I started rewriting THE MIDDLESTEINS the past few days, just one of the chapters that had always needed some work. I had wondered if I might be rusty but as it turns out I’ve been living in it this entire time even when I wasn’t writing it anymore. It felt so, so great to touch it again, practically sexual. Certainly I enjoyed it more than anything else I have been working on the last couple of months except for perhaps this blog, which is almost always an easy-breezy experience, even when I am talking about crazy ex-boyfriends.

You know, whenever I go to an author’s launch event, friend or otherwise, and we get to the question and answer session at the end, if no one else is raising their hand, I always try to help out and start with a first question. There are various reasons why people don’t raise their hands: because people are shy, because no one wants to draw attention to themself as being a total nerd, because the reading has just made them sleepy, because the bright lights of the book store have melted their brains like some alien invasion laser beam, because they had a long day at work and why are people still trying to make them think when all they want to do is not think and why did their girlfriends make them come to this thing anyway? But I think the big reason is if the book has just come out, no one has read it yet, so how do you ask a question about something you haven’t read yet?

I am here to tell you, however, there are still standard questions you can ask to help an author out. Here’s a good one: How much/what kind of research did you do for the book? Everyone does some kind of research for their book even if it means they just read their old diaries from high school. You might get some sort of canned response but I can assure you the author will be eternally grateful that someone has made the effort to ask. It is the worst feeling to just be left hanging by an audience. It’s not the audience’s fault or responsibility, obviously, but, you know, hook an author up is all I’m saying. My favorite question to ask someone is which of their characters was the hardest to say goodbye to at the end of the book. I like to ask that because then the author can talk about the character who excites them the most. I like it when people are enthusiastic, and I think it’s fun to create the opportunity for them to get to that place.

I bring all this up because the way I am feeling about THE MIDDLESTEINS is close to some sort of lovesickness, and I don’t want to say goodbye to any of them. I am so comfortable in their brains. It’s like when I drive cross-country and I haven’t seen anyone I know for days and then I end up at a friend’s house and they give me my own guest room and a set of keys and there is a friendly cat there and a fully stocked refrigerator and they make me coffee in the morning and they have really good internet access and overstuffed bookshelves and a big stack of magazines and comic books on the living room table and there is a small backyard with comfortable lawn chairs and it is sunny outside and there are butterflies and all the flowers are just about to bloom and my friends say, “Stay as long as you like,” and I genuinely feel like they mean it, but of course I can only stay for a day and then I have to hit the road, and I know the next stop is a small shitty town and I will probably be staying at a Holiday Inn Express and yes, the Holiday Inn Express does serve those delicious cinnamon rolls in the morning at their breakfast bar and also I can always steal a bunch of bananas from it for the road, but it is obviously no substitute for the awesome house I have just left. That’s how I feel about this book. It is an awesome house I want to visit forever.

Related: Haus, Oberhofer.

(02/24/11) | 2 Comments »