Lately I’ve been editing the final version of my new novel, which is going to be called The Stuff That Never Happened, and I’ve kind of lost touch with Kissing Games of the World.

It’s a little like tending to a new baby while your toddler plays in the sandbox and doesn’t need so much attention.

So how sweet, then, to get invited to come to Newtonville Books in Newton, Massachusetts (another state, even!) to read from the toddler-aged book and get reminded once again of how much I once loved those characters and all the trouble they got themselves into.

Even better, I get to see one of my new dearest friends, Holly Robinson Cookson, whose new book, The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter, is coming out in just a few weeks. I wrote a blurb for her book, which is such a delightful memoir about growing up amid quirky, unpredictable adults and…well, their gerbils. And then she came through town the other day on her way to visit her editors in New York, and we ate lunch and talked about a million things…and now she’s going to come to my reading since she doesn’t live so very far from there.

It’s very good, as you might imagine, to have Actual People at readings. A writer’s worst fear is that not one member of the public will show up to be read to, and you will have to slink away in embarrassment for the trouble the bookstore people went to even just to write the sign with your name on it. You will vow never to trouble the public again with the illusion that you wrote a book. WAIT!  No, no! I just remembered. That’s NOT the worst fear. The VERY WORST fear is that there will be ONE PERSON there to hear you read–one singular, baffled human being who is probably somehow related to the bookstore owner and who was BEGGED to come–and so with one audience member in the sea of chairs, you will actually have to DO the reading, and will not be permitted to crawl away and start trying to put the whole thing out of your mind, if you can.

So, anyway, all this is by way of saying that if you happen to be within striking distance of Newton, Massachusetts, on this Thursday (April 30), at oh, say, about 7 o’clock, and you would like to come to the VERY delightful bookstore there–well, I would be there, and I would jump up and down with joy.

AND, as an added bonus, you would get to meet my wonderful son Ben and his delightful wife Amy, who happen to live in the neighborhood and have agreed to saunter on by and clap very loudly. (You’ll know who they are because they will be the people in the back, whispering, “NO! No! PLEASE don’t read the sex parts!”)

Newtonville Books is located at 296 Walnut Street in Newtonville. The phone number is (617) 244-6619. Tell Jaime I said hello!