The Write of Way
Inspired by the East End, Authors Tell What Moves and Motivates Them

HOLLY PETERSON

Holly Peterson only published her second novel, "The Idea of Him," in April, but she is already deep into writing her third: It's a murder mystery set in the Hamptons, which makes perfect sense, since she has been spending time here since she was 10 and knows the scene very well. "The culture is very sexy, very athletic," she says. "It's varied and it brings so many people together; it's perfect for social satire."

Holly Peterson

Peterson – a former journalist at Newsweek and ABC News – often writes here too. Sometimes, it's at her house in Watermill, in a window seat in her bedroom, propped up on giant pillows, as early as 4 a.m. Other times, it's at The Golden Pear in Southampton, where she will hunch over her computer and sip tea at a table in a corner from mid-afternoon to about 5:30 p.m.

"I'm a divorced mother of three children, and I have a very intense job," she says, explaining how she must carve out time to think and write in peace. "Writers have to turn off the world to get their head and their heart on the page."

Peterson's two books of the moment are very different. "The Idea of Him" aims to illustrate how women often fall in love with the idea of a man, rather than the real person who sleeps with them at night. "I wanted to write a book to inspire women not to cling to the next guy," Peterson says. "It's a feminist book." The message: single women can be complete and happy. She says she faced some pre-publication resistance from editors wary about a protagonist who "was veering off on her own, instead of looking for a man." But feedback from readers, she adds, has been positive.

Her mystery novel will be less serious, not least because the Hamptons are for "playtime," filled with Porsches, pools and parties. "It's biting and funny, but I'm not mean," say Peterson, whose first book was the bestseller "The Manny.""My characters are all composites, not one person. But I am poking fun at the group in general and I'm part of it, so I'm poking fun at myself too."

JENNIFER ESPOSITO

Jennifer Esposito

Actress Jennifer Esposito, author of "Jennifer's Way: My Journey with Celiac Disease--What Doctors Don't Tell You and How You Can Learn to Live Again," is on a mission. And it's not just on behalf of people who must eat gluten-free diets. Esposito believes that everyone wants "good, clean food," free of chemicals and additives. "Food has become so tampered with, so artificial, that our bodies don't know what to do with it," she says.

Her book, which chronicles her long struggle to deal with an undiagnosed disease and then, once she was learned the true cause of her woes, to cope with it, is only part of her quest. Esposito has also opened a bakery in Manhattan (bread is the best-seller) and a mail order business in Queens (cookies and pancake mix, because bread is not yet available). Someday, she says, "I'd love to have a restaurant." Her "most favorite" pastime involves reading cooking magazines and cookbooks, thinking how she might adapt them, and "getting in the kitchen and trying it out." She rarely eats in restaurants, she says, "because it's not just gluten that I have to avoid; it's dairy and corn and…they can't cook for me. I'll go and meet friends and have a glass of wine, but I'll take my bread and have a salad or something." She is a self-confessed "bread fiend."

But Esposito, who lives in Brooklyn and also rents a house in East Hampton, says she also loves to write. Aside from the book, which she finished with help from Eve Adamson, Esposito has written a screenplay and writes a blog. "I wake up with a lot on my mind from my sleep, and I start writing." Is she contemplating another book? "We'll see," she says. "There's more to say."

THOMAS MAIER

Thomas Maier

Hard as it is to believe, Thomas Maier, says that being the author of the 2009 best-seller "Masters of Sex," which details the explosive but sad lives of sex-researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson, and is the basis for the hot TV series on Showtime that began its second season in mid-July, hasn't changed his life much. He's still an investigative reporter – now in his 31^st year at Newsday – and proud of it. He admits to one material change in circumstances: Instead of writing his books in his unheated basement in East Northport, he now works in a heated bedroom upstairs. Then he changes the subject, saying "I don't like to talk about money. It's not as much as you might think."

