This Time.....Today!
Pub Day Mayhem Ahead
Well, today is the day. Publishing a book never gets less weird, or scary, or disastrous to my gastric systems. The real world is falling apart around us—white supremacist murders, the destruction of reproductive freedom, the ongoing pandemic, to name three—and it always feels tone deaf to promote one’s creative work in the midst of such awful chaos. But I also know that our creative work, our art, is the thing that carries us through, and the things that provides solace and entertainment and escape to each other, and to ourselves. So please know that I am as heartbroken as you are about everything in the world, and that I hope this newsletter and This Time Tomorrow offer you a little moment of peace in your day.
Kate Dwyer wrote a lovely portrait of me for The Cut. I love the photos by Sara Messinger, who didn’t mind that I was crying. Here I am crying at Belvedere Castle.
Mary Louise Kelly interviewed me on All Things Considered, and I’m pretty sure I’m the first person on ATC to talk about my dead cat.
Susan Dominous wrote a nice review for the New York Times.
Yesterday, my maniac publisher made enough fake book jackets to fill the windows at Books Are Magic. Leonard Stern is one of the main characters in This Time Tomorrow, and Time Brothers is his classic time travel novel.
Isn’t it just wild?
And now she’s out! Out in the world, making her little way. To paraphrase Richard Wilbur, I wish her a lucky passage.
Now I’m off on a day of interviews, culminating in my launch event with Bobby Finger at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn Heights. (Click here to see if there are any tickets left!) My friend Stephin Merritt is going to sing a couple of songs first, a true pleasure, including one he sang at my wedding. This time tomorrow (heh) I’ll be heading to the airport to start the tour. Click here to see the rest of my events schedule.
So, in short: melt the guns. Support bodily autonomy. Be gentle on yourself and your loved ones. And yes, if you need to go somewhere else for a little while, may I recommend the Upper West Side of 1996. Buy one for a friend, while you’re at it.
Until the future!
So...now you GOTTA write Time Brothers under the pen name Leonard Stern. Duh. Make it a picture book. Make it funny. And weird. And set in Brooklyn. Grazie muchissimo.
Pre-ordered your NEW book from my local bookstore and just bought my tix yesterday to see you in conversation with Celeste Ng in Cambridge at the end of the month. The world is so troubling right now, it's a gift to have great fiction (and fun events) to escape into. Thank you and Happy Pub Day!!