*

Laura is thrilled to see that the nationally syndicated column “Ask Amy” has mentioned Laura’s website and brant after running a letter about breast cancer. Laura is already getting lots and lots of really positive comments about her “Breast Brants” and about her new book on Failure, and, oddly enough, about her “Just Jimmies” post (who knew there were so many rabid Brigham’s Ice Cream fans out there who still remember the days of yore?)

To all her new readers — Welcome! And please bookmark the brant! Or, if you’re just here for the day, thanks for passing through! For her regular readers, click here for the link to the “Ask Amy” column:

I know she just said that she’s too busy to brant, but Laura has one more thing to post before she gets started on her Magnus Brantus — the link to a UK chick-lit book-blog that just posted a review of Piece of Work. Laura is always so touched when people actually say nice things about her and her books that when they do she feels compelled to thank them publicly. So, Thank you Trashionista!

http://www.trashionista.com/2006/11/book_review_pie.html

Laura promised, at the end of the summer (or at the beginning of the fall), that she would for Halloween post a piece she wrote two years ago (or was it three? Laura can’t remember. Laura can’t remember anything these days) for the New York Times about trying to make one of the incredibly complicated craft projects in Martha Stewart’s now defunct catalogue, MARTHA BY MAIL. Laura’s not ashamed to admit that she used to love that catalogue and purchased many truly excellent items from it and misses it to this day. But that is life, Laura knows. Here today; gone tomorrow. Which is true, but which is also neither here nor there.

Bad cliches notwithstanding, because the Haunted Gingerbread Mansion project took so long to build, the piece she ended up writing was way too long to run in it’s entirety in the Styles section, so it was, the following year, run on the Op-Ed page in an extremely abbreviated version. Laura always liked The Long Version of the piece much better since she felt that it really conveyed the hellish real-time feeling she experienced while in the thick of the project.

And so, here it is.*

Laura hopes you like it.**

And Laura also hopes you have a great Halloween.

(*Because it was written for the New York Times, Laura maintained a tone of journalistic integrity. Had she not written it for the New York Times, there would have been a lot of swearing.)

(**If you get bored, you don’t have to read the whole thing. Just skip ahead. But please don’t leave a comment that you got bored and skipped ahead.)

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.

The other night Laura was feted at Lincoln Street Coffee in Newton Highlands during a Girls Night Out evening her close friend and former next-door-neighbor Elisa D’Andrea (and husband Glen Weinstein) arranged. (Laura’s not sure how she feels about phrases like “Girls Night Out” or “Girls Night In” or any other one that uses the word “Girls” to refer to women over the age of 9, but for lack of a better descriptive title — “An Evening of Free Brownies and Coffee” just doesn’t quite seem to cut it — Laura’s going to leave it that way. For now. [She can always come back and change it. That’s the beauty of blogs. Or, brants.])

Anyway, about 40 women came for an evening of free brownies and coffee and to listen to Laura talk about herself while sitting criss-cross-applesauce in an upholstered club chair and read from her new book. Laura had a great time. One of the reasons she had such a great time was because so many of her friends from so many different parts of Laura’s life were there all at the same time. For instance, her cherished Preschool-Era Blog Moms were there — including Pinar, whose due date to give birth had come and gone two days before and who ended up, only hours later, giving birth (very very quickly) to a little girl named Ayla! Also there were the women from Laura’s book group (from which she’s taken a brief sabbatical); friends from Laura’s new neighborhood (another section of Newton called Auburndale); sisters of friends from Laura’s new neighborhood, former preschool teachers, friends of friends, etc etc. The other reason it was a great night was because Laura was feeling uncharacteristically blue that day (well, that’s not entirely true; Laura has battled off and on her whole life with depression, but that’s neither here nor there right now!!) and so being around that many truly good friends gave her mood an enormous and desperately needed boost. Quite a night, and Laura thanks Elisa, one of the smartest and funniest and most generous friends she’s ever had, and everyone who came, for helping her celebrate..

