fear factor

So: my book is now available for purchase. Today was originally the official on-pub date, but as of last week it started showing up in a few stores, and Amazon is now shipping copies (to everyone but my mother, it seems). Which means that for the next few weeks, I will cease to be a writer and instead become something absolutely terrifying: a talker.

I'm under no illusions. I am absurdly, insanely lucky. I have, pretty much, my dream job. (Well, the writing part is, anyway. The freelance editing I do to keep me in text messages and crappy health insurance is rather less than dreamy.) But one of the things I love best about writing is that I get to do it in my apartment, by myself, in silence. Or near-silence, depending on how frustrated I am with a given passage.

In print, I am open and outgoing - probably too outgoing, actually. In person, though, I am painfully shy. I can hide it sometimes. Or I can dampen it with the magic of sweet, sweet alcohol. But I can never completely get rid of it. And there's not much that scares me more than having to stand in front of a crowd of people and entertain them. (In one of my masochistic periods, I contemplated trying my hand at stand-up comedy as a way to cure myself. Then I realized that any comedy set I would do would basically be a combination of Andrew Dice Clay, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jay Leno - that is: profane, obvious, and unfunny.)

But today I have to just get the fuck over myself. Because I have my first radio interview in like a half an hour, and although I gazed longingly at the Negro Modello in the fridge when I woke up, it's a little too early for liquid courage. Then, later this afternoon, I have my first newspaper phone interview. The real crunch starts next week, when I leave for St. Louis to do a bunch of local publicity. I'll be doing readings, more interviews, and even an event at my old high school.

However, as much as I dread the prospect of putting myself on display, this is one thing I am not worried about: being entertaining. Because these early interviews and readings are going to be rocky, rocky things. You know all that dead air during the TBS baseball broadcasts? Yeah, like that. Except instead of being able to watch a ball fly out, you'll be able to hear me quietly wanting to die. And if reality TV has taught me anything, it's that there's little else that's more entertaining than watching somebody squirm.

So if you're in St. Louis, Boston, or New York for one of my upcoming readings, all I can say is stop on by. It's sure to be a treat.