A couple of days ago a friend wrote and told me my psychiatrist was crazy. Work on getting close to people, he said. The rest will follow. …more

(Note, these go out as part of The Daily Rumpus email. Most of them aren’t posted on the site so consider subscribing to get all the Notes From Book Tour.) …more

In Washington I sold thirty books, or so I hear. In Naperville I sold twenty more. Luis and Cindy Urrea came to see me and I spent the night in their house. I had a reading planned in my foster sister’s apartment  but she cancelled it, which was fine with me, I was getting sick. Also, she’s not really my foster sister but I moved into her mother’s basement nine months before going to college, so it’s basically the same thing. …more

I couldn’t really write a Daily Rumpus today (not a long one certainly, until I decided not to). Why? Last night I was with rock stars. …more

Last night was the big Rumpus event in New York. …more

I’m in a barn on a hundred acres of land trust in upstate New York. I hear a machine going somewhere but outside all I can see are naked trees and then hills descending to a small pond and past that a line of mountains. Nearby is the farmhouse where an Irish man and his wife and three children live. How did I end up here? …more

There was a reading last night in Connecticut. I was told it was a disaster, not because there were only twelve people there, but because of the old woman who owned the building and the used bookstore next door. …more

I’m in the final stretch of my book tour, but it’s a long one with something scheduled every night until December 18, with the exception of six days over Thanksgiving. Yesterday I flew from San Francisco to New York, arriving at the Mixer Reading Series just in time. The series is in a basement and I felt dizzy. Sometimes flying makes me a little ill. The bookseller didn’t show up but I had books with me. Tip to young authors, always have your own books. …more

I’m back in San Francisco for a week. That week is almost up. I’ve been doing events of one kind or another for The Adderall Diaries almost every day. On Wednesday, in San Jose, I interviewed Denis Johnson. He said he didn’t read that much anymore. He said he watched a lot of situation comedies. He was on his way to Los Angeles next to pitch a television show. He also said that before he won the National Book Award he had never received a fan letter from someone who wasn’t also a writer. …more

On the 44th day of book tour I borrowed my friend’s car and drove south to Oberlin College, 2.5 hours down the 23 and across the 80/90 toll road. I have an iPhone now and I read short articles with the device perched against the steering wheel, swerving toward my destination. …more

Let’s start with last night, because that’s when it happened. Or maybe the night before, reading for fifteen people in someone’s living room in Ft. Lauderdale. There was a woman there poured into a tight black dress with lace webbing across her breasts, feet bound in some cross between high heels and sandals. She looked like she stepped from an Eric Stanton comic. Late at night we were in the bedroom and she made a point of saying she hadn’t bought my book. I think I was supposed to give her a copy as a symbol of my affection, or a thank-you for hers, but I didn’t want to do that. …more

I landed in Washington, D.C. and went to the Lincoln Memorial where I did a short reading and Q&A for Barrel House Magazine. It was a quickly put together event and there were only maybe ten or eleven people. We went out for a drink after and it was fun but it also reminded me to protect the wind in my sails. That wind is valuable. I spent the night in a friends house then drove to Richmond for a reading in an area known as The Fan.

Richmond is a fascinating place. The home where I did the reading was one street off Monument Boulevard, lined with giant tributes to Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee. I was raised in Chicago and I’ve always thought of these men as people who got a lot of people killed defending the south’s right to decide whether or not they would have slaves. Of course, there’s other ways of looking at it, or maybe not. Either way the monuments are beautiful.

There were twenty people in the home that night, middle class or upper middle class. Some artists and teachers. It was an educated crowd and it was the first time I’ve ever sold more books than the actual number of people in attendance.

The house was built in 1905, had hard wood floors and I had a bedroom on the second floor with its own bathroom and porch. There was a small dog that that bit my leg. I’d been arguing with Andrew over artist’s compensation and it seemed as if Andrew was controlling the dog’s mind. My basic point about artist’s compensation is take as much as you can get and no one should make more from an artist’s work than the artist, but really nobody owes us anything. I don’t like it when writers think they’re entitled. We chose this life and there should be sacrifices to be made for it. I say much more on the topic in this essay.

Back to Richmond. The hostess’ boyfriend was an incredible musician, a saxophonist and singer for a band called Chez Roue (the link does nothing to get at the magic of seeing this band live). And that night, following the reading, we saw them play and I thought, here is an undiscovered Tom Waits wailing his heart out.

