Fiction author Robin Brande talks about writing, reading, and other vital matters

Here’s where I am: Ann Arbor.

Here’s how I feel: elated, exhausted, satisfied by the vegetarian lunch in between two separate school events, followed (finally!) by a massage from a woman with really muscular thumbs, washed down with a snack of yogurt-covered pretzels (which were my white chocolate macadamia cookie for today).

And because it turns out a lot of the people Random House invited to dinner with me tonight are actually in New York right now visiting Random House, among other places, the dinner is cancelled, which means JAMMIE TIME. I get to go to bed early. Like right now (7:30-ish here) would be nice. I’ll try to hold out until 8:00, but no promises. Then the car comes at 6:00 tomorrow morning to take me to the airport to fly to Dallas for my biggest school event yet–about 50 high schoolers–then a dinner with some teachers, then brief sleep, then up early again to catch my flight home.

Where I understand there is a particular black Lab who has gotten more and more depressed with each passing day that I’m not home, and he doesn’t realize I’ve been talking about him on tour, because maybe that would help him realize I haven’t forgotten him. Which is why I’m actually considering doing some of my fall touring by car so I can take the husband and dog along and we can all pile onto some hotel bed together at the end of these long days. We’ll see.

I feel like I have so much to catch you up on. First of all, as completely exhausting as this tour has been, it’s also been wonderful. I’ve LOVED meeting all the teens who came to the various book discussions, and it’s been a tremendous treat to get to have dinner every night with so many smart, creative, motivated booksellers, librarians, and teachers who make it their life’s work to get books into the hands of children. I’ve been so impressed by the tactics some of these independent booksellers have come up with for competing with the big box stores. Meg Ryan would not have gone out of business in You’ve Got Mail if she’d had these people’s brains. But then the movie would have turned out differently, and I loved that movie.

I realize looking back up at this post’s title that I’d better say something about that, or you’ll all be “huh? How sleep-deprived is she?” Very, but I can still complete at least this thought. At my high school visit today we were talking about what it’s like to be on tour, and the kids wanted to know what my schedule was like and where I’d been, and I was sort of hopped up on coffee and feeling a little spacey from lack of REM sleep, and so I may have said something about how by this stage in the tour (which, I admit, is just a baby tour–I mean, some authors go out for four to six weeks. Five days is nothing), and somehow the words, “You know, and then you just sniff your underwear and go out and do it again,” slipped out, and I’m afraid from comments I heard afterward that that may be what stuck with people, rather than all those meatier issues like whether God and evolution are compatible and how far we should go to protect free speech and always, that most critical piece of information that gets all the kids excited, which is that my editor, Michelle Frey, is also the editor for Christopher Paolini, who wrote Eragon. The kids get extra psyched when I tell them that means they are just three degrees of separation away from Christopher, since now they know me, I know Michelle, she knows him.

So if any of you guys who were at that talk today are reading this, please remember all the other, vastly more important things I told you today about the publishing process, about copy editing, about the writing process, etc. My underwear is actually quite fresh, I hardly ever have to sniff it, and really, you don’t need to know everything my mouth decides to tell you, now do you?

To all you booksellers, librarians, and teachers I’ve met in the past few days, I can’t thank you enough for your time and lively, fascinating conversations we’ve had. I’ve learned so much about the book world from everything you’ve told me. I’m going home with a brain fit to bursting with all the new information. Plus I’ve had such a great time with all of you every night I haven’t wanted to end the evenings when we were supposed to, which is why I keep getting to bed at 11:30 every night, despite the crack of dawn airport pickups. Sleep schmeep. I’d rather play with all of you.

So back to you, my bloggie friends. What’s new? How have you all been? Please don’t tell me anything about Lost since I had to tape it. But feel free to catch me up otherwise.

Technorati Tags: Writing, Publishing, Book Tours, Author Tours, Depressed Dogs, Fresh Clean Underwear Every Day No Matter What You Think I Said

Posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 4:42 pm under Writing . Subscribe to responses: RSS 2.0 Comment Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.