I’m deep in the heart of Dixie right now. I was driven down to Greenwood a couple of days ago and when I woke up from falling asleep in the back seat of the town car, I looked out the window and the first thing I saw was this hand painted sign across a dilapidated building: JUANITA’s BEAUTY PARLOR, BAIL BONDING, AND BRIDAL BOUTIQUE. No doubt about it, I was now - hotdamn! - in the Delta.

I had come to town to read as part of the Delta Literary Tour which was coinciding with the Conference of the Book up in Oxford. My hosts were Jamie and Kelly Kornegay, the owners of Turnrow Books, in Greenwood, one of the most beautiful independent bookstores I’ve ever been in. They are also one of the coolest couples I’ve ever met. With the help of Fred Carl, the founder of Viking Range in Greenwood, they opened Turnrow a few months ago and have begun to bring writers into town for readings. I was flattered to be asked to read with three amazing men, both personally and professionally: the great Mississippi writer, Steve Yarbrough (The Oxygen Man, Visible Spirits, The End of California); the legendary Sonny Brewer (The Poet of Tolstoy Park and editor of the short story collections Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe) from Fairhope, Alabama, who read from his upcoming novel about his beloved dog, Cormac; and the award-winning - some say Canadians best living novelist - David Adams Richards (Mercy Among the Children, The Friends of Meager Fortune). Go on all their websites and read about them and buy their books. We all went out to Lusco’s afterwards - the restaurant even more dilapidated than Juanita’s and sneaked in our liquor and ate a big southern meal and talked about the south and literature and even gossiped a bit about other writers. I felt like I had pledged a fraternity after that evening. Thanks to Jamie and Kelly for inviting me down. (And a shout out to Benji Perkins - a sexy kid who bakes at the Mockingbird Bakery - who gave me a pen to sign with. Thought I’d give you a cyber wink, Benji.) I stayed at the Alluvian Hotel - another Viking investment in Greenwood - and it was one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever been to . Check out Turnrow and the Alluvian and Lusco’s (the last time I was in one of Lusco’s curtained off rooms was with some of Miss Welty’s coterie when we drove up to audition for Max Bear, Jr., Jethro on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” when he was about to direct the movie version of the Bobbie Gentry song, “Ode to Billie Joe” around these parts back in the early ’70s) if you’re ever down in the Delta. And check out Juanita’s too if you ever need your hair done or are getting married or need to get out of jail during a stay.

The next day I headed down to Jackson to John Evan’s Lemuria Books. (Having met Richard Howorth of Square Books in Oxford and Jamie Kornegay of Turnrow and John of Lemuria on this trip through Mississippi, I’m beginning to feel like a real writer - for once you’ve shaken their hands and signed books in their stores, you can say you’ve been taken seriously by men who love good books. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to meet them all.) We had a great turnout at Lemuria - maybe over 200 people would be my estimate and we almost sold out its stock of Mississippi Sissy. I even had some of the Soulforce kids there - the bus tour of Christian gay/lesbian/bi/and transgendered youth who are going to colleges throughout America that discriminate against such people - to reach out to them with love and in Christain fellowship - though love is cetainly not what they are too often met with. Many of them were arrested at Mississippi College, the Baptist school down the road a piece, as we say down here, from Lemuria. But those who weren’t arrested showed up and I was so touched to see them in the crowd with their Soulforce t-shirts on. Those kids are heroes of mine - so a shout-out to Soulforce.

I’m now in Vicksburg staying with my sister, Karole, and her partner, Mississippi artist, H.C. Porter (hcporter.com) and will do a reading and signing at their gallery and beautiful loft downtown overlooking the river tonight. I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

And I’m happy to tell you this while sitting here in my home state - a state that can dredge up so many emotions in me, but here is a happy one: As of April 1 Mississippi Sissy will be on the extended New York Times Bestseller List at #34. That’s a start. I won’t be satisfied until I’m in the Top Ten, of course. And then #1! Also I’m at #9 on the Southern Independent Booksellers Bestseller List. John Grisham is #10. I couldn’t believe that when I saw it. So thanks all of you out there who continue to read this blog and support my book. It means the world to me. Keep telling your friends about the book. I’m counting on word-of-mouth. And prayer. And energy drinks. And - oh, hell - the kindness of strangers. I ain’t above stealin’ a line from Tennessee while I’m sittin’ my ass down here in Mississippi. And I still have that other goal - I know: shut up already about it - to get that Amazon number below a 100. But it’ll happen soon I hope. Maybe I should have asked the Soulforce kids to pray for about it once - shit, I should have called Juanita - they all posted bail.

