On the Road! (UPDATED)

Five years ago yesterday, I registered this domain name—though my first post wouldn’t go up for another two weeks or so. Five years! There’s even a David Bowie song about that.

I have several entries percolating that I haven’t had time to finish—and am a little afraid to finish, honestly, because then I’ll have to post them and at least one is the written equivalent of a impotent foot stomp and sometimes, looking back at my five years of writing online I worry that the one overarching theme, the constantly percolating and reappearing motif, the mode subtending my entire electronic oeuvre, such as it is, is auditory: namely a whiny, nasal “iiiiiiiiiihhhhhhhhh!” of complaint. This troubles me.

But, believe it or not, this is not a complaining post! This is a post about something that makes me very, very happy. Happier, even, than the fact that whenever she sees the below picture Simone says—with a touching certainty—“MOM.”

{fig. 1: I carry it around now, to show to her whenever I need a pick me up.}

(For the record, it would be difficult for me to look LESS like Keira Knightley than I do already without serious, and possibly surgical, effort.)

To get to the point, I am delighted to tell you that there are now actual, honest-to-god events on the books for an actual, honest-to-god book tour. I will be at BlogHer from August 5th through the 8th, and then POW! the very next day:

Monday, August 9th
Iowa City, Iowa
Prairie Lights Bookstore
7:00 p.m.
Reading, Q&A, Signing

Prairie Lights is quite possibly my favorite bookstore. It’s in my book, even, and seems a fitting place for a first event. Though I feel a little faint when I read this.

(STREAMING OVER THE WORLD WIDE WEB! That means live, people. Need I remind you that I am not at my best live?)

The next day, my book is officially on sale. In stores. Of course, BlogHer attendees will be able to buy it ahead of time, at the conference bookstore (I hope—still waiting for confirmation) and if you show up at my Iowa City reading there will be copies there. But Tuesday the tenth is THE DAY, and I will probably celebrate by—well, first by driving home from Iowa, but then by drinking champagne with my cousin Amy and showing up at local bookstores with a pen. And a photo ID, so as to avoid charges of vandalism.

My official local release event is the day after that:

Wednesday, August 11th
St. Paul, Minnesota
Common Good Books
7:30 p.m.
(Exciting details forthcoming, but that is a whole other post.)

And then my schedule looks like this:

Thursday, August 12th
Chicago, IL
Women and Children First Books
7:30 p.m.

Thursday, August 19th
Seattle, WA
University Bookstore
7:00 p.m.

Do you notice the part about being in three different cities in three days? I’ve never done that! In fact, I have never been in three cities in three months, even, unless you count layovers, or my home-city, which I do not. I might as well admit that when I first saw the itinerary I thought it was odd that I was scheduled in BOTH Portland and Seattle because…well, because I thought they were more or less the same place. Like Minneapolis and St. Paul, or D.C. and Arlington, and thus everyone who would want to come to see me would show up on Wednesday in Portland leaving noone to come the next night in Seattle. (You can laugh at me, if you like. Heather already did.) Geography has never been my subject. I have many talents, but knowing where Kansas lies (East of me? West?) is not one of them. I am excellent at reading maps, however. A good thing, too.

The West coast part of the tour is especially exciting to me because I’ve never been to any of these places. I mean, I was in San Francisco when I was five, but that was a quarter of a century ago, and I mostly remember the wedding—my wedding, to my god…brother? Awful sounding, yes, but he was only the son of my godparents, so no real, incest-y relation. We were married in the living room of his parents’ house, He-Man peeking out from between the lapels of his father’s tuxedo jacket, my gown an adult-sized “Oh No, It’s Mr. Bill!” t-shirt turned inside out (borrowed AND blue!) For a veil, I wore a lacy nightgown on my head, and our rings were plastic and featured characters from Disneyland. In the picture (which I do not have, or I would scan it for you), Beau (my husband) looks properly gleeful and five-year-old-ish, whereas I look inappropriately solemn and have one hand over my heart. The other hand is reverently displaying the ring (Goofy, I believe).
That isn’t really a “city-specific” memory, as you can see, and though I also have vague impressions of beautiful bay scenery and houses arranged below us like colorful stair steps, I consider myself a San Francisco virgin. Now, when I think of San Francisco, I think “Holly Lives There! And Moose! And Leah! When I think of Portland/Seattle—because let’s be honest, until a few days ago I thought of them as a single unit—I think immediately of Linda.

