I was returning tonight from one of my most enjoyable readings yet—a packed house, literally standing room only, at the Bailey Library in Winthrop—when a doe sprang in front of my car. People in the audience had just been asking me about my next novel, and I'd said it begins with a deer-car collision. I avoided the doe (or she avoided me), but my heart continued to race for a while, as much at the uncanny coincidence as the near-death encounter.