It has been a tremendously long time since I last wrote a blog entry.  I'd like to give a fabulous excuse--detention in the gulag, a chance to fly to Mars, a stint as a taster in a Belgium chocolate factory--but life is far more mundane than that.  A standard excuse, "life," will have to do. 

I'm in Downeast Maine now, sitting in a wi-fi endowed cafe on a very rainy day.  Coastal Maine is the place that I feel most at home, perhaps because it is not my home?  Rather, it's the moodiness of the place, the changing ocean that reminds you that nature is essentially bi-polar.  Sparkling in the morning, choppy by noon, mustard by dusk and always moving, always waning and waxing, always singing, making sound, hitting rocks, smacking the shore. 

It's the sheer density of smell--rugosa rose, cedar, juniper, heat of the blueberry leaves, salt, cinnamon, sweet fern, sweet pea and beach pea, spruce, peeling birch, and so on and on and on.  I I love having every sense engaged.  Nothing makes me feel more alive.

I suppose if I was twittering about this--though I never twitter--I'd be texting while driving which would make the whole enterprise even more dangerous than it was in real life. 

In real life, I was first driving to exercise class and hoping to hear the review on the way there.  No luck.  I sat in the parking lot,listening to news story after news story wondering if there was an possibility that NPR staff was going to find a way to shoehorn my review between rat theory and economics.

My friend at NPR had warned me that it could be cut from the program if time didn't permit...so I gave up and went into the already begun muscles and more...my cell started ringing and I grabbed it and went into the hall.  Jim on the other end raving about the rave! 

After class, I drove my daughter to her bat mitzvah lesson, NPR droning in the background (our local affiliates rebroadcast immediately after the first hour);  still no review.  In the rabbi's office, we tuned in to the live feed and I held the speaker to my ear, while Sarah sang Haf Torah.  Still no review.  After the lesson, I took Jim out to the car place to pick up his car...still no review.

Crossing SUCO campus, en route to Sarah's jazz band practice, I suddenly heard Robert Seigal (segal?) saying my name!  It was the juiciest, friendliest intoning of "Alice Lichtenstein" I'm ever likely to hear.  It was the tone of someone who has known me a long long time and still loves me despite my many failings...I will cherish Robert's intontation of "Alice Lichtenstein" for many years to come.

But let's face it--nothing can top the sound of Alan Cheuse's enthusiastic endorsement of LOST!!  I should have the review memorized by now; I don't.  I'll work on that while Sarah works on memorizing her Torah portion.

I've discovered something about my blogging style--or habit.  I can only blog on my laptop which is upstairs now in my study.  The nifty little Toshiba notebook which I thought would be handy for using downstairs (and for blogging on) is not an instrument fit to blog on.  The screen is tiny; the keys a little stiff.  I have to wear my reading glasses in order to type.  Not conducive to writing at all.

So I have braved the sweltering third floor heat (and set up a fan) to get down to writing a proper blog entry.  What you ask is such a creature?  To answer, I suppose, you must begin with defining an improper blog entry--which I'm getting pretty damn sure this is!  Improper--a sort of rambling soliloquy on one's navel and the contents therein; proper--something pithy and smooth, something that enlightens in a single bite, a silken swallow of good prose or excellent advice. 

Enjoy life?  Eat your peas?  Buy local?  Use Febreeze?

Slippery, not particularly useful.  But it feels good to be sitting in the artificial wind of my rotating fan and connecting with the keys--and language--and possibly a reader or two--again.

I apologize for not being quite up-to-the-minute with my blog.  I have been on the road, stumping for my book.  Over the past two weeks I have read at both OBLONG BOOKS in Rhinebeck, NY and at RED FOX BOOKS in Glen Falls, NY.  The experiences confirmed my belief that all serious readers must support their local, independent bookstores! 

Both of these wonderful independents serve as community centers and anchors for their respective downtowns.  The truth is, a good independent is an enormous endorsement of a cultural life--it's that place you can go and walk in and breathe and think, I'm not alone.  Books, talk, music, decent lighting, reading nooks--all that is missing is tea and crumpets and clotted cream, a crackling coal fire and a ginger cat.  (Can you tell I'm a bit of an anglophile?  Why else would I live in a place that is cold, gray, and damp, 99.9 percent of the year?)

At Red Fox, I had a bonus experience for a writer--99.9 percent of the audience (this is the only percent I feel comfortable slinging around) had read "LOST."  Somehow Susan and Nafthali, owners of Red Fox, and my dear friend, Stacey Mandelbaum, managed to convince five different area book groups to adopt LOST as their May book. 

As you might imagine, the questions were quite focused and provocative--I was glad that I had re-read the book so recently!

Also in the past week, I was interviewed by Tish Pearlman, host of the radio program, "OUT OF BOUNDS"--I'll write about that tomorrow.

G'night and thanks to wonderful readers everywhere.

In the past two weeks, I've had two amazing experiences meeting with book groups who had decided to read "LOST".  The first, was the "notorious" (I think that's notorious for being such dynamic and powerful readers) Pawlet Book Group of Pawlet, Vermont.  The night that I attended the discussion of "LOST" the group was 17 strong, but I believe the full membership is even larger than that.  In full disclosure (always wanted to use that phrase), my sister, Elizabeth, is a member of the group and very generously hawked her sister's book as a candidate.  Thank you, sister!

I arrived at my sister's house in the early evening to a feast, prepared by...my sister.  The Pawlet Book Group meetings center around great food and great discussion of books.  I thought it seemed a super-human feat to host an event like this--actually read the book AND cook a gourmet meal for 17?  Makes novel-writing seem easy.

I cannot tell you how much pleasure it gives the writer to talk to people who have connected to your work.  (Okay, it's also nice if they profess to love it.)  But really it is that feeling that someone gets it and by extension, gets you.   It's also incredible to discuss your characters, your other world, with those now in the know.  The book group readers know Corey and Susan and Jeff.  We can talk about their lives, their troubles, and their triumphs with the same intimacy as those who live in the same circle, the same community.  And how generous the Pawlet readers were!  Buying hardcover to support a friend, my sister, and an author.

My second book group was right here in Oneonta, New York, hosted by Michelle Pondolfino, the owner of the now AWARD-WINNING Green Toad Bookstore.  This was a small group, four women, all friends of mine.  In the midst of the discussion, Jacki, a local restaurant owner, spoke of having found herself weeping at one point.  She told us that the story had built and built and all of a sudden it hit her and she broke down.  "What hit you?" we asked.  "Oh," she said.  "I realized what Christopher was searching for in the woods..."  I practically levitated from my seat.  "You did?"   You see, writers don't necessarily know these things about their own stories.  Okay, I don't know these things.  "He was looking for that connection he had with Susan," she said.  "He wanted to spoon with her in the woods, the way they spooned on the rainforest floor."  He wanted to spoon with Susan.  I wanted to weep then.