The next night I read in a home in a suburb of Richmond. The streets were winding and the homes were recently built. All of the stores were in shopping malls along the main street, which was a highway. In other words, there were streets you lived on and bundles of stores on lots where you did your shopping but no streets where you could live and also shop. The people at that second reading in Richmond were interesting and nice, just like the first event, but they were also different. Again there were about twenty people, but nobody at this reading had ever been to a literary event before though several told me how much they loved to read.

The host for that event had first found out about The Adderall Diaries on Chuck Palahniuk’s blog. She signed up to receive an advance copy and that’s how she came to invite me to do an event in her home. She was a nurse and many of the attendees worked in the hospital with her or went to her gym. There was a trainer from the gym there, an expert in Brazilian Judo, who used to compete in ultimate fighting events and told me he was more fit at 38 than he had been at 20. He reminded me of my old friend Pat Kelly, the most charismatic kid in my neighborhood growing up.

It was a population, I thought, that had been abandoned by the literary establishment much the way John Kerry abandoned so much of America in 2004. These were smart, engaged, middle class people living away from the urban center. The only books they were likely to find out about were the big sellers, and Chuck Palahniuk who is one of the few literary writers to penetrate the “other” America, which is really most of America.

Maybe I’m not being nuanced enough in my presentation here. But what I think is that publishers only try to sell literary books in urban centers and to aspiring writers. The giant MFA literary industrial complex has created a specific but limited market for a certain type of book. But what about the readers that don’t want to be writers? The readers that read only for pleasure. How do we introduce our books to everybody else?

I didn’t like one Richmond reading more than the other. They were entirely different. Every time I read in someone’s home I’m reading to a reflection of that person’s life. But that house outside of Richmond was the doorway to a much bigger world that I worried I was not connected to in any way. I found myself wondering how to get more books to that population.

From Richmond I continued to Charlottesville and today I’m back at Dulles about to fly down to Ft. Lauderdale. I stayed in a hotel last night. It was a $70 extravagance on a shoestring book tour but there was free breakfast in the morning and the air outside feels cool and good.

Sometimes I think about money. But what about money? Last night I went wheat pasting in Williamsburg. I was with two girls in their twenties. I said I hoped they weren’t still hanging posters on construction sites with homemade glue when they were in their late thirties. …more

It’s noon and I’m leaving Columbus. Last night’s reading was kind of a hybrid. I was invited to read at OSU by Michelle Herman but it was unpaid, so it was kind of like a house party, but more like a University reading. There were at least 50 people there and the local B&N had a table and I think they sold a dozen books. It was mostly MFA kids, young and earnest, and they weren’t all from the midwest but they seemed like they were.

After the reading we went to a college bar, the kind graduate students go to with thick wood booths and tables and a pinball machine. It was really a great time, though I can’t put my finger on exactly why. It might have been the ride from the airport with Kyle Miner who’s living the post MFA life with a book of stories out, a couple of kids, teaching classes up in Toledo, finishing what sounds like a fantastic novel and contemplating law school. Or it might have been Claire, the student I stayed with. Or the walk for donuts at 10:30 on a Wednesday night, which felt late in that town, especially on the strip.

I tried to get in Claire’s bed. It was a big, comfortable bed. She said no, how would she explain it to the boy she was getting to know. I said there was nothing to explain to the boy, nothing’s going to happen. It’s like sleeping with your gay friend. But she wasn’t so sure. She had been drinking and I don’t drink. I slept on the air mattress in the other room.

I think for a while I didn’t enjoy being on the road. Now I enjoy it again. It’s like running away, but in the best sense of the term. Every runaway knows it’s all about timing and luck. You look at what’s coming up behind you, then out the window to what’s waiting ahead, which you never really know but you can guess at based on weather conditions. Then you step into the cold air, move as fast as you can.

I’m back on book tour and I have many things on my mind. The unfortunate thing might be that you publish a book and you learn certain things and then years later you publish another book, and by then everything has changed.

I’ll say this. Last night I was part of a group reading. There were maybe a hundred people in the room, and as comedians say, I killed it. Why do they say they “killed” their audience? Why so adversarial? There was a line of people to talk to after the reading; everybody wanted me on their radio show and open mic. I’m not bragging, I’m making a point. I think I sold five books.

