I’m writing this at 11:15 p.m. in a hotel room in Dallas, in a bed that is not my own. I meant to be asleep 15 minutes ago, and then I realized that—even though I’d written this on my planner 3 days this week!—I forgot to write today’s post.
It’s been a year of every type of emotion imaginable. A year of so much writing. So much traveling. So much book touring (almost non-stop) for Everyone Knows You Go Home since it came out in March. So little is actually in our hands when a book releases, so I told myself earlier this year that I would do everything I could do for it. For me that translated to doing events. Meeting readers. Crashing at friends’ and family’s places all across the country and sometimes, oftentimes, being home no more than a week or two at a time.
This is the dream, right?
Kinda.
Things that make it absolutely beyond worth it for this introverted homebody who would rather be writing in bed:
The young mom in California who brought her young son to my reading because he’d never met an author before…and getting a note from her the next day telling me how her eyes had teared up hearing her boy telling her grandfather all about it later that evening.
Having readers ask me to make their book out to their mom. A book that I wrote as a gift to my mom…becomes a gift to theirs.
Standing-room only crowds full of loved ones.
Standing-room only crowds full of strangers.
Three-person crowds on a cold and rainy day—and pulling up a chair and just chatting.
Hearing my literary hero (the author who inspired me to write fiction!) introduce my book before a reading using words like masterful and magical (how is this real life?!).
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