Midwest Beauty, Bookselling, and Bummer

Put the bummer right in the beginning. Four hours at O'Hare last night (which is when I started this entry, hence the Sunday date). I could have driven to Madison, Wisconsin. But that's not why I've got a picture of Hell's Kitchen here. This is a good Hell. It's where I ate breakfast yesterday morning in Minneapolis (Hell's Kitchen motto: "Damn Good Food" -- they were right). I had the crab cake with poached eggs and Paul had the Huevos Rancheros. The hot sauce on the table was called "Bottled Hell." The decor was hip and funky and the line was out the door. Good thing we had reservations.
It's good to walk a city with someone who knows it. Paul Von Drasek grew up here. His dad was a doctor in a small nearby town. Paul is the oldest of four boys. "We couldn't get away with anything," he said, "because my dad was the town doctor and everybody knew him!"

Paul knows Minneapolis. "I think this is Loring Park," he says. It is.

Fall is everywhere.



It's easy to forget there's a booksellers' convention going on just blocks away.


Somewhere over there:











After a too-brief peek into the sculpture garden at the Walker Art Center, we take ourselves back to the convention center where The Moveable Feast of Authors is about to take place.

Booksellers stay put at round tables during lunch. Authors.... move. Every ten or fifteen minutes. The first time I participated in a Moveable Feast, I was so shy and so new to publishing -- everything was scary. It was 2002 in Fort Lauderdale during a SEBA (Southern Booksellers) conference. I sat in a room full of authors, listening to Executive Director Wanda Jewell explain how each of us would move from table to table during the evening's meal, meeting upward of forty new people in under two hours, and I said (under my breath, I thought), "Oh, that's awful!" and Wanda swiveled in my direction like a machine, clapped her hands once with command, pointed to me, and barked, "NO IT'S NOT. YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE IT."

And I did. It's a joyous, fast-paced affair, sort of like speed dating. Here in the Midwest, Susan Walker is executive director of MBA and she pairs two authors at each table, so I have a partner each time and not only meet booksellers, I meet a different author each time I move and learn about his/her new book. Bliss.

This is Joyce Sidman with her new Houghton book, THIS IS JUST TO SAY: Poems about Apology and Forgiveness. It's such a fabulous book. The premise alone is fantastic; the poems themselves are little jewels. The art is just-right. The... well, you'll have to see for yourself.

I remember discovering Joyce's SONG OF THE WATER BOATMAN AND OTHER POND POEMS two years ago on book tour with LITTLE BIRD. Yvonne Rogers at Lemuria hand sold it to me. I am still madly in love with that book. It won a Caldecott honor for Beckie Prange. I want to shower honors on Joyce's poetry.
One last photo. These are brand-spanking-new booksellers. In a day when independent bookstores face such difficult challenges in the marketplace, along come entrepreneurs who plunge right in. Let's all go buy books from Novel Ideas in Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin and Cate's Books and Stuff in Louisiana, Missouri.

Minneapolis: My work here is done. O'Hare awaits, and you know that story. I have had bad airport luck this season; some seasons are like that. But finally, late last night, I got to Madison, Wisconsin where, smiling at the bottom of the escalator and holding her copy of LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER, was Chris Antonuzzo, librarian at Rome Corners Intermediate School in Oregon, Wisconsin. I'll be spending the day with her fifth graders on Tuesday.

Today, Monday, I'll be in the School District of Belleville. I want to tell you all about these schools, and I want to talk about school visits -- I Have Opinions. First I'll get myself ready and out the door. My throat is sore. That joyous Moveable Feast involves much shouting in a room with lots of noise. I've got my water and Ricola with me today. No airports, thank goodness. I can't believe that I return to O'Hare tomorrow, however. May the travel gods be peaceful. Today, may the school-visit gods smile.

It's a Warm Day in Lake Wobegon

I haven't seen a lake (or the river). Haven't spied any Norwegian bachelor farmers or devout Lutheran ministers, but I have heard talk about Garrison Keillor, Minneapolis's favorite son. At the MBA cocktail party last night, Patricia Hampl told me that Keillor worked through ten years of relative anonymity with what would become "A Prairie Home Companion." Hampl described her own career as long and quiet. She's being very modest. I am anxious to read her new book, THE FLORIST'S DAUGHTER.
National Accounts Manager Ellen Sugg is taking good care of Harcourt books (and me) at the Midwest Booksellers show. Here she is with Paul Von Drasek, Executive Director of Sales at Harcourt.