I went to a book release party once south of San Francisco. The woman throwing the party was well off. Her friends were well off. They bought her anthology two or three at a time, making presents of the book for their cousins and nephews. I remember asking myself what it was about. But it was obvious what it was about. It was about money.

Of course, that’s a brutal and dangerous oversimplification. 90% of all books are bought on the recommendation of somebody else. Or are they? How do you explain The Nanny Diaries? And why would you want to? When my novel Happy Baby was released it had no marketing at all. It was reviewed maybe three or four times, but the few reviews were overwhelmingly positive, and the novel “over-performed” (I’m making that word up, though I’m sure it’s already in common use).

I’ve seen many books come out to gigantic starts. It’s the next Eat Pray Love, the next Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the next Corrections. But those books seem to disappear because they aren’t the books they’re supposed to be the next of.

Or maybe not. And what about all the great books that also disappear? And what about the great books that keep reappearing and then disappearing again. Books like Stoner and The Car Thief. You get endless shots at being brought back into of print, returned to the surface where you can stand on the edge of the board and contemplate diving into the shallow pool.

I’m on my way to Columbus, Ohio to read at the University. I’m fond of meeting new people, talking about The Adderall Diaries, selling books one at a time. Maybe that’s all the meaning I need. Maybe it’s enough just to know that tonight I have plans.

**

But there’s more. I’m not even going to begin to talk about the fear. It’s going to require some real research to come to some truths about cowardice. I want to find the science of it, interview the world’s foremost expert on threat. I will say that cowardice is not well represented in art. We write about the beauty of teburculosis, Jane’s flushed cheeks and weak cough, but we never write about the beauty of cowardice. Everybody despises a coward. Tell someone you’re a coward and they’ll insist, “That’s not true. You’re one of the bravest people I know.” As if admitting to cowardice disproves it. I remember when I was in the group homes all the other kids insisted they had never lost a fight. I wondered who was losing all the fights, other than me.

And what if, instead of using cowardice when writing about vilians, or to show the flaws in our protagonist, we wrote about the boy on the corner, feet planted firmly on the cold cement, unable to do what he knew he should do, which is walk quickly across the street, or scream for help, or even wave at a police car that drove quickly past. His thoughts slowed so if you could see inside his head you would notice the electrical currents, soggy and pink, idling along his nerve endings. The currents were big thoughts, too big. He couldn’t make sense of any of them, and the result was that he was helpless when he came face to face with what would happen next.

**

I’m not ready to go there. I’m reading about Justin Hall, the first blogger to “overshare.” And I came across this line in Scott Rosnberg’s Say Everything: “Writers who tell stories about themselves, their families, and friends always walk a tightrope: you fall off one side if you stop telling the truth; you fall off the other if you hurt people you care about, or use them as fodder for your career. Dishonesty to the left, selfishness to the right.”

I’m thinking about blogging and creating stories from experience. I’m thinking of the difference between a blog and an online magazine. I was sitting next to a man reading a trashy novel by C.W. Morton and I was reading this thoughtful post by Mark Athitakis on my new iPhone. And I wondered which one of us was pissing on culture and making the world a dumber place. I decided he was, but I’m biased. This is not a survey.

So yes, it’s all changed. If you’re just starting your novel or memoir it will be changed quite a bit more when your book comes out. With that in mind it’s important you don’t read anything about publishing while you work on your book because Publisher’s Weekly knows nothing about the landscape you’ll toss your heart into. There’ll be a new species of lion in a different jungle. But one thing will remain the same: creating art will not make you loveable. You can create art instead of learning how to love, but it’s like putting a band-aid on a river.

I’m in a backyard in Las Vegas, a week into this book tour, the morning after my third home reading. I’m still collecting data, but in the three homes every crowd has been different. Last night there were some people who came because of the write-up in the Las Vegas Weekly. And there were some journalists who are going to do follow up pieces in the local papers. There were also a fair number of sex workers and artists, good looking people, stylish.

The reading was outside. There were thirty people or so in attendance, but I only sold ten books, a little less than Austin or Lincoln. My theory? Hang a sign on the book table with the price of the books. Something that says, “BUY A BOOK.”