(All three cities, incidentally, are on my list of Places I Would Live If Only. Portland and Seattle look beautiful, and Scott and I are constantly tempted when we see them on television, but they don’t get enough sun to keep us from taking our own lives. San Francisco seems perfect, save for the whole dropping-into-the-ocean thing. We talk a lot about moving to another stop on the tour—Chicago, and though I have never really explored the city beyond its center, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we end up there eventually. It is urban but near family, it has the lake and public transportation. Oh, how I long for public transportation!)

With such a gap between Chicago and San Francisco I am thinking I should spend an extra day in least one of those places to explore, or something, because won’t going home in between just be jarring? I’d have to leave Simone all over again, and it adds a whole other flight. On the other hand, the extra flight expense is probably less than extra lodging, and if I DON’T go home, I have to pack for a million days, probably without checking a bag. And it’s not like the extra days will be in a city like New York, one I know well and in which I have many friends to occupy me. On a third, anatomically anomalous hand, there is something appealing about turning the whole Chicago-through-Seattle leg into one long multi-stop trip instead of coming and going and packing and un- in the middle of it all.

I don’t know yet where I will be staying, because I feel so lucky to be getting a tour at all (if you follow publishing news, you know that you don’t even have to play anything backwards to hear BOOK TOURS ARE DEAD ABORT ABORT APOCALYPSE!) that I am trying to save money for my publisher by finding cheap places to stay whenever possible—you know, youth hostels, the homes of strangers I find on Craigslist. (Kidding! Kind of.) This will help me feel slightly less guilty if no one shows up to the readings, and hopefully keep open the possibility of more events in the future.

I am starry-eyed at the prospect of going to new places with new bookstores and meeting new people and thanking my readers up close and in person. All of these events will have a reading and signing, per usual (she says as if this sort of thing is old hat, as if she has ANY IDEA AT ALL what part of the book she will be reading), and all feature a Q&A. Please come, if you are nearby, and during the Q&A ask me something I know, like Where Was I Born? (Boston!) or Do I Care For Hockey? (No!)
While I am understandably clammy at the prospect of standing up in front of as many as HALF A DOZEN people, reading from my book and then enduring a Pop Quiz, worse still would be if nobody comes at all and it is just me and my Media Consort (that doesn’t sound right—escort, maybe?) surrounded by angry bookstore employees. So please, if you live in or near one of these (presumably) fine cities, come and see me! It would be so wonderful if you were to come! I want to meet you! Please! Come! Please come!

(And for those of you willing to show up, I have a few suggestions for how you can help my readings seem less sparsely populated. I have already talked to my friends and family about this, and it’s simple, really. The main thing is to bring a lot of props—scarves, hats, fake mustaches, that sort of thing—and keep changing them up while milling around in a busy fashion, to approximate a crowd. If two or three of you are doing that, I figure it will look like a good ten or fifteen people. This is especially important for the local event, because I have a secret fear that I am not going to be able to get people to come to an event even in my own hometown, and then I will be driven out and deposited outside the city borders, exiled and pitied.)

Wherever I am, I sincerely hope to see some friendly blog-reader-y faces (under the scarves and mustaches, I mean), and I’d love to have some sort of bloggy meet-ups–perhaps after each event we could all retire to my hostel hotel for a pickpocketing sidecar? I’ll let you locals suggest the details, maybe.

UPDATE: If your city isn’t on the list, you can vote to have it included below. (Link is also in the sidebar.)