And this is Heather Strand from Buffalo Books in Buffalo, Minnesota. This picture was in my email inbox this morning along with a message from Paul's Blackberry: "Heather Strand stopped by hoping to see you. Your biggest fan and is a teacher reading your book to her class. I told her about your blog." Sorry I missed you, Heather; thanks so much for reading ALL-STARS to your students and for all the work you do at Buffalo Books.

Paul works in NYC but grew up in the Minneapolis area, so this is a coming home for him. For me, too. I have never been to Minneapolis, but being with friends is a coming home. It's always good to see Paul, and there will more good soon, as I meet up with friend Marion Dane Bauer. I get to see more than the city when Marion picks me up -- I even get to see DIRT. We drive past a construction site with mounds of black dirt -- I see what those Norwegian bachelor farmers fell in love with now. This is the blackest soil I've ever seen -- wish I had a picture to show you. I've gotten used to the red clay soil of Georgia (well, I haven't gotten used to it, but I'm beginning to accept it).

Marion and I grab a precious hour or two together on a beautiful fall day (these were the leaves we walked through on our walk) before we're back at the convention center for Marion to sign BABY BEAR DISCOVERS THE WORLD, a beautiful new 64-page picture book published by Adventure Press with amazing photographs by Stan Tekiela.

Then Marion and I excuse ourselves from the cocktail party so we can attend the orchestra! What a treat on the road. What a treat anytime. I'm thrilled that Marion has two tickets to the Minnesota Orchestra's season preview concert and I'm touched and delighted she would invite me to come with her. I was so tired by the time I got here -- remember, the morning started with a power outage at 5am while I was in the shower at home in Atlanta, then hours of flight delays getting to Minneapolis, yadda yadda, but I have to say, when I sank into my seat in Orchestra Hall and the lights came up... I was totally blown over.

Copland, Grieg, Brahms, Bach, Mozart Rimsky-Korsakov, and more -- it was a feast for the senses. The theatre was packed -- 2000 strong. And my soul was fed. I remember the very day I discovered classical music. I was sitting in my fourth-grade classroom in Camp Springs, Maryland when a new music teacher, Miss Farrell, wheeled her music cart into the room, put a record on the record player, and played "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg from his "Peer Gynt Suite." Be still my heart. Eugene Ormandy was the conductor. For Christmas that year I asked for a record by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Ormandy was the conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra before he made his way to Philadelphia. Now, Osmo Vanska conducts -- just like this. The orchestra publicity folks call it "Osmosis." Boy, is it. He was amazing, his orchestra is amazing, and what a way to end a night in Minneapolis. This morning I meet Paul for breakfast ("Minnesota's a great place," he says. I want to hear more.) and then attend The Moveable Feast of Authors at noon, then scoot myself to the airport in order to fly to Chicago (backwards on the map), then to Madison, Wisconsin, where I'll be in schools on Monday and Tuesday. I'm hoping for more fall beauty. I've missed it in Atlanta. We have a fall, but not that luscious, gorgeous, beauteous fall we had in Maryland in the years I lived there. When I think Wisconsin, I think cheese and Land O' Lakes. That's as much as my before-coffee mind will let me think. I know there's more. Can't wait to see it.

Hurry up and Wait

I'm on the way to Minneapolis. I'm waiting. In the airport. At O'Hare. I got up at 5am in order to catch a 7:50am flight out of Atlanta. It is still dark at 5am. I turned on the coffee pot, clicked on the bathroom light, got in the shower, began to wash my hair, and --fitz! -- the electricity went off. Don't try to imagine what it was like, dripping wet, to search for flashlights, candles, matches, and a towel, not in that order. I had laid out my clothes the night before so I could easily pack this morning... now I would pack by candlelight and hope not to leave anything behind that I just can't see. When the lights came on an hour later, the first thing I said to Jim was, "Turn on the coffee!"

Jim laughed. "You're an addict!" I am. There are worse addictions.

Speaking of seeing, I worked in a long-overdue eye exam this week while I was home, and ordered new contacts (you'll remember I lost a contact in the bowels of Allyn Johnston's Honda while I was on tour in California) and a new pair of glasses. They're red. Next week I'll be back in the seeing-well business.

