Home No. 5

Here’s what’s up with me:

On Sunday I wrote the last twelve pages of the first part of the new book.

Later, I sent 156 pages of the book to my agent and now I sit and wait to see what he thinks about it.

If he thinks it sucks, that would suck.

I had a three-hour coffee with Ben yesterday and I still had the post-writing-high thing going and all I could do is talk and talk and talk.

I can’t even remember what I say half the time.

Writing is all about traveling between the terror and the bliss, is a thing I wrote in an email this morning.

Someone who once impacted my life in an extremely negative way died a few weeks ago.

I said to my therapist the next day, “Boy am I glad I decided to start therapy.”

Mortality issues.

I am going to a wedding soon, and I do not have a date for it, but the party is within walking distance from my home so I will allow it.

I’m not drinking right now, I’m just doing yoga and riding my bike and getting ready for my paperback tour.

I am getting my head in the game.

The game.

What’s up with you?

Took the subway to Penn Station, and then the train to DC, and then the Metro to Rockville. My uncle yelled hello at me from the roof of his apartment building. The woman at the front desk liked my outfit. I was wearing a thrift store dress I had gotten in LA and also a cheap chambray blazer from Target. I dress bargain, but I dress like a champ. My uncle made us crab cakes for lunch, and also he roasted this candied ginger nuts concoction and handed me a full Tupperware container for the weekend. Then they drove me to Gaithersburg.

I took a nap in the hotel room, and then later Susannah came to the room, hungry and tired from her drive from New Jersey. I handed her the Tupperware container. It was a game-changer for her. Like I think those nuts might have actually saved her life. We should all roast more nuts as a nation.

Later there was an opening night party for the book festival and I met lots of really lovely people, other writers as well as the nice people from Gaithersburg who put on the event. It is quite infectious when you meet people who are excited about books. Everyone smiles at you. It makes the trip worth it.

Also I met Ben Percy for the first time. I liked him a lot. He’s solid. We have the same editor and publicist. We share a lot of love for these people, and thus it was easy for us to like each other. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to work with people I like. I work really hard in my life just so that I only ever have to talk to people I like.

At the festival the next day Jennifer Close interviewed me in front of an audience. She was extremely generous to me with her questions. About half the people had read the book, and the other half were just curious I suppose. Everyone was super enthusiastic and engaged. They smiled at me, too. Thank god they smiled at me. You never know, you can only hope.

Jennifer asked me lots of literary questions but also asked if I read internet comments about my writing. I told the story about when I stopped reading them entirely, which was when I saw a comment on Goodreads about one of my books that said simply, “Meh.” You put a few years of your life into something and someone says that? Forget it, you’ll never win. So I stopped after that. Congrats, author of Meh. You changed my life forever.

Near the end I started rambling about how my older books were way dirtier and that there’s only a handjob scene in The Midds. I am a child and cannot resist saying the word “handjob” during public appearances. My uncle had a shit-eating grin on his face the whole time in the front row. I swear I do half these public appearances just to have the chance to crack up my family members.

Afterward I signed a copy of my book for my uncle. He is constantly buying copies of my books and having me sign them. “Thanks for the crabcakes,” I wrote. He and my aunt went off to Susannah’s line to have her sign a copy of her book, Brain on Fire. They came back later, grinning. Susannah had written, “Thanks for the nuts.”

Gus