Ficlets

The end of the book tour – one end of it anyway – came just a little before 9pm tonight, when the hotel courtesy car drove up to the Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, where I had had just finished reading and then signing books, and the driver motioned at me to get into car. I shook hands with the bookstore owner, thanking her for such a lovely time (because it was), got into the car, and we drove away. It was the last event in the tour. There are no more.

Well, sort of. If you look at my tour schedule, you’ll see that, in fact, there are at least four more “tour appearances” scheduled. But all of those appearances are in Ohio and Indiana, spread out of a month, all separated by several days (if not weeks), and all – importantly – within driving distance of my house, so I can go out and come back in a single day. The contiguous part of my tour, the part that has taken me away from my family and home for three weeks, is now done. All I have to do now is wake up tomorrow morning, go to the airport, get on a plane and go home.

And I’m glad of this. I’ve had a heck of a lot of fun on this tour – and you can be sure I’ll do at least one follow-up entry on it, detailing some of this – but three weeks on the road is enough. I can’t imagine how musicians and actors who tour for months at a stretch can handle it. I’m proud to say that I managed to get through three weeks without going completely insane (or, really, even partially so), but I’m also pretty sure that if I was out on the road much longer than this that insanity surely would have taken hold, and while I would not have been able to do, say, Led Zeppelin levels of out of controlness (it’s really not in my mental makeup), I might have still gone just a little daffy.

Fortunately, we will not know. For tomorrow, barring some catastrophe with the weather, I’ll be home and with family, petting my own cats and sleeping in my own bed. After three weeks, this sounds even better than usual.