Right now I'm in the airport-waiting business. Came home from the fabulous SIBA to the news that my college-age daughter's old laptop -- which we have been bandaiding together for years -- is finally most sincerely dead. She has three papers due, midterms looming, and the campus library hours have been cut back severely (long story). Boyfriend Richard showed up from Florida (not my boyfriend; Hannah's). Poison pen letters arrived -- more on this one day, too... they took the wind out of my sails, and I was exhausted anyway, so this gave me a chance to take to my bed with even more reason, which I did.
Books continued to arrive, which got me out of bed, where I joined in the search for a new laptop. Hannah wants an iMac. We have to win the lottery first. And, since she's paying for her laptop, she grabbed my offer to buy myself a new laptop and give Hannah my old one, which works Very Well, although the new one has twice as much storage space and speed, and now that I'm BLOGGING.... But what I didn't understand was that new computers now have..... VISTA. Windows Vista. Ohmygolly Uncle Jim-Bob, WHAT were they thinking?

Nothing works with VISTA, particularly not my ancient, beloved email program, Eudora. I've made some progress in getting it all straightened out ("Thank you, Richard; let's all go to dinner."), but I have a feeling I've got a long way to go. If any of you have suggestions for dealing with VISTA, please let me know! (No fair saying "take the laptop back.") Used to be, Vista was a program much like the Peace Corps, only in this country. When I was a teenager, I wanted to join Vista before I found myself in a surprisingly different line of work. I loved the idea of that Vista. This VISTA... pah.

So. It has been an expensive week. But hey. I was home. Home between gigs. Four days on the road coming up, then one day home, then three days out again.

Oh, and one last thing, while it's all about memememe: The Listening Library audio book of ALL-STARS is here, and you must must must go hear just a snippet of Kate Jackson's wonderful, heartfelt reading of this book. Kate Jackson. Yes, that Kate Jackson, formerly of Charlie's Angels, formerly of Birmingham, Alabama, where she was born... her southern drawl and slightly salty/scritchy/silly/sensitive voice is perfect for ALL-STARS. You can have a listen here. And you can read the PW starred audio review here. Way to go, Miss Kate. Thank you so much for such a fabulous rendition of ALL-STARS.

My waiting time is over -- United is calling my flight to Minneapolis. Midwest Booksellers, here I come, complete with my old glasses, my new laptop with VISTA (booooo!) and my hair washed by candlelight. Look out.

Coming Home

Thanks for hanging around while I've been gulping sleep and getting used to the 3-hour time change. I've moved slowly this week. I've opened mail and read some of it. I've paid the bills. I've reconnected with family. I've eaten lots of spinach. Saturday I went to the SIBA conference -- the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.

I love SIBA (which used to be SEBA, and then Southern and Southeastern booksellers got together and merged and created SIBA). It's always a great show. Even the 2001 show, just after 9/11, although lower in attendance, understandably, was such a heartfelt show. Thank you, Wanda Jewell, for all you do for southern booksellers and storytellers. I had such a good time.

I was on a panel with some great spirits: Alan Gratz, Gail Giles, and Isabel Gomez-Bassols. Between us we'd written such very different books and I wondered how moderator Betty Jo Harris (from Windows, A Bookshop in Monroe, LA) was going to bring us together.


Betty Jo had done her homework -- she'd read all four books and could cogently talk about them. She took questions from the audience. This is what the audience looked like to most people.



This is what y'all looked like to me:

Kidding, kidding, I could see you just fine. I'm not sure how cogent *I* was, however. Still, I loved meeting booksellers, especially at the signing afterwards, loved hanging with Alan and getting to know him better... I'll never forget the absolute horror I felt when I began reading chapter one of SAMURAI SHORTSTOP and realized that a ritual suicide was about to take place -- be still my heart. I've now got a copy of Alan's new SOMETHING ROTTEN and can't wait to read it.

On the exhibit floor I also snagged a galley of fellow Harcourt author John C. Waugh's new book: ONE MAN GREAT ENOUGH: ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ROAD TO CIVIL WAR. I've been hooked on Jack's scholarship and writing ever since I met him at SEBA in Ft. Lauderdale in 2002 and read his book about Sara and Richard Pryor, SURVIVING THE CONFEDERACY. Good book. Good writer.

