What a tour. My god. It’s going to take me a while to fully process the last six weeks. But the tldr is: What a tour, what a wonderful tour. Better than I could have imagined, far exceeding all expectations. Thank you to everyone who showed up.
Did you come to an event and take pictures? If so, please drop them in this folder. Thanks. I did a terrible job documenting things and am grateful to everyone who has shared pics.
Random House informs me that TBOT has recently entered its second printing — so thank you for that, too, for buying copies and telling your friends. Most of the copies out there are still first-printings, so if you’re into that sort of thing, now’s the time to grab one. And if you read it, and enjoyed it, please consider leaving an Amazon or Goodreads review — they go a long way to helping the book reach new readers. (And double thanks to everyone who has left a review so far!)
While on the road, I signed a bunch of extra books. It’s likely there are signed first-printings at the following stores:
(If you’re thinking of picking one up, I’d give them a ring first to make sure they still have copies. But also, if you’re nearby, you should visit all of them because they’re all wonderful shops.)
(Huge thanks to the bookshops for all their love and support on the tour; truly pillars of stalwart goodness in an increasingly unhinged world.)
As for the tour: All the events sold out. As I wrote last month: The bookshop owners were confused. Who are you? (Me: Craig Mod, this: the Roden newsletter) they asked (never having heard of me before; most people never having heard of me), shocked at the lines down the block, the flurry of calls asking for additional tickets as event after event sold out. This interest in me doing events was as much a surprise to me as the bookstores. I mean, I had a sense that folks would appear, but not necessarily like this.
So, again: Thank you to everyone who joined, who listened with such attentiveness, and filled these great bookstores across America with your kindness. Because, that too: The shop owners noting your kindness again and again.
There was the great NYC opening salvo of Matt Rodbard at Rizzoli, on a night of freezing torrential sideways rain, where the bookshop so underestimated the demand for books that about 40 people left empty-handed. (I still feel bad about that; I had told everyone to buy books at the shops to support the shops, and apparently few authors do so (??), and even fewer attendees of book talks buy books (apparently many just listen and leave, rarely buying a book).)
There was the event splashed with the glancing late-afternoon light of early-summer at Politics & Prose with The Atlantic’s Ross Andersen (and our incredible Indian dinner afterwards) in D.C., Ross, a man who is normally on stage with folks commanding much, much larger presences and impacts than this fool writing this newsletter.
Then I was off to San Francisco to partake in what was probably my favorite event of the trip (not that I’m ranking events, but SF and Booksmith stood out for a number of reasons) — Robin Sloan is a master interlocutor; it was inspiring to watch him work, to control the conversation, push things along, doing all with his Sloanian Flair before a rapt audience (clearly fans of us both, multiplying the raptness, a raptness rapture), at Booksmith, the most lovely of lovely bookshops, and one I realized only upon arriving that was connected with the Alembic, a bar at which I spent many a strange and often sad night during my forlorn drinking days many moons and many lives ago. To have returned to that same space as I was a few weeks ago, in honor of this new book, to be up there with my dear bud surrounded by all that love — well, the feeling of having bridged a great personal distance was not lost on this schmuck.
Onward then to Seattle, where I ate some falafels and spent some time with the Microsoft design team, and had a spontaneous slap-up dinner with one of my “heroes” (dare I use that tired word) John Maeda, a guy I looked up to when I was eighteen as one of those rare guiding lights out of the muck (his first book was the one and only book I imported to Japan during my stay that first year in 2000), a guy mixing design and programming and humor (he is a funny dude) in inspiring ways. My dream was to attend the MIT Media Lab. I never did have the fortitude to make it to grad school (Media Lab was grad-only, to my crushing dismay), but it informed my choice to go to UPenn with their Digital Media Design undergrad program (fine arts + comp sci). (My general attending of university always felt tenuous at best; the itch to be out Doing The Thing / Making The Thing rather than sitting in class has been there since I was twelve.) Anyway, to chow some pizza with Maeda and my talented friend of nearly two decades, Liz Danzico, was as perfect a dinner setup as I could imagine. (Liz admitted to me the following, which I found hilarious, so please allow me to relay it to you: She described our first dinner together — at a “fancy” (to me) restaurant in Manhattan — as if she were “sitting across from some feral animal who had never before seen a menu, ordering in a way that defied all logic.” Which, when I was 26, was probably not entirely inaccurate. I’m glad my feralness didn’t obviate friendship potential.) John’s house was, as you’d expect, an infinitude of considered surfaces. Nothing was not considered. Every little thing. And John, in his magnanimous, quirky ways, made me feel inspired and at ease when I was probably at my lowest on the whole tour (exhaustion, a bit of mid-tour emptiness, the usual stuff). The Seattle event with Liz was wonderful, packed. It was also where I met my biological sister for the first time (we hugged, and then I went on stage). Yes — while this was a book tour, it was also a secret blood tour. And we spent the day after the event climbing Rattlesnake Ledge in the pouring rain, eating chocolate chip cookies at the top of the climb, soaked, gazing out at the misty nothingness (supposedly the view is beautiful), her, all boundless optimism and adventure-seekingness, saying over and over: These are core memories we’re making! (And yes yes yes, after the last eight months, I now believe Nature is responsible for almost everything.)
