When Frank found out last year that I was about to start my book tour, he said, “Your biggest fear is the part I love the most! You’ll hate it!” But I think he might have been wrong. I didn’t hate it. In fact, my biggest fear is that I liked it. I liked it too much.

2016 hobbles in. Or, more accurately, I hobble in to 2016. Late last night, walking the dog after midnight, I started scrolling on my phone in the dark to see how people were celebrating the new year on Facebook, and twisted my ankle on a rut in the road. It was an apt admonishment to begin the year: be mindful. Be aware. Or you might make a misstep.

Oh, but it’s been a long long time since I’ve written— I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been on a whirlwind tour promoting my book, but really it’s just been Life: a new writing class at Los Angeles Writer’s Workshop, the Olympic marathon that is Thanksgiving, high school applications and tours, the annual clusterfuck of holiday events and shopping and year-end minutiae. However, there have been a few work-related events to savor in the dwindling glow of 2015

A flurry of October events that has left me a bit discombobulated but ever so satisfied… The month began with a return to the hometown of my adulthood—Chicago.   I’d imagined a homecoming similar to Bette Midler’s in “The Rose”—I would get up to do a reading, start singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and collapse (cue plaintive piano […]

All right, let’s take a brief intermission from all this book talk, all right? Time to get my head out of my arse (more on that in the next post) and see what else is new and exciting in the world: Games and Baking Shows! Imagine reading the entirety of Moby Dick, one phrase at a time, and […]

The agent picked up his phone? “Yes?” he said. “It’s me,” said the editor. “Did you get it?” “Oh, yes,” he sighed, pulling up the email on his laptop. “Right on time.” “You could really set your watch to it,” said the editor. She realized how close to anachronistic the phrase was—who set watches anymore?— but, […]

The publish date crept in quietly, with little fanfare but great anticipation. It had the hope of Christmas Eve mixed with the nervousness of the first day of school. I lay awake in my bed at 4:20 AM, imagining owls swooping across the dusky pre-dawn sky, brown-paper-wrapped parcels clutched in their talons, as they deposited my book on doorsteps across the land…

Less than a week to go before the book hits the shelves, and I’m up at 5:20, ruminating… …Last night the heavy shelves above our desk in the study collapsed, bringing down with it all manner of folders, notebooks and small work-related tchotchkes. The iMac hurtled to the ground, knocked down by the lamp above. […]

Less than three weeks before my book is released to the world, and things are about to get REAL. Lots of news, including book tour dates, the audio book, and a VIRTUAL BOOK SIGNING! Read on!