Rochelle Jewel Shapiro is about to release her first book, Miriam the Medium, published by Simon and Schuster, which is set right here in Great Neck. She has been living in Great Neck for 27 years and she even learned how to write at the Great Neck Adult Education Program where she studied poetry with Kent Ozarow and prose with Cynthia Shor. "Both teachers not only have a great ear for language, but they also know how to find what's good about your writing," she said.

Ms. Shapiro could not say enough about the wealth of intellectual resources available to the public in this community. She has attended the Great Neck Arts Center Film Subscription Series since its inception and refers to it as her "Ninety-second Street Y." And she regularly attends book discussions and readings by Shirley Blanc Romaine and others.

Responding to our positive comments about the book, she shared the good news that she has nearly finished the sequel to the book. She said that she is still so involved in the characters that she cannot let them go. "It's like color field painting," she says, "where an artist places a red square on a blue field and next to it, a red square on a yellow field and you get a whole new effect." Every time she places Miriam, her protagonist, in a new setting with new characters, it results in something totally different.

Like the heroine of Miriam the Medium, Miriam Kaminsky, Rochelle Shapiro is also a phone psychic who has clients all over the world and has done many radio shows. But she needed a break from staying in her home-office, talking on the phone all day and so she began to write.

It took her seven years to complete Miriam the Medium, which, although it has deep themes of children of survivors, family struggles, and the need to accept oneself, is richly comedic. After September 11, she thought that neither she nor anyone else would ever laugh again.

But then she ran into two Great Neck residents, Miles and Mimi Coons, who encouraged her to finish her book. Miles said, "The answer to destruction is creativity." She wrote that quote on an index card and whenever she lost the will to keep going with the book, she looked at the card and that gave her the strength to keep going. It was the generous spirit of her Great Neck friends and neighbors who continued to encourage her.

Since she had spent seven years writing the book, it had been through a few different computers and programs, and there were all kinds of errors which she could not fix. The screen would show the text as she wanted it, but on the printouts there were big blank spaces. No matter what the experts told her nothing worked. The pressure mounted; her rewrite was due at the publishers. Dorrit Title, from her poetry workshop, came over and read from her monitor so she could fill in the blank spaces.

Hannah Ritter, who designed Ms. Shapiro's web site, helped her proofread the book, which was a monumental task. For example, the grandmother character, Bubbie, was making "healing slaves" instead of "healing salves." And the people were driving around in "Porches" instead of "Porsches." Cynthia Shor helped the author keep tabs on the timing of the events in the novel so that characters were not in two different places at the same time. She also helped with the narrative flow by listening to Ms. Shapiro read the book to her over and over, while making suggestions.

Suddenly this interview went from one that was very interesting, to one that was deeply personal. Ms. Shapiro began speaking about my father who had passed away when I was 9, telling me about how he died and the messages that he had for me which were very specific and meaningful and private. I was shocked. It blew my mind. People had always told me that my father was around, but I assumed they were just trying to make me feel better. Now I know it's true.

Wednesday, May 12: 8 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in Manhasset

Tuesday, May 8: 1 p.m. at the Great Neck Public Library, Main Building

Thursday, May 20: 8 p.m. at Borders Books in Westbury

Saturday, June 5: 1-3 p.m. at Womanspace in Great Neck