So, what’s sky blue pink anyway?

The first time I heard those words, I was a kid at one of those summer get-togethers my family threw on the east end of Long Island, the kind that started at noon and ended whenever the citronella candles gave up. There were usually clams and crabs, both pulled fresh from the bay, ears of corn stacked in a cooler, and a Carvel cake sweating on the picnic table because there wasn’t any room left in the freezer. The sun went down over the water the way it does out there, leaving the sky half-blue and twelve other colors making up the other half, and somebody—an uncle, or one of those family friends who gets called an uncle anyway—looked up from his beer and said, “Would you look at that. Sky blue pink.”

That was it. Three words, and they stuck with me. I’d bring them out on evenings the sky earned it, and almost nobody knew what I was talking about. When the internet arrived, and our communities stopped being defined by geography alone, I found some others who said it too. It’s a small thing to feel less alone over, but I counted it anyway.

So that’s the name. The book I’ve been calling Project Sunset around here for the better part of two years is now sky blue pink, and it’s coming on March 30, 2027. You can preorder the eBook today on Amazon. The print editions will be available soon.

THE ORIGIN STORY

Back in film school in the nineties, I had an idea for a teen comedy. Two best friends, forced into a road trip across America, the kind of thing that would have starred whoever was the latest teen heartthrob and their quirky best friend. The working title was Get Over Yourself, which should tell you about the tone of that original script. I wrote a lot of drafts, but never got myself past the second act. Eventually I filed it away with all the others that didn’t make it and forgot about it.

Years later I moved to Florida, where the sunsets do not fool around. One evening the sky went the exact color from my childhood and the old phrase came back to me, and right behind it, for no reason I can explain, followed the two best friends and their road trip. I wondered whether they could belong together, like chocolate and peanut butter. It turned out they could. The story had grown up while it waited. The comedy was still in there, but now it needed to be a family drama, with the humor where most people keep it, which is usually in the worst possible moments.

More than anything, I wanted it to be honest. Ordinary people, difficult situations, and the way they handle them revealing who they actually are.

At the center of it is Willow. She’s the one Tom Petty sang about in “American Girl.” She dreams about getting out of Hillsboro, Missouri, and doing something big, but she’s scared to do it alone. Her father left. Then her sister. Her mother stayed in the house but left in every way that counts. The one person who never left is her best friend Ronni, and walking away from her is not something Willow can do lightly. When something awful happens, Willow and Ronni are pushed into that road trip, and, well, I hope you’ll pick up a copy and find out where it takes them.

If you read The Family, you might be wondering what a conspiracy-thriller author is doing with a coming-of-age drama. It’s a fair question, and the answer is that I’ve never thought of myself as a one-genre writer. The six scripts I finished in my screenwriting days covered four pretty disparate genres, and the writers I admire most are the ones who refuse to let the last book decide the next one. I try to let the story run the show, and I think you’ll find these two have more in common than the covers suggest. Both are about how people handle situations they never asked for, and what “family” means to each of them. If The Family worked for you because of Esther, Melody, and the folks around them—and I suspect it did—you’ll find much of the same here. Different road. Same questions.

DETAILS

sky blue pink comes out March 30, 2027. Hardcover, trade paperback, and eBook, all on the same day, and if you’d rather be read to, the incomparable Nikki Lyons narrates the audiobook, which follows in June. If the site looks different today, that’s on purpose. I wanted the new book and the new house to show up together. More about Willow, Ronni, and the road ahead of them is coming soon.

I hope you’ll come along for this one. It took me a long time to find people who knew what I meant when I said sky blue pink. Hopefully you won’t have to wait that long.

Thanks for reading.