And if this moves you, you might want to click here for a little reading on exactly why arts education is critical in public schools, which are dropping classes faster than a Kardashian can lose a husband.

(Okay, I confess. I don’t exactly know what a Kardashian is, but I heard something about one on the radio. I think it might be a new species, possibly one that lives at the Jersey Shore. I’ve heard some vague rumblings about that place, too.)

I’m on a permanent quest to find the next amazing book for my TBR (to be read) pile. Yes, it’s too big already, but somehow there’s always room for one more.

May I recommend this for your TBR pile? Arcadia is the story of Bit, a young boy who grows up in a flawed if idealistic commune and follows him over half a lifetime as he grows into an adolescent and finally a man and father. Groff’s writing is lyrical.

All thumbs way up.

Author pal Sue Ann Jaffarian and I signing at the book festival. (Photo by author Avery Aames. This photo links to her site.)

If all the attendees of the LA Times Festival of Books got together, there would be enough of us to form a small town. We’d need a grocery store, a post office, a sheriff’s deputy or two and a volunteer fire department. We’d be the most literate, book-crazy town ever, and I would live there happily.

I started the day, hosting the Vroman’s Bookstore Reader Bus that took attendees from Pasadena to the festival site. Fellow author Charlie Schroeder and I passed the mic, telling jokes, sharing stories and answering questions as we rolled down the freeway, passing downtown’s enormous skyscrapers. (How many writers can say that?)

Once there, I had a fabulous time signing at the Sisters in Crime and Mystery Ink booths. So many readers came up to tell me they’d heard about LOSING CLEMENTINE and were excited to get the book. It made for a very happy author. Thanks, guys!

(Photo by fellow author Avery Aames. Check out her site.)

Enjoy!

It's not heaven. It's the wild part of Southern California, and that's plenty good enough for me. Photo by Austin Baker. All rights reserved.

On weekends, I drive an hour out of the big, sprawling city and into a state park. I leave my car and hit the trail in running shoes with a bottle of water lashed around my waist. Most of the world is still asleep, and the sun hasn’t had time to burn off the marine layer that blows in from the Pacific like something between high fog and low clouds. The mule deer watch as I pound out the miles, getting further and further away from roads and traffic, commerce and commodities, away from city sounds and smells.

The trail leads into the mountains. Striated rock formations the size of office buildings jut out of the ground at awkward angles that I attribute, perhaps erroneously, to violent, prehistoric plate tectonics. Wild flowers grow low to the ground. Quail flush out of the brush when I pass. The sky is that cartoon blue unique to California.

As the morning heats up, I keep one ear open for the warning rattle of a snake caught unaware. Neither of us wants to meet the other.

Not too many other people grind out miles on these steep, quad-busting, calf-burning trails, no matter how beautiful. Saturday, though, I passed an older gentleman shuffling slowly but determinedly up the steepest slope.

“Good morning,” I said, as I went by. “Doing well?”

He turned a smile on me that put the whole mountain to shame. “I am so blessed,” he said.

I hear you, brother. I hear you.

Photo by Seamus Holman. Used under Creative Commons License.

Monday, I’ll start work on my next book. It’s not the next book you’re likely to read, of course. Publishing is a long process – almost a year – and the follow-up (although not the sequel) to Losing Clementine has been finished for a couple of months. That book, which is currently titled The Short Yet Astounding Fall of Dell Cohen¹, was terrifying to write. The “sophomore” book is always when folks stand around with their arms crossed over their chests, a pose their therapists would point out is extremely guarded, and say, sometimes aloud and sometimes to themselves, “Well, can she do it again?” Once is lucky. Twice is a career, it seems. But now I’m sitting down to write the third book, which has no title at all, and feeling much more confident.

There is much about writing books for a living that I’m still getting a handle on. But those things, things to do with marketing and long IRS forms, have nothing to do with actually writing. When I’m alone at my desk with the blank page, I am in my element. That is not to say that every writing day is a good day or that I won’t, with some frequency, lay my forehead down on the edge of the desk for disturbingly long periods of time. But it does mean that deep down I know I’ve got this. I can do it because I’ve done it before and more than once. There’s a lot of comfort in that.

So now I’ll go write the story of the woman seven years disappeared and her father, who goes looking too late.

¹Don’t get too attached to the title. These things often change.

So far I’ve had two amazing launch parties – one in L.A., the city I love and where I live, and one in Kansas City, where I was born and bred. LOSING CLEMENTINE takes place in both, so swooping in and making noise in both places only made sense. I’ve also hit up Chicago and St. Louis so far with the Bay Area and a ton of dates in SoCal still to come.

If you came out to say “hello,” bless you. I’m so thrilled to have seen you all. Truly.

And now, for some photos after the jump.

Click on the thumbnail to see the full image. Click again to make it larger.

If you couldn’t make it to one of the signings, you can still get a signed copy from one of these amazing independent bookstores:

Skylight Books

Rainy Day Books

Left Bank Books

My momma told me not to write in my books. Oops.

(More photos after the jump.)

Today, I stopped in at Vroman’s in Pasadena (along with B&N in Old Town Pasadena, not pictured) and signed a few copies of LOSING CLEMENTINE. (Hi, Allison! Hi, Sarah!)

So this is what the backroom of a bookstore looks like...goofy face not included.

This is me being goofy in the back office, scribbling in books like my momma told me not to. You could go to either of those stores to get yourself a signed copy or come to Skylight Books in Los Feliz on Friday for my launch party. (Hi, Mary!)

I love bookstore staff.

That's me at about four years old, and that's my dad. (Don't worry. He doesn't have the mustache anymore.)

Yep.

As soon as I was old enough to put letters into something that might be a word, I would sit with a yellow legal pad, gripping one of those fat, green pencils, my hair in a ponytail, pushing my always-too-long bangs out of my eyes, writing out my stories.

I made up people, and I wrote about them. At 32, not a lot has changed.

Except, of course, that today my debut novel LOSING CLEMENTINE comes out. It’s a big day when your childhood dream comes true. So thank you.

Thank you to the editors, the publicists, the designers and printers. Thank you to my agent and the whole team that made this possible. Thank you to my friends and my family. And most especially thank you to the readers. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Photo by likeaduck. Used via Creative Commons License.

Husband: (coming in from outside) “Squirrels don’t understand the concept of licking.”

Me: (pre-coffee) “What?”

Husband: (holds up spoon) “I let the one on the patio have the peanut butter off my spoon. She just pushed her face in it.”

Me: (speechless)