Was a great time, going up and down the West Coast—and as far east as Idaho, Utah—signing stacks and stacks of books, talking to readers, eating at Chipotles I haven’t eaten at before. Here’s probably my favorite pic from the whole tour, thanks to @paperbackbish, who made a couple of these stops. This one’s San Jose:
It’s an honor just to have been seated on the side of the table Adam’s amazing book’s on, I mean. If y’all haven’t read it yet, then . . . then you got some good stuff waiting. I’ve been through it twice already, and may go back for a third time.
Anyway, here’s the San Jose event with more faces in it:
How I ended up with three drinks—who knows. Was a thirsty night, I guess? I mean, I was doing a lot of, you know, talking:
And, guess Lorin/@paperbackbish must have passed her phone to someone, for an action shot?
Too, this is the last stop I was in possession of those reading specs, there. Already missing them. But, getting some more today, so, disaster averted (that disaster being me not having long enough arms to read anything).
Anyway, that was a Tuesday. By Thursday (had to run the Stegner workshop at Stanford on Wednesday), we were already dialed up to this level of things, at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego:
Always great to hang out with Grady and Gabino. And, thanks to Rob Crowther for always doing the killerest displays.
Anyway, this event was 7pm, and I showed up at about 6:59pm and a half, which, really, is frighteningly punctual for me. But? No one had any heart attacks I know of, anyway, and Brian Asman was hanging out in the green room, ready to go.
And here’s some zoom-in action—unintentional, I’m just stacking them this way:
Then, after signing until well after 10pm, it was off to Salt Lake City, which I hadn’t been to for a book since . . . since October, think it was. But, first, had to sign up about thirty books at DEN’s terminal B Tattered Cover:
Then it was sneaking up to Legendarium in Salt Lake City for some rapid-fire pre–signing action—think we did maybe 400, 450 books in an hour? But that’s with an assembly line of people around a big table. By the end of it, the veins in my arm were all standing out; it’s one way to know you’ve signed a mountain of title pages.
Then it was Chipotle (not the first of the tour, and hardly the last), then it was this cool church for the event:
Here’s a snapshot I actually did (me the reluctant photographer, who thinks phone-cameras are just for documenting the aisle and row the car’s parked at) from the balcony—I’d sneaked up while folk were filing in:
Here’s a pic my wife caught from the rear corner right about the same time:
And, for the first time ever, I got to bride-walk down the main aisle, once the place was full! Another way to say that is: the Twix I had bought at a gas station to eat in whatever antechamber I was in before the event, I bit into it, and . . . stale, unchewable. So, had to get by on the memory of other, better Twix. But then it was the bride-walk:
And, first in the signing line that night, with her mom (thanks, Kylie):
Then it was off to Boise, to be in conversation with Christi Nogle:
And, guess I should have started this with Texas Book Festival in El Paso a couple days before San Jose (have a whole directory of cool photos of that). And, here at the end of the week, I’m at ECCC up in Seattle for Mannequins. Maybe I’ll just do individual posts for those? Too late now to do it, and I’ve got to get to packing—that’s my life, pretty much: packing, unpacking, and, somewhere midst and between, writing a book or three.
