I was a huge Mr. Rogers fan. He sang that catchy neighbor song, and told us we were fine just the way we are, and assured us that when the water goes down the bathtub drain, we definitely wouldn’t go with it. You could believe a guy like that. Turns out he was right about the tub drain.

He was right about neighbors, too.

In my novel DEEP DOWN TRUE, Dana Stellgarten is a newly divorced mom with loads of problems of her own. Nevertheless she finds time to cook dinners for a young family with a dad with cancer, through a “fictitious” organization called Comfort Food.

I have an admission to make: Comfort Food is real.

I lifted it—lock, stock and disposable pan—from an organization I belong to called Neighbor Brigade. It was started by two women in my town who received numerous dinners during their own bouts of cancer. Today Neighbor Brigade is growing like every fabulous idea should, and is now in nineteen cities and towns in Massachusetts.

Here’s a story from their latest newsletter:

A Norfolk family has three children, ages 2, 4, and 8. After complaining of head pain and subsequent treatment for an ‘ear infection’ for over a month, their 4-year-old  was diagnosed with a tumor in her skull. She has been responding well to treatment, but treatments are difficult, time consuming and nearly an hour away from home. Her mom wrote recently:

“You have no idea how nice it was to come home and have dinner all ready for us. I was getting ready to go in the house and heat up leftovers from three days ago but I was not looking forward to it! I saw the meal in our milk box and it was like finding a pot of gold! You have no idea how it made my night. We just got through a very long, nail biting day and have another nervous night ahead of us. She is miserable and just wants me next to her, so to have dinner all done for me so I can cuddle on the couch with her, is such a blessing you will never know! Please pass this thank you on to whoever was so nice to make this meal for us!”

Of course, we all want to help a friend or neighbor who’s experiencing that kind of crisis. But what Pam Washek, co-founder and executive director of Neighbor Brigade figured out is:

1. We don’t always know our neighbors.
2. We don’t always know when they’re hurting.
3. We want to know, and we want to help.

Since 2003, Pam and company have honed the program to a dazzling example of compassion and efficiency. They even post what the prior volunteer cooked, so the family doesn’t get chili six times in a row. And there’s no big commitment–you help when you have the time.

If you’d like to start a Neighbor Brigade in your own town, Pam and her team have made it very easy with clear steps and guidelines.

The great and saintly Fred Rogers has gone on to his reward. I’d like to think that when he wrote that wonderful song, reaching out like the Neighbor Brigade does was just the kind of thing he had in mind.

May his neighborliness live on in all of us.

I’ve been told I need to blog more. I am a slacker blogger.

I find this pretty funny, since in most aspects of my life, I am the Anti-Slacker. You should see me on vacation. Before a recent trip, my kids sat me down and told me they were not going to put up with my making them “see everything.” (How abusive!) It was vacation—they wanted downtime. They practically announced this in unison, which was disturbingly convincing, since there’s four of them, and they rarely agree on anything, much less a plan of action. Or inaction, as the case may be.

I’m not resistant to blogging, I just tend to be a late adopter. Maybe most of this are like this—we bop along, doing what we always do, and don’t adjust until someone we like and trust says, “Hey, take a look, you should try this.”

Or in my case, it was when the PR department said, “Um, Juliette? How about doing a little more blogging—your readers might enjoy reading your stuff between novels.”  This was, of course, code for “Blogging has become one of the most important PR tools for marketing books (or pretty much anything) these days. You blogged three times in the last year. Which officially designates you as a slacker blogger.”

I love the PR folks. They’re so gentle. But I can read between the lines.

There’s a hilarious New Yorker piece called “Subject: Our Marketing Plan” by Ellis Weiner. It’s a farcical note written to an author about what will be expected of him in terms of promoting his book. It’s get-your-inhaler funny—in part because it’s a little too close to home. In the Good Old Days (which as a rule, I don’t actually believe in), writers wrote, and that was pretty much it. Now, we’re like Bert in the opening scene of Mary Poppins, a one man band who doesn’t play any of the instruments all that well.