I have a few minutes this morning - March 21, the first day of spring and the day after my brother Kim’s 49th birthday - before the car comes to get me in Memphis to take me down to Greenwood, Mississippi, for my appearance later today at the Delta Literary Tour, which is a part of the Oxford Conference for the Book. I’ll be reading and signing from 5 -7 at Turnrow Books. I’m already exhausted from this tour, but this is a nice problem to have.

The first two readings and signings went really well. We had a big crowd at Square Books in Oxford - I’d say a little more than 50 people showed up and we sold almost all their stock. Oxford is a beautiful town. It’s the home of Ole Miss so there are lots of cute kids running around and they give the place a certain energy that can only be combusted by the awakenings of sexual energy. That’s combined with the fact that it’s also becoming a retirement community as well for a certain sort of rich preppy southern couple who once pledged their own fraternities and sororities and still like to be around a campus atmosphere for their own reasons. Perhaps they’re even trying to find a way to combust a bit of sexual energy in their own lives. I had a great time. So thanks to everyone at Square Books. They have a great staff there. It was one of my dreams to write a book and have a reading there. It came true.

(By the way, someone told me you can break down the Bestseller List on Amazon into categories. So I did it last night before going to bed and Mississippi Sissy was #1 on it Gay/Lesbian list and #13 on its Memoir list. Those numbers probably change by the hour and I haven’t checked them this morning, so, again, if you don’t buy the book at your favorite independent store then go on Amazon and help me remain #1 and move up on the Memoir list. I’m still trying to get my overall number to stay below 100 - I know I’m becoming obessed, huh. But it’s my old competitive streak rearing its head. Humor me. Or better yet, egg me on by ordering books.)

Also last night we had a huge crowd at Davis-Kidd in Memphis. Maybe 80 people - and we did sell out the stores entire stock of over 100 of my books. They’re ordering more, don’t worry. Lots of local gay guys showed up as well as a middle-aged married couple from Brookhaven, Mississippi, my brother’s hometown, who could not have been more charming and supportive. So a shout out to The Bullards! But for all the gay guys in attendance, there were more female faces in the audience it seemed. Many of them had come to buy books for their sons as well as themselves and I was quite touched by that. At one point at the signing, a young fresh-faced pretty woman, who had stood in line for over half an hour and I think I had spotted in the standing-room section at the reading, slipped me a note and sweetly said that she had lived in Forest, my hometown in Mississippi, on Hillsboro Street right next door to Bobby Thompson, who was my unrequited crush growing up. She told me to read the note later and scampered away in the crowd. She seemd a little nervous and I was touched that she had stayed and had written me a note. I slipped it into my copy of Mississippi Sissy and headed out to dinner with Jeffrey Lancaster, a Presbyterian preacher at a conservative church here in Memphis who is a friend of my brother’s and mine and one of the most kindhearted men I know. His gorgeous wife, Cathy, joined us as well as my cousin, Janice, who owns an etiquette and charm school in Mississippi (Missjanice.com) and her husband who manages The Horseshoe Casino down in Tunica. A couple of their friends from the casino joined too. We had a great meal at The Beauty Shop. If you’re ever in Memphis I recommend it.

This morning, the note from the sweet fresh-faced girl dropped out of my book when I was packing. This is what it said in her perfectly formed handwriting:

Kevin,

Imagine how much you could accomplish for God’s Kingdom with all of your talent.

I pray your eyes will be opened to see the enemy of your soul and to see sin as sin.

Please don’t push God aside. It will be an everlasting loss.

“Open his eyes that he may truly see from your perspective.”
2 Kings 6:17

Concerned Forest, Miss.
native with hope for your
redemptive future

At first my hands began to shake when I read the note. Its self-righteousness is something I confronted all my life as a little sissy boy in the south and now, on this first day of spring in my 51st year, I was having to confront it yet again. I read that verse from Kings once more. How had that fresh-faced acolyte of fear been so blinded by her own fear of difference and otherness that she couldn’t see that just maybe that verse was for her? Or perhaps God had meant it for both of us. But then a complete calmness washed over me. My hands steadied. I will use this note from her - she didn’t have the courage to sign her name - as a bookmark for the rest of my tour as a reminder of what all little sissy boys still out there growing up are facing day in and day out. The section I have chosen from my book at each reading is about just that - how the culture tries to shame us into submission and how strong we have to be to resist the inculcation of that shame. God does work in mysterious ways. That note was a gift from Him through her - yet she had no idea what the gift was she was giving me. I stepped into the shower this morning and in my daily prayer I prayed for her and all the sissies that will be standing up to her and her well-intentioned well of indignation if she continues to refer to our souls, which God created just as He created hers, as our enemy. She’s not my enemy, but she is my past. And, sadly, she’s still my present. But that’s why I’m on this book tour.

