I’ll be reading at the Barnes & Noble in Kingston, New York, at 2 p.m. tomorrow, Saturday, February 27. I’m writing this from down in the city and I’ll be traveling up in the morning… but I will be there. Though the snowpocalpyse has put a damper on my travel plans and will surely keep some people away, I’m looking forward to returning to the pages of this novel I wrote what feels so long ago, even for one day.

It’s strange how you write a novel, go through all the drama of getting it published, and now so much time has passed that I’ve since written a whole entire other novel and started a new book (yes! I’ve started my new book!). The distance is enormous, but there are the words I wrote on the page and when I read them back I discover that I know what’s coming next. Like I somehow still have them memorized… Weird.

(Of course, now that all this time has passed and I’ve seen how the book was called a mystery I wish I could go back and rewrite the entire thing to make it a mystery, since I never intended it as one, and also snazzy up some sentences, and fix others, and change some things I’d questioned, and write a new first page and… maybe it’s a good thing that once a book is printed you can’t go back and redo it, or else I’d be writing the same book fifty times before I was happy with it.)

I promise to read only what’s on the page, well, mostly, and not rewrite as I’m standing there. That would be crazy. 🙂

This morning I also did a strange thing: I was interviewed on the radio. I’m not sure if I remember exactly what I said, and there’s no podcast saved to play back and remind myself, but I hope I sounded all right and interesting and passionate enough.

After this reading, DANI NOIR will pretty much be behind me. But it will be many, many months until Summer 2011 when my next book will be out. That’s a strange limbo to be in. I think the only good distraction for that is to focus on writing a whole other book, don’t you agree?

So if you’re in the Kingston area, I hope you’ll come to the B&N tomorrow afternoon! There will be a Q&A afterward and I’ll sign books, too. I was looking out the window before at the snow still falling… it’s calming, actually. Soothing. Makes me less anxious. Looking forward to tomorrow!