Exciting things have been happening to local author Barbara Rogan, since the publishing of her latest book within the past few weeks.

The gothic, psychological suspense novel, Suspicion, her sixth fiction book, has received widespread positive reviews, including being named as a featured alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Set on the north shore of Long Island, its tells the story of a ghost writer, who, after moving with her family from New York City to an old Victorian mansion overlooking the Sound, is haunted by eerie, inexplicable things that begin to happen while she is alone in the house.

"I took a lot from my own circumstances and experiences living here on Long Island, and in Farmingdale. I just played it into the book, and I had a lot of fun doing it. And, people seem to be responding to it," Rogan said during an interview this week.

The tie to the local community is specifically illustrated in the acknowledgements portion of the book. In it, she thanked Craig Copius, her son's former soccer coach in Farmingdale and Kevin Newman of the Farmingdale Fire Department for providing expertise, as well as the librarians and staff of the Farmingdale Public Library. "The librarians helped me by being librarians, and they're very good librarians. They've always been very helpful to me - they go of out of their way," said Rogan, who is known in the local community by her husband's last name, Kadishson. "And in a way, to thank them, for me is also like thanking all the librarians through the years, who have helped, because writers are very dependent on librarians. I do a lot of research."

Barbara and her husband Ben Kadishson have two sons, Jonathan Kadishson, 16, a junior at Farmingdale High School and Daniel Kadishson, 11, a Northside student. Both are soccer players.

She said her sons helped edit portions of the book that included soccer techniques. (The main character's son plays soccer.)

As the authoring of the book took place in Rogan's home office in Farmingdale, the novel's setting relates to the greater Long Island community. "It's the first book I've ever written that is set on Long Island, although it's not set in Farmingdale. I called the town Morgan Peak. But [Eileen Brennan], who reviewed it for Anton Newspapers, kind of outed me, and said it has to be Sea Cliff, and in fact it is the town that I used to visit while I was writing it, just to kind of ground myself physically," she said, although adding, "It's not the town in terms of the people there."

Brennan's review noted that the story takes place in "a village that can only be Sea Cliff, although Rogan calls it Morgan Peak."

A natural writer with a ferocious appetite for books, Rogan got her start in the field at a young age.

"I was always interested in writing - since I was a kid. And, like a lot of writers, I enjoyed doing it. I wrote a play when I was in fourth grade. It was supposed to be a class project, but I kind of took over, and I wrote all of it, and then it was performed. And that was such an incredible experience for me. I think it started about then," she said. "Plus, I was reading a tremendous amount, and there were books I just loved and admired and stole from the library, and had to own."

Reviews of this and her previous novels describe Rogan as a gifted storyteller and word craftsman, although she said, "I never took a course in writing. I learned from writing, and, I learned from reading. And, I learned from good editors along the way." In college, she majored in Liberal Arts.

One of the most complimentary reviews she received was that written by John Perry, who teaches in Stanford's Writing and Critical Thinking Program, for the Feb. 7 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. The headline of the article dubs the main character, Emma Roth, "A Haunted Housewife for the '90s."

"Since its inception, the gothic novel has allowed writers, often women, to explore the darker aspects of domesticity...In Suspicion, the curse of insight just happens to light upon a literary-minded soccer mom, and the darkness chances to envelop a Home Depot," wrote Perry.

Rogan's response to the review was both modest and witty. "A lot of times you see very flattering reviews, and you say, 'I couldn't have written it better myself.' But, this one, I could not have written myself," she said. "I felt like I should take a course from him and maybe understand my book better."

In addition to writing, Rogan also has been teaching in the continuing education program of Hofstra University for the past 5 years. This spring semester, she is teaching an online course: "Editing Your Own Work." She noted that anyone with a connection to the Internet can take it.

Rogan will conduct a book signing at 8 o'clock tonight at The Book Revue in Huntington, and on Wednesday March 10, at Barnes & Noble in Carle Place.