"At least," the interviewer never fails to say, "it gets easier after you've written eight books."

It almost breaks my heart to have to answer, "Uh, no."

That isn't QUITE true.

It does get easier in some ways and harder in others.

If there is a way in which it is "easier," it is that I know what I need to do. If there's a way in which it's more difficult, it's that I know what I need to do.

I also know exactly who does it better than I do and what I would need to do to do it the way those others do (grow more smarts and imagination on my head in the night like a Chia pet grows clover).

My other writer friends never fail to say how much "fun" they're having with their current projects, how excited they are about them, how the words keep coming faster than they can set them down.

This would be.. not my experience.

Now, don't tell anyone.

I want people to think that I spring from my bed each morning with little thought bubbles of pearlized prose swirling about my head like clouds. I want people to think that I never wake up at 5 a.m. and wish I were someone else, who worked at a bank, because I have no idea what to have the characters do next (or even first).

When I tell people that I'm not what you'd call "a natural," they scoff. They say, "It reads so smoothly." (Well, they say that sometimes. They say that on good days.)

But for me, writing is like makeup. I spend a very long time and considerable effort on trying to make it look as though I spent a very short time and not much effort on it.

If the Foolish Genie were to come to my breakfast bar right now with a bottle of peanut sauce I could open and ask for one wish, it would be this. I would ask that writing burned as many calories as running does. If writing burned as many calories as running does, I'd have a body like Eva Langorio. Or at least like a middle-aged Eva Langorio. I wouldn't have to feel guilty for laboring so hard that some days, I write only a paragraph. (And they call this a livelihood!)

The Foolish Genie hasn't yet arrived, however. I'm staring at the peanut sauce bottle my 11-year-old used for her breakfast (don't ask) and the cap, while fetching, is not magical so far as I can tell.

And so here I sit, burning six calories an hour with my fingers skim and criss-cross the keys like an elephant in the Ice Capades.

If you are a writer, I don't know if you should take heart from this or be very, very afraid. I'd go for the heart, with a little peanut sauce.

best ever,
Jackie M.

I'm going to give you a mystery. It'll be fun, sort of -- but not quite -- like those party games people used to play. They'd gather and have dinner while figuring out, Agatha Christie-style, who among them was Colonel Mustard in the library with a noose.

Look at MySpace.

Look at my MySpace -- that is. It's very new, and, as I'm not 21 years old and accomplished at this, a bit raw.

In the gallery of my very unfinished page is a photo of a young woman dressed in black.

Next week, look at You Tube (another of the ubiquitous "get to know ME" sites on the 'Web that it seems every -- and yes, indeed, his brother) -- visits every day.

Sometime next week, you're going to meet this girl on You Tube. Her name is Hope Shay.. or is it? Did I create her? After all, the young woman in my upcoming book for young adults (and, I hope, their parents, who might read with them) is called Hope Shay. At least, that's her stage name. Her real name.. but you don't need to know that now.

Is she a real person? She's undeniably a real person. But what's her purpose? Is she the girl in the book? Is she pretending to be the girl in the book?

You figure it out.

As you watch her tell her story, write and tell me what you think.

mysteriously yours,

Jacquelyn Mitchard

Yesterday, I gave Amazon visitors a chance to get an unauthorized PRE-view copy of my upcoming novel, STILL SUMMER. I offered three beautifully bound copies (kidding! They are spiral-bound by the copy shop) since that was a much larger population. I'm also going to include a stunning prize (well, it's a little stunning) for any comments they might make.

I want to make the same offer to loyal site visitors (excluding, to my sorrow, my devoted students who already know so much about this novel that it bores them).

But since there are fewer of you, the pre-view for a pre-review will only go to one reader.

The book will be out at the end of next August.

It's a different kind of Jacquelyn Mitchard novel (although you'll notice the same bright, almost uncomfortable light that shines on the most complex relationships, as well as ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances. But it's also an adventure, a story of survival at sea in circumstances fraught by human frailty, treachery from within and without and the sometimes fragile bonds among friends, between mother and daughter.

I'm betting you'll like STILL SUMMER: but I want you to tell me if you DON'T!

Write me at the function on this site that says "E-mail Jackie" and request a copy (AND a fabulous trinket!) and one will arrive in a few days.

Don't forget to leave your address.

Then share your comments by starting a new discussion thread on the website.

This isn't my publisher's idea, but my own little experiment.

Let's see what comes of it.

It's finally cold today her here in Wisconsin -- not JANUARY cold, but at least not this creepy semi-fall we've been having all year. And last year. I've taken out my cross-country skis ONCE, only to see that they went straight through to the mud. I'm dreaming of a white February!

AND P.S. WATCH FOR THAT GIRL ON YOU-TUBE! KEEP CHECKING....

Next week's the premiere of something we're doing that hasn't been done before. Or maybe it's real.

In just a few days, Hope Shay, the character you've read about in the presenter for my newest book, NOW YOU SEE HER, a novel for young adults, becomes "real."

Or was she always real? She'll be real now.

In more practical terms, I'm going to try to "blog" more often, using this more as a diary. I'm going to figure out how to add photos, because my friend Holly Kennedy photographs her trash can and her Newfoundland dog and I want to be like her.

For those of you who've recently signed the guest book, and asked quesitons, please go to the section that says 'Email Jackie." I'll get the quesiton right away and usually answer within 24 hours. One person asked if there were literary criticisms of 'THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN,' written ten years ago. There are dozens and dozens. You can go on Amazon and read the readers' reviews or just Google the book and see reviews from many publicatons.

best and best,

Jackie M.

That's what the t-shirts that will appear on this website in a few days will ask. (The t-shirts are for girls. There are hats for guys; and they're good, too.)

