See Me in Person

Does anyone know where you can get vegan cupcakes in this town?

A lot of this time in the publishing life of your book, when you’re done doing all the stuff you can physically do to the book and it’s headed to the printer, just gets devoted to reading tea leaves. Does it mean anything that this review outlet has changed the status of your submission from “submitted” to “received”? Is this person’s “oh, interesting” a sign of “Oh, this looks like something I want to dive into” or does it mean more “Why would a person choose to do this?” If you have an anxious mind, this is the time when it will show you all its best tricks.

I’m also having the fun experience (and I mean fun in the “this is actually really cool” sense and in the “this is not fun” sense) of getting some preliminary indications that the book could be much bigger than I expect. I’m just getting some feedback from strangers I respect that’s like “Wow, I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. It’s great.” I need my anxiety brain to switch over to graceful pride brain, but that is not a trick it’s very good at.

Anyway, appearances. Friday I’m over at Art & Soul. I’m talking about hauntings and how to navigate a literary community full of ghosts. Details here.

And then, as a reminder, the book launch is July 13 at the state museum. But also, Kim Baldwin is going to talk to me right after that at The Porch.

I really want to have a cake at my book launch. I just think you need cake at book launches. But I also want a vegan option because my nephew is allergic to milk and I don’t want him not to be able to have cake at the book launch. However, I don’t know much about where to acquire a vegan cake in Nashville because I am not a vegan. Hell, even this Substack is an animal product as I just dictate it to Billy, my dog, and he actually types it up. So, if you have a line on a good vegan bakery, let me know.