Laura just posted her first brant entry with photos and graphics and she could not be happier and more excited by the results! It’s a whole new world for her and her brant — being able to communicate her thoughts and feelings even better than she did before through pictures!! — and she’s tempted to go back and add photos to all the non-illustrated entries in her archives. But that would be tampering with BackBrant, and Laura is a true believer in the immediacy and spontaneity and in-the-moment-ness of her bragging and ranting, even if her postings could be vastly improved retroactively with visuals.

Branting, Laura thinks, is a lot like doing laundry: just when you think you’re all caught up after doing 5 loads, you take a day off and suddenly there’s 5 more loads to do. Same with branting: Laura does a whole bunch of entries, thinking she’s all caught up, but then she takes a day off and suddenly she’s behind again. Oh well. A branter’s work, it seems, is never done…

Bad cliches notwithstanding, Laura wants to provide a quick update on The Great Read in the Park last weekend in New York’s Bryant Park. Thank goodness Laura was paired with the enormously popular and hilarious Adriana Trigiani and the very talented Jennifer Egan, because when Laura and Adriana and Jennifer were escorted from the Authors’ Registration tent to their reading tent, it was packed and the crowd was spilling out onto the lawn. Jennifer did a great reading from her new book, The Keep, but both Adriana and Laura chose not to read. Instead, they chose to talk. Adriana could not have been funnier which really really sucked because Laura had to talk right after that and boy was Adriana a hard act to follow. But luckily the crowd was already in a good mood so they seemed to enjoy Laura’s talk about the upside of failure.

There was also the perfect fall weather….and the fact that Laura finally met Emily Griffin who works with Laura’s editor Amy Einhorn at Warner Books after talking with her on the phone and emailing for almost two years….and the fact that she met James Ellroy in the Authors’ Registration tent. James Ellroy was a Knopf author when Laura was a Knopf publicist, and while she never got to meet him or work with him back then they had a great conversation before and after their events on Sunday afternoon. That really made her day.

Laura has a real backlog of brants — several events and issues to cover. But it’s late and she’s going to try to keep things brief:

Newtonville Books
Laura never branted about her kick-off reading and signing at her hometown bookstore, Newtonville Books, owned by the fantastic Tim Huggins. Tim has a lot of facial hair and he’s from The South and he’s one of the best things about living (and writing) in Boston. Tim puts on these great events at his store (he calls them “Books and Brew” events because after the reading everyone walks down the street for free drinks at a nearby restaurant); he also used to organize these other great events at The Attic, a restaurant with a bar upstairs where big-draw authors would read or groups of authors would read; and he used to organize yet another series of great events called “Earfull” where writers would read and musicians would play. “Earfull” events were held in this really small crowded bar in Somerville and going there to read used to make Laura feel really old and pathetically suburban because she always got hot and sweaty and claustrophic and uncomfortable and she’d get really tense beforehand about where she would park. Parking has always been kind of a “thing” with Laura and going to Somerville on a weeknight knowing she would have to find a place to park would sort of throw her into a tizzy.

Anyway, on September 27, Laura did her reading at the store and a lot of her friends came. A lot of people she didn’t know also came, and perhaps it was the combination of all the people Laura knew and all the people she didn’t know that made her have an attack of stage-fright-sweating on the level of Albert Brooks in “Broadcast News.” Laura was caught completely off guard since she’s never ever ever had such a thing happen to her while she was meeting her public, but it happened, and now she’s hoping she won’t get panicky about getting panicky again at another reading.

Borders, Downtown Crossing, Boston
Well, Laura’s friend and neighbor John saved the day. If Laura thought driving to Somerville and finding a parking place was terrifying and overwhelming, then trying to figure out where Downtown Crossing was in downtown Boston and then finding a place to park completely immobilized her. Luckily John, who can get anywhere in Boston like a cab driver, offered to take Laura to the lunchtime signing. Laura couldn’t believe her good fortune: not only was she being spared the torment of the transportation, but she was also finally being escorted to an event by a person who had the means (a car) and the ability (he’s older than six) to perform the duties required and in the manner she required! In other words, Laura was getting escorted — chauffeured, if you will — to and from her signing!

Transportation and the much-needed management of her fragile ego aside, Laura was surprised that there were actually people there — some of whom were friends and some of whom were friends of friends. Laura was thrilled to see Monika and Gail and (a different) Jon there (each with a friend or two to fill up the chairs) and she was especially thrilled to see an old high school friend, Frank Morrissey. Frank is one of the smartest and funniest and most well-read people Laura has ever known and she had lost track of him since the last time he showed up at one of her readings — at Waterstones in Boston in 1998 for Animal Husbandry. So aside from the fact that after the reading Laura had to go with John into the garage to get the car instead of John just going to get the car and picking her up outside the store the way an actual media escort would have done, she had a good time.

“Book Swap Cafe,” NH Community Cable TV, Concord, NH
Laura already branted briefly about this — with a picture! — so she won’t go into too much more detail except to say that after doing two cable television shows in one week, Laura loves doing cable television shows and would be happy to do more. So if you have a public access or community cable show that features authors — or that simply features people –live people! — please contact Laura via her website’s “Contact” page!