A certain Mitchell Powers of Savannah, Georgia sent me a very nice email about the book. He also suggested that I shouldn’t have been wearing a black polar fleece in my author photo, in case polar fleeces fall heavily out of favor in the future and come to be seen as a sign of moral and/or intellectual depravity. Clearly, this is the sort of damaging misperception that I need to get in front of before all hell breaks loose: for the record, I am wearing a black cotton sweater in the picture, not a polar fleece. But thank you, Mitchell, for your concern and advice.

Apparently I’m supposed to be doing this, and so I am. Follow me if you dare. Twitter name is yrnameer.

Alright, that’s what’s technically known as “untrue.” She was, however, at Book Court about an hour beforehand. She’s been shooting Eat, Pray, Love in the neighborhood and they used Book Court as one of the locations, and she had apparently stopped back in for a little shopping.

I dropped by to make sure everything was in place for the big event and realized the woman I was passing in the aisle was none other than Julia Roberts. I then watched her out of the corner of my eye while I chatted with the manager about the launch party, finding myself speaking in a unnecessarily loud voice about the final preparations (”SO, I’LL BE READING FROM BEHIND THIS PODIUM?”) in the vain hope that she’d overhear me and decide that she’d like to stick around to hear an unknown writer natter on about his first novel.

Her eventual absence aside, the launch party was a great success. Due to everyone’s generosity, we sold every single one of the 50 copies of the book they had on hand, meaning I’ve now supplanted (at least temporarily) Thomas Pynchon as Book Court’s #1 best-selling author.

7pm at the lovely Book Court, 163 Court Street, Brooklyn. Apparently my book is being sold in the UK, where I’ve garnered at least one highly-educated fan.

You are clearly a wonderful person. My very first customer review on Amazon.

I’ll link to it. Thank you BSC Review.

…and likes my book!

Absolutely rules. You should all buy his books. Seth wrote a blush-inducingly complimentary review of my book for Amazon. For the record, I don’t consider myself anywhere near the class of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett.

I was invited by the wonderful folks at PEN to speak to a group of high-schoolers who are attending an 8-week summer writing program (I assume I was invited as a sort of cautionary tale). Over the course of two days, I learned something disappointing about the youth of today: they are far more intelligent, well-read and educated than the me-youth of yesterday, or even the me-me of today-today. What are they reading? Grace Paley. Sherman Alexie. Dostoyevsky. I bet if one of them was writing a blog post about Dostoyevsky, he or she wouldn’t even have to check how to spell Dostoyevsky. Curse you, well-spoken, intelligent youth of today!

…than a writer who continuously points out his/her good reviews? Clearly not. That’s why I refuse to link to this. Or this. Never.

Or this.