I loved sharing the experience with my fellow debs. I loved “meeting” book bloggers, other writers, and readers in the comments.

I learned how to blog, how to use WordPress, how to tweet. I’m grateful.

If you want me, you can find me at my website and my blog.

Starting next Monday, The Debutante Ball has a new line-up!

We had a tough time choosing. These were my favorite lines from each new deb’s application:

Kim Stagliano
Memoir: All I Can Handle; I’m No Mother Teresa: A Life Raising Three Daughters with Autism
Skyhorse Publishing, November 2010
“How one woman raises three daughters with autism, loses one at Disney World, stays married, has sex, bakes gluten-free, goes broke, and keeps her sense of humor.”

Eleanor Brown
Novel, women’s fiction: The Weird Sisters
Amy Einhorn Books, February 2011
“When I finally met my editor in person, she was totally bowled over by how tall I am (about 6’1″), so apparently that is the first thing I should tell people who have never met me.”

Elise Allen
Y/A novel: Populazzi
Harcourt, April 2011
“In addition to TV, I’ve written about 12 Barbie DVD-movies, and a couple internet shows, one of which starred my absolute heroes, The Muppets. During a particularly slow period, I wrote the dialogue for Furby toys.”

Sarah Jio
Novel: The Violets of March
Penguin, June 2011
“I make really good cupcakes, which hold up well in overnight shipping.” [Sarah, where are our cupcakes?? You have till next Monday to make good on your implicit bribe!]

Tawna Fenske
Novel, romance/caper: Making Waves
Sourcebooks, August 2011
“I got a call from my editor informing me they were canceling the line a month prior to my scheduled debut. My [first] book would not be hitting the shelves after all. Incidentally, this was also my birthday. And the day my cat died. Oh, and the same morning, my employer at the time informed me that they would terminate me the following week if I continued to disobey the company’s hosiery requirement.”

Don’t they sound fun? You’re in good hands now!

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I had the pleasure of being in college when The Secret History came out. I think that is the ideal age for reading it.

It’s set at a fictional college in Vermont (based on Bennington, I believe, where the author wrote it).

The narrative gives away the murder it’s leading up to right on the first page: “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”

It’s exquisitely written, every sentence strung together gorgeously. But what made it so memorable and affecting to me was that the motives were abstract and idealistic. The narrator comes from a dull, uninspiring California suburb to a gracious New England idyll. The value of that beauty, not just the physical beauty but the beauty of idealism and learning itself, drives everything.

It’s probably not entirely appropriate to put this book in the position of “If you like The Whole World you’ll also like…” Maybe a better way to say it would be, “this book inspired me and I aspire to be that good.” Also, “my book is set in a college town too, and I hope the beauty and idealized experience of Cambridge comes through.”

If you haven’t read it yet, and especially if you’re college-age yourself, I strongly recommend it!

This is what I learned about invitations from my recent flurry of book events:

I have an e-newsletter. In the months leading up to my book launch, my newsletter mentioned the places I was going to visit and generally when I would be there. Eventually, I specified dates for events in each place. I received many replies assuring me how much people were looking forward to attending. Yay!

Then, weeks before my trip, I sent personal emails based on geography, in each case mentioning only the applicable event for each person. Then and ONLY then did people crack open their datebooks. I received many confirmations and many regrets– “I will be traveling that day” and “Oh no! I have a show that night!” These regrets often came from people who had previously expressed, in response to the group emails, that they were really excited about attending.

I’m not mentioning this to criticize; I just find it psychologically fascinating, and helpful to know for the future. When the information came in a GROUP EMAIL, people absorbed the sentiment, but not the actual dates, even though dates were mentioned. They responded, but their responses were indicative only of enthusiasm, not availability. Only when I sent each INDIVIDUAL INVITE did people check and, if possible, reserve the date (or reply with regrets).

My tip to you: send individual invites! I was sure glad I did!

More practical tips gleaned from my recent tour here. At the link, I detail my experiences with bookstore events, book clubs, drop-ins and media; what I did, what worked well and what didn’t, and my evaluation of what was “worth it.” I’m grateful for those authors before me who shared their experiences; I hope my experiences help others (and may be just plain interesting to people who love books). Check it out.

As you can tell from her posts, Alicia is compassionate, creative, and kind. Everything you already like about her comes through in her debut novel, Simply from Scratch, and in her grieving heroine, Zell.

If you don’t know Alicia through her posts, the summary is that she and her husband both wanted to write, and took risks to make that dream come true. You can read more about that here.

In that post I just linked, she refers to the book “All Come Home” which was subsequently retitled “Simply From Scratch”–and debuts tomorrow! It’s warm and quirky, showing the happiness that can, eventually, come after loss.

The book starts with this terrific sentence:
“I knot Nick’s camouflage apron under my boobs, unable to remember the last time I wore a bra, or preheated the oven. That’s my widow style.”

(That’s a masterclass for aspiring writers right there: “How to get in the backstory that the protagonist’s husband has died, while being active and revealing voice.”)

And it ends with a recipe, for a dessert called “Scrumpy Delight” that, yes, Alicia made up herself (with some help from her mom). I actually don’t like overly sweet things, but this dessert involves goat cheese and pineapple–yum!

As the title implies, cooking figures prominently in Simply from Scratch. Zell used to not cook at all, so literally “not at all” that her husband used the oven as a secret hiding place for gifts he’d bought her. As she tries to get her life back together a year after his death, and cook as a practicality, her pre-heating of the oven, and unwittingly of his last gift, almost burns her house down. That’s the start.

Don’t you want to know what happens next?

Indiebound
Powells
Amazon

My two favorite junk week memories:

1) My elegant mom dragging a mattress across the road calling triumphantly “It’s a Beautyrest!!”