Class:
I went to my agent’s townhouse last night - Friday - in Brooklyn Heights for a dinner that was auctioned off in the fall to benefit Barnard, her alma mater. Cyndi Stivers, who was the editor-in-Chief of TimeOut New York for years before moving over to Martha Stewart Omnimedia where she was Executive Vice President and is now starting her own media company focusing on “green” issues, won the dinner at the auction. Nina Collins, my agent, was the hostess. I was her date. Three-time Peabody Award winner and four-time Emmy winner, John Hockenberry, who has been a broadcast journalist for NBC and ABC and is now a Contributing Editor for Conde Nast’s new business magazine, Portfolio, as well as a Senior Fellow at MIT’s Media Lab, was the guest of honor along with his beautiful wife, Alison, who is part of Stivers’ new media company. There were other highfalutin media types there at the table set for the eight of us. It was a fun, grown-up time filled with conversation about new media forms, shrinking media forms, Al Gore’s prospects if he decides to run for president, and gossip from the most recent TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, an invitation-only confab for cons and fabs alike in those three conflating worlds. John had just arrived back from Mississippi the previous afternoon where he had spoken at a convention of the disabled (he lost the use of his legs in a car accident at the age of 19) at a Choctaw casino outside Philadelphia in Neshoba County. He’d even signed books at the bookstore where I’ll be next Saturday signing my own book in Philadelphia. The diningroom at Nina’s - she and her husband last year had been in a bidding war with JayZ for the 1840s house and finally won it - seems to float out over the Brooklyn Promenade and hover over the river. Through the many large windows, Manhattan’s lights competed, rather succesfully, with the candles on the table as the talk turned to Cyndi’s and Alison’s plans to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. I told them I had made the summit two Januarys ago. Secondlife.com was discussed. The word “avatar” was thrown around. Would our concepts of God, once secondlife.com reaches a third and fourth technological generation, morph into a concept of Gods? A discussion of how evil is so easily unleashed in cyberspace then ensued. Two of the women could not eat the spareribs placed before them since they were vegetarians and broccoli was steamed and brought up from the kitchen. A new teenage word was introduced into the grown-up patter: flexitarians, a term coined by the acned cognoscenti who are vegetarians until their need for a carnivore’s breath nudges all correct political concerns to the side. Gore was brought up again.

Ass:
I left the dinner party to go, in the middle of the ice storm we were experiencing here on the East Coast last night, to a pool party at QT, a hip hotel for the dietary and sexual flexitarians among us that Andre Balasz has opened on West 45th Street off Times Square. It was for a friend’s 30th birthday party. (Happy Birthday, Sam!) The pool is on the second floor and the room was quite steamy from the heated water and the boys bounding about in bathing suits. I still had on my tie and gray pinstripes and felt like … I don’t know … Mr. Mooney on Here’s Lucy on one of the Monday nights in my distant past instead of a fellow-traveler here on a Friday night in my not-going-so-swimmingly present. I stayed 45 minutes and went home in a taxi that seemed to slide - rather swimmingly itself - down Seventh.

