FIRST THERE WAS BANANA BAY….

Cindy's debut novel Banana Bay was released in hardcover in July of 2004, and hit the local bestseller list south of Boston the same year. In between other writing projects and two more Matti Maitlin mysteries, Cindy wrote Hubba Hubba.

HUBBA HUBBA HAPPENING

"The idea for Hubba Hubba came to me one night as I lay in my bed in Isla Bocas in Panama neither fully asleep nor awake. We had a house over the water and as I lay in that hazy limbo I got, well—zapped—is the best way I can describe it. The story of Hubba Hubba was presented to me as if Mike Nichols (or maybe Steve Martin) was tenanting my brain with a projector.

Hubba Hubba should be a movie! (I brilliantly surmised the next morning.) Unfortunately, I have no experience with screenplays, and so the project became a curling pile of notes on the top shelf of my closet. Still, the story stuck to my psyche like a sweaty butt to a plastic chair—it just wouldn't let me go!

A few years and mysteries later, I took my notes down and realized I had the bones of a novel. My husband Paul hooked up my laptop to a car battery in the casita at our farm, and I began writing Hubba Hubba. Two and a half years and many edits later, I had the manuscript in hand.

This is truly one of my favorite books. I don't think I've ever been so entertained writing anything. As the characters all developed a life and language of their own, I'd often laugh out loud—delighted (as I hope you will be) by the absurdities, ironies and down-right craziness which are so much a part of island life.

Those who know Panama will find much familiar ground here. Concepción and the island of Hubba Hubba are thinly disguised, as anyone who is familiar with living in Bocas del Toro can attest. And though much of Richard's "discovery" was what my husband and I found when we moved to Bocas in 1994, fiction works best when reality can truly be suspended...and altered to accommodate the author's whim. Thus, in Hubba Hubba fiction mixes with reality throughout.

For everyone who ever had a fantasy of starting over, Richard Darlington will perhaps provide an inspiration (or maybe a reality check!) for their own dreams of escape.

Paradise is so laden with the ripe, promising fruit of re-invention and happiness. My only advice: Don't stand under any coconut palms!

CINDY’S (VERY) CONDENSED BIO

In 1980, Paul and Cindy left the US on a one-way ticket to Paris with their skippers’ licenses and a vague plan to find work on boats and travel around the world.

They ended up working and living in Spain for 15 years and traveling all over Europe, instead. Cindy owned a nautical publishing company based in Palma de Mallorca writing and producing an annual yachtsman’s guide La Guia del Navegante, and a bi-lingual yachtie newspaper, The Boat Market.

They moved to Panama in 1994, and after 11 years of many adventures in Bocas, they moved to Chiriqui with their two dogs, Elvis and Lucy in 2005.