Harcourt has many good books/good writers publishing this season. At ALA in D.C., Harcourt's Geoff Hughes gave me Patricia Hampl's new memoir, THE FLORIST'S DAUGHTER, which I'm eager to jump into. In children's/ya, we have such a rich crop this season! I just opened a box of books I picked out when I was at Harcourt's offices in San Diego last week: Linda Urban's A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT, Gennifer Choldenko's IF A TREE FALLS AT LUNCH PERIOD, K.L. Going's THE GARDEN OF EVE -- I am in such good company this season.

Also picked out for the 7-year-old (and me) the new Chet Gecko mystery by Bruce Hale, HISS ME DEADLY, and the picture books PSSST! by Adam Rex, WHAT WILL FAT CAT SIT ON? by Jan Thomas, and the surreal, gorgeous WHERE THE GIANT SLEEPS by Mem Fox and Vladimir Radunsky. And just as I was leaving the office last week, Morgan Gould gifted me with the EUDORA WELTY biography by Suzanne Marrs, which I have checked out of the library so many times... now I have my own copy, in honor of the dog, Eudora Welty, in THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS.

I'm going to go back and paste links and put labels on posts before I head for Minneapolis on Saturday. I'm curious to compare these different regional booksellers conferences. I've now been to PNBA and SIBA. What's UMBA going to be like (MBA now, Midwest Booksellers Association). I'm doing the Moveable Feast at MBA and I'm going to spend some time with good friend and mentor, Marion Dane Bauer, who has a new book out this season that I hope to snag at MBA: KILLING MISS KITTY AND OTHER SINS. Ha!
I love connecting with good friends on the road. Here's Elisabeth Grant-Gibson of Windows, A Bookshop in Monroe, Louisiana. She's promoting Windows at SIBA (and ALL-STARS -- love the hat), while she also drums up advertising support for the wonderful BOOK REPORT: A scintillating once-a-week, one-hour radio magazine about books, originating live from the KMLB studios in Monroe. Obviously, our photographer, Will Clarke (check out his website for more about THE BOOK REPORT and his books), thought the banner was more important than we were! He's right.

I've kept you long enough. I've been researching all summer and I'm about to plunge into writing a trilogy of novels I've just sold to Harcourt, and I want to tell you all about them. Who grew up in the Sixties? I did. I'm going to be writing all about it in what we're calling THE SIXTIES TRILOGY: THREE NOVELS OF THE 1960s FOR YOUNG READERS. I'll have questions for you and I'll chronicle my writing process here as I travel through the fall to schools and conferences, teaching writing workshops and talking about ALL-STARS, yes, and RUBY and LITTLE BIRD, and FREEDOM SUMMER, but mostly talking about our collective and individual stories and how we find them and tell them. See you on the road.

Family is a Circle of Friends who Love You

I returned home to books arriving from my independent bookstores. Look! TurnRow, the little indie that could, nestled deep in the Mississippi Delta, packages books in cotton! Quail Ridge in Raleigh uses brown paper and also includes a BookSense flier -- THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS is a BookSense Fall Pick -- fabulous.

Boxes will continue to arrive and I will set-to with the task of catching up on all that needs attention now that I'm home. ALL-STARS is launched into the world -- I still have a couple of conferences to attend, but overall, the book is sailing forth on its own now, riding off in the hands of librarians, booksellers, and teachers, finding its way to children and adults everywhere. It is making that full circle that I long for as a storyteller, that response after the call. "Music is dialogical," says my musician husband Jim. "It requires a listener in order to be complete." Story is the same way. It requires a listener, a reader.

I'm going to finish a draft of the new book this fall. I'll chronicle some of that process here, and I'll write about fall travels to schools and conferences. I'll write about teaching, too. I've been teaching writing for many years and I Have Opinions. I'd love to hear yours.

I came home to friends and family. Dinner at Mary Mac's, an Atlanta institution, with daughter Hannah and two tall men, Walter Mayes and Jim Pearce. I'm married to one of these men.

Here's Hannah adding some height perspective:

I came home to a mountain of mail. Jim Williams installing lighting in my home. Son Zach telling me about his latest DJ gig, daughter Hannah coming home to do laundry and catch up. All the usual suspects and more. Family is a circle of friends who love you. Michael Hill, Harcourt's southern sales rep is in town. We went to my favorite noodle house for comfort food last night. This morning I'll pick up Carol Moyer (of Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh) and we'll go junking in the hours between the author breakfast and the author lunch at SIBA.

