Tuesday night’s dinner in Cambridge, MA was spectacular, and it was such a pleasure to meet some of the finest booksellers in Boston, Cambridge, and the Cape, and to learn about their stores. There was much food, drink, talk, gossip, and laughter long into the night.
All of those sybaritic chickens came home to roost, however, when I had to haul myself out of my unreasonably comfortable bed just a few hours later to drive the rental car to Logan airport in time for my early morning flight home. I spent most of the afternoon in a daze and finally fell into bed in the early evening. It felt as if I’d just flown in from Australia, rather than the East Coast. I must be getting old.
All the talk in Columbia is that we’re expecting to be hit by a massive ice storm this evening, which promises to bring everything to a halt for days. The lines at the grocery store were long as worried shoppers were buying provisions in anticipation, apparently, of a zombie apocalypse, rather than a meteorological event. The fun thing about ice storms, apart from the fact that the only safe form of transport is a Zamboni, is that it’s not uncommon to lose power when the ice freezes on power lines. Naturally I tend to regard such storms as excellent excuses to stay tucked up nice and warm at home, and to do nothing but read and write.
In happier news, I’m delighted to report that SETTING FREE THE KITES has been selected as an Indie Next pick for March (NOT February, as I had originally written.) This is a list that is generated every month by the national collective of independent booksellers, Indiebound, who poll their members about the new titles they are most excited about selling. Only twenty books make the cut, so it is a huge honor to have been chosen again (A GOOD AMERICAN was also chosen in 2012.) It promises greater visibility for the book in stores, which is wonderful – but from my perspective, it’s the vote of confidence from the booksellers themselves that means the most. Books need champions, and there are no better champions than the people who hand sell titles in independent book stores. I’m looking forward to saying thank you to as many of them as possible when I set out on tour next month. In the meantime, I’m going hunker down and wait for all that ice.