Actually, there are plenty of great blogs out there, and I have to say I really do enjoy them. Beyond the Margins is one of my faves. But wow, they’re so … what’s the word? … GOOD. Can I offer anything nearly as wonderful? If so, can I figure out the most technologically optimized way to offer it? What about next week, when all the technology I boned up on this week will have changed?

So here I am, writing a blog about not blogging. My late-adopter self is adopting, and now I’m off to optimize.

Then I’ll go plan the next family vacation. Lots of museums! I can’t wait.

I think I have giftlexia. Or would it be dysgiftia? I can express love and appreciation in lots of ways, but gifts are definitely not my strong suit.

I have friends whom I consider gift savants — seemingly born with the uncanny ability to take one look at a person and know exactly what might fulfill deep, barely conscious wishes. They get me things I never would’ve considered, and now use constantly — an interesting candle holder, a really comfortable hat, funky earrings that were not “me” until I tried them on, and suddenly they were so “me” I wondered how the earrings and I had existed separately for so long.

The above-mentioned aside, I have to admit I’m secretly not the best at receiving gifts either. I’m polite, I say a sincere thank you, I try to behave as if this thing I was given is the greatest thing ever…because sometimes it is. But sometimes it isn’t, and the world is already so full of unnecessary trinkets and do-dads and stuff. I truly appreciate the gesture, but I’d be just as happy with a heartfelt note.

So, with the holidays galloping toward us, presents to buy and receive, and the inevitable proliferation of unimaginable ton-loads of stuff, my stress level is beginning to rise…

Our family celebrates Christmas, and I sincerely love everything about it — the rich piney smell of the tree in the living room, new renditions of old Christmas carols, decorating the house with both the lovely ornaments and the unlovely ones that have nonetheless made their way into family lore and tradition. I love egg nog. I love thinking of Mary, pregnant and poor, giving birth in a barn, and knowing even still, that it was all worth it.

But I can’t make myself love the gift part.

People with learning disabilities develop skills to compensate for what their brains don’t do easily. Similarly, I employ about half a dozen little coping mechanisms: starting early, making lists, making my family members make lists, asking other people what they’re buying for their loved ones. I blast my ungiftishness with all the power of my organizational skills which, I modestly admit, are mighty. I go out there, and I shop and check off lists and fill in my spreadsheet — yes, I have a spreadsheet, as absurd as that sounds, and it’s like a security blanket. I look at my spreadsheet, creating order out of gift chaos, and I’m tempted to suck my thumb.

On Christmas morning, I will anxiously await my family’s reactions to all this effort in the same way I anticipated exam results when I was in school. Did I pass? Did I get an A? And before we all go into the living room to hand out the loot, I’ll insist to myself that it doesn’t matter. They know I love them. And soon it will be January and I can return to the ways that I’m good at showing them. Until then, I’ll try to remember that Mary had nothing but herself to give her baby, and that was most certainly good enough.

When my first novel, SHELTER ME, came out, people often asked if it was autobiographical. “No,” I’d reply. “It’s pure fiction.” Sometimes this question came from people who actually know me—even a few who’ve met my very much alive husband. I found that a little surprising since the story is premised on the main character’s husband being dead by page one.

I can’t imagine writing a memoir—happily, my life isn’t nearly exciting and/or horrific enough. But readers often want to know a writer’s connection to a fictional story. Had someone very close to me died? Do I have people in my life like the characters in the book? Is the main character like me? I can’t answer yes to any of these.

Readers also ask if my characters are based on real people. They’re not. It’s much more fun to invent a character than to be limited to the boundaries of a live person. Also it seems like a great way to get yourself into some interpersonal hot water. You can’t write authentic characters if you show only their good sides, but their true life counterparts would rightly hate you if you revealed their less-attractive traits. I do occasionally borrow little incidents, phrases and mannerisms. For instance my son once wore goggles for no apparent reason, as Dylan does in SHELTER ME. Other than that I generally rely on my wayward imagination.