So I'm off to SIBA this morning -- the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance conference. It's in Atlanta this year, right in my backyard. I'll take my camera. I'm going to see my southern bookselling friends and be on a panel with other authors, discussing stories. I haven't let myself do the post-tour crash yet, but I will soon. I have one week at home before I travel to MBA -- Midwest Booksellers Assoc. -- and two schools in Wisconsin. And more.

Time to make the doughnuts. I'll be here if you want to stick around a while. Thanks for going on tour with me. It was so, so wonderful to have your company.

Follow the Yellow Book Road to the Land of Harcourt

I was going to title this post "I am worried about my cleavage," but that just wouldn't be appropriate, would it? I was on television Wednesday morning and... well... I write books for children, I'm representing children's books, I wore red so I wouldn't look like a cadaver. I didn't think about my cleavage. This is what it has come to, on the road. It's all about the cleavage.

I *would* like to point out that I left only one thing behind yesterday, but it was recovered. I want to say that right off the bat. I didn't leave it at the teevee station. I didn't leave it at Yellow Book Road. I left it at... but wait, I'm gettin' ahead of myself, left me back up.

No, I can't back up. I can hardly make a sentence this morning. I've been on the road for most of the month of September and today I'm going home. No bookstores, no libraries, no schools, no nuthin' but a five-hour plane ride in first class. First Class. I was upgraded last night; Delta Airlines must have been alerted: "She has worked so hard! Let's give her a comfy ride home."

Yesterday morning at this time I was getting ready for publicist Tricia Van Dockum to pick me up at my San Diego hotel and drive me to the Fox News station for an interview about ALL-STARS. "I haven't read the book," said morning show host Mark Bailey in the green room as I tried not to check my cleavage, "I just got it yesterday, but here's what I'm thinking from reading the pitch letter. I got to thinking of Ken Burns' PBS documentary about baseball. It was full of women talking about how much baseball had meant to them as kids -- Doris Kearns Goodwin was one -- and I'm wondering if women approach baseball not only as a game, but also on some sort of emotional level..."

And men don't?

I'm quickly trying to decide if this is sexist or not; I wonder if my cleavage is prompting his question, but I decide Mark is sincere and wants to find purchase for this book so we can talk about it to an adult audience, and I agree that that's one way to pitch the interview -- the social fabric of baseball culture.

When we're in the studio a little later (no, that's not me with Mark at the news desk) and I'm asked that question, I say that baseball is the American game, and that girls wanted to play, too (and I'm thinking of Karen Blumenthal's wonderful book LET ME PLAY, The Story of Title IX: The Law the Changed the Future of Girls in America -- I know I was influenced by this book when I wrote ALL-STARS).

I say that yes, there was an emotional element to baseball when I was a kid -- I wanted to play! In THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS, Ruby Lavender just wants to play baseball. So did an old man who chose not to play, and another old man who wasn't allowed to play.

I also say that I was in love Sandy Koufax. I think I called him gorgeous. There are all kinds of emotions in baseball.
Tricia hands me off to Kia Neri at breakfast. At Yellow Book Road we encounter another sea of students -- 4th graders, all. And I run smack into my team! Here they are, lurking in the aisles, and then gathered together for a photo. This is the children's marketing/publicity team at Harcourt that put together this amazing tour and took me on the road, that shepherds each season of Harcourt books for children. I am indebted to them in ways I well know, and in ways I can't imagine. Barb Fisch says, "We saw you on television!"

How was my cleavage? Let it go, Deb.

During a Q&A after my presentation, a student asks me how I make the finished story into a book and get it into the store. I refer him to the people in the baseball shirts and tell him that it takes a village to make a book, and that these folks -- along with readers -- are the real stars. I mean it most sincerely.

I meet readers and sign books and stock while owner Mary Hayward sells me Marla Frazee's WALK ON for my toddler grandgirl and TOYS GO OUT by Emily Jenkins and Paul Zelinsky for the 7-year-old.
I say goodbye to Mary and Bud and Yellow Book Road and dash to Harcourt's downtown offices with Kia -- we are expected for lunch. After a quick hello to publisher Dan Farley -- is it live or is it Memorex? --
we take ourselves to Dakota, where I get to meet Steve Hamilton and Roseleigh Navarre, the IT folks who set up this blogging tour with me. I am ever-so-grateful -- look at the memories I've been able to capture, thanks to Steve and Roseleigh... I would never have figured this out on my own.

