So why the Easter basket? Welp, that's about the thing I will miss: Easter eggs. One thing I enjoyed more than I probably should have was hiding them throughout the series. There are ZILLIONS of them.
You know what I mean, right? What I'm saying is that as I wrote these books, I sprinkled them with in-jokes for the kind of readers I hoped to have pretty much throughout.
Only fair to provide you with a kind of treasure map, I guess. So--stuff to be on the lookout for:
For-real Hudson River Valley places-: Stormkill is somewhere on the banks of the River, about an hour from the City. There are Dobbs Ferry references, Sleepy Hollow references (especially the cemetery), identifiable restaurants (Luigi's is totally Sam's, Dobbs, for example) and such...
...and MUSIC--So many music Easter Eggs!! Of course, The Grateful Dead. They are in every book. There are specific concerts. You can crawl down the rabbit hole after this Easter Egg, for sure. I tried super-hard to get the dates right. There are actually recordings accessible online of the first Dead concert Bean and Zak attend at the Fillmore East. The old Westchester County free form radio station, WRNW is the model for a lot of the action in Bean 2 (IN HER OWN TIME). LP track listings should be correct! Young Bean has a folk rock band, and is a fan of Sandy Denny and Simon and Garfunkel. But there's a ton of early and mid-seventies music references, from Norman Greenbaum to the Byrds. Grown-up Bean works in public radio, but Gracie, the heroine of the last two books, discovers David Bowie and learns to deal with the Robyn Hitchcock obsession her boyfriend brought home from college. It's no secret to my friends that I'm a major Robyn/Soft Boys/Egyptians fan, and I had to close the series with a wave at my old hero. It was fun writing it from a what-the-heck-is-this viewpoint. Classical fans will see WQXR (the New York City classical station of many years) shouted out. And anyone who knows about Fanny Mendelssohn will recognize bits of her story in the first few Bean books.
Hobart and William Smith Colleges are the models for Bodechon College, where Bean, Zak, and Amp go---bu loose models The geography of the campus and town (Geneva, NY) more or less work. Alums will find a few things that look a bit similar. There is one Cold-Duck-soaked Thanksgiving dinner that old friends in my class will recognize.
Love is love--and fiction is fiction. As in, these books are part of a very long, made-up story. But when you're world-building, you have to start from somewhere. And it's fun tucking in little bits of things that folks who have walked on a path like your own will find--and pop in their Easter baskets!! So have a look. I think you'll find plenty of goodies.
NEWSFLASH: BEAN FIVE, THE AFTER TIMES, IS ON PRE-ORDER for Kindle now--clicky click!