I'm on my way to Austin for the Texas Book Festival. Only people who remember "Risky Business" will relate to the following. It helps if you play the YouTube musical clip above while reading. The dream is always the same. Instead of going to my seat in Coach, I go to First Class. The curtain is open, so I go inside. I'm looking around for the people, but nobody seems to be there. And then I hear a giggle, so I go over to the row to see what's what. That's when I see her, this...single mom...with a toddler. What they're doing there I have no idea...but it's a dream, so I go with it. "Who's there?" she says. "Todd," I say. "What are you doing here?" "I don't know what I'm doing here. What are you doing here?" "I'm taking a nap," she says. Then I give her, "You want me to go?" "No," she says. "I want you to play with my toddler." So now I'm getting enthusiastic about this dream. So I go to the toddler, but she's hard to find through all the leather folds of the First-Class seats. I keep losing her. Finally I get to her...and I find myself in a room full of MBAs working on PowerPoint slides. I'm over three hours late; I've got two minutes to finish my entire presentation. I've just made a terrible mistake. I'll never pay off my mortgage. My life is ruined.
...and "Beep! Beep!" is Tuesday morning's storytime selection at the B&N in Middletown, RI.
We also achieved a new high of #8,576 on Amazon earlier this week.
The Texas Book Festival is this coming weekend--we got a teeny, tiny mention among the higher-profile authors, but it's a great big festival, a cool thing to be a part of, and I'm really looking forward to it. Here's a video on the "Reading Rock Stars" program we're participating in on Friday:
Here is a tired boy who just took the SATs. He hasn't had 7 hours of sleep any night all week, much less 8. He thinks he did well. He finished every section except one. He says he was starting to get tunnel vision during the last section because he was so tired. He was afraid he was starting to get a migraine. But he didn't. Right now he just wants something warm to drink. Hot chocolate. Okay, and maybe a croissant. Then he wants to go home and sleep.
I'll be at the Texas Book Festival on Oct. 16-17 in support of "Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep!" We kick it off on Friday morning with a "Reading Rock Stars" event. I don't know what that means, but it sounds suspiciously like little kids will be involved. I'm signing books on Saturday afternoon, in between wandering around getting other authors to sign their books for me. Never been to Austin. Looking forward to it.
In other words, 12,932 other books kicked our butt in sales. But it still kicked the butt of 8 million other books yesterday. Hey, it is what it is. We can't quite seem to crack the top 100 bedtime books (#105), and we're not among the top 10 Hot New Releases there either (#13). We're totally getting our tush handed to us by some dumb rabbit sleep book. But I'm happy to report that we're breathing down the neck of Daniel Striped Tiger.
Is it good? Is it bad? It's all kind of subjective. As with pretty much everything in life, no one cares but you anyway, so why get all stressed?
I had just quit my job in NYC to move to Iowa to wrestle and train with Gable. This family reunion was the one-week break in between. I was outwardly optimistic and inwardly panicked about my life. I realize now, outside the haze of youthful narcissism, that everyone else in this picture was going through their own life changes and decisions and optimism and panic. (My aunt Janet, behind me, is wearing a shirt that says, "I'm 40 and it's okay.") It's nice to see everyone so young and vibrant and alive, but of course you wouldn't want to live in this moment now even if you could, because of all the wonderful things that were still to come: Jennifer (whom I met a year later), Samuel, Ethan, other nieces and nephews and new additions. But what a great family I come from. Build a base of love for those who follow--that's basically what this picture says to me.
