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Dear Reader,
I'm on my annual vacation, and today author Meg Gardiner is filling in for me. Normally I'd tell you all "About Meg" before you read her column, but her column is such a sweetheart of a read that I want you to get right to it.
Read about Meg's latest book, her giveaway and how to contact her at the end of today's column.
Welcome bestselling author Meg Gardiner...
When I was a kid, we played kick the can. Our quiet street made a great neighborhood playground. My sisters and brother and I were allowed to stay outside until the streetlights came on.
Kick the can is hide and seek with the stakes raised--if a player races from hiding and punts the can, everybody who's been caught goes free. The game is as close as many of us get in real life to the pulse-pounding excitement we love in thrillers: chase scenes, jailbreaks, rescues. Maybe that's why, when my siblings and I grew up, we didn't just teach our kids to play. Whenever we went home to Santa Barbara, we joined the game.
Kick the can became a Gardiner tradition. Now no holiday or family wedding is complete until somebody grabs an empty coffee can and we head outside. Though these days we play after dark.
Over the years, we've sucked everybody in. While the person who's It counts to 100, my children, nieces, cousins, and in-laws race for hiding spots. The neighbors know not to freak out if they spot a fourth grader up a tree, or a physicist behind the trashcans, or a three-year-old running across their lawn clutching the can, shrieking, "Mine!" Once, a neighbor opened her door to find my uncle lying flat on the driveway beside her car. She turned and went back inside without a word.
She didn't spot my aunt lurking in the bushes, covered in army surplus camouflage paint.
Kick the can is why, one November night, my sister and I ended up crouching behind a pickup, whispering, "He'll never get us both. We go together. On three." We sprinted for the can. Captured players cheered us on. We sprinted like crazy, until my sister yelled, "Ow--my knee!" I laughed, thinking, 'I'm gonna win'--for two seconds, until I yelled, "Ow--my ankle!" My sister laughed back.
My son, who was It, reached the can and called out, "I see Mom and Sara...uh, staggering in the street." Busted.
And that's why, days later, my doctor frowned and asked, "How, exactly, did you mess up your Achilles tendon?" Chagrined but proud, I said, "I got outplayed by my own kid."
But there's always next time.
I'm giving away three copies of The Shadow Tracer. For a chance to win, email me at meg@meggardiner.com. Thanks so much for reading!
--Meg Gardiner
* Meg would love to hear from you. She'll reply and you'll be entered in a drawing for a copy of her latest book, The Shadow Tracer. Send your email to: meg@meggardiner.com
About Meg Gardiner: A bestselling author of eleven thrillers, before becoming a novelist Meg practiced law in Los Angeles and taught writing at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her latest novel, The Shadow Tracer, is about a skip tracer who hunts down fugitives for a living--until she ends up going on the run herself with her five-year-old daughter.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
* This month's Penguin Classics book is MEMOIRS OF A FOX-HUNTING MAN by Siegfried Sassoon. Start reading now and enter to win a Penguin book bag. Go to: http://tinyurl.com/Sept13Classics
AUTHORBUZZ: THE OUTCASTS (Fiction) by Kathleen Kent
A taut thrilling adventure story, set in 1870 Texas. A young woman fleeing a life of prostitution, a policeman with a pure heart and a strong sense of justice, and a ruthless killer who has claimed the lives of men, women and children across the frontier, cross paths looking for Lafitte's fabled pirate's treasure.
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader click on THE OUTCASTS to read more and to email author Kathleen Kent, you'll get a reply.
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