HE WROTE: Day Two. The Morning After

The Tour Has Officially Started.

So the publicity rep, Shannon, from SMP, a very nice woman, and I head out to LaGuardia in the rain to find Jenny. We pull up to Delta and get her. She's standing there, in the rain, in the same clothes she tried to move the tree out of her driveway in. As we head further out on Long Island, Jenny is trying to remove bark from underneath her fingernails while remaining up-beat and cheerful. I did not compliment her on her shoes because they were kind of covered in mud and she would have known I was lying.

Meanwhile, as we get further and further out, I'm starting to think this is like the scene in Seinfeild-- everything is like a scene in Seinfeld-- where George is driving Susan's parents out on Long Island to show them his non-existant second home. I mean we're going a long way out and it is an island after all. You know Susan, his fiancee who died from licking the cheap envelopes George bought for the wedding invitations.

I keep turning to Jenny going, "I've never been this far out on Long Island" and she pulls another branch out from underneath her fingernails.

Meanwhile Shannon is worried because she's also handling her first ever full time client who's flying in that night to NYC who is a retired Marine Corps general, not the best choice for your first client. So she's calling her mom to track his flight, which is really kind of cute.

And Jenny and I, her and I, are in the back seat cracking jokes.

It took about two hours, cause it was rush hour, to get to the book store. It was a wonderful book store, Book Revue in Huntington, Long Island. The manager, Liz, was great. Although at first she thought we were a pair of loons. Well, I think she still thinks we're a pair of loons. They had photos of all these famous people who signed there on the walls and I kept asking Jenny-- who's that?
And she's say: That's President Carter, Bob.
Who's that? That's Hillary Clinton.
Who's that? That's me, Bob.

Anyway. Shannon's on the phone trying to find the flight her General is on and some sweet old guy with a violin case comes up and I figure he's got a Tommygun in it and he starts talking to Jenny and Shannon can't hear her mom and it's getting hectic. Well, later as we're talking, he's upstairs actually playing the violin so all is ok.

We talked like 45 minutes and Liz, the manager said we had a great scthick except it wasn't sthick cause we had no clue what we were doing. Then we took questions. And there were several Cherrybombs there, yes, you, over there, you know who you are. We did not tell the taking one for the team story because there was a child present. Then we signed books. Then we drove for an hour back to the greatest city in the world. Ordered a pizza.

Ah the exciting lives of writers.

So then I went to my room and took the Moot stamp with me that Jenny bought. Cheap. And started practicing with it. Because the effective signing technigue we have worked out is I sit to Jenny's left. She signs a person's name and the YECCY stuff. Then she signs her name. I sign my name. And then I will do the Moot stamp, which is very, very hard to do. So I must practice. But this green ink smells very weird. My head is spinning. I have to lie down. I think th