Talking Book

I talked to my publisher yesterday, Gavin at Small Beer. I love calling Gavin 'my publisher' because he was at one point 'my student' and he and Kelly are 'my friends' and when Bob jokingly said last night, 'tell the publicist to contact Terry Gross at Fresh Air' I realized Gavin is also 'my publicist.' If you contact a department at Small Beer--circulation, publicity, accounting, sales, you get Gavin. Sometimes you get Kelly.

He was talking about putting together author info to set a couple of signings of Mothers & Other Monsters and he asked me if I wanted to say anything about the blog or Hodgkins. The pub date for the book is July 1, and I thought for a moment and then said, no. I don't expect to have Hodgkins, or, for that matter, to be keeping the blog. I wouldn't mind doing the whole cancer survivor thing and if he had thought there was any gain in doing it, I'd have said sure. But the book is about other things. No cancer stories in it. (And Alzheimer's story, but not cancer.) This is part of my life, but so are the five years I lived in New York City and the year I lived in China, the twelve years of raising Adam, and twelve years of marriage to Bob. Hodgkins has been hard, and may get harder still in the next seven weeks, but it, as yet, has not been the most difficult thing in my life. Part of that, of course, has been because of everyone reading this. You have all made this easier to keep in perspective and you've often made me feel good when I might not otherwise.

I don't know if I'll keep a blog after this. I might, I've really enjoyed it. But my fondest hope is to say sometime in May or June, 'well, that's a wrap.' If I want to keep a blog, I'll start a new one.