What he does like to talk about is narrative journalism, which, after all, has been good to him. "Masters of Sex" grew out of the profile he was drafted to write for Newsday the day William Masters retired. Both researchers were very secretive at the time, but when Masters died in 2001, he went back to Johnson and "won her confidence" – partly by sending her a copy of his "Dr. Spock: An American Life," which was published in 1998. "She knew Jane Spock," Maier says, adding "once she started talking she was a chatterbox."

Pleased as he is with the TV show – whose pilot was partially filmed on Long Island, including the mansion in Sands Point Preserve once owned by industrialist Daniel Guggenheim – Maier is on to new things. He says that Sony bought the rights his 1994 book, "Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power and Glory of America's Richest Media Empire and the Secretive Man Behind It," and he hopes that'll become a narrative TV series, too.

And his next book, "When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys," an examination of the deep personal and public links between the two families, is set to be published in October. "There will be real news in that," Maier says, refusing to provide even a clue now. "There are 1,700 footnotes."

CHRIS PAVONE

Chris Pavone

Chris Pavone has a sweet life. He drops off his twins, aged 10, at their school in Greenwich Village each morning, then proceeds to Soho House, the chic private club in the meatpacking district. There, he writes "in full public view" until about 11:30 a.m. That's it. Done for the day. "If you do that 100 times, you have a book," he says. Pavone is well into his third one now, and both his first outing, "The Expats," about two couples abroad who know too little about their spouses, and "The Accident," a thriller set in New York's literary world that was published in March, turned out to be best-sellers.

Not bad for a guy who never set out to be a novelist. For years, Pavone worked as a non-fiction book editor, primarily handling cook books, including "The Lobster Roll: {And Other Pleasures of Summer by the Beach}" about the well-trafficked diner on Route 27 in Amagansett. Growing unsatisfied, he quit and traveled down a road that made a stop at "ghostwriter" and freelance-editor before finding himself in Luxembourg, where his wife had taken a job. Unemployed, Pavone had a self-described "difficult year" as house-husband. Then, one day, he took his laptop to a café and began to write fiction. He bumbled around with a domestic tale, not getting very far. When he changed it to a thriller, he discovered his métier.

Pavone and his family set out for Long Island most weekends and in summer, where they have a home in Orient, on the north fork. "I go to the south fork to go to the beach and to visit friends, but not too often," he says. Why? The trip requires two ferry rides.

And lately, he has been on the road a lot, promoting "The Accident," which like his labyrinthine first novel is full of twists and turns. Pavone says he loves the writing life, but isn't one of those authors who can churn out a book a year. "I'm on a two-year schedule now."

LEE BRIAN SCHRAGER

"It's a food that appeals to everyone," declares Lee Brian Schrager, the food entrepreneur and author of "Fried & True: More Than 50 Recipes for America's Best Fried Chicken and Sides." "It's a classic American food, and you'll find it everywhere from white tablecloth restaurants to shacks along the street."

Lee Brian Schrager

Yet this enthusiast, who traces his earliest memories of fried chicken to his mother's kitchen in Massapequa, had cooked it himself only once before going on the road last year co-author Adeena Sussman to scout for the very best recipes. At the time, he wasn't even sure he'd find enough variations to make a book.

The tour around the country made him wake up and, well, smell the checkin. Now Schrager, the founder and director of the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival in Miami as well as the New York Wine and Food Festival, says he's "a lot more aware of its diversity."

He has no real favorites. What he cooks depends on how much time he has: "The beauty of the book is that it has recipes that take from 45 minutes to those requiring marinating overnight." To brine or not to brine makes the biggest difference in the results, he says, followed by the type of oil used for frying and the right temperature (375 degrees, to start).

Schrager, whose Hamptons history goes back to his childhood years – when he often visited "Little" Edie Beal at Grey Gardens – tested all the recipes in the book, and more, in a photo studio in NYC. He would write, starting at 6 a.m. on the patio overlooking his pool. After his day job and perhaps dinner at one of his favorite eateries – Nick & Toni's, Easthampton Grill and Tutto il Giorno in Sag Harbor, among them – he'd often return home and write more, before slipping off, perchance to dream of his next book, "Morning Glory, whose subject is breakfast, due out in 2015.