Dear Reader,
Please welcome today's return guest, Nancy Thayer. Nancy is the New York Times author of 35 novels, including Summer Love, Family Reunion, A Nantucket
Christmas, and The Hot Flash Club. Her novel Let It Snow was made into a Hallmark Christmas movie entitled Nantucket Noel in 2021. Her new title, just in time for summer, is The Summer We Started Over.
Her books are about families, friendship, and the beautiful island of Nantucket where she's lived for 40 years with her husband Charley Walters and their spoiled cat Callie. Sometimes they invite their thousands of grandchildren to visit. She loves libraries, bookstores, and zoom parties.
Contact Nancy via her website: https://nancythayer.com/contact-nancy
Welcome back to the book club, Nancy...
I can't tell you how many times I've started over.
I'm certain you've started over many times, too.
For example, I started over when I went alone and shy into pre-school. I started over each time I dated a man. I started over when I came to Nantucket for the first time to see my good friend Dinah–and to meet the man I would marry and the island I would call home.
I start over when I start to write a new book. Often, I discover I've gone down a blind alley. For so many things in life, starting over isn't as easy as opening a door and entering a room where smiling people are waiting for you. Sometimes it takes work, editing, revision, and often, despair.
Sometimes, in both writing and in life, it can be magic.
It was a gray, gloomy November when I flew to Nantucket to visit Dinah. Nantucket wasn't at its most lovable. Heavy, clouded sky, cold wind, darkness. No fast ferries. Dinah had arranged for me to be interviewed about my third novel on the local television channel. The show was called ArtsView, and the host was Charley Walters, blue-eyed, six one, thirty-two, unattached.
When he walked in the door, I thought, "I could love him." Just like that. I could never have imagined someone like him. But there he was, and here we are, married for forty years.
I live on this island thirty miles out to sea with a population of billionaires and normal, attractive people who work here but can't afford to buy a house here. I don't go a day without discovering something--or someone--I want to write a novel about. I have piles of notes.
But one day I was chatting with my friend Dinah, yes, that Dinah. She now lives in Palm Beach, but visits the island often. Dinah is truly glamorous and generous and lovable, and her last name is not Lavender. She's also fascinating, but while we were talking, something in my mind whispered: Dinah Lavender. She writes romances.
I couldn't wait to get off the phone. I sat down at my computer and typed out pages about Dinah Lavender, who lived in New York and had written over a hundred best-selling romance novels, but who had no significant lover or friend in her life. She had long black hair and a voluptuous body and she needed an assistant...
I intended to write about a family that had suffered a terrible loss. I wanted to write about getting what you want only to find out you really want something entirely different. I wanted to write about sisters. I have a younger, blue-eyed blonde pretty baby sister, and believe me, our relationship continually supplies me with ideas.
So I wrote about two sisters in their twenties who move to Nantucket with their father to start over. And before long, Dinah Lavender arrives.
I hope you enjoy The Summer We Started Over. That will make me and Dinah Lavender very happy!
Have a wonderful summer!
xoxoNancy
-- Nancy Thayer
https://nancythayer.com/contact-nancy
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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