Happy New Year, one and all!
I was on a headlong sprint through the end of A True Account book tour before crashing face-first into the holidays. Trees! Lights! Menorahs! Houseguests! A veritable arsenal of Nerf guns! A command performance as a sheep (me) and a were-rabbit (my son) in the Old North Church first annual no-rehearsal Christmas pageant! It’s been a bit of a blur.
I was always going to be the kind of parent who would strictly limit screen time and disallow violent toys. Now I am the kind of parent who says “Sweet pea, why don’t you play with your Nerf flintlock pistol for a few minutes while I drink my coffee, and then we can go up and finish The Little Mermaid.”
Proof positive that change is possible.
(My friends Heather and Amy surprised me at the Southwestern Yacht Club in San Diego for the last stop of A TRUE ACCOUNT book tour. No, they didn’t plan to wear matching shirts, we just roll that way.)
So what’s next?
Now that we are past the flurry of book tour, my missives here will become a little less frequent. That is, until springtime, when THE PENGUIN BOOK OF PIRATES will be upon us, and you might hear from me a bit more often. In the meantime, a few things have happened, and will continue to happen.
First, I talked to the BBC. (Can you tell this interview took place at 5 AM my time?)
Next, I’ll be doing a virtual event for the Ashland Public Library on February 28 at 7:00 pm Eastern. This talk is in conjunction with Aesop’s Fable bookstore, and you can order signed copies of A TRUE ACCOUNT as part of it.
Then, on March 2, I’ll be one of the featured authors at the Southwest Florida Reading Festival in Fort Meyers.
Later, I’ll also be hitting the Virginia Festival of the Book, as well as festivals in Pittsburgh and Exeter, New Hampshire. More news on those events when we get a bit closer.
And finally…..
I’m going to start experimenting with offering exclusive content for paid subscribers. First up will be a short satire, inspired by the hip hotel where we stayed in San Diego, which was deemed “not the right fit” for “Shouts and Murmurs” in the New Yorker.
I got my first rejection from the New Yorker at the tender age of 17, for a poem. (It was not a good poem.) The rejection was handwritten, and it is stashed away somewhere in my collection of teenage treasures, along with journals and miscellaneous political buttons and probably a couple of mix cassette tapes made by my friends. Are you really a writer if you haven’t been rejected by the New Yorker? Well, now I’m really a writer twice.
That piece will go out in the next week or so, so there is plenty of time to subscribe, or upgrade to paid before then.
Postscript: Epiphany
One of the strangest traditions in the New England town where I live is to welcome Epiphany with a giant bonfire of Christmas trees on the beach. A burst of warmth raining sparks and smoke in the January night, visible from airplanes passing over head. A roaring nexus for all our trepidations and hopes as we wait for the return of the sun. At the end, when the fire department douses the flames and we head home, our coats and hair perfumed with smoke, we leave renewed, the holidays officially behind us, with time to ready ourselves for whatever spring may hold.