On a warm night in July, 32-year-old Jenny finds herself sitting on the deck of a Chinese cruise ship next to a charming but secretive stranger. In Jenny's lap is a tin containing the ashes of her best friend, Amanda Ruth, mysteriously murdered fourteen years earlier in a small Alabama town.

In this foreign landscape, filled with ancient cities that will soon be inundated by the rising waters of the Yangtze River, Jenny must confront her haunted past and decide the direction of her future. As the ship moves slowly upriver, from one abandoned village to another, Jenny journeys deeper into her own guilt and eroticism.

Dream of the Blue Room explores the nature of friendship and the intimacy that exists between young girls as they struggle toward adulthood.

Sounds good, right? And Michelle Richmond, on the GCC with me, wrote it! You can read an excerpt here. And read how the book came about, in this little essay on Backstory.

Now without further ado, Michelle's boyfriend list!

Boyfriends I Never Had (and why we would have made a great match)
by Michelle Richmond

In the interest of protecting the privacy of that eclectic and well-adored group of hunksters whom I like to refer to as "all the boys I've loved before," (mcjunkin, davis, luke, etc....and of course, my one-&-only kevin), I give you here my list of Boyfriends I Should Have Had, But Didn't:

Vince Vaughn (at left) : We have a similar sense of humor. He's goofy and doesn't have any of that macho baggage. I get the feeling he'd be good company on a cross-country drive.

Tony Blair: I admire his wit. I like the way he pummels the evil Tory David Cameron on Ask the Prime Minister. If only that damn Cherie weren't in the way.

Nick Cave. Like me, he seems to suffer from a lot of weird religious guilt, which drives his writing and which is at odds with his deliciously oversexed personality. He frequently writes songs that combine sex and church. (Sex and church have been frequent bedfellows in my fiction as well.) Also, his voice is SO deep. A few years ago I saw him on Ocean Beach in San Francisco. He was so tall and stringy and unhealthy looking, like someone just needed to take him home and nurture him. What can I say? I'm a born nurturer to the wayward male.

Lloyd Cole (left): Lloyd Cole should love me. I'm not sure why he doesn't (aside from, like, his wife, and the fact that we've never met). We have a lot in common. In addition to being a fabulous rocker (which I'm not, but would like to have been), he has sidelined as a teacher of literature. His songs are full of literary references… as in, "What pale fire I ever had is gone, but you don't want to hear that in a song…"

Steve Forbert: Okay, he's a little old for me, but we both have that Mississippi connection. I once made a request when I saw him play at a little church venue in Noe Valley in San Francisco, only I got the title of the song wrong, and he made fun of me in front of the entire audience, which conssisted of, like 40 people, but I didn't mind, because he was STEVE FORBERT. He looks like an elf, which is appealing.

KT Tunstall (at left): She's not a boy, she's not even a lesbian, but I still wish she would be my boyfriend.

It now occurs to me that of all the folks I would like to have had for a boyfriend, one is an actor, one is a head of state, and four are musicians. Not one writer in the bunch...I'd say that's fairly healthy!