Some Catching Up to Do

I'm leaving tomorrow for the main section of the book tour.  Five cities, five bookstores, five days.  Jackson, Greenwood, Memphis, Oxford, Blytheville.  My dad is coming with me.  He is a super dad.  We have agreed that if no one comes to my reading, I will not give a reading to just him, sitting in the front row, resisting the urge to buy multiple copies of the book just to make me feel better.  

I got some nice reviews from some really good places.  You can read them here, here, here, here, here and here.  

Interviews were conducted here and here.

The book was selected as an Indie Next pick for the month of April.  Christopher Chadwick of ASUN Bookstore in Reno, Nevada, said some incredibly nice things about the book.  Christopher shot to the top of my "people to whom I will donate a kidney" list.

Andrew Scott selected it as one of three books, along with Paul Yoon's Once the Shore and Tracy Winn's Mrs. Somebody, for Andrew's Book Club.

I read on Thursday in Nashville.  My extended family made up a large percentage of the audience.  It was a lot of fun.  The staff seemed wired from the Miley Cyrus signing earlier in the day.  Behind me, while I read, were two copies of Miley's book.  My mom and dad stole every single poster in the store that mentioned my reading.

I read on April 1st in New York for the Happy Ending Reading and Music Series.  It was a ridiculously fun event.  Colson Whitehead was awesome.  Amy Cohen was very, very funny.  But it was Sam Amidon who really made me happy.  If there was a person who didn't want to sleep with Sam Amidon after that event, then that person was a robot.  He sang "Relief" by R. Kelly and did not snicker while he did this or try to be funny about the choice.  He sang it like it was the most beautiful song in the world, which it might be, and he got the entire audience to sing along.

The next day, we flew to Greensboro, but our flight was delayed four times and I just barely made it to the class I was supposed to sit in on.  I did not have time to change into a coat and tie.  I was wearing a flowery western shirt.  This made me very uncomfortable.  The undergraduates in the workshop did not seem to mind.  Or at least they said they did not mind when I mentioned that I felt uncomfortable three different times.  They were very nice.  Then I read a story that night and that went well.

In New York, I ate at Paul's.  It was really good.  I got a 1/2 lb. burger that was just a burger on a bun with a side of mayo.  It was amazing.  It was like the burger had been changed at the molecular level from a solid to a liquid.  And then the liquid was turned into a not-quite-solid burger.

In North Carolina, because we got in so late, we didn't get to go to Lexington Barbecue #1, which is the best barbecue I have ever eaten in the entire country.  I wanted, for a half hour after I realized we couldn't go, to kill myself.  

If you live in the cities for my reading tour, please come to the readings or tell your friends to come to the readings.  Here's the tour.  I'll write in when I can, I hope daily, to tell everyone what I ate and how I reacted to the fact that no one came to the readings.