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Toomer started jogging. Looked left, looked right. Looked for a place to land. Looked for another person, anywhere, on foot.

No one. And nothing. Across five lanes, down the road, neon sign said COFFEE. Might be open this time of night.

"Let's get a piece of that skin under the microscope."

 "Spic skin comes right off, you know. They're snakes. That's how they sneak into the country."

 Behind him, back in the other direction, another neon sign. Looked like a gas station. Looked open.

 This is a scene from my new novel, Sylvan Street (p. 103), and features a night in the life of Tasmin "Toomer" de Silva, a character from the other side of the tracks, or, more accurately, from the other side of the border.

He inhabits an entirely different universe from the main group of characters on Sylvan Street, a suburban neighborhood of white-collar workers, civil servants and artists. The two worlds knock together in a series of mostly near misses, with one very important collision (worth about a million dollars).

In the above passage, Toomer is about to be chased by a pack of drunken white teenagers (whose voices you hear) on a deserted, decrepit street late at night. Given his dark skin and the fact that he is alone and car-less on the side of a highway, they figure he must be an illegal alien-which, for them, includes Black and Muslim, as well as Hispanic and Arab.

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I've been writing a new novel for about four months. Until recently, things were great between us. We were so compatible. So full of possibility. I couldn't wait to see it every day, spend time with it.

The new novel was so much easier to write than the previous novel (Sylvan Street), which, toward the end of the writing process, was all about solving problems: shoring up the pacing, fixing the ending. But with the new novel, still in its first fifty pages or so, problems had yet to reveal themselves. We were blissful.

Then, the inevitable happened. Slowly at first. A key structural decision I'd made in the new novel seemed like it might be flawed. A central character started proving opaque. I was revising the opening scene over and over. Things were getting complicated, difficult.

We didn't see each other for a day or two. I got busy with a little freelance work. Then I got the flu. Next, the kids got the flu. The new novel and I didn't see each other for a week, maybe two. When we did get back together, for an hour, or for a whole morning, it was awkward between us. Not as much fun as before. Doubts crept in. So we'd stay apart again, which only exacerbated the distance and the difficulty.

At the same time, my novel Sylvan Street came back into the picture. It was a book now. I have to admit, it looked good. Beautiful cover, interesting blurbs on the back. I remembered how much fun I had writing it, how exciting it was.

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In the novel ("Art"), five households in a Hudson Valley neighborhood much like my own find a million dollars in cash.

But in reality ("Life"), much of my business as a freelance copywriter has dried up in the economic downturn. My husband, a partner in a small business, has gone through a so-called "corporate divorce" and become unemployed. Up and down my real-life street, the recession has hit hard. Not only have my neighbors and I not found a pile of money, we keep losing it.

From house to house, we neighbors—many un- and underemployed—have been rubbing two nickels together. Investments and college funds are shrinking fast. Work is harder to come by. We pool our resources (hot dogs, chicken legs) for impromptu neighborhood barbecues that have replaced dinners out, join up for riverside bike rides, which have replaced European or Caribbean vacations.

Meanwhile, back in Art, the neighbors are tucking away hundred-dollar bills in their basement, taking trips to Paris, shopping around for Porsches, quitting their jobs to pursue their dreams. They are also striking moral compromises and covering up corrosive secrets. Friendships and marriages are tested, and not all relationships survive.

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Deborah Schupack is our guest blogger during the week of May 24th. If you have any questions for Deborah Schupack, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information on Sylvan Street:

Nine neighbors; two ominous outsiders; one suitcase containing a million dollars

Deborah Schupack tells a provocative and suspenseful tale about what happens when cold, hard cash moves in next door. With page-turning storytelling, graceful prose and deep, true emotion, Sylvan Street explores the ultimate power-and limitations-of money. What these friendly suburban residents do with their newfound money, and what the money does with them, builds toward a revelatory conclusion: how the tensions between benevolence and greed, duty and desire, inform our every action and interaction. Readers of thrillers and character- driven dramas alike will find a sweet payoff in these pages.