Thank you for all of your kind support of ASK AGAIN LATER in paperback. This week the book was No. 35 on the NYTimes Best Seller List.

Two friends took me out in the west village last night to celebrate the above mentioned. It’s always nice when you are with someone who knows to order the truffle fries even when they aren’t on the menu …

I almost never comment on current events here because no one cares what I think about current events and why should they? Anyway, much of the conversation last night centered around the NY Gov. and his recent troubles. Should the Gov’s wife have been present at his press conferences? I didn’t know what the Gov’s wife looked like before this week - so my vote was that she should not have been present because any chance at being anonymous with her children in this city is now gone (sure there are file photos to trot out, but that podium shot is the shot you see splashed everywhere). Then the two people I was with explained that they get all of their news online and there have been many photos of his children and his wife online. I still read the newspaper … I rarely get news online with the exception of the primary coverage. Conversation continued to range from: I’d have locked him out of the house for exposing me to any of this b.s. Isn’t it just fascinating that Spitzer was so compelled to go after people who were committing the same crime he was committing? Mostly though what I’ve heard people say is how disappointed they are that this man who said he was going to clean things up turned out to be so hypocritical. Perhaps that is what drove him to want to clean things up … to correct and repent for his own behavior.

…Because nothing goes better with this laugh-out-loud tale of learning to love your dysfunctional family than a little retail therapy!

Enter Sweepstakes Now! Click here for more info.

WHat goes together better than wine and cheese, er, uh books? Sutter Home - the wine people - have a monthly book club. This months selections are ASK AGAIN LATER, by Jill A. Davis, nd INES OF MY SOUL, by Isabel Allende. Check out this link for more information and remember not to read and drive:

http://www.sutterhome.com/bc_home.php

Ok, friends of this blog will possibly remember me making some noise about a sweepstakes contest about 10 months ago … well, dears, your patience has paid off. Tomorrow the sweepstakes will be unveiled here and also at the Harper Collins home page. I’m not supposed to say too much, but if you like shopping and you like New York, you’ll want to check it out.

This week the paperback edition of ASK AGAIN LATER is in stores. Got some good news this morning. Harper collins is printing another 20,000 copies this week.

I wanted to mention the new cover, which I love. It was designed by Alison Saltzman, an artist for Harper Collins. She did a great job.

What have I been doing since last I posted? I’ve been writing and enjoying New York. We had a family Thanksgiving in Florida and 24 relatives were able to make it to Thanksgiving dinner which was fun and lots of great stories evolved from that weekend - but they’ll have to be fictionalized before I can share them! Otherwise people will stop showing up for family vacations. We had a similarly good time over Christmas break with some relatives. I saw a double rainbow which I’d never seen before and it lasted about 45 minutes and was enormous and stretched from the sea to the clouds which were at about 400 feet. We went on a submarine ride (my husband will mock me for this because while it was shaped like a sub, only its glass hull was submerged). Anyway, it was yellow and looked like a submarine and the owners called it a submarine. So I’m going to call it that too. We had a chance to see some reefs and a shipwreck and the things that struck me most were that things just seemed so damn calm underwater. I expected to see fish travelling in schools, not straying, because who knows what shark is lurking around the next reef. So this was my big revelation - and everyone else probably already knows this - folks, the ocean floor is not segregated at all. Very few fish were swimming in schools, most were just hanging out with different types of fish. The sea turtles were giving rides to fish - I kid you not. Anyway, it reminded me of New York. And the sea turtles are the cabs. The only troubled loner seemed to be a stingray which was covered in sand and then just appeared like a stealth bomber. Everyone else on the submarine seemed hot and a little bored and really wanted the hour trip to be 20 minutes.

My first reading for this book will be next Wednesday at the Borders Bookstore in the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle. The reading is at 7 p.m. I hope you can make it so I’m not reading to a staggered row of chairs.

I will also be doing two panel events at part of the Virigina Book Festival. That is in late March and if you locate their website you can get ticket info. (otherwise I’m sure I will post it here in a week or so). If you live in CT or Westchester - I will be doing an event at the artists salon SpokenInterludes in April. I did this event in Los Angeles during the tour for Girls’ Poker Night. It’s a great night - multiple authors read and people eat and drink. Authors sign books.

Did you happen to notice, circle, note any typos in AAL? Final approval needed on Monday for the paperback edition (to be published in Jan). Let me know … guess what I’ll be rereading this weekend.

Raining here and phone lines went down. Makes me feel like I’m living in the country. Correct: Dan Rather.

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum yesterday … Empire State Building tomorrow …

S: Sorry to hear about your dad. On the flip side, if you’re looking for inspiration to write, the crazy sister could make a decent short story. If you really don’t feel like writing, just start behaving in odd ways and mentally record her reactions to the bizarre behaviro (then it pretty much writes itself and all you really have to do is dot the i’s and cross the t’s, eh?)

I’ve been living the life of a tourist the past few weeks. So far the highlights have been The Summer of Love exhibit at the Whitney (strobe light room! liquid video installations … gigantic spin art that keeps on spinning’).

Also, saw the FROGS at the Museum of Natural History. Really amazing, I think. A private tour would be amazing becuase I think I could happily stand in front of any one tank get hypnotized, The crowds (well, it’s no running of the bulls … and they do sell limited tickets for timed showings …) disrupt the hypnosis. Mythic Creatures show was good, the frogs were better. Though there was an interesting Barnum and Bailey mini mermaid … that was assembled for the circus show back in the early 1900s. The detail was pretty impressive.

Mary Poppin’s … who’s the most unlikely news person to be attending a Wed. matinee of the Broadway show? Guess among the following … Tom Brokaw. Dan Rather. Tim Russert.

I was planning a tour of the rivers around Manhattan - but read today in The Post about a weekend birthday party for a three-year-old. It was a trip around the Hudson. The boat ran into something (post cake) that turned out to be a body. Lots of screaming kids - then the boat circled the body for 20 minutes (presumably until someone came to pick it up). Anyway, may have quelled the urge to set barge to river.

Got the Woody Allen book, enjoying what I’ve read so far.

Carm - I did try typing in jilldavis.com (many, many, many times). i think it was a ‘browswer issue’ - does that make it sound like i know what i’m talking about? anyway, i couldn’t get on yesterday either.

scott - those are johnny’ winning photos (there are more to post, i think he sent 11 entries in all). so wayne has not met the swan. i presume that is johnny’s cat.

should is read the john adams book or the new woody allen book. WSJ gives the woody allen book a great review. a collection of shorts.

Well hello everyone! Sorry for the delayed announcement of the current contest winner - make a tinfoil swan, win some signed books and other AAL and GPN loot. As you can see, Johnny from Canada nailed this task (more photos to come).

I was unable to access my own webpage for about six days, and then suddenly this a.m. it righted itself. Notice the lovely thumb-nail photos as promised.

Carm I missed your whole Soprano’s epic! Reading it in hindsight it’s impressive, especially considering the nephew was visiting at the time! Did you know baby bats are called batlings? Makes them sound really cute I think. (While you were whale watching, I was at the driving range, riding the ferris wheel at Toys R Us in Times Square, and such).

Scott, oh Scott, how sweet of you to email and harass me about the delayed contest announcement. I feel like we’ve really developed a nice little contemporary American family here. Scott and Carm are the parents, and Johnny and I are the kids. We all look out for eachother. We might need a theme song … someone start writing it, ok?