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I’ve written many stories about my family’s blunders for a long time now, even during the twelve years I wrote forDan’s Papers of the Hamptons, when my kids used to complain, ‘Mom-m-m, how can you tell the world about our idiosyncrasies? It’s so embarrassing!’ Okay, so maybe it is a clear case of exploitation, but my daughter and son, and especially my husband, supply me with some damn good material. Even our pets have gotten into the act . . . actually, our first pet was our son, Jeffrey, when he was a pre-schooler and he thought he was an imaginary dog named Duke. For a solid year he was always on all-fours, begged for his dinner dish to be placed on the floor, and chased his non-existent tail in circles. Of course we were a bit concerned at first, but he outgrew his identity crisis when I tried putting him on the leash.

Lines. My husband hates them; he has a phobia about the lines he has to wait on, you know with other people standing in front of you and behind you. For him – the people are always in Front. He truly does pick the wrong line every time. I’ve seen this happen over the past 40 years. Let me give you an example of this past Saturday, alone:

I was over-excited to go on my trip to the Historical Novel Writer’s Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida with two of my friends, Kathleen Vermaelen and JoAnn Phoenix. We had met years ago at the MFA writing program at Stony Brook and would be among hundreds of established and soon-to-be authors from all over the world, pitching our books to agents behind closed doors. OMG, why am I so frazzled? Have I seen way too many American Idol auditions?