It turns out I really enjoying visiting cool indie bookstores. It also turns out that all indie bookstores are cool, so that works out well.

I finished the May leg of the KING CAL Tour with stops in Knoxville, TN, and Sylva, NC. Union Ave. Books and City Lights Bookstore are both wonderfully curated and staffed by smart book lovers, and they both have real humans coming that walk through the doors to shop. I remember when Barnes & Noble looked like it would wipe out indie stores, and then when Borders and B & N tried to Godzilla v. Kong for control of Book World, and then when Amazon came along to Black Plague all other stores everywhere. And yet! The indie stores survive.

In Knoxville, Michael Amos Cody and I talked about the origins of our novels, what we learned from playing music that we bring to our fiction, and why we keep writing novels, even if (because?) it feels like shouting into the void. Someone also asked a great question about Calvin's sibling, Alex, one of those characters that became more important to the book as I revised, and I confessed that I did not know that his younger sister wanted her name and pronouns changed until I was transcribing one of their phone calls.

When the writing is going well, the characters do just take over and tell the story for me.

At City Lights, Christy Alexander Hallberg, host of the fab ROCK IS LIT podcast and author of a fine rock novel of her own, once again came prepared with a fantastic set of questions: most prepared interviewer, ever. This was one of the smaller crowds, but it was also a great discussion, the half dozen or so of us talking about music and fiction and how art can keep us sane(ish) in these insane times. Fantastic.

The last of my Book Tour Dinners (for now) may have been the best. The manager of City Lights insisted that the best food in Sylva was at a Thai place, and it was indeed fantastic. Our table looked out over this lovely creek, and the curry was beyond words. Also beyond pictures: I meant to take a shot of the beautiful curry but forgot, because I was too busy eating.

After a final morning run, I scored the best cup of coffee I'd had on the road and headed home. I did ten events in May, some more eventful than others in terms of books sold and people in attendance. I felt satisfied with how things went, and satisfied with the plan I'd made to visit as many stores as I could after this book was published: I would Say Yes to all the things and see what happened. Was it the same as being in my twenties and touring the country for weeks at a time, playing music with my friends? Not at all, and there is something about the way that experience makes you feels as though you are all part of the same team that can't be replicated as solo dude talking about his books. At the same time, book appearance hours are better suited for my current existence (back in the hotel by nine, not leaving for the club at nine). I also think I did a better job, on these tour stops, of being able to enjoy the entire experience, of understanding that the event is better when I make the most of the hours before and after it. Maybe indie authors, like indie bookstores, can survive, even in the age of Godzillas and Kongs.