There were cupcakes, donated by Retro Bakery, and coffee, also donated. There was a very pretty girl with a dog and we sat on the couch together and I asked if I could lay on her for a little bit and she said I was just like her puppy, so I pressed against her and laid my head on her shoulder for a bit, which was nice. You need a little of that when you’re traveling.

Last night was my second home reading, in Austin, Texas. There were close to 30 people. Amanda Eyre Ward brought brisket. I read at the front of the living room, near the kitchen. Doug Dorst opened for me and Book People, the local bookstore, sold books.

I did a long reading, quite a bit longer than I would do in a bookstore. Then there was a break where people mulled around and drank wine and bought books. I sold fifteen books, which presents an interesting math. Because there is airfare, which my publisher covers, and I’m not working on much else while I’m on tour. But then there’s the coverage in the local media, which amounts to some kind of something. And there’s the ride to and from the airport, the dinner, the bedroom (why is everybody else’s bed more comfortable than my own?). It’s certainly more people, and more books, than I would have sold if I read in the local bookstore. Also, we had a long discussion in the living room. People stayed. They were still drinking and talking when I went to bed around midnight.

The reading was fun. I mean really fun, like, life-affirming fun. A room packed with people (30 people feels pretty tight in someone’s living room), great conversation, food and drink.

The truth about reading in bookstores, in cities where you don’t live, is that they are often not fun. It’s fun meeting the bookstore owners and employees, who are usually lovers of literature, kindred, artistic souls. But often not many people show up, often they leave you feeling sterile and sad, and when the reading is done you go out with a friend or two, or go back to a hotel room. You don’t spend enough time with the audience to really connect. And last night, just like in Lincoln, many people told me they had never been to a book reading before.

Still, when I think about trying to get people to read a book, sometimes it’s like a thin rain, the kind that never wets the sidewalk. I don’t know if this is an effective way to sell books. I don’t know what that would look like. But here’s the other side of that coin. This is the best book I’ve ever written, and possibly ever will. You can’t work on something that long and just leave it out there to die.

I was talking to an author the other day, a very famous author. He said, controversy sells. He also said, sometimes it’s just about getting the book in the hands of one person, the right person. You don’t know who that person is.

So you hit the road, and you ask people to read your book. If they don’t like it, there’s nothing you can do. It’s not a job with great odds. But you’ve locked yourself in a room for two years to write it. I don’t look down on readers. I don’t think I’m entitled to readers. I always think readers are doing me a favor. I like what Emily Gould had to say here. At the same time, and this is maybe the most important thing, when asking people to read your book you should do so with as much integrity as you used to write the book. But you’ll have to figure out what that means for yourself.

Yesterday was my first house reading, in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was organized by Gunter Voelker, who read The Adderall Diaries through the lending library. The event was in Clawfoot House, which is really just his friend Ember’s apartment. She hosts bands that come through town and they play shows in her living room. She’s also a musician, a singer/songwriter, and before the reading she played me the most wonderful song, accompanied by Gunter on a second guitar, a song so good it can only be described in cliches about angels and airplanes and weeping clouds.

There were 30 people, about the same as the book store in Seattle, Washington, but they were more into it. And they bought more books, even though they were poor. I knew they were poor because we talked about where they worked. And they were young. I felt bad, like I should have told them to wait for the paperback, or for the time when you could get the book used on Amazon for a penny, plus four dollars shipping.

It was many levels of beautiful. Some told me this was the only book they bought this year, but they were looking forward to reading it. I read from the book and talked in the front of the living room for about 45 minutes. We talked about memoir, who owns the story, what your responsibility is to the people you write about. I explained that the answer to many of these questions fell into a gray area. That ultimately you had to decide what you felt was right, and stick to it, while understanding other people could feel differently. You wouldn’t be able to please everyone. Artists are selfish, but we should all try to be kind.

I felt very connected to the audience. For a good while after the event we stood around drinking beer and wine and eating Mexican pastries. There was a gay couple there and one of them worked in a Christian bookstore. He promised he would get them to sell my book. There were musicians and music fans who had never been to a reading before.

I slept in a comfortable room on a comfortable mattress set on the floor. There was a bag of coffee on the windowsill in the kitchen next to the machine. Gunter gave me a ride to and from the airport and I learned about his job and his wife who is very stylish and works in the vintage clothing store and how he met one of his closest friends because of a mutual love for the writer Dan Chaon.

I met the most interesting people in Lincoln, Nebraska. I wish I had a camera…