They say man plans, God laughs. It was never more true than it was that night.
Carl caught my elbow. “How do you like this little surprise of theirs?”
“I think I love it,” I said. “They sure saved us a lot of anxiety. And money.”
That’s when we started to roar with laughter. Eve and Eliza joined us and when Carl pointed out to them that we were all finally related, they laughed at the beautiful irony of it all. Not one single thing about our friendship was coincidence. Each step brought us to the next one. Maybe it was true what the Good Book said—the good Lord had a plan for each and every one of us. All we had to do is pay attention.
acknowledgments
Acknowledgments at the end of a book look like an opportunity to write a mini-memoir each year, so for just a few lines, please bear with me. A lot happened during the writing of Same Beach, Next Year. Our daughter and son-in-law are expecting their first child in June 2017 and our entire family is wild with happiness. Then our son got engaged to a wonderful young woman and is to be married this coming October. We are completely thrilled to welcome Maddie into our family. And Peter and I are still hard at work with our crazy careers and retirement is nowhere in our plan. Nonetheless, we are at a watershed moment in our lives, one where we are looking back in time and realizing how much our friends mean to us. We have seen them marry, bring children in to the world, send those children off to college and walk them down the aisle. Our friends are almost all grandparents now and we are about to take our place in that lineup as grandparents too. I am wondering about how we will be changed. I am already filled with so much love for this unborn child my heart could burst. How many grandchildren are in our future? Please share your stories with me and any advice on how to do this in the very best way would be welcomed.
Now to the business at hand. Using a real person’s name for a character has been a great way to raise money for worthy causes. And in Same Beach, Next Year three generous souls come to life in these pages as my characters. I have never met these folks so I can assure you that I would be astonished if the behavior, language, proclivities, and personalities of the characters bear any resemblance to the actual people. Special thanks go to the family of Eliza Stanley for their generous support of Christ our King Stella Maris Grammar School, my alma mater oh so many thousands of years ago. Although Eliza Stanley is a freshman in high school, and no doubt, a lovely young lady with impeccable manners, in these pages she is the female protagonist, a married woman and the mother of adorable twin boys. She gets into a lot of mischief and has a bit of a potty mouth, which I’m sure you don’t. I hope you’ll take all the character does in stride! Remember, this is just fiction!
And special thanks to Kelly Engelbert for her generous support of Abby’s Friends, a non-profit that works to end type-1 diabetes. We combined her two daughter’s names, Clare and Elizabeth to make one character, Clarabeth. Clarabeth is an elderly lady with a lot of style and something to say about everything. And just for good measure we made Kelly Engelbert a teenaged girl with a lot of attitude. On the house.
Everett Presson, Angie Avinger, and Judy Linder? I hope y’all will be pleasantly surprised to find yourselves in this drama. It was fun being reminded of you each time I wrote your names!
Special thanks to George Zur, who is my computer web master, for keeping the Web site alive. To Ann Del Mastro and my cousin, Charles Comar Blanchard, all the Franks love you for too many reasons to enumerate!
I’d like to thank my wonderful editor at William Morrow, Carrie Feron for her marvelous friendship, her endless wisdom and her fabulous sense of humor. Your ideas and excellent editorial input always make my work better. I couldn’t do this without you. I am blowing you bazillions of smooches from my office window in Montclair.
And to Suzanne Gluck, Alicia Gordon, Clio Seraphim, Michelle Feehan, Clarissa Lotson, Andrea Blatt, Matilda Forbes Watson, Tracy Fisher, and the whole amazing team of Jedis at WME, I am loving y’all to pieces and looking forward to many more years together!
To the entire William Morrow and Avon team: Brian Murray, Michael Morrison, Liate Stehlik, Lynn Grady, Tavia Kowalchuk, Kelly Rudolph, Kathryn Gordon, Carolyn Coons, Frank Albanese, Virginia Stanley, Andrea Rosen, Josh Marwell, Andy Le Count, Carla Parker, Donna Waikus, Michael Morris, Gabe Barillas, Mumtaz Mustafa, and last but most certainly not ever least, Brian Grogan: thank you one and all for the miracles you perform and for your amazing, generous support. You still make me want to dance.
To Debbie Zammit, okay, so how long have we known each other? No one needs to know! Our years together in this endeavor have now surpassed our years together on Seventh Avenue. What a spectacular friend you are! We finish each other’s sentences, reading each other’s minds—what’s left of them anyway. As the years try to snatch our mental acuity and recall, we need to stick together. Thank you over and over for well, everything.
To booksellers across the land, and I mean every single one of you, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, especially Aaron Howard and Melinda Marquez of Barnes and Noble and Vicky Crafton of Litchfield Books.
To my family, Peter, William, and Victoria, I love y’all with all I’ve got. Victoria, you are the most beautiful, wonderful daughter and I am so proud of you and I’m just crazy about our Carmine, which he knows. I love everything about y’all. William? You are so smart and so funny, but then a good sense of humor might have been essential to your survival in this house. And proof of your intelligence is to be found in the simple fact that you’re bringing Maddie into the fold. We are so very excited. I’m so proud of all of you. Every woman should have my good fortune with their husband and children. Peter Frank? You are still the man of my dreams, honey. Thirty-four years and they never had a fight. It’s a little incredible to realize it’s only thirty-four years, especially when it feels like I’ve loved you forever.
Finally, to my readers to whom I owe the greatest debt of all, I am sending you the most sincere and profound thanks for reading my stories, for sending along so many nice e-mails, for yakking it up with me on Facebook and for coming out to book signings. You are why I try to write a book each year. I hope Same Beach, Next Year will entertain you and give you something new to think about. There’s a lot of magic down here in the Lowcountry. Please, come see us and get some for yourself! I love you all and thank you once again.