The Book Sense 76
-- The Children's 76
-- Category Top 10s

We've been curious about what goes on when authors are out on the road, reading and signing their books. We keep a listing of some of the events at BookSense.com, but we generally only get to readings in the New York area.

So we asked a few authors if they would send us tour diaries. This first one is by Kelly Link (Stranger Things Happen). Kelly is touring with Shelley Jackson (The Melancholy of Anatomy). They are driving across the country reading from their debut short-story collections on a 16-bookshop tour that has taken them from their hometown of Brooklyn, NY, to great independent bookshops in Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Day Two: Cleveland to Chicago
by Kelly Link

We drive to Chicago. We listen to The Magnetic Fields' "69 Love Songs." Shelley writes her journal for Boldtype.com and practices her guitar. I now have Shelley's voice, singing Shelley's hospital song, stuck in my head.

The leeches in sleep/were as peaceful as sheep

This isn't a bad thing.

Some of Shelley's long orange hairs stand upright, waving out of the air vents in the dashboard. They give the dashboard a fringed, festive appearance. Little My, perched beside the radio, glares backward, down the road behind us.

We get to Chicago just as my friends Lynne and Tom Casey are leaving for an appointment with her obstetrician. I get to see ultrasound pictures. The blurry, watery, vaguely military look of ultrasounds always makes me feel as if the pictures were taken down in a submarine, off the coast of Iceland, by a lab technician nervously scanning the radar equipment for Russians or aliens or babies -- Look! It's dancing!

Shelley and I drop by Women & Children First, Andersonville's local bookstore, and one of my very favorite independent bookstores. We introduce ourselves to the owner, and explain that we have written books. This always feels awkward, embarrassing, even, as if we might be lying -- lunatics, perhaps, who must be humored -- or perhaps just mistaken. Have we really written books? Have they really been published? (Shelley says, before we go in, "What if they ask for our IDs?" We decide it might be amusing to pretend to be other authors and sign other books, but not here, not today.)

Murphy

They don't have our books, but we have Lynne's dog Murphy, who is charmingly hideous, on a leash: Murphy looks like a lamprey eel in a furry coat, and also Queen Victoria. The owner of Women and Children First is understandably more interested in Murphy than in our (possibly imaginary) books. We all fuss over Murphy, who has not written a book. Murphy will never write a book. I buy Lynne a copy of A. E. Frank's young adult novel, Life is Funny, and Bel Canto, by Anne Patchett.

Lynne and Tom come home and we all (except for Murphy) go to Quimby's[2]. I am in heaven. There is time to browse through the books and zines and to talk to various friends who have come to the reading. Quimby's staff, Hannah and Liz (who puts out the zine Caboose), tell us cautionary stories about other readings. We ask for names. They demur, smiling, but give us beer and water and gift certificates, which I spend on zines, and comic books by Andi Watson and Dylan Horrocks, and several states' worth of Jerome Pohlen's Cool Spots, USA series.

Lynne, who is a librarian, finds a copy of The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life by Grace Llewellyn. She buys it for her high school. Lynne is the coolest librarian I know. We worked together at Avenue Victor Hugo[2], a new-and-used bookstore in Boston -- the same bookstore where I met Gavin, who is now my husband.

I miss Gavin. Gavin is at home, working on our zine, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, or else possibly watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." [Full disclosure: He may also be working at BookSense.com! Read more here.]

Shelley reads the appendices of her story "Phlegm." I read "The Specialist's Hat." Shelley goes out to a dinner, and to dance, but after only two days on the road, my voice is already tattered and hoarse, and so I go home with Lynne and Tom to drink tea and eat avgolemono soup and potato cutlets from Andie's, a Lebanese/Greek Andersonville restaurant. The last time I visited Lynne and Tom, I ate at Andie's every night for a week.

We discover that the VCR has not recorded "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I go to bed, feeling very sorry for myself.

I do not start my journal.

Day Three

Zines listed above are available from Quimby's and other bookstores.
[1] Quimby's, 1854 W. North Ave. Chicago, IL 60622 773-342-0910 http://www.quimbys.com
[2] Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, 339 Newbury St. Boston, MA 02115 (617) 266-7746 www.avenuevictorhugobooks.com

Further Reading:

• Pen/Faulkner winners
• Summer Paperback Book Sense 76
• Shelley Jackson interview
• Eva Ibbotson interview
• Maureen McHugh
• Events Calendar

Browse Archived Interviews
Browse Archived Excerpts

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