Okay, okay, okay – I am getting soooo many questions about this! Yes, there will be a third D.J. book. Yes, I am writing it – possibly as we speak, if you happen to be reading this paragraph while I’m at the keyboard. Following revisions, it is in the hands of my indefatigable publisher, which makes all release decisions based on market research, publicity schedules and the patterns left by tea leaves. (Or so it seems to me, knowing as much about marketing as I do about subatomic physics.) In the meantime, you might want to scan the “All My Favorite . . . “ section of this site: lots of great books, both old and new, plus my most watched movies.

In answer to the emails I know I will receive:

• Yes, Brian will be in the third book. Will he redeem himself? I guess that depends on how much he grows up, doesn’t it? Given the volume of communication I receive on this subject, I sense he has a lot of fans who’d like to see him do better. Frankly, so would I. But let’s see what happens.

• The working title is “Front and Center.” This is very much a working title – check out my interviews on The Off Season to get a sense of what we went through with that title – so don’t start the embroidery project quite yet.

• Curtis? Yes. Dale? Duh. Win? Yes, though he's not going to get any easier to live with – I can tell you that right now.

• The book will cover D.J.’s junior basketball season. A certain person has been nudging her toward the WNBA, to which I say: be patient.

• There will not be a fourth D.J. book. I love the kid like a sister, but she needs a little privacy after eight months under a magnifying glass. "Front and Center" will complete the Dairy Queen trilogy. Given that I never even intended to write a sequel, that's pretty incredible. One loyal reader suggested a boxed set, once everything is said and done. Great idea but that decision is out of my hands. 
  
  
• Why won’t there really be a fourth book, even though you adore D.J. and Smut and all the others and you’d pay good money just to read her journal entries and math homework and her post-it notes to Curtis? Because – and here I will speak as a writer – because the defining element of coming-of-age fiction is, of course, coming of age. This is a genre about growing up, often quite painfully, and reaching some sort of maturity and closure. Otherwise the book is just a diary, and while a diary is interesting, it doesn’t provide anywhere close to the same fulfillment and emotional satisfaction. Note that even published diaries of both real and fictitious people are constructed around this framework of emotional growth – the narrator at the close of the diary is a better person. D.J. develops so much over the first two books – and here’s to hoping she continues that path in “Front and Center” – that there’s really very little opportunity left for more profound emotional development without her, say, becoming a Buddhist monk, which I’m afraid I don’t see happening. Even in Red Bend, Wisconsin.
  
  

Cheers! Happy reading!

Catherine