And here we are, the whole gang, telling tour stories and laughing ourselves through lunch -- "I come from a family with a lot of fabulous people," to misquote Comfort Snowberger. Here are some of them. It is so, so good to see them again. Thank you, thank you, thank you, every one of you, for... everything.



I almost leave my camera on the bread plate but remember it. I do leave my shawl under the table, and we have to go back and grab it before the Warwick's signing after lunch. But we do, we get to Warwicks in La Jolla, we sign stock (okay, I sign it), and I meet Janet and Adrian, pictured below.


What a fantastic store. Janet and Barbara (not pictured) worked at The White Rabbit, a beloved children's book store in La Jolla that everyone still misses keenly. I'm so glad they've brought their expertise to 111-year-old Warwicks -- I could have listened to the book conversation for hours.

Purchased at Warwicks: A CD by Pink Martini called "Hang on Little Tomato" -- this was my impulse buy at the register. Also, BEAR SNORES ON by Karma Wilson for the toddler, AIRBORN by Kenneth Oppal and THE ALCHEMYST (Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel) by Michael Scott for the 12-year-old, TALENTED CLEMENTINE by Sara Pennypacker for the 7-year-old, and LEAVES by David Ezra Stein, for me because I am enchanted by it -- you must check it out.

Another handoff and I'm with my agent, Steven Malk, whom I haven't seen in five years, but with whom I've worked since 1999. I've had more reunions on this west-coast tour, and it has been a good thing. A drive to look at the water and a low-key dinner with the shortstop and his team (Hey, Lindsey!) is the perfect way to end the day and this tour.

Now I gaze around this hotel room -- I must pack yet again. But this time I pack for home. I'm taking back much more than I brought with me, of course, as always happens when people travel. I have some books for the plane, a rad soap, a box of zinnia cards (Thank you, Kathy S.), a tin of terrific chocolates with Sandy Koufax's image on the front (Thanks, Jandy), a sunflower from a fan (Hmm.... logistics....), coffee beans and some CDs Cousin Marcia sneaked into my bag (Patty Griffin), and more memories than I can pack into a suitcase.

I won't wrap up here. I still have SIBA, a regional booksellers conference, to attend in Atlanta this weekend. I'll have dinner tonight with my family and with Walter Mayes, as he's working in Atlanta today as I fly home. So I'll see you on the other side of the country. I loved the left coast. I love home. I love stories... I can't make much more sense than that!

Geezing through Southern California

Here is my Geezer -- I mean, escort -- for the Southern California leg of this tour: Allyn Johnston, Editor and Chief of Harcourt Children's Books. Before Tuesday is out, I'll only be able to see out of one eye and Allyn and I will both be Geezers, punchy and laughing at everything that's not funny.

The subtitle for this entry could be "Allyn and Deborah's Excellent Adventure." I wish I could tell you everything, but if I told you, I'd have to kill you. (My, we ARE getting to the end of the book tour, aren't we??)

I arrived at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana on Monday evening and Allyn met me for dinner -- Marla Frazee stopped by, and that was such a treat I forgot to take photographs. Marla is the artist who made the Aurora County novels come alive with her beautiful cover art. I am forever indebted to her for those transcendent covers.

Allyn and I spent all day together yesterday and we are still speaking. Being a media escort is hard work. Riding with a competent media escort is heaven. I've been lucky this entire trip, but this ride was a real treat.

Whale of a Tale in Irvine is our first stop, where I sign stock and get to know owner Alex Uhl, whom I first met at BEA when LITTLE BIRD won the E.B. White Read Aloud Award for older readers. Whale of a Tale is 20-years-old. It's tucked into a charming courtyard in a shopping center across from UC Irvine.

Alex whips me through the stock, and we take ourselves to Bonita Canyon Elementary School where Alex has set up a school visit with 4th, 5th and 6th graders.

Whoa! 300 kids! I've got my PowerPoint ready, and my singing voice tuned up, and off we go. What good energy was flowing around this room... and you know, I didn't read one word of ALL-STARS. I read from RUBY and LITTLE BIRD, but saw I was running out of time. Somehow, in schools, it's not about the newest book for me, it's about a body of work and personal stories -- kids' stories as much as mine. I figure they'll find the books -- they'll find lots of books.