Then LA. A great event with my talented friend and native-level Japanese speaker, Dexter Thomas, in a courtyard with a stack of pizzas donated from a local pizza shop that happened to be a fan.
A few days later, longtime supporter, super-fan, patron-extraordinaire to many, and dear friend, Julia Huang, “threw me a dinner party” at firstborn, Anthony Wang’s new, award-winning restaurant in Downtown LA. About sixty people attended, including a bunch of Julia’s friends and mine, plus about fifteen SPECIAL PROJECTS members, none of whom I had ever met. (I emailed all members and invited anyone in/around LA to the dinner — the first in-person membership perk I’ve done so far.) Apparently the four-course menu was delicious (I ate two bites). Julia covered the cost of it all, including the open bar. I felt like I was “attending my own wedding” as many said to me. I was a bit mortified by all the attention and felt it supremely unearned given who was in the room. I took one photograph the entire night. (A small delight: getting to chat with Barry Jenkins — arguably the most talented user of Old Twitter (Twitter of Ye Olde Times) and also a great director — for twenty minutes; I wish I had asked for a shot of us together.) I was … overwhelmed, and anxiety riddled (worrying about everyone) until it was over. But it seems like folks had a wonderful night; the food was delish, the conversations were exciting (the tables somehow magically worked themselves out pretty well; and if volume is an indication of goodness, then this may have been the most goodest dinner gathering in history), and I got to see a bunch of humans I love (some for the first time in many years), and meet some new folks and sweet members too. Thanks to everyone who came and made it such an inspired time.
Then to Chicago (Evanstown) to do an event with Dan Sinker, a guy I met only a few minutes before our event, but whose thoughts on The Who Cares Era are right up my alley. During the Q&A, someone asked a fairly intense (but loving) question about meeting my birth family; right in front of him sat my birth mother (the event was only our second time meeting), so that was interesting! Ha ha!
Finally, I swung back to Brooklyn for a Books Are Magic event with Lynne Tillman, a friend of “only” fourteen years, but a friend of great inspiration. We did a joint event, with books that shared a design sensibility and seemed “destined” for a pairing. Look how cute these two are together:
And finally finally I hopped up to Beacon, NY, staying with The Great Sam Anderson in his home of many years, meeting his family, “watching” basketball on television with him and his son (they forced me at penalty of sleeping in the garden). Beacon, I had been to before, but just from the train station to Dia (went back to Dia again and took underexposed photos of Sam amidst the Serras). This was my first time walking the town proper, and what a revelation. An eminently walkable town?! With housing close to the train station?! All cute as heck?! Where was I? Kichijoji? The event was excellent, and the rain gods managed to stop the violent thunderstorm about thirty minutes before we took stage outdoors next to Binnacle books. Sold out of all copies the bookstore had nabbed, had a great chat, great Q&A, and met some great people. I also met the famousWalnut:
Along the way, at various points during signing books, I’d look up and there’d be someone I hadn’t seen in … decades. The most shocking / affecting was my old friend Brian. We met on IRC when I was 13. He ran iCE, an ANSi art group. I aspired to be in such a thing (but never had the skillZ). Still, we became texting buds in the time before cellphones. He’s about five years older than me. Graduated from university and started a small web design agency in the Bay Area, invited me out to be their first intern when I was eighteen. Cracked open the world, changed my life, etcera etcera. Rendered true (in the form of a paycheck and friendship) the feeling I had had about the internet (this is my way up and outta here, “here” being my hometown, “this” being mastering technical and design skills). Four times, I drove across America in a bare bones Honda Civic thanks to Brian’s invitation (two summers in a row). We hadn’t seen each other in a long, long time and there he was, suddenly, standing before me with his big ‘ole grin. Probably the closest to tears I came on the whole trip.
Anyhow, it was nice, the whole damn thing. Thank you to everyone for making it so nice.
The book tour actually began in Los Angeles on May 1, at the studio of Rich Roll. We had a great chat. If you haven’t listened to my Rich pod, I recommend it. (You can watch it on YouTube, too.) The response has been … overwhelming. My inbox is overflowing with kind notes. I mentioned on the pod how I keep a “yourenotapieceofshit.txt” file and the number of folks writing in citing that has been hilarious / thrilling. Thank you, and yes, all those letters are going straight into that dumb little file of mine.
I have so much more to write, but we’re already at 2,000 words, so I’ll shut up. More soon. And I’ll be hosting a SPECIAL PROJECTS Members Board Meeting in the coming weeks. Members: Be on the lookout for an email announcing that. We have a lot to talk about!!
