Arriving in Chicago Friday, August 28 (earlier than I would’ve liked), I was picked up by my literary escort, who was assigned to get me to the WGN-TV studios for a mid-day news segment. The escort was nothing like what I expected: instead of an effete, rumpled, mustachioed man, Bill was a tall, burly, classic Midwesterner who liked nothing better than talking baseball (specifically the White Sox). He drove me over to the studios where I taped a quick segment on the book. Things went well, but it’s hard for me to watch the tape; they say the camera adds ten pounds, but the way I was slumped back in my chair added at least another ten. Ugh.

The event that night was at the Book Cellar, in Lincoln Park. I’d heard a lot of great things about the place, particularly from Larry Smith and Rachel Fershelisher, who landed there during their Six-Word Memoirs book tour. The Book Cellar serves wine (as well as the usual tea & coffee) while you peruse your favorite books. The event itself went really well, with about 40 people in attendance, including a group old Chicago pals. The crowd was really receptive to the book and ran me through the best Q&A session to date.

The next day was August 29, the actual fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. My only event was an “author coffee” at Amy Davis’s writing workspace, where I walked 11 people through the origins of A.D. Everyone there was a writer of some kind, with a range of interests in self-publishing, web-to-print projects, and comics, and we spent a lively couple of hours chewing the fat.