Here's the fabulous Alex with Ms.N (4th grade teacher), Allyn, and Clyde, who handles the technology (among other things) at Bonita Canyon. Thanks, all, for setting up a terrific school visit.

As we get on our way, Alex gifts me with... a writer's notebook. "To replace the one you left behind," she says. Thank you, Alex. It's beautiful.
At The First Page in Costa Mesa, I'm scheduled for a stock signing only, but I find fans! A scattering of die hard Deborah Wiles readers gladdens my heart. I know I look ragged around the edges (perhaps even "cadaver-like" as he-who-shall-remain-nameless and who is tall called me in San Francisco), but I really am glad to be here. I've just been on the road for a really long time.

Soon I must get busy with stock -- LOTS of stock. "All of these?" I ask manager Kim Newett. "All the hardcovers," she says. "We'll sell them." Wow. It's Kim's wedding anniversary. Flowers arrive. So does her 8-year-old daughter Amelia.

"What a good book for a 7-year-old?" I ask her. She brings me JUDY MOODY GETS FAMOUS by Megan McDonald. Sold. Kim hand sells me THE LOOKING GLASS WARS by Frank Beddor for my 12-year-old Logan.

[Note: As I reread this entry (and most of the time I don't get a chance to reread -- I'm dashing out the door), I was going to edit the sentence below, and decided to leave it in as an example of writing-by-the-seat-of-the-pants weariness -- Kim is not four years old, The First Page is four years old. Sheesh... I'm sure I've got more of this stuff sprinkled through this tour journal -- I don't want to look.]

Only four-years-old, Kim says The First Page is dedicated to giving back. "We give 5 percent of each sale to the school of the customer's choice."

My choice right now is supper. Allyn and I drive north to Santa Fe Springs. Joyce Ryan, who coordinates events for the Santa Fe Springs Library, recommends Geezers for an early supper before our 7pm library event. By now we are hot, wrinkled, hungry, and tired, and glad for a break in the day. We sit by ourselves outside in the shade, away from the televisions and near the fountain, where we get silly. We check email, we call families, we call the office, we call all over the place while picking at the fried zucchini and Caesar salad. Everything is funny in that shimmery, exhausting way that everything gets to be funny. "Welcome to the book tour!" I tell Allyn.

But we pull it together for the library event, which is.... quiet. "We've never done this on a Tuesday night before," says Joyce, as we arrive. And indeed, there are many white chairs set up and maybe 25 people in attendance. I forego slides; we've got an intimate group here, and half of them are children of varying ages. Sweet, sweet children, too.

So I punt. I sing. I read. I talk about stories. I ask questions. Kids answer me. Angels fans boo me when I talk about my beloved Dodgers. It's all affectionate.

As we take our leave, I want to put on my glasses. I sit in Allyn's car and take out my contacts in the sifty dark -- there's an almost full moon in the sky. We have a long drive to San Diego yet ahead of us. I lose my left contact somewhere in the bowels of Allyn's Honda. I knew better -- I knew better! But I am tired, and we are not going to look in the dark for something we can't see, so we begin our trip to San Diego with Allyn yawning and talking and me patting on myself in unmentionable places to see if I can locate that contact as we hurtle down the freeway. We are still laughing. Life is good. Thank you, thank you, Allyn, for taking good care of me on the road yesterday.

And today -- I am home! Home to San Diego, Harcourt's west-coast offices. I'm about to be on local television -- see how calm I am? I sit here with my hair still wet and my clothes still packed, cadaver-like but calm. Can I get away with wearing one contact? Probably not. I'd squint like Long-John Silver. I feel like Long John Silver. TREASURE ISLAND is one of the books House reads to Norwood Boyd in ALL-STARS. It was one of my favorites growing up.

Today: TEEVEE! Then Yellow Book Road in La Mesa, CA at 10am and stock signing at Warwick's in La Jolla at 3pm. School groups at Yellow Book Road, my last school group of the tour.

And a couple of big fat presents: lunch with the marketing folks at Harcourt who put together this fantastic tour, and dinner with my agent. Then home again home again to Atlanta on Thursday, where I'll attend SIBA over the weekend. Let's hang in together a few more days -- I'll try not to lose anything else.