In my never ending quest for interesting content for you dear reader, I decided to take a page out of John Hawkins' book and do some interviews. At the time I happened to be reading a very interesting book, Amanda Bright@home by Danielle Crittenden, and thought it would be interesting to interview the author. Thanks to the power of email and the graciousness of the author, I was able to arrange a Q & A.

In case you are unaware of who she is, let me give you some background on this impressive author. Besides writing Amanda Bright@Home, the first novel to be serialized by Opinion Journal, she is also the author of What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes The Modern Woman. A former columnist for The New York Post, she is also the founding editor of The Women's Quarterly, published by the Washington- based Independent Women's Forum. Miss Crittenden is married to David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush. They have two children and live in Washington.

I will post a review of this interesting book on Tuesday but to wet your appetites please find below a series of questions I posed to the author via email. The questions are in bold and her answers follow.

Q: What was it like working on what was, in essence, a weekly column and then putting it together in book form? How have reactions differed between the two?

A: I cannot think of a better way to write fiction today than the old way--as a Dickensian-style serial. I don't think writers have yet fully realized the potential of the Internet as a means to by-pass the whole New York publishing cabal, and reach readers directly. It helped a great deal that the Wall Street Journal and its terrific website, OpinionJournal, were behind me: I had, as it were, a ready-made audience. I did not have to send missives randomly into the black hole of cyberspace. And from the Journal's point of view, it was a cheap and easy way to drum up female readership of its website--it didn't have to devote costly newsprint to the experiment, and after the first chapter (which was launched in the paper itself), I could write as long or as short as I pleased. Space is never an issue on the Internet. That being said, if I was going to to attract readers, and keep them coming back week after week (and a week IS a long time in cyberspace, as you know Kevin--readers expect new material practically on the hour) I had to rely on Victorian methods of novel writing: lively characters with whom readers could immediately identify, a strong plot, topical material, and usually some sort of "hook" at the end of each chapter (whenever I finished writing one, I would ask myself, do I hear those old-fashioned organ chords of suspense? Do I hear that wonderful actor's baritone asking, "What will happen next to Amanda? Will Bob run off with that thinktank hussy? And will Susie finally meet the man of her dreams? Stay tuned....") . You get the idea. The reader response was fantastic--both good and bad. This was the other fun aspect of writing on the Internet--immediate response. You are not trapped in some ivory tower wondering if people will 'relate" to the novel--wondering, frankly, if anyone will read it at all. The readers left me in no doubt. If they loved a chapter, they let me know. If they thought the plot was stalling, they let me know that too. If I got something wrong, there was instantaneous corrections from five different people. Some people got so absorbed into the story they began to write directly to my lead character, Amanda--to give her pointers about how to cope with being an at-home Mom, relaying some of their experiences they thought Amanda might find helpful, reminding her of the value of what she was doing. And then there were the "haters"--people who wanted to let me know that the thought it was the stupidest thing in the world that OpinionJournal would stoop to running such low fiction, and how stupid the story was, etc. etc. I noticed these same "haters" came back week after week, and were following the stupid plot intently, just to let me know how stupid they thought it was. I took a small amount of pleasure in that. If they hated it so much, why read it?