The Old and the Restless    

Florida columnist serializes fictional condo soap opera

If he's said it once, he's said it a hundred times. The Hamsteins aren't real so you didn't see them at Publix. And no, the condo in the book is not the one that went up a year ago near that shopping center. It's fiction. He, Frank Cerabino, made it up.

Granted, one could see how the Palm Beach Post columnist's fans, particularly the more gray-haired among them, could be confused. It's fiction, sure. But any casual reader of Cerabino's knows life in an "adult community" can be all but a geriatric "Melrose Place." So when he was dreaming up the condo caper "Shady Palms," a serial novel for the Post, Cerabino didn't have to stray too far from the eldercentric, wacky, cranky reality that is South Florida. And readers know themselves when they see it.

"We knew it would play well in Palm Beach," says Tom O'Hara, the Post's managing editor during the serial's debut, now managing editor at Cleveland's Plain Dealer. "It's about living in condos in Boynton Beach. Many, many, many of the Palm Beach Post's readers are those people."

"Shady Palms" debuted in February 2000. "Shady Palms 2" followed in 2001, and this February and March, readers are being treated to a third helping of zany condo goings-on--"Shady Palms 3: Viagra Falls." Though serial novels and newspaper fiction have historical roots--Charles Dickens dabbled with the medium and O. Henry's "Gift of the Magi" ran in 1905 in the New York World--newsprint fiction, on purpose that is, is hard to find these days.

In recent years a few papers have pulled off serial novels that tap area authors to contribute different chapters. Examples include the Miami Herald's "Naked Came the Manatee" in 1995 and, also in '95, "Pete & Shirley" in Raleigh, North Carolina's News & Observer. Rarer, though, are papers that give the creative reins for such a project to a single writer. Rarer still, those that invite those writers back for sequels.

O'Hara talked Cerabino, 46, into trying a serial novel after enjoying Armistead Maupin's famously offbeat "Tales of the City" that the San Francisco Chronicle ran in installments during the '70s and '80s, heralded for its pitch-perfect depiction of the area's characters, culture and lifestyle.

It didn't take much convincing for Cerabino, already a Maupin fan with an unpublished novel or two under his belt. In his head, the story sprung to life. He'd follow the Maupin lead and craft a page-turner that could only be born in the paper's own backyard: In a gated seniors condominium named Shady Palms where everything is everyone else's business. Retired Long Island deliveryman Bernie Hamstein would lord over the C Building of said condo, though Bernie's plucky wife, Rose, would really run the show. Filling out the cast would be supporting codgers that put "The Golden Girls" to shame in the sass department.

As for the plot, Cerabino wanted it soap opera-esque, with mystery and suspense, but nothing too heavy. Even in Florida, where truth often comes stranger than fiction, it was liberating for the journalist, for once, not to have the facts stand in the way. "You get a rush," he says, "because suddenly anything you imagine can happen."

Cerabino set the alarm early for four months, crafting the twists and turns of "Shady" from 5 to 8 a.m. so it wouldn't interfere with his regular work. The editing and logistical planning that followed was even more labor-intensive.

For last-minute advice Cerabino called fellow Floridian Roy Peter Clark at the Poynter Institute. The year before Clark had published a serial novel called "Ain't Done Yet" that eventually appeared in about 25 papers around the country. Clark told Cerabino the key was to make sure that readers who missed installments had a way to catch up. That became a big project in itself.

The Post dedicated a phone line that readers could call daily to hear taped updates on the story. For a dollop of pizzazz, Cerabino recorded them himself in the character of Mort Granger, the salty publisher of the Shady Palms condo newspaper. Adding authenticity was Post Accent section editor Nicole Piscopo, who, playing Mort's wife, Doris, would argue with him and interrupt during the message.

When Post readers first met the Hamsteins and company, it was pretty clear pretty fast that "Shady Palms" got their seal of approval, something they don't give lightly. Readers e-mailed Cerabino: "I live just down the street from Century Village...and your character portrayal is so dead on target." "I am thoroughly enjoying your serial novella and am...only slightly vexed by the anomalies of grammar.... If your wonderful, colorful characters butcher the English language that is fine with me." And, "Are you sure these people don't exist?" (One reader actually called Cerabino to complain that the Post was devoting too much space to covering Shady Palms and should write about some of the other area condos, too.)

When a rush of requests for reprints came in, the Post quickly decided to publish the novel in book form, following even further in the footsteps of "Tales of the City." They'd sell it in area bookstores and also give it as a gift with subscriptions.

Though some journalists question the place of fantasy in a medium founded on fact, O'Hara isn't one of them. He says the Post powers that be never worried the novel would be out of place on its Accent section pages, but rather that dedicating a page of newsprint to the novel every day for a month was too much. They got over it.

"There's nothing wrong with a paper being entertaining," O'Hara says. "God knows newspapers aren't inclined to try new things."

As for a fourth installment of "Shady," Cerabino says it's up in the air. When dealing with the seniors set, it's wise not to plan too far ahead. "They're getting old," he says, joking about his characters. "So I don't know."