Mary – Page 7 – Mary Simses

Italy Day 1 – Venice

I’m overwhelmed. This is my first trip to Venice and it really is a remarkable place. Yes, it’s full of tourists (30 million people a year come to this city and I think 20 million of them are here now) but there are so many wonderful things to see, I don’t care. And there are also plenty of canals and bridges to discover that aren’t overrun.

Here is part of the view from our hotel window – the Grand Canal. I keep thinking about the wonderful Merchant/ivory film, A Room with a View, based on E.M. Forster’s novel. Parts of the story took place here in Venice. What a romantic city.

We had a private walking tour of Venice, which included St. Mark’s Basilica. A tiny

July 23, 2016

On My Way to Italy

I’m so excited. We’re at JKF airport in New York, waiting for a connection to Venice. We’ll be there for three days and then to Positano on the Amalfi Coast for six days. It’s a long-awaited family vacation and I can’t wait to get there. We’ve been to Italy twice before – to Tuscanny and to Umbria – but this is our first trip to Venice and Amalfi. I’ve got three cameras packed – two Nikons and one Sony point-and-shoot. I learned from a previous trip to Paris to always have back ups! I’ll be posting photos and travel tidbits here, so stay tuned.

July 22, 2016

Blueberry Cafe to Become a Movie!

I’ve just inked a deal with Crown Media for a Hallmark Channel movie of my first novel, The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Café. Alison Sweeney will star and produce. They are already into pre-production, and filming will begin this month in Vancouver, Canada. I’m hoping to fly out there and watch the filming for a couple of days. Unfortunately, it’s taking place during a time when I already have a lot of travel going on with my family. That said, this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so I’ll have to figure it out somehow. What an odd (but fun!) feeling it will be to see and hear people act out the parts of characters I’ve dreamed up.

July 15, 2016

A Place from My Past

I used to come to this beach when I was a teenager. It’s a private beach, but I had friends who lived in the neighborhood. We loved to swim and jump off the float and sometimes we’d sail around in a sunfish that belonged to one of the guys. One recent afternoon when I drove by here, I saw some kids on the float and it brought all those memories back in a flash.

June 24, 2016

Where, Exactly, Is Dorset?

If you’re looking for the town of Dorset, Connecticut on a map, you won’t find it. When I wrote my first novel, The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Café, I decided to create my own town of Beacon, Maine. Although Beacon was inspired by real towns I’d seen in Maine over the years, I took bits and pieces from several places, added a hefty dose of imagination, and came up with the final setting.

I used a similar approach to create Dorset in The Rules of Love & Grammar. I grew up in Darien, Connecticut, so writing about the state where I spent most of my life was fun. In creating the adolescent backstory for the main character, Grace Hammond, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my own teen years. There’s something very comforting about going back to Darien and seeing stores and businesses that were there when I was a kid and that are still there today. This is a big thing for

June 7, 2016

My New Novel is Out!

The Rules of Love & Grammar, published by Little, Brown & Company, is in bookstores as of today and can also be ordered from online book sellers. I can hardly believe it. The process of having a book published, once you turn in your manuscript, seems about as long as the gestation period of an elephant. Well, maybe not quite that long, but close. There are so many steps to be dealt with, and as an author you’re involved in a number of them – reviewing changes suggested by your editor and making the ones you feel will strengthen the story (most of them in my case), reviewing the questions and proposed

June 1, 2016

Good Housekeeping’s Summer Reads

Guess what book Good Housekeeping has included in the “Summer Reads” section of its June 2016 issue? Yes, The Rules of Love & Grammar. Calling it a nostalgic romance, the review says, “You’ll laugh and even tear up.”

May 18, 2016

Famous Author in Disguise

Well, maybe not.

Yes, it’s James Patterson. The other day I had breakfast at a local eatery with Jim’s wife, Sue, and Kristy, another friend of ours. After we had a long chat, catching up on life in general, Jim came in and joined us. Kristy presented him with these “You Don’t Know Me” sunglasses, which she had seen at an airport and thought would be perfect for him. Jim, who has a great sense of humor, immediately put them on and I took this picture.

May 1, 2016

I’ll Take Three Scoops

Grace Hammond, the main character in my new novel, happens to love ice cream. (Don’t we all?) My publisher in Germany, part of Random House, held a huge promotion for my book, in conjunction with 82 ice cream parlors in Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and five other cities. The ice cream parlors sold their ice cream in paper cups with the Sommer der Sternschnuppen (Summer of Shooting Stars) book cover motif on them and gave our free excerpts of the book.

April 26, 2016

Thinking About My Next Novel

Well, my second novel, The Rules of Love & Grammar, just came out this Monday in Germany (the title there is Der Sommer der Sternschnuppen or The Summer of Shooting Stars) and I’m VERY excited to report that by Wednesday it was number 25 on their paperback bestseller list. On May 31 the book will be published in the U.S. and I’m really looking forward to that.

The book has been out of my hands for weeks now, while my publishers in the U.S. and Germany have been doing what they do to get it ready to send it out into the world. It’s kind of like going through an “empty nest” syndrome for me, similar to how people feel when their kids go off to college. So I’ve been thinking about my third novel.

April 22, 2016