Professor Mary Mackey has a certain glow when you ask her abouther work.

You get the feeling that she is comfortable with her life andher accomplishments.

It is hard to catch a glimpse of Mackey, an English professorand writer in residence at Sacramento State, because she is only oncampus during the spring semester. This is because each fall she isbusy writing.

A Harvard graduate, with a Ph.D. in comparative literature fromthe University of Michigan, Mackey has published nine novels andfour books of poetry. Her work has been translated into 11 foreignlanguages, including Japanese, Hebrew and Finnish.

A screenwriter as well as a novelist, she has sold featurescripts to Warner Bros. and various independent film companies. Hermost recent book, “The Stand In,” is already beingadapted into a film.

As a professor, Mackey says she enjoys interaction with herstudents. She says it is an essential component of teaching. ForMackey, teaching is also impromptu. “It’s aboutreacting and connecting with students,” she said.

She enjoys observing students and the way they interact with oneanother. She particularly enjoys surrounding herself with youngpeople to hear the way they speak.

“I try to listen to how young people talk and incorporateit in my writing,” Mackey says.

She says people have become very visual recently, and film hasbecome the means of expression for young people.

The way young people talk these days has transferred from aliterary lexicon, to a cinematic lexicon. “Up to 25 yearsago, people quoted either two things, Shakespeare and the HolyBible, now it is different,” she said.

Overall, Mackey has a genuine interest in people and she triesto apply this philosophy to her writing

She began writing her latest novel, “The Stand In,”published under her pen name Kate Clemens, after the events of 9-11to offer some type of therapeutic comic relief.

“When times are really tough, we need comedy,” shesaid.

The novel is a modern retelling of “The Prince and thePauper.” It’s a story about class, set in Los Angeles,and is a hair-line split away from being a satire on Hollywood.

The plot is as follows:

Movie star Jayne Cooper is an uptight and disgruntledblockbuster actress who is upset because her films rake in bigbucks, but she has never received an Oscar – or even criticalacclaim. She wants to work for directors likeSpielberg, butshe must first learn how the rest of us “real people”live.

Jayne has lived a pampered life, her days filled with massagesand personal assistants. She sustains herself on hot-pink, $15.00packs of cigarettes, and numerous cans of Diet Coke, her signaturesoda. Jayne decides to be a true method actor and seeks out alook-alike to “stand in” for her.

Jayne tracks down a checkout clerk at the local Food Barn whocould be her identical twin – minus the glasses and a few pounds.All she needs is a makeover. Meet Mary Lynn McLellan. Not only isshe a cashier at the local supermarket, she is also an adjunctprofessor of freshman composition at the local community college.Jayne persuades Mary Lynn to switch places in exchange for$100,000.

Before long both characters become occupied in their new roles.Jayne is quickly fired from the Food Barn. But she soon findsherself connecting with her students, convincing them that writingis much like the production of a film and that Hamlet should berewritten with added Kung Fu scenes and explosions. In becomingMary Lynn, she learns to value real life.

Mary Lynn learns something new about herself from her rolereversal as well. The politics and the artificiality of Hollywoodall seem to repel and appeal to her at once. She is looked at assexy, for once in her life, gaining confidence.

Mary Lynn reconsiders her assumptions about Hollywood – a placewhere you lose your anonymity.

Mackey says that this novel is a comedy, and not a”calling-out” at Hollywood at all. Mackey says that herportrayal of Hollywood is an extreme version of the real Hollywood.She happens to teach Robert Altman’s “The Player”in one of her film classes.

“The Stand In” is somewhat her version ofAltman’s Hollywood expose. She says Altman’s piece ismore political in nature than her own because of the way Altman hasbeen treated by Hollywood over the years. Her novel is a comedyabout the differences in class, therefore, she feels it is theextremities about Hollywood that make it a comedy, a little absurdat times, but overall, funny at heart.

One critic, Harriet Klausner, has pointed out that although theswitch theme has been attempted many times since Twain’s”Prince and the Pauper,” all types of people will enjoythis “madcap romp” set in contemporary Hollywood.

“The Stand In” is the first in a series ofcontemporary comic novels which will be written underMackey’s pen name Kate Clemens.

You may just now be making the connection, or you may alreadyhave, but Mackey’s choice for a pen name for her modernversion of “Prince and the Pauper” seems particularlycontrived.

Mackey is related on her father’s side to Samuel Clemens,who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain. For an English graduatestudent, it’s a literary conundrum – for Mackey, it’shomage to an old relative.

Mackey has published poetry and novels, made the New York Timesbestseller list and optioned the film rights to “The StandIn” before it was even published.

It’s being made into a film and is in the process of beingcast right now.

Mackey was unwilling to divulge any further information aboutcasting, and with a confident, almost devilish smile.

If the film maintains the novel’s comic elements than itwill prove to be a promising picture.