Things You Wonder About from Craiglist Ads

I do want to make clear that I am not nor have ever been nor am planning to be a nudist - but perusing the "housing wanted" ads on Craiglist on the outlook for a possible summer roommate to help with dog-sitting, I stumbled across this one.

(I haven't blocked name or phone number because, well, this is a public listing.)

There are so many ways to parse this and so many ways this makes me wonder:

• What is a family nudist?
• There are nudist houses in my neck of the woods?
• "I am ready" - for what, exactly?
• "Can send a photo" - arghh, the full monty, I presume?
• "What your requirements are" - would would one require of a nude roommate?
• Why are race, maturity, and respectfulness the only personal attributes listed?
• Is spelling out every other number in a phone number some sort of secret code?
• Wait - "Please stay nude" ?!?!?

Amazon, Dunno Why You're Pushing My Book

... but I do appreciate it. This from a recent email blast:

 (Of course I want you to support your beloved local bookstore - but, for those folks who don't have local bookstores, there's Amazon.)

Yes, I'm in New York City: BEA and Backspace

Anyone going to BEA in NYC wanting a signed copy of my book: the MWA booth, #4482 (I've always wondered when I'd be reduced to using three acronyms in a sentence, and now I've done it - maybe the hyperlinks make it a forgivable offense) at 2 pm today, Wednesday.

Friday I'll be on a panel at the Backspace Conference at 11 am, but also hanging out in the vicinity (that usually means the bar, or the cocktail reception) with my gang of writer friends Thursday and Friday evenings.

Forgive my brevity - but the city awaits - hope to see some of you this week.

I Don't Mean to Disrespect Anyone's Beliefs ...

... but I find this quite funny - from "It's Happening: Top Ten Rapture Pics"

from Mashable - @MichaelBrower

Come See Northshire Bookstore and Me May 21

If you haven't yet visited the amazing, wondrous store that is Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont - come visit this Saturday, May 21, when I'll make my debut Vermont appearance at this store at 7 pm. I'm proud to say that Learning to Swim is a staff pick there - come listen, visit, and, if you want, get a signed book.

But come early so you can browse. Seriously. It's an enormous store, but with great nooks and crannies, and handwritten recommendations posted on the shelves. Make a weekend of it - this is a great area of Vermont to visit.

This Reader is 91. Yes, You Read That Right.

Sorry, Mom Dreissigacker, you've been supplanted as the oldest person I know who read my book - this wonderful lady, at 91, is now my oldest known reader. (The youngest is a 13-year-old girl.) (Yes, men read my book, but just not very old and very young ones, as far as I know!)

My book is currently available in large print only through Doubleday Large Print Book Club - this one I bought on eBay.

In other book news, Learning to Swim will be coming out in recorded form from Audible.

Because Sometimes You Just Need to Laugh

(Recommended by David Pogue.)

I'm Loving This ...

I'm loving this cover of my novel in German, coming out from DTV this October in  paperback and e-book - and I'm loving the title: Ein Herzschlag bis zum Tod, which I'm told translates to One Heartbeat Til Death.

Two Small Mysteries: Solved

When I looked in my wallet this week, there was less cash than I remembered having. Okay, I thought, I must have bought more things in New York City last week than I'd thought. This can happen: a bag of peanuts here, a cup of coffee there.

And when I unpacked my book bag from the Edgars - hey, my friend, the wonderful A.S. (Amy) King was nominated, so I had to be there - I found a business card embossed with a lovely gold eagle, from someone in DC involved in politics, that I simply did not remember getting. I didn't in fact remember getting any cards at the Edgars, so I concluded that someone had accidentally slipped this one into the wrong bag. I'd actually seen someone from a neighboring table look inside my book bag while I was standing nearby, so this could have happened.

Today in my mailbox was an envelope from Washington, DC, with a handsome card inside  - mystery solved.

On the day after Edgars I was comfortably settled on the train, wearing my absolute last set of crumpled clean clothes, heading to my car parked in New Haven, when a young couple got on with backpacks and things that had to be hung and apparently missed the announcement that, well, on MTA trains you cannot use credit cards to buy tickets. (Me, I am the type who knows these things, and knows that tickets from the little machine in the station are cheaper than those bought on board.) And when the conductor came by, they didn't have the cash to buy their ticket - which meant they'd be put off at the next stop to buy a ticket and wait for the next train ... an hour later.

I'm not sure what made me do it - but I've traveled a lot, and it's frustrating as heck to have your travel plans changed when you're tired and lugging bags, so I leaned forward and asked the guy if he had a check. No, he didn't. I pulled out my wallet anyway, asked how much he needed, handed him $25 cash, gave him a business card and wrote my address on the back to send me a check, and gave him a mini-lecture about the need to always carry a stashed $50 bill on trips. I didn't honestly know if I'd see the money again because, well, people forget about things. They both thanked me profusely and he gave me a business card that I dropped in my bag and promptly forgot about, and went back to reading Jodi Compton's new book.

Until the card came today from the young man who is, in fact, assistant to blah-blah at the White House. He again thanked me, said he would, indeed, pay forward the favor, and that he had told the story again and again over the weekend to his family. And enclosed was a check for my $25.

Sometimes helping out someone really does feel good.

"Peddling my work like a Viagra salesman still feels at odds with the high calling of literature"

From the New York Times:

Ad from P Ballantine &Sons/NYT

As every author knows, writing a book is the easy part these days. It’s when the publication date looms that we have to roll up our sleeves and tackle the real literary labor: rabid self-promotion. ... In this era when most writers are expected to do everything but run the printing presses, self-promotion is so accepted that we hardly give it a second thought. And yet, whenever I have a new book about to come out, I have to shake the unpleasant sensation that there is something unseemly about my own clamor for attention. Peddling my work like a Viagra salesman still feels at odds with the high calling of literature. - "How Writers Build the Brand," Tony Perrottet, New York Times

Hear, hear.

It's an insanely delicate balancing act, promoting one's own book on Facebook and Twitter and emails to friends, and marching into bookstores and introducing oneself to bookstore managers and owners. None of it comes naturally to me, a reticent Southerner who wasn't allowed to go trick-or-treating as a child because, my mother said, asking for candy was like begging - and it wasn't nice.

When I started posting notices of book reviews or radio or TV appearances, it wasn't easy. (My agent said: "Think of it as reporting, not bragging.") When my first attempt at introducing myself in one bookstore went nowhere, I nearly headed out the door and the 45-minute drive home - and then I remembering Amy King telling me You have to do this, and turning around and going back in and trying again. (And that turned out very well, indeed, with the bookstore madly promoting my book and inviting me for an appearance.)

But, as another very talented writer told me, "I thought all I had to do was write books and they would sell themselves" - and then she discovered she was wrong.

So we bang our own drum softly or loudly, and we undoubtedly make some missteps - because, after all, neither our training or predilection is in publicity or marketing -  but we do what we can, because writing is what we do, and selling our writing allows us to keep doing it.

And now we can take some consolation in realizing that writers before us, ones as revered as Hemingway, have done their share of self-promotion, efforts that make those annoying automated emails from Facebook pale in comparison.