Archive for November 2009
All I want is Christmas day in the sun …
I’m taking off in the morning (Monday), on another flight to D/FW, renting a car, and heading up to Oklahoma City for a reading/signing, and then out west from there to do three more (Portland, Seattle, Bellingham) and then back east to St. Louis for another. I’m gone 10 days this time, then home, then…
Read MoreAs Tammie would say: Movin’ the merch!
Tinsel is getting good press — and I’m grateful, even if I’ve been slow to get it posted up here. So I’m spending part of this sunny Sunday making a round-up of the last several days of my media hype machine. It’s getting harder and harder to get MSM attention for a book, but my…
Read MoreSurvey says? (The Black Friday edition)
Tinsel opens and (nearly) ends with Black Friday, an American cultural event about which I am ambivalent. My opinion has changed since I began work on the book. Obviously people aren’t out there doorbusting for bargains alone. They’re out there to participate in something that feels large. They are grasping at their own sense of…
Read MoreHouston Post
It so happens that I wound up in Houston on the Monday night that the Texans were playing the Tennessee Titans, which, I gather from the traffic jams on the way to my reading at Brazos Books, was a big game for Houstonites. They lost. I care about that about this much, but I could…
Read MoreVIP
Forgot to mention a very special guest who showed up at my Book People reading in Austin: Carl Anderson, PhD, a UT prof. If you live in Dallas, however, you know him as somebody else, starting about this time every year at NorthPark Mall. Carl was in a purple tie-dye T-shirt on Saturday, but I’d…
Read MoreSentimental journeys
If you’ve been reading this blog or if you know me even just a little, then you know that when it comes to memory and the past and driving around I can be a total sap. Fair warning, then. Move on or get in the passenger seat… I lived in Austin for just a bit…
Read MoreTexas Munchly
Drove down from Fort Worth to Austin today. Last night’s reading in Fort Worth was small — 14 people plus your author — but actually calming, fun. I had people sit in a circle in the TCU Barnes & Noble cafe. I donned the Burger King Wise Man crown (hey, Laura T. Faherty: It travels…
Read MoreFrisco and Plano, from the rear-view mirror
About 50 or 60 (?) people came to the Tinsel reading at Frisco’s Stonebriar Centre Tuesday night. For those who expected fireworks (or a Hank Stuever effigy burning!) I am so sorry to disappoint: The crowd was very interested in the book and gave me a very warm reception. (Um, it helps that the audience…
Read MorePress here and press there
Stonebriar Centre Barnes & Noble tonight. Where it all began. I hope people bring lots of questions. Here’s a picture of me in the Stonebriar food court in October, courtesy of the Dallas Morning News article. Here’s a li’l roundup of some press in the last week or so for Tinsel, while I have a…
Read MoreWise Man! (Or is he?)
The Politics & Prose reading Sunday night was a lot of fun (or, I hope it was). Yes, that’s me, dancing around, dressing up as a school pageant Wise Man in a velour bathrobe and a Burger King crown. So great to see many friends in the audience, and the full complement of Stuever siblings:…
Read More