IT’S OUT!

So RETURN TO CHRISTMAS debuted on Friday amid record-breaking temperatures (cold, of course) and more snow. When you write a book there are worlds you want to be in, world that feel absolutely real to you. Actually, the same is true for the books you read, isn’t it? Well, that’s how Return to Christmas feels for me. I’ve always loved Macy’s – when I worked in New York city and went home on the weekends I’d walk down from the Time-Life Building (just across from Radio City) and always, always head into Macy’s before I went two blocks down to Penn Station. They sold fabric on the 8th floor, and you couldn’t charge food (I guess they felt there was no way to collect) and the entire place was a wonder.

There was a great book called THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER about two children who get locked in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which always sounded like pure heaven to me. Only Macy’s is better. I know just what I’d do: sleep in all the beds on the furniture floor, try on the most absurd pieces of clothing, drape myself in jewelry. Macy’s has everything, except, I’m quite sure, fabric, since you can’t buy fabric anywhere but Joanns nowadays. Back then I made my own clothes, including some very strange concoctions like a red satin flamenco dress and an Yves St. Laurent tailored suit. I worked for the Rockefeller Foundation, and they were very tolerant. One day I showed up in hot pants and my mother’s graduation robe and walked the halls like Groucho Marx, and of course I wrote a vampire novel about the denizens of the 41st floor (the title, CORN IS THE GLUE, came from a report I filed that said “Corn is the glue that holds together the lives of the people.” I was so horrified by the clumsiness of that line I had to immortalize it. The business office printed off a bunch of copies for everyone to enjoy.)

No wonder I’ve hard a hard time with regular jobs since then – most of my employers never had a sense of humor.

I lived in NYC to go to rock concerts – I was a rock ‘n roll nun. I saw Iggy Stooge/Iggy Pop in a tiny nightclub singing “I want to be your dog,” the Who when the Fillmore caught fire and Pete Townsend kicked one of NYC’s finest in the balls on stage before being evacuated. I saw Janis Joplin and Tina Turner sing together at Madison Square Garden (before the Stones came on), saw Ray Davies of the Kinks fall on his amplifiers after drinking too much, Eric Clapton in his “Layla” tour. Man, I saw everyone, and for the longest time rock and Macy’s was enough to make me happy, but eventually I had an epiphany, moved to Vermont to a town of 700 hundred where I didn’t know how to drive, and wrote my first book, which sold.

And after all those years I have so many more books to write that I don’t think I’ll ever quit. In fact I can’t imagine not writing – it’s who I am. So there’s tons more to come, but for now, you’ve got RETURN TO CHRISTMAS, my Christmas present to you.