Wellesley Booksmith Party.  More friends!  More strangers!  More ways to share Nice and Mean!

For this event, I actually read, and it was so fun!  Once again, I was thrilled by the people who came.  Grad school friends who drove in from Cape Cod and Massachusetts!  Friends of friends—one of whom I’d co-bridesmaided with back in 2001!  My very first boss from when I was a camp counselor and her 9-year-old daughter!  Writers I’d met on the internets, one of whom blogged about the event in such vivid detail that I’m gobsmacked to have this record of it.  All this in addition to friends I see frequently and, once again, some people I’d never met who just thought the book sounded good.

Probably the best thing about giving the reading was hearing people laugh.  I shared Sachi’s chapter three, in which she picks her little sister up from school. (This is the second time I’ve mentioned that chapter here.  I’m obviously attached to it.)  Everybody is saying, “Pallavi is the princess!”  Sachi asks, “Wow, how’d that happen?” and Pallavi says something to the effect of, “I don’t know!  I just asked everybody, ‘Who wants me to be the princess?’ and they all said, ‘I do!’ and so I was!”  I hardly base anything in my books on real life—whenever something does slip in, it’s usually the first to get cut—but this incident was actually inspired by the daughter of a friend of mine, and apparently everybody else thought it was just as funny as I did.  Hooray for laughter!

I had a few special effects that I was proud of, too.  One was the Nice and Mean Memories Clothesline—ribbons I’d strung up along with slips of paper to share their Nice or Mean memories.  I did this in New York, too, and some fun ones have emerged, such as, “I drove my 8^th-grade teacher, who was a nun, crazy.”  I actually know who wrote this and the story involves writing fake diary entries about time spent as a Satanist.  I feel bad for the nun, but this story always makes me laugh, and I like having it preserved on the Mean Clothesline.

Ticket to anywhere blogged about the Q&A session, so if you’re curious about what people wanted to know after the reading, head on over.  You can also win the copy that I signed for her!

I’m so grateful to the bookstore for hosting me.  When I asked New Englanders where I should have my Boston party, I heard almost unanimously, “The Wellesley Booksmith.”  It’s not hard to see why: they have fantastic write-ups of books classic and new; they have a vast collection of gently used books in the basement; their toys and favors don’t seem too commercial; and their staff is helpful and fun.  I hope to return there soon, possibly as an author, but most likely as a customer!

Me and lovely Vermont College grad school peeps! (Sorry they are so small…I have had it up to Here with WordPress, though!)