The Real Menlo Park

In one scene of "Runaway Daydreams," Julie and her friend Stanford refer to Menlo Park Mall, the mall nearest to their fictional hometown of Danforth, NJ. Stanford drily comments on the appropriateness of honoring Thomas Edison's memory with a shopping mall. There really is a Menlo Park Mall, near Piscataway, my real hometown. It's located in the town of Edison, where Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. His lab was in Menlo Park, which remains an unincorporated community within the town of Edison. (Piscataway isn't a town, though: it's a township. New Jersey also has cities, boroughs, and villages, and even "census-designated places," located within towns and boroughs. Confused yet?)  I always thought "Menlo" was a weird name (I know, who am I to talk, with a hometown called Piscataway) so I looked it up. The Menlo Park in NJ was originally a real-estate development in the 1800's, named after Menlo Park, California. That Menlo Park was named after the home of the two Irish immigrants who had first bought the property - a town called "Menlough." I can't tell you why they changed it to "Menlo" - there are thousands of towns in the United States that have traditional English or Irish spellings. The photo above is of the Edison Memorial Tower in Menlo Park. It has a cool little             museum where you can record your voice on Edison's first phonograph! The Menlo Park Mall looks like this:

A lot like EveryOtherMall, USA.

          Honestly, from what I know of Thomas Edison, he probably wouldn't have cared                  about the general sameness and lack of character taking over the country, but I'm not            a fan. At least Edison the town has a museum dedicated to Edison the inventor.

      

         

 Last Couple Standing - Review

Last Couple Standing
by 

Matthew Norman

Abigail Connors's reviewit

liked it

I read Norman's first two books, and they both had appealing qualities - interesting characters and some nice observations, and even though I didn't exactly love them, I looked forward to reading his next book thinking it might be a little bit deeper. But "Last Couple Standing" has a premise that was pretty unbuyable - when their three "friend couples" all get divorced, the wife proposes having a somewhat open marriage so they'll stay together before boredom sets in, or maybe it already has. What's unbuyable is that she's a therapist. Shouldn't she have a clue as to the repercussions of this plan? Indeed, things go terribly wrong, but there are also funny bits. No problem with that, life is sad and funny, but the next-to-last scene is Marx Brothers - type farce, totally incongruous with the intense and disturbing emotions the couple has gone through. This book just didn't work for me.

My other self

 My non-fiction-writing self is a teacher. I teach music and movement to young children ages 18 months through kindergarten, and I love it!

I've written five books about early childhood music education, which include my original songs and music activities for children using rhythm instruments and movement. I'm really into improvising with young children and nurturing their creativity. 

To learn more about my "teacher side," visit my Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/Abigail-Flesch-Connors/e/B001KITR46?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1602772679&sr=8-1. 

And also check my website: abbyconnors.com. 

 

The Real Graveyard

   One of the creepy/adorable features of the fictional town of "Danforth" in my new YA romcom "Runaway Daydreams" was taken directly from my hometown, Piscataway, NJ.

When I first passed by Piscataway High School, I did a double-take. "Is that a graveyard?"

I backed up and took another look. Yes, it was. The Fitz-Randolph Cemetery, like its fictional counterpart, is "right next to the football field." There must be a story behind this, but I couldn't find it. Maybe, when building the high school, they realized late in the game that they'd need more space, and just worked around the little graveyard, which they enclosed. 

How many high schools have their own graveyard, right on school property? It's just one of Piscataway's charming bits of weird-New Jersey-ness.  

"Less" - One of My Favorite Books

 

This is one of my favorite books. It's written in the third person, but by a character who obviously knows Arthur Less very well, whose identity you discover at the end. Arthur is a wonderful character, filled with insecurities and hurting from a recent breakup, and his adventures at book conferences, speaking engagements, etc. around the world are hilarious and heartbreaking. But mostly hilarious. Greer is a wonderful writer. I've re-read this twice! Charming, funny, sad, meaningful. 

 "Danforth"

Runaway Daydreams takes place in the fictional town of Danforth, New Jersey, based on my adopted hometown of Piscataway (the town no one can pronounce 😄 - I've heard "Piss-ka-taw-ee," "Pee-scatta- wee" and "Piss-katooey" - the correct pronunciation is Piss-CAT-away.)

I knew I'd like Piscataway when I saw the sign saying "Welcome to Piscataway, founded 1666." That's, like, a hundred years before 1776!

Historical! And legendary.

Among other well-known ghosts is one inhabiting the Metlar-Bodine House, which dates to 1728:

The tales of "sightings" or "sensings" are remarkably vague (icy temperatures, etc.) and the explanations sound dubious (a feuding next-door nighbor of the original Mr. Bodine, the judge from the Halls-Mills murder case in the 1920's). But the house is fantastic, isn't it?

The house and its supposed "hauntedness" are the inspirations for the Little House and its ghost, "Uncle Andrew," in Runaway Daydreams.