And yet …

There’s a way in which all the characters are vaguely autobiographical. As a writer, I have to be inside the “head” (as it were) of each of my characters, and those mindsets make sense to me in a fairly personal way. How would I—as character X—feel if … fill in the blank? It’s a lot like method acting.

Also, writers write about what interests them. I cooked up a story about a recent widow because of a long-standing worry that something would happen to my own husband. Then I wrote about a woman going through an adult version of middle school, while helping her daughter negotiate real middle school, because middle school was miserable for me. Also I’m fascinated by how adults have to work out identity issues from time to time even though we think we’re “grown up.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay once famously said, “A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down.” Fiction writers may not be recounting factual events, but we often reveal something of ourselves simply by virtue of the stories we choose to tell and the characters we create to tell them.

I guess my “pure fiction” isn’t quite so pure after all.

If you know nothing about a book or its author, how else can you judge it? When I’m perusing bookstore shelves, it’s often the split-second appeal of the jacket that makes me pick it up or pass it by. It’s sort of like an impulse buy—an impulse gander.

I first saw the cover of my novel SHELTER ME at my agent’s office. I arrived at that moment with the kind of semi-psychotic mix of hope and trepidation one reserves for blind dates and college entrance letters. Would it be great? Or would it be ugly, cheesy, boring and/or misleading? Would anyone gander?

I think it’s pretty great. Readers often say they picked up SHELTER ME because of its colorful, evocative cover. However, they also mention with striking regularity that the woman’s hair doesn’t quite match the description of Janie’s, and the boy is a little too big to be Dylan. Readers really care if the cover matches the story.

And why shouldn’t we? A book is an invitation, and we want to know if it’s to a hoedown or a minuet. And further, we want to be beguiled into believing the characters exist somewhere in reality. When the cover doesn’t match, it lets a little air out of that sweet bubble of enchantment.

“That’s not really her,” readers often say of Janie’s cover shot. “Her hair is curly.”

“Yes,” I was tempted to reply the first time I heard it. “But that could never be ‘her’ because I made her up. She’s fictional.”

That’s the wrong answer. The highest praise for any fiction writer is when readers believe. The worst thing we can do is remind them not to. So I agree and apologize, because I really do wish the art department had found a photo that was just as beautiful, but with a curly dark-haired woman. (In fact I had to ask them to darken the hair of the woman on the cover because she’s actually blond.) Publishers don’t set up photo shoots for each cover—it’s far less expensive to search stock photo sites for pictures that already exist.

For my second novel, DEEP DOWN TRUE, it was harder to find one that reflected the story and had that elusive gander-worthy appeal. They finally chose a photo of two kids whispering, a scene that wasn’t in the book. Knowing this would let the air out of readers’ enchantment bubble, I added a few lines to make it happen. The publisher may have thought I was a little nutty, but I knew readers would rightly ask, “What’s with the cover? That never happened in the book.”

The sales reps (a group you really want to make happy) loved the story—but hated that cover, in large part because it showed the kids’ faces. Readers have strong feelings about what characters look like, and we don’t want to be contradicted by someone else’s version.

Back to square one, this time searching for pictures that might not strictly represent the story, but would be beautiful and evocative. The minute they showed me the final cover of DEEP DOWN TRUE, I had the gut reaction I’d been waiting for, one I hope readers will share: “I want to be in that lovely scene and find out what’s going on there.” It made me want to gander.

In the end I kept the little scene where the kids whisper to each other. Apparently storytelling inspiration can come from the most unlikely sources … even from a book cover that doesn’t exist.

I love the cover of Shelter Me, and I can say that without a hint of self-satisfaction because I had nothing to do with it. Not a thing. In fact, I had no idea of where the photo had been taken, who’s in it, or where that gorgeous rainbow of an afghan came from …

Until last week. Last week I got an email from a man named Raymond Forbes who told me:

“I am the photographer who took the photo on the front of your book. It was a pleasant surprise to be walking through my local Barnes & Noble and see your book on the shelf.”

