I found myself intrigued by her mother, who she would bring to some interviews:

I'm telling you, if I'm able, I'm bringing that woman to every single interview. If you were a celebrity, wouldn't you relax a little, knowing that someone's mom was in on the proceeding. My mother has a pin shaped like a radish, because she likes to garden. I'm going to make her wear that for every encounter, because what's more disarming than a radish pin? And she's very outgoing, more so than I am. She'll talk to anyone. And I don't get quite as nervous if Mom is there.

I was amazed by Jancee's dialogue. I felt as if I were listening into great conversation:

For certain scenes I would call my sisters or my parents and we would sort of go over it again -sort of like play-acting. That made it more authentic and God love them, they were always willing to do it.

It was the same with my best friend, Julie, who was always willing to, as we called it, 'run some dialogue.' I would give her the setup and the scene and we'd be off.

Jancee's writing a novel. Of course I asked her about it:

It's familiar territory – it's set in New Jersey and so forth. Lord knows I'm not a skilled enough writer to suddenly bust out with a novel set in sixteenth-century France.

But I did find it easier to write a novel. I loved every minute of it. I can hardly believe that I might be able to do this for a living. Is that too nauseatingly gee-whiz?

And the premise is based on a real situation: my sister Heather moved back home with my folks last year, after she and her husband opened a restaurant that didn't do too well. She's 36 and she has two kids, and the whole gang moved in with my parents for six months. Well, she began to regress in the funniest way – playing old mixed tapes, driving too fast (as only a Jersey girl can) and listening in on my conversation when I would call home, as she had when she was a kid. So she handed my plot. Thank you, Heather.

The novel will be out in June of next year from Random House and it's called In Between Days.

(Yes, after the Cure song!) I think there is a small movement of people moving back home in their late thirties - not the 'boomerang' generation of 25-year-olds but people who have financial problems and their folks are doing better than they are. My folks' generation saved like crazy but my generation is more willing to take risks and follow their happiness and all of that, as my dad calls it, "nonsense." And as a result I know two close friends aside from my sister who moved home very, very late in life.