Monday, October 13, 2008

Curse you, beautiful weather!

So it was a Rockwellian fall afternoon in Western Massachusetts yesterday. The kind that's so beautiful, my mom probably wouldn't have come inside a bookstore to hear me speak. Even if she lived next door. For the second day in a row, I showed up at a bookstore filled with dread. This time at the Odyssey Bookshop, in South Hadley, MA. It's a great bookstore, right in the postcard-perfect town commons, that gets some amazing authors. On November 6th, they're hosting Richard Russo and Stephen King. Together! That's, like, an event of a lifetime. Let's just say that I didn't quite get a Russo/King-type crowd. The total number in attendance on The Most Glorious Foliage Day in a Decade was six. But they were a dedicated six, who asked a lot of great questions. And the number six happens to be six more than zero, which is what I feared would be the attendance.

Today I'm speaking in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Harvard Book Store. But the Red Sox are playing a playoff game late this afternoon, so my reading will occur around, oh, the seventh inning or so. I'm not kidding when I say that a few of my siblings might not show. If the first four events are any indication, this one's going to be fun regardless.