Though they'll refer to my upcoming book, NOW YOU SEE HER.

But the question is real. And it's real for many young people.

You might think my publisher and I are devoting a great deal of attention to a book about a 15-year-old who fakes her own abduction. After all, she doesn't even do a school shooting!

But I think that kids like Hope Shay are far, far more common than we think. They are born and they are made, by this culture and by parents who want them desperately to succeed.

Hope's are parents who care -- too much.

Their daughter is so talented and savvy and smart it seems she's as invulnerable as she acts. In fact, Hope is very, very vulnerable indeed. She's both utterly charming and deeply, almost pathologically insecure, she is ... not too very different from many successful kids.

You might know kids like this. You might have kids like this. You might be one.

The world seems to treat kids as sophisticated, knowing, with a tough veneer -- so much so we almost begin to believe it. And this is how Hope is. Tough. In the know. The girl with everything.

But not really.

She's a trained actor. And it's a big act.

She has what appear to be the dream parents, who notice her talents and gifts, who nurture them and her, who listen, who are there for her. But there's such a thing as noticing overly often, caring too much, getting your heart and mind too tangled up in your child's stuff. Every kid who's had a parent like this knows what I mean.

Every parent who's been a parent like this knows what I mean. For I've been that kind of parent, too.

I'm not sure who'll get the t-shirts and hats (they've been vetted for having the right shape, being non-humiliating and minimally invasive by the "right" kind of kids) or how.

But I want them to draw attention to a different kind of teen book, one that's not so obviously about a social problem, such as date rape or drugs or crime or parents who are drunks or addicts or abusive or even vampires. Hope's parents, and Hope, are just a bubble to the left of ordinary. But what they do, all with best intentions, may be just as hurtful.

And Hope...well, because of all the attention she receives, feels she has to perform, to give more, to be more, to want more. Finally she doesn't know where her parents end and she begins.

In fact, the young woman who is "being Hope" on You Tube this and next month cried her heart out when she read the book. She realized, even though she is slightly older, how much like Hope she is and how nearly she could have gone Hope's way.

Do you know a Hope who may be vanishing?

I do.

That's why I care so much about this novel.

That's why I wrote it.

best and best,

Jackie M.

ON THIS VERY WEBSITE, you now can find the promised goodies -- tee shirts and hats (the tees are girls only, the hats unisex) for my new novel NOW YOU SEE HER. It's a young adult novel, but some parents can be allowed access as well.

For a small fee.

No.

Seriously, these are free to the first forty people who write to me and tell me how they found Hope (Hope Shay, that is, the primary character in NOW YOU SEE HER), and why they want to know more about her.

If you want an autograph on them, I'll sign them in white fabric marker to you.

So send me an e-mail at this website, or on Amazon, or at my private email, mitch@mailbag.com. And even if you write to me care of the Discussion Board or guest book here, send a private email, or I will not know how to reach you and send the shirt or hat to you.

You can also look on MySpace and, as of next week, on You Tube, where I hear Hope is alive and well.

Hope Shay even has her own MySpace page, which is something of a mystery even to me... because she's not real...

But she is.

Perhaps not by that name, but there really are young women like fifteen-year-old Hope, who are trophy children for their parents -- given every lesson and privilege in the name of love -- but expected to repay those gifts with unstinting excellence.

Every one of us has pushed a child too far; and it is because we care, because we're proud, because we shine in their reflected light. But Hope's parents are over the top, and so is Hope's lonely desperate reaction.

One adult review said that she was "confused" by Hope's story. But every teenager from age twelve to twenty really knows exactly what I'm writing about.

Maybe adults don't get it.

with best wishes for good reading,
Jackie M.

My beloved Stacey, friend and confidante for 22 years, left the hospital yesterday.

After more than forty days, she still is in a coma; and the muscles in her arms and legs are beginning to contract -- which her sisters-in-law and husband fight with daily massage.

In recent weeks, I've been sick or away from home, so I haven't been able to see Stacey. The last time was just before my son went to an audition for college. He asked if he could see Aunt Stacey. Before he auditioned, he needed his hair cut; and Stacey's husband, Mike -- a doll of a guy -- asked my son, "Who cuts your hair?"

Marty fought the tears and lost. No one cuts his hair, not for 16 years, except his Aunt Stacey.

Our life is rearranging around her loss. We are crossing dates off the calendar we made to see each other as couples and and families... and yet, she is still with us. Praying for a miracle is difficult to keep on doing when miracles are in such short supply. I haven't yet seen Stacey in the nursing facility to which she has gone; but from what I know of such places, despite the kindness and decency of the staff, miracles are even harder to find there.

So many of you wrote to tell me that you grieved along with me for Stacey, her husband Mike and their little daughter, Gabi. Please pray now that whatever her destiny has in store for her comes soon.

The long haul is long indeed, and when you can see where it often leads, too much to visit on all their dear heads. Emotion is at war with science; faith with fact. Still in shock at the shock of her illness, no one can imagine her death.

It's a time for empathy and sympathy, not pity. It's a time when information doesn't lead to power.

There's been a cloud over the sun since before Christmas, and "except for..." in every sentence. Seeing Stacey's husband, Mike, live in a twilight land, between then and now, is a drain and a strain. Mike was one of the most carefree men on earth. He had everything -- his beautiful wife, his beautiful daughter, a job where he is loved, a comfortable home.

An actor pictured in People magazine said something recently that stayed with me. He said his philosophy is, "You're alive today. Do 200 situps." It may not be 200 situps you do. But you're alive today. Read a book. Forgive a friend you may not have forever. Notice the birds in the field. Write a letter.

We are all temporary.

with love,

Jacquelyn Mitchard