Archives - Weekly Update

Today kicks off the Book Expo America (BEA) trade show in New York, which is a whirlwind event where publishers present their fall titles and we all are on what seems like an endless merry-go-round of meeting authors, hearing about new books and celebrating at parties and other soirees. The schedule reminds me of finals week at college. By Sunday there will not be enough caffeine around to keep even "Energizer Bunny" me going, but we will have a pretty good picture of what's going to be published for fall.

Here comes one of my favorite three-day weekends. The pool here is crystal clear, the lawn chairs are out and the hammock looks inviting. I have no plans except for watching the local town parade on Monday, which the boys and I always call "a Mayberry moment." It's incredibly amateurish, but watching it I always get a lump in my throat at some point --- usually when the older veterans walk by. Knitting (making this cool shawl in a new pattern) and reading on the agenda....lots of both. Oh, and we have a new grill, which supposedly has a ton of features I "am going to love." I think that that was hype to get me all excited about Tom and the boys hitting the hardware store to buy this last weekend. I got an amazing sales pitch from them on why we "needed" this.

Is there anyone else annoyed about the postage increase this week? I find this maddening since I feel like we are being asked to invest more in something that is a failing system. Sending and receiving mail has become a game that is about as much fun as trying to figure out the timing of traffic patterns at the Lincoln Tunnel (which I have not figured out in 29 years of commuting). We still get mail from the person who owned our house two people before us, which is not astounding unless you realize we have owned this house for 17 years. I used to be able to mail something in New York City to someone in New York City and have it get there in a day. Now it could be a day, or a week, IF it gets there at all. No wonder I love email. The way I see it, if I relied on the post office to get you this newsletter, you might never hear about new releases --- and you would miss all contest deadlines. And that's my two cents on this, which is the same cost as the increase.

Wednesday night I got home around 8:30 to find Cory, my younger son, the one who usually is so buried in a book that he barely acknowledges my arrival home, standing by the door saying, "I need to make homemade chocolate chip cookies for school tomorrow and we have no butter." Well there went my plan to sit on the couch and eat some dinner, read and relax. In his defense, he had mentioned this and the lack of butter the evening before, but all three people who could hit the store blanked on remembering to get there.

I love to take pictures when I travel, and I am noted for shooting a lot of photos when I am on the road. What's interesting about my literary travel is that I rarely shoot an author photo or anything at book festivals and events. I bring back a hundred anecdotes, but rarely do I snap a picture. I had a friend who told me he never shot pictures of mountains, because they never looked as special when you got home and looked at them. The memory was dwarfed once you looked at it. I think these experiences are the same way for me. It's not about how the author looks, but rather about what they said. I find myself running their conversations like film in my head.