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.