Ode to Derba
Had a fleeting breakfast in McKinney, Texas, yesterday morning with Laura Froelich, known as “Derba” to those of us who go way back. People who’ve read the dedication (but not the acknowledgments) in Tinsel ask who this Laura person is that she would rank above not only my mother (also a dedicatee) but also Michael…
Read More‘Cause it’s the gift that’ll live and live …
Is it a book tour or just a long nostalgia trip? And is it my own nostalgia, or some longer epic nostalgia trip that anticipates the demise of the printed word? Yikes! In any case, strap in… About once a week I have a vivid dream that takes place in Oklahoma City, where I was…
Read MoreAll 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…
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