He went on to tell me that it had been taken in Marshfield, Mass. — which, while not quite on Cape Cod as I had suspected, definitely has that South Shore/Cape feel, with the marsh grasses and the hydrangeas. The woman is his wife, Elizabeth, and the boy is his nephew, Luke.

I replied with many thanks for his wonderful picture, which I feel so fortunate to have gracing the cover of my book. But what about the afghan?

“Do you own it?” I asked.

His reply: “The afghan blanket was knit by my wife’s grandmother back in the 70s. It is a one of a kind … kind of a mish mash of whatever leftover yarn she had.”

There went my thoughts of offering to buy it. Better for his wife to have such a warm, colorful remembrance of her grandmother. I have my grandma’s dining room set; Elizabeth has the afghan. As it should be.

If you’d like to see more of Raymond’s work, his website it www.raymondforbes.com.

Target department stores has given Shelter Me a huge vote of confidence by choosing it as one of its six Bookmarked picks of the year. It’s an unexpected honor for me because it puts my little old novel in the company of some really wonderful, well-written books, like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Loving Frank, and Three Cups of Tea. Hit the link below to see all of Target’s picks:

http://bookmarked.target.com/clubpicks/list.vtl;jsessionid=A3697E9160E53DFBC4F25F342E603DF8

One of the greatest perks of publishing is that people you haven’t been in touch with in years see the book in a place like Target or their local bookstore and find a way to check back in. It’s been a huge delight to be “found” by old college friends and others from my younger, wilder days. (Not that my days aren’t wild anymore—but as any parent can say, it’s a distinctly different flavor of wild.)

One more thing. My friend Karen Kiefer and I came up with an idea for readers who want to test drive the powers of Pology Cake. Check out the details of Baking Amends in the BOOK section of this website, as well as on the Spread the Bread website at www.spreadthebread.org.

I’m new at this. By “this,” I mean This Whole Thing. The novel-getting-published, eponymous-website, people-might-want-to-know-what-I-think-about Thing. And though there are lots of blogs out there that seem based upon the presumption that people want to know details like what the blogger ate for breakfast, or the disagreement she had with bagger at the supermarket about whether the cantaloupe should go on top of the eggs … I’m guessing you don’t. Not really.

So, I’m going to give blogging a whirl. And knowing it’s my first time, you’ll read it and smile indulgently and think, “Isn’t that cute,” as if I were wobbling down your street, the training wheels on my blogging having just been removed, with a look of exhilarated panic on my face. Trust me when I say, that’s exactly how I look.

Not surprisingly since I’m a writer, what I want to talk about is books: those I love, at least at the moment. On vacation in Vermont last month, I read Belong to Me by Marisa De Los Santos. It’s the sequel to Love Walked In, which I haven’t read yet, the experience of Belong to Me being complete in itself. It’s about three women in the suburbs and the unexpected ways in which their paths cross. Ms. De Los Santos writes with juicy lyricism—the woman knows her way around a metaphor, let me just say. She explains an image or a feeling or an experience as you’ve never heard it described before, but nonetheless makes you think, “Yes! That’s it exactly!” I also love the way she offers up the most brilliantly awful character and by the end you are absolutely rooting for her.

At the moment I’m reading The Geography of Girlhood on the reliable advice of my teenaged daughter. It’s young adult fiction at its best, especially if you want to know what teenaged girls are freaking out about and hoping for and ignoring. Also, it’s written in verse, which I thought would be distracting, but isn’t. Instead, Kirsten Smith uses poetry to boil everything down to the pure essence of the main character’s experience. It’s a deep, fast, funny, heart-rending read. See if you can find those four adjectives strung together in any other book review.

Okay, look at me: my helmet is slightly askew and my hands ache from clutching the rubber grips on the handlebars so hard my fingerprints are practically imbedded in them … but I did it. I don’t know if I’ll get any better at this blogging thing, but you’re a kind cyber-neighbor—you’ll wave as I teeter along and call out, “Keep going!”