At the end of Sassy Ladies Shopping Night Out last Friday at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Tarrytown, a vendor approached the table where I was selling my new novel, “Water Music.” She had been by earlier, but our conversation had been cut short by the appearance of customers at her table. Now true to her word, she came back as I was packing up and bought a copy.

She had told me that her son was gay, coming out to her when he was 14, and I could sense all the pain of that reality, not because she rejected him but because no mother likes to see her child rejected by others. She couldn’t quite understand why I – with no such similar narrative – would’ve, could’ve written a novel like "Water Music," whose four gay athletes whose professional rivalries color their personal relationships with one another. I told her that being a man didn’t stop Tolstoy from writing “Anna Karenina.”

“Yes, but at least he knew what it was like to make love to a woman.”

True, but he didn’t know what a woman feels like when she makes love to a man.

Boy, nothing like a day spent meeting members of the public to measure character – yours and theirs – as I discovered when I appeared wearing my deux chapeaux, as WAG editor and author of the new novel “Water Music,” at the recent Hudson Valley Gateway Experience in Cortlandt Manor, N.Y.

First, a big shout out and thank you to Chereese Jervis-Hill of Events to Remember in Mount Kisco, N.Y.; Deborah L. Milone, executive director of the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce in Peekskill, N.Y.; and The Mansion at Colonial Terrace in Cortlandt Manor for a truly terrific day. Some 500 guests milled about the antebellum manse, with its Doric columns and brocade wallpaper, savoring carrot-ginger soup, gluten-free crab cakes, mango ice and sweet potato tartlets. Attendees saw cooking demonstrations; got a chance to meet authors like young Claribel Ortega, who’s on her way with the teen witch novella “The Skinwalker’s Apprentice” (more on her in my upcoming women warriors post); and received freebies like the sweet plants provided by Manzer’s Landscape Design and Development and the smart, sturdy canvas bags from Entergy. Who doesn’t love free stuff?

Are women who write about gay sex ‘fag hags’?

Adventures in the book and mag trades