Everyone who is lucky enough to have a great evening has a favorite part of that great evening, and Laura’s favorite part (besides the moment when she had a giant brownie) was when people started telling her how much they were enjoying her brant. Laura was shocked and amazed that so many people seemed to be reading it since she can count on the fingers of one hand the number of comments that have been left on her website. And so it became obvious that Laura would need to create a bridge for herself to get her over the huge chasm of doubt when it came to brant-writing. And so she asked the group of women assembled a favor:

To please please please leave a comment on her brant to let her know they were reading it.

Most of the women had only one objection to that request: they were too shy to leave a multi-sentence comment on her brant or her discussion page. Which is when Laura tailored her request to something very specific:

Just write the phrase, “I’m reading it,” she asked.

And so, the brask was born (brag + rant + ask = brask).

Laura is deeply grateful to the few friends and friends of friends (you know who you are) who have posted their support in the form of that one simple sentence, and she now sends out a wider brask for more people to do the same. This is because Laura finds it really hard to continue writing her brant when she thinks no one is reading it. All she needs is for a few people a day, or a week, or an hour, to post those three magic words — I’m reading it — to ensure future branting from Laura.

Laura just got off the phone with Robin Krall of WHJJ-Providence’s “Reading with Robin”, one of the best radio interviewers she’s ever spoken to and certain to become one of Laura’s NBFs (she’s going to do a whole separate multi-sectioned brant on NBFs in the near future), and Laura promised to post information ASAP on her brant about the particulars of the “Great Read in the Park” tomorrow. The event is sponsored by the New York Times and is huge, and Laura is reading with Jennifer Egan and Adriana Trigiani in the Yellow Tent at 2:00 -2:45 p.m. Here’s the link to all the events:

http://www.nytimes.whsites.net/grip2006/panels_readings.html

One of the things Laura was hugely excited about when she started her brant was the idea that she could plug people and places and things that she really likes. Which is why this post about the interview she did with the nationally syndicated radio show “The Good Stuff” is going to be so fun to write.

You see, Laura’s sister-in-law (Laura’s husband’s brother’s wife) Colleen Dealy is one of the hosts of “The Good Stuff” which, as I may have just mentioned, is now nationally syndicated on the Lifestyle Talk Radio Network. The other host of the show is Colleen’s friend Taylor Purdy, and together they make a great team. Back before the show went national, when Colleen first had the idea for the show and when they first started taping the one-hour show once a week in a local Greenwich, Connecticut radio studio, Laura would sometimes agree to be on the show — either in studio or by phone — when they were desperate for a guest. Sometimes she would even listen to the show from her computer (don’t ask her how she did it, because at a certain point she couldn’t anymore and she didn’t know why she couldn’t because she’d never quite figured out how why she could) and call in with a question to make it seem like someone was out there, all the way in Boston, listening and engaged enough to call in with a question or a comment.

Laura always felt like she was saving the day when she did these enormous acts of kindness — helping these poor radio hosts, with no guests and no listeners, out of the goodness of her heart. But the real reason she did it was because Colleen is one of Laura’s favorite people in the whole world and someone Laura can never do enough for because Colleen has helped her out (let her stay over in Greenwich and save $$ on hotels) and saved her (watched Benji while Laura went into the city for meetings or lunches or anything else that had to do with the publication of her new book) a gazillion times. This is why Colleen’s name is on the dedication page of Piece of Work. (Not that that can even begin to pay Colleen back for all the enormous favors she’s done for Laura. But it’s a start.) Of course now Laura can barely get booked on the show and has to have her publicist call and beg for an interview. (OK, that’s a lie, but you know what she means.)

What she means is that now the show is an actual show, two hours long and five days a week, part of an actual radio network, and rapidly gaining affiliates. Laura desperately wishes she could upload the fantabulous photo of her fantabulous sister-in-law Colleen and her friend Taylor but she thinks she shouldn’t bother trying and instead should just post the links to the show and be done with it. After all, “The Good Stuff” is getting plenty of attention without Laura plastering Colleen and Taylor’s blond hair all over her brant.

(Note:  this photo was finally uploaded on 12/31/06.)

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!