I hope you don’t think I forgot about my oatmeal reviews. Seattle Kimpton, you get a 5/10. Not good, not bad. Steel cut. Fine berries. Straight down the middle.
Hi ho hi ho, back to the airport we go. On the plane I read Ayelet Waldman’s forthcoming book, A Perfect Hand, which is out in May! She and I will be in convo in San Francisco tonight. Come!
Have you been wondering about the snacks I packed? Have you been worried that I might have already eaten through my dried peach and cashew supply? Luckily my LA hotel is next to an Erewhon and I got to reup my stash. These are four hundred dollars (approximately) and worth every penny.
Do you know about the light in California? I went over to my friend Hrishi’s house to record an episode of his podcast. THIS IS A BRAG. Hrishi’s main podcast is Song Exploder but you may have noticed that I’m not a musician. It has a spin-off, Key Change, where non-musicians talk about important music in their lives. Hrishi and I sat in his studio and talked about The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs and boy o boy does a beautiful day surrounded by lavender bushes and lemon trees and creative people make one think that one should really probably live in Los Angeles.
Then Hrishi and I walked over to Skylight, where people had already started to arrive. My first event at Skylight was in 2011, for my small press short story collection, and it felt so good to be back for this book.
I hope no one is sick of my free fancy shoes yet because you will be seeing them every day for the next three weeks. Look, it’s Susanna Hoffs, the cutest woman alive! Here I am teaching a math class (?) that she is confused by. Fair enough!
And then.
You ever write a novel about a boyband and then befriend your favorite member of a boyband and then he comes to your book event in a sweatshirt from your bookstore and calls you his therapist in answer to someone else’s question????????? Just me? I think in this photo, I am saying, what is life, and he is saying, it’s just friendship, my bro, let’s not overthink this. Joe Mac showed, everybody, he showed.
We can workshop my posture at a later date.
Here’s the thing that I want to say about my book—it’s not about nostalgia, about pining away for some long-ago time that was better or easier or whatever. It’s about loving what you love as you grow and change and evolve, because goddamn, you just never know. The people you loved from afar then may be people you love up close now, because life is long and surprising. It’s all timing, that is the truth, this whole cosmic adventure. Today I am feeling really lucky to be in this moment. How could I stress about anything—the book tour, the sales, yadda yadda yadda—when I’ve already got this.
I think that’s the whole missive.
<3
