The Book Sense 76
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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 Three: Chicago to Minneapolis
by Kelly Link

Shelley is groggy in the morning, and it's raining. I'm still croaky. We load up the van and Shelley climbs into the back to sleep while I drive West on I-94. The windshield wipers jerk back and forth, and the wind pushes at the van, so that it feels very much as if I am steering a ship, rather than driving a car.

"Ship of the Desert!" Shelley says, but then we remember that camels are the ships of the desert. And it's too wet to be a desert, anyway.

While Shelley is in the back, dreaming that no one is driving the van, and that she has left me behind, we pass Six Flags. Even though it's raining, I can see people on the rollercoasters. I am envious.

Rain forces itself through the seams of the windows. Shelley is still asleep. There are black birds with orange necks sitting perched at the tops of tall grass alongside the road. They look determined, but glum.

We were hoping to stop for tea at Neil Gaiman's house on the way to the reading in Minneapolis. I am in need of tea -- if my voice doesn't come back, I will have to resort to semaphore, or interpretive dance (or maybe I'll ask the audience to read to me). But the rain has made us late, and there is no time for tea. Instead, as we stand in the kitchen, there is the loudest clap of thunder that I have ever heard. It echoes, the sound becoming rounder and milder and farther away. Everyone stops talking and listens to the sound roll away.

Neil gives us many kinds of cough drops -- Slippery Elm Throat Lozenges, and odd Finnish drops that taste of licorice. The Fabulous Lorraine (one of the Flash Girls) tells me what the little black birds with orange necks are called, and I instantly forget it.

Kelly reading

There is more rain, bad traffic, and we are 40 minutes late to our reading at DreamHaven[1]. Shelley reads "Fat" and I read part of a new story. We are both very tired and the reading seems to proceed in an underwater sort of way. Afterward, I buy used copies of all three of Joyce Ballou Gregorian's novels -- The Broken Citadel, Castledown, and The Great Wheel. Why hasn't someone brought these back into print?

There is no time for more sustained browsing, or to look at any of the toys DreamHaven sells. We forget to sign copies of our books for the store.

All of the people in the audience are friends, and we go out to a bar next door. I am loaned a copy of the poet Lisa Jardin's collection, Ring of Fire. "After the Johnny Cash song," my friend Alan says.

We drive home to Neil's and are given tea with ginger and lemon and honey. Neil plays us a not-yet-released (future) Future Bible Heroes CD. For the next three days I will have Claudia Gonson's voice in my head, cheerful and bold, singing I'll never age/and I'll never die/cause I am a vampire stuck in my head.

This is not a bad thing.

I sleep in a bedroom with a fish tank, and dream that Neil is offering us barrel rides, down a long hill, in enormous wooden barrels. I wake up hearing a noise as if someone is sorting pebbles. In the fish tank, the largest fish is sorting pebbles, shoving at them with its head. I feel as if I must still be dreaming.

Downstairs, outside the kitchen windows, there are flurries of little yellow finches, and doves, and other birds -- even a woodpecker -- diving at the bird-feeders. I stand and watch at the windows and one of the cats comes and watches with me. Later, while Lorraine is planting strawberries, Neil and Shelley and I go for a walk. We discover a tree hit by lightning, the foreleg of a deer, and then, back at the house, laid upon the doormat, a liver (or maybe a spleen). Later we discover that Shelley's van has been hit by a UPS truck, and we can no longer open the back doors. Neil cooks us an omelet. I have never had such a tasty omelet. The trick seems to be lots of butter.

Lorraine gives Shelley Flash Girl CDs, and tells me to look for the out-of-print romance novels of Madeleine Brent, a pseudonym of Peter O'Donnell's (author of the Modesty Blaise books). I promptly forget Madeleine Brent, Madeleine Brent, and drive through the next several states, trying desperately to remember it.

I have still not started my journal.

A list of things that we didn't see, visit, or do:

• Eat cheese.
• Ride the rollercoasters at Six Flags.
• Visit the Circus Museum in Baraboo.
• Visit the House on the Rock.
• Visit the Houdini Historical Center in Appleton.

We also failed to visit the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Perhaps on our return trip.

Day Four

[1] DreamHaven Books, 912 W. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408 (612) 823-6161 http://www.dreamhavenbooks.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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