2) Our next door neighbors, rumored to have some association with the Rite Aid drugstore chain, throwing away a mountain of still-in-wrappers cosmetics. I am not kidding when I say the mound was as big as the kind of autumn leaf pile kids gather to jump in, or those drifts of snow made on the side of the road after the plow goes by. Mascara, blush, coconut scented sunscreen, hairbushes, all brand new and untouched. Treasure, I tell you!

It’s not on the same scale, but I like when a whole street gets together to do garage sales all on the same day. That way people who don’t have enough stuff to bother doing a sale of their own still get to go for it, and for buyers it’s fantastic. Twenty years ago I hit one of those for my first apartment, and I still use the baking sheet I got there for 50 cents.

Just yesterday we bought two used DVDs for cheap in a local charity shop: Alien and Spiderman. Movie night tonight!

What are your favorite finds from stuff that other people have discarded?

She’s had a rough year, culminating in surgery for kidney stones. It took us a year to get from “cat suddenly starts peeing all over the place, in every open box, and even RIGHT ON MY ARM IN THE MIDDLE OF A SOCIAL GATHERING” to the proper diagnosis. We first treated it like a UTI with antibiotics, which played out pretty much like that hilarious old bit “How to Give a Cat a Pill.” (If you don’t know it, give yourself a treat and read it.)

Finally, we gave in to costly and invasive measures and the stones were found.

After the surgery, she became so relaxed that it was as if she’d gained weight. She’s a real lapcat, but pain and tension had apparently kept her from ever fully resting, even before the renegade peeing started. Now she sleeps heavily across our legs, pinning down whoever she’s sitting on. (“Can you get me a beer? I have the cat.” or “Can you change the channel? I have the cat.”)

Love you, Minky! Good girl.

I significantly underestimated how tiring it would be. But had a great time

Later, when I had a child of my own, we lived in California. I greatly enjoyed the very different experience of a July Fourth parade that I had there, and sent the following email to my family in 2002:

Besides the expected

• high school marching band,
• local teen dance class (on foot dancing to Mary Poppins’ “Let’s Go Fly a Kite”),
• beauty queen (“Miss Teen”) waving from a Porsche Boxster,
• assorted Scouts,
• community organizations (garden club, animal rescue),
• religious organizations,
• local merchants (*I* want to ride on the coffee shop float; thay get to sit at pretty tables sipping lattes!),
• and a few groups who we only caught sight of from the neck up (dressed as cowboys, old time baseball players, and medieval lords and ladies),

there were some unexpected aspects too.

The Asian population was well represented in various ways, including two attractive Chinese dragons (this is as it should be, but it is “unexpected” to me after my years of attending July fourth parades on the east coast). Sikhs danced with scimitars (fake, I assume), followed by a float representing the development of the Sikh community in the U.S. over the past century (with real Sikhs, carrying labels such as “engineer” and “teacher”).

Incongruous marketing efforts took the form of a local “haunted house” providing actors as dead pirates, and of a bevy of pink-clad Mary Kay saleswomen passing out fliers as they marched by. A bus labeled “Masonic Home for Adults” also took part, presumably full of adult Masons, though it is hard to be sure as the windows were tinted and closed.

The theme of this year’s parade, the turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th, not the most recent turn), inspired many of the costumes, as did traditional red, white and blue patriotism. One float had, with the best of intentions, wanted a Statue of Liberty. Presumably they doubted that any person would be able to hold a torch aloft for the entire parade, and so they costumed a mannequin. By this I mean a literal department store mannequin, all skinny and pinch-faced with a high fashion aloof expression. She must have been difficult to pose, for she was kind of hunched over (at least by the time she arrived at our point on the parade route), but her torch arm did, as they had hoped, remain high. The torch itself, however, was of such a shape that it seemed to have been made from an inverted bottle, painted. Lady Liberty inadvertently appeared to be acting out a barroom brawl, and about to smash someone over the head with a beer.

What did you do to celebrate the fourth of July?

1) Don’t sign that first page right inside the cover.

At first that’s exactly where I signed. I wanted anyone picking up the book to SEE that it was signed without having to hunt for it. But, I have learned, a signed front page could have been “tipped in.” That means the author could have signed blank pages that were then bound into the book, instead of holding the finished book in hand while signing.

2) Do sign the page with both the title and author name.

Unless your title/author page has a really pretty picture on it, like mine does. Then, sign the facing page.

3) Everyone will ask if you have a special pen. I wracked my brain trying to imagine what a special “autograph pen” might be like. From those who cared, Sharpies seemed to be preferred, and they do sign nice, if a little thickly.

I haven’t yet been asked to sign anything bizarre, or spell a name in a confounding way. I think my best stories came from signing with Deb Sarah at the Union Station Barnes and Noble in DC.

I’d already done a few events, but this was the first one where I wasn’t doing a presentation to an audience. Instead, we were meant to snag passersby with smiles and chocolate and enticing plot descriptions. We got a few sweet, aspiring writers, who had lots of questions and, they explained, brand new DC jobs and no cash yet with which to buy books. We got one shy, almost obedient woman who was so instantly compliant to our suggestion that she buy our books that we accused the store manager of planting her there to raise our confidence.

My personal fave was the guy who agreed that he liked books, then agreed that he liked mysteries and crime, then agreed that he liked books set in England. I asked if he’d like me to sign one for him.

“Oh no!” he said. “I was just agreeing with everything you said!”

He was awestruck and silent. Then he said: “This is the proudest I’ve ever been.” Pause. “Except for the day I married your mother.”

Isn’t that just the sweetest compliment EVER??

I should add that I have three siblings, of whom Dad is equally proud, with whom I share the honor of second place.

Here is a pic of Dad’s first-place proudest day: