Now that our taxes are done, my webmaster husband is fiddling around again with my website. Let me know what you think of the new look after he's finished. (It's under construction and a real mess right now).

Hey, you like KEEPSAKE! (That was my Sally Field imitation. I do a good Boris Karloff as well.) KEEPSAKE has made several bestseller lists so far, and no one could be happier about it than I am (except possibly my editor).

But never mind the lists. What I like best about KEEPSAKE is the wonderful mail I've received from you. Truly, I'm just so pleased that you were moved by Quinn and Olivia's story. And for all of you who have re-read the book already, know this: I write my books to be read over and over. I want you to be able to find some new nuance, some new humor, some new irony, every time you go back. (I'm pretty sure you won't find any new love scenes, but hey. )

PICTURE TIME: Here's one I really like of me with Kristine Rolofson standing on the stairs in my little Newport cottage. (Okay, that's a lie. The fabulous heart-shaped staircase is in Rosecliff, one of the Newport Cottages-with-a-Capital-C, which the Providence Journal used as a backdrop for a very nice interview they did with a bunch of us Rhode Island romance authors, including Patricia Coughlin, Jane Goodger and Gail Eastwood). It was a Valentine's Day story, needless to say.
THE CATS , still pouting because they weren't in the last newsletter, have suggested I run this photo. They want you to know that they're (1) affectionate, (2) clean and (3) fond of Easter baskets. But I say, no single photo is going to rehabilitate their terrible reputations. We know what we know about them.
	THE LONG-AWAITED ADDITION : Here is an artist's rendering of our Newport cottage after we finish the addition. (Okay, that's a lie. This is the Breakers on Cliff Walk in Newport. By my reckoning, our cottage, WITH its addition, would tuck under the Breakers' right portico. Which is fine with me. I'd rather dust seven rooms than seventy.)
THE BIG DIG : The next photograph is of the grounds of our cottage-with-a-small-c (that's not a lie). The backhoe operator is about to take the first scoop out of my tulip garden to make room for the foundation. If you don't think that this was a good-news/bad-news moment for me, then you haven't been reading my books closely enough. For the next two days I wandered the hills of rubble and dirt, scooping upended bulbs that I hadn't managed to find and transplant before the arrival of The Machines. I pray that this thing gets built soon. It's tough for me to watch a garden go untended.

THE NEW BOOK : In between picking out tiles and faucets, I'm actually having fun with the new book, which will be due on my editor's desk much, much too soon. Maybe it's the upbeat mood I'm in, and maybe it's because I like to alternate darker stories with lighter ones, but I sure am having fun with my work in progress. In it I feature a heroine who's a little too naive for her own good.

Trust me--I'm doing something about that.

Thank you all again for your wonderful response to KEEPSAKE. You make writing worthwhile.

xo,

Antoinette Stockenberg

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