Lara Zielin

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: Swine flu is no laughing matter, it’s true, but these masks? Come on. That’s funny. You gotta admit, you giggled.

Last night, I talked to fellow author and Carleton grad Sarah Quigley. Her new book, TMI, is hilarious and fun, and you can get it here.

Ah-hem. Anyway, after our conversation, I realized, oh jeez, there are some SERIOUS coincidences going on here. So I penned a letter about said coincidences to Laurie Hertzel, book editor for the Star Tribune. Because, seriously, this is beyond accidental. This is fate. This is worth an article.

Right? Let me know what you think. Cuz here’s the letter:

Sarah Quigley and I, both Minnesota natives, graduated from Carleton College the same year — 1998. We never had a class together, never held each other’s hair back at a party, never even lived in the same dorm. When we graduated, we both lived in Minneapolis for four years. For a portion of that period, we lived about a half-mile from each other in Uptown. We never met.

We both moved away from Minnesota around the same time (2002)–me to Michigan, Sarah to New York, then California.

We both wrote young adult novels that were picked up by the same publisher, Penguin. Sarah’s book is titled TMI. Mine is titled DONUT DAYS. We both appeared, mere pages apart, in Penguin’s recent spring/summer catalog.

Sarah saw something that tipped her off that I’d gone to Carleton, too. She emailed me, which was the first time we’d ever communicated. We realized our books would be coming out just a few short months apart.

Then I picked up her book and realized …

Both our young adult novels take place in Minnesota. Our protagonists are both from small fictional towns — hers is Pine Prairie, mine is Birch Lake. We both reference the cold. And Northfield, where we went to school.

Can I just say … OMG?!

It’s a little weird, even for me. I’m wondering if there’s a story here that the Star Tribune might be interested in. Sarah’s book is currently on bookshelves, and mine comes out this August. I’ve pasted our websites below, and both of us would be more than happy to supply any additional information about our books. Or lives. Or cats. Or how much we love Minnesota.

Thanks so much for the consideration, and I hope to hear back from you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 6:16 pm and is filed under other writers, what I'm Reading, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.