Announcing...my first novel!

I have finally, finally, finalized my first novel, titled Summer to Fall. (That's the cover...photo credit to me, a fortuitous beach moment.) Originally written in 1992-94, I shopped S2F around to editors and agents and received supportive words back in the mail (yes, this was in the Internet's childhood, when e-mail was not appropriate for manuscript sharing). Supportive words, yes; compliments, many; but no offers or contracts. YA fiction was not hot in that era, and nostalgia for the 1980s was, at that cultural moment, absolutely unimaginable.

So Summer to Fall dwelled in the latter-day version of the proverbial desk drawer—surfing from Nessa-computer to Nessa-computer, Mac Plus to Performa to iMac to PCs x 3. I've made lots of changes to that MSWord file over the decades...and now, I'm self-publishing this baby, thrilled to have seen it through.

Towards that end, I've posted some images here so that I can upload them to my Pinterest account. See, on Pinterest, I've established a board called Lara and Bryan's world, from Summer to Fall. In a superfine act of Internet criss-cross-apple-saucing, people who look at that Pinterest board will be directed here...and people reading this right now (that's you!) will be directed there. The mind boggles. 

And all for a humble little manuscript about two New York teenagers named Lara and Bryan who fell in love, once upon the 1980s. Dense with rock and roll, drizzled with jazz and even some classical piano, hemmed in by skyscrapers, awash in nighttime lights and dazzling Rockaway Beach sunshine, and dressed to the 80s nines...I hope you'll want to give Summer to Fall a read, once it's open for business. 

This is my author pic, courtesy of Steven Albert (please check out his artwork!) Steve took this photo in 1986 on a smoggy summer afternoon, up on my roof in Queens, NY. It may be my favorite portrait, and it certainly represents my book's world in a perfect microcosm.

And now, the crossover pics, below. My dear friend Joe Caffrey's gorgeous images fortuitously reinforce places and scenes that appear in S2F. Check out my Pinterest board for even more!