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!

I could write, for instance, that I DO have two actual upcoming events. I am going to be reading and signing copies of KISSING GAMES OF THE WORLD on two different dates coming up:

* At the meeting of the American Association of University Women on Nov. 1st, at the Clinton Country Club in Clinton, CT. At 11 a.m. Lots of you probably aren’t already a member of that organization, so I won’t be looking for you there.

But!

There is also this event, which is free and open to the public, whether you’re a university woman or not. I’m reading and signing copies at R. J. Julia Booksellers, 768 Boston Post Road, in Madison, at 7 p.m. on Nov. 6th. This is a mere two days after the election, which is beginning to really feel as though it might be a GOOD day after all. You could come and we could do a high five.

I have to tell you something about book signings: authors are TERRIFIED of them.  It’s not that we’re afraid that we won’t be able to see both the text of the book and our audience at the same time, although that IS problematic, I’m not going to lie to you. It’s that we all have the horrible, secret fear that no one will come. It’s like seventh grade all over again, when you walk into the lunchroom and realize that you have no one to sit with. Yep, it’s that same sinking feeling. As you park your car and walk into the bookstore, you are praying for one of two things to happen: a meteor will crash on top of your head at that moment (that’s the first choice), or that you will see someone you know who will agree to sit there and let you read to her.

Once you see that people other than just the bookstore employees are there to listen, there are other fears that kick in.

• You have forgotten how many gratuitous swear words you wrote in the piece you’re about to read.
• You are going to have a coughing fit in the middle, just enough coughing that your eyes bug out unattractively but not so awful that you won’t die from it.
• Someone yawns while you’re reading–and you realize it was YOU.
• At the book signing afterward, your mind freezes and you can’t remember ANYBODY’S name…so you try the old trick of, "Now remind me how you spell your name again," and the person says coldly, "Sue. S.U.E."

You can see that a person needs friends at a time like this. Friends who will spell their name for you without hating you forever.