Day: October 16, 2010

Don’t be an ass. Check out my first novel in ten years, “Rose In A Storm.”

Photographic snoots, like literary novelists, like to bitch that digital photography has ruined the art of photography because taking photos is so easy and inexpensive that people like us get to do it and we can occasionally catch some pretty neat stuff. Nuts to them, I think. It is, in fact, easy to take a good photograph. Not easy to take a very good or great one. I always remember the words of a dying photographer to me when I began taking photos. Remember, he said, it isn’t what the camera sees, it’s what you see. And what sometimes looks back.

Izzy loves people, but he isn’t crazy about other dogs, as people learn who try and bring their dogs to my readings (I don’t understand why people do that, but they do sometimes). He did seem to like this stuffed border collie at Northshire Books in Manchester, Vt. They were hanging out.

Fear is a disease, I think. Life is the reality of things.

I think dogs do have character. Some are resolute in their work and Frieda is resolute in her desire to protect me, Maria and the farm. She is a beautiful dog, serious and ove, a mix of two intense working breeds. Frieda does not give it away. Like the other dogs, she gets restless when we start packing. Hangs close, looks at us with big eyes of concern. We don’t do separation anxiety here. We come and we go without much fuss, and with adaptability. But none of us really likes it.

Very humbling to be on book tour. To meet people who have driven or flown a long ways to see me. To meet photographers taking photos because of the blog. To meet people who read my books and love them and think about them. People who love Maria just from seeing photos of her. Who love the dogs and the donkeys. Who understand my strange journey and cheer it on. Who share their own pain, loss and triumph with me.  Book tours are a bonding experience, a continuation of the rich dialogue that exists between me and readers of my books, mine and others.

This week will be challenging, emotionally, creatively and physically. I am grateful for it. We are packing our own suitcases and also Izzy’s. Off to Clifton Park this afternoon and then to Ohio. I will be blogging along the way, of course.