would be rare.  Don’t get me wrong.  There’s plenty of romantic love in my new book.  But there’s also plenty of NON-romantic love, and I think that’s super important, too.

    I can’t remember whether it was my own junior or senior year in that little upstate school I was telling you about when Jean Shepherd, a New York City radio story-teller and author I’d idolized since my childhood, came up to tell his tales.  Jean Shepherd is the man who wrote the short story the film A Christmas Story is based on, and I adored him as a kid. He’d read a letter on the air that my high school BFF (another lovely and very nerdy girl) and I had written to his WOR radio show back when we were in junior high or maybe 9th grade.  

    So of course, I was very excited to meet Shep, as his fans called him—and very proud to be (as Bean is in the third book) program director of my campus FM.  When he spoke at the school’s auditorium/performing venue, I made sure we did a remote broadcast of it, and stayed back in the studio to run the mixing board and interview my childhood hero when his talk was over.

    My memories of that night are scattered. After the speech was over, I cut to DJing records.   I remember looking up into the mirror over the board—and seeing Jean Shepherd come into the station with a big crowd of people.  The control room was soundproofed, but a friend of mine told me what happened just before he opened the door to where I sat.

    “Hey, Shep, what’s  your hobby?” someone yelled.
    “Chicks!” said Shepherd, and everyone laughed.

    Then he was standing a little too close behind me.  “Hey, baby, you’re peaking kind of…high,” he said—and that was true.  In my nervousness, I wasn’t watching the levels of the music going out over the air.  What followed was a really uncomfortable interview full of what we’d today call “that’s what she said” jokes.  Or maybe we'd just call it harassment.  I mainly remember being so embarrassed I could hardly breathe.
 
    Afterwards, Shepherd insisted on going to the Student Union with me.  He demanded that I log off from the show I was doing and go with him--that very minute. “Hey, baby, you run this place,” he said.  

    “I’ll take the show,” said a friend who’d come in with the crowd—guy named Art, the music director, probably meaning some flavor of well.  So I was swept along with my old hero, arm candy, to a table full of laughing, hooting guys—not the good friends I’d thought they were. 

      I need to make one thing very clear: to Shepherd’s credit, he did not force himself on me in any physical way—although when the evening was over, it was obvious to me that things were turning into a your-room-or-mine situation.  He mentioned his hotel.  I ended up quietly calling campus security, who drove him back there.  The last thing Jean Shepherd said to me, out the open back window of the white sedan that drove him away, was his room number.

    Shepherd died when I was in my forties, and I heard about his death on my way to my English teaching job at the local high school.  Despite everything, I had to pull the car off the road and cry for a few minutes.

    For years, I told this story as a kind of joke.  This year, it’s not funny anymore.  Zak in The Bean Books says “Love is the heaviest energy of all,” and if there’s a theme that ties all three of my young adult books together, that is it. But there are all kinds of love. I’m hoping that Bean Three, What Time Is It There?, will add the friendship that I believe is still possible between men and women to the mix.

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