book tour

True confession: I sing the spelling of Mississippi to myself every time I type it.

I had never been to Mississippi before and I was fortunate enough to have wonderful weather for my visit, I wish I could conduct all of my phone interviews from porch swings.

Had a splendid, open windowed reading at Square Books, which featured the book tour’s first bookstore kitty:

And then I had a long winding road trip from Oxford to Jackson, with a stop in Greenwood to sign stock at the lovely Turnrow Book Co. Then in Jackson I signed quite a few books at Lemuria Books before my fantastically circusy event. I tweeted the view from the podium and this is from the back of the room:

I tried to convince them to just leave the ceiling like that. And my blurry phone camera photos will not do all their exquisite circus signage justice:

Had a fantastic time and huge thanks to everyone who came out for events and worked so hard to put them together!

In Milwaukee now, clinging to my room service coffee before I get rolling on a day full of interviews and things.

Hi Internet! I have been away and off and about and becoming far too intimately acquainted with airports.

I have had good intentions of blogging along the way but then my connectivity gets cranky and sleep seems so much more practical than blogging and then a week goes by, not sure how that happens.

A housekeeping note: am in the process of trying to overhaul the site a bit, giving news & reviews their own blogfeed rather than putting them all on this one. Still working on the best way to accomplish that.

I have been all over the place and I am not sure I can do a proper recounting of my adventures, so I will rely on the bits I managed to capture on my phone camera, which as you may know, takes better photos retro-cam style than it does normally.

One of my favorite bits from Odyssey Books in South Hadley, MA, their very own Wishing Tree:

And this has nothing to do with anything (well, directly) but I couldn’t not capture this bit of found Shakespeare in Salem:

Llamas in Baltimore, from the very quick trip I took to the Baltimore Book Festival. (The Peabody Library is astoundingly beautiful, by the way.) I am not sure if they are drama llamas, but they probably are. I suspect most llamas have drama.

This week I spent several days in Toronto on the first of my international stops, got to break in my brand new passport. Everyone at Random House Canada was wonderful and I ate so much good food that I forgive them for putting me on tv. A lot. They had a lovely cocktail reception with cotton candy and tarot reading and magic, I signed books in bookstores and tried to wrap my head around being the kind of person who gets talked to on tv shows and failed, it was all very strange. I get to go back next month for the International Festival of Authors so I am very much looking forward to the return visit, I’ve been promised I will have more time for city exploring.

Geese in Toronto:

View from my hotel room in Toronto:

Home now for just over a day before the busiest leg of the tour begins. Next time I’ll be back in Boston it’ll be for a matter of hours before leaving for London. So far have spent my day off doing laundry and shopping for new dresses to add to the tour wardrobe rotation.

Also, in between Baltimore and Toronto I briefly stopped in NYC to hug all my Doubleday lovelies, and they gave me the stunning original paper art from the cover! It has been shipped to me, proper photos once I actually have it but it is truly lovely and it was such a sweet & thoughtful present. I am a very lucky girl to have found myself such a wonderful publishing family. They’re all cute, too, I’m just sayin’.

There were also beautiful cookies and cupcakes and I got edible roses that I can’t bear to eat:

Also, I cannot quite believe that tomorrow is October already.

I type this from San Francisco. I have never been here before and I’m glad I’ve had a little bit of time to wander the city. I have a crush on the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. I’m so used to flat cities that the inclined streets keep reminding me of Inception. I’ve been signing books and meeting lovely bookish people and practicing my public speaking skills. Not sure I quite have the hang of this whole author tour thing yet, but I’m enjoying soaking in the scenery.

Also, my hotel room has a goldfish. He is difficult to photograph because he doesn’t like to stay still. I shall miss him.

Headed to Seattle later today.