Class:
Vanessa Redgrave was brilliant this afternoon in Joan Didion’s stage adaptation of her book, The Year of Magical Thinking. Redgrave commands the stage for one hour and forty minutes without taking a sip of water or needing a bathroom break or flubbing one line. It has been estimated that the text is around 13,000 words. I think it must be more. It is an astounding feat of memory and stamina and emotional fortitude. The first three “movements” of the piece are quite familiar to any who have read the book. But the fourth and fifth movements, in which Didion’s daughter dies (she was still clinging to life when the book’s manuscript was turned in) are newly … not imagined exactly because it all really happened - but newly assembled, thought out, written with the unconditional maternal fury of one who loved (who loves) in the same way. A widow’s lament is expertly woven into that fury. Didion’s longing for life - her husband’s, her daughter’s, hers - is laid bare by the end of the theatrical piece. Her finally letting go is not a surrender to the seemingly continuous death of her husband and daughter but an affirmation of her continuing life. Life continues. It changes. But it continues. Redgrave is transcendent. Didion’s language, so often incantatory on the page, on the stage - though she is certainly not a playwright - is just that: an incantation. In real life her husband did not return as she convinced herself in her year of magical thinking that he would do. Her daughter, following him and not staying with her, did not circle back. But through this theatrical event, Didion has, with magical rethinking and Redgrave’s own magical assistance, conjured them for herself once more. And for us.

Crass:
When I sat down before the play, the woman next to me asked if I’d ever seen Redgrave before. I told her, yes, five or six times over the years I’d seen her in several theatrical productions and bought a ticket to this one on a matinee day because I was leaving town soon to go on my book tour for three weeks. I wanted to see this before I left. “What’s your book?” she asked.

“Mississippi Sissy,” I told her.

The gentleman to my right: “Excuse me. You wrote Mississippi Sissy? I just bought that book yesterday. I can’t wait to start reading it.”

I was taken aback and, yes, flattered. The woman told me she would go buy the book as soon as she could. So I took that as a good omen for book sales. I hope she goes to her independent bookstore in Rhinebeck where she’s from, as I hope all you out there go to your own favorite independent bookstore and purchase the book. Support the independents!!! If you don’t have an independent bookstore near you, then maybe go online to order the book. (Unless you’re sleeping with someone at a big chain bookstore you want to give the business to.) I’m trying to get my numbers down below 100 on Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com before I head down south on Monday. So please go online and buy a copy if you haven’t already or tell friends about it. My number on Amazon keeps going from the high 200s to around 400 and back. My Barnesandnoble.com one keeps hovering 200. So I’m almost there. It’s addictive checking out those numbers. I feel like a rat in the maze who keeps going back to hit the crack cocaine lever. Or, a better image: in keeping with NCAA basketball’s March Madness going on right now on my television (Vanderbilt won in double overtime - great game - and UCLA is leading Indiana right now by 1 point with 1:14 left to play) let’s just pretend it’s a sporting event and I’m keeping score.

So, that’s it for right now. I’ll report back on the road from my tour. Thanks again for reading this blog and keep telling your friends about the book. I’m counting on word-of-mouth. Hope I’m not becoming too much of a huckster, but that’s what it takes to get books in the hands of readers.

More on Monday. I’ll be at Square Books in Oxford - one of the best independents in the country - right down the road from Rowan Oak where Faulkner kept his typewriter.

Sitting here on a Friday in Starbucks watching the ice storm - old men in fedoras they have had cocked on their bald heads in just such a manner since their 40s, no doubt, trying not to slip on the sidewalk; a dachshund being dragged along by its harried owner, a woman with a tattoo of something indecipherable snaking up her neck (she just covered it up by tightening her scarf with her leashless hand), the dachshund, its belly almost touching the ice, its feet refusing to move, leaving behind what looks like miniature railroad tracks cut there into the white of the sidewalk; children delighted by the feel of such weather against their faces; a few teenagers arguing about something that happened in school or perhaps just speaking in that decibel level that teenagers speak in when they swarm about each other on a Manhattan street, their voices piercing the wall of glass here at Starbucks and, only slightly muffled by such a transparent barrier between them and me, mixing with the sounds of Aretha’s voice singing “God Bless the Child” on the sound system from a double-disc CD Starbucks is selling this week. God bless them. All of them. The traffic outside glides along silently on the slush beneath its many, many wheels. Nobody is blowing a horn. Aretha moves on to “Muddy Water” and “Won’t Be Long” and “Soulville.”

I’ve been resting up since my reading and getting ready to head down south to Memphis on Monday to begin my southern tour. Bought a ticket a couple of hours ago - wasn’t going to chance missing this and not getting a press seat - for the matinee tomorrow of Vanessa Redgrave in the one-woman show based on Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. It opens while I’m out on the road so wanted to catch it before I head off. Can’t wait. I don’t worship many white women, but I come close to worshipping those two. I’ve been lax in going to the theatre lately with all the energy it’s taking to launch my book. I did see Journey’s End the other night and recommend it. The performances are wonderful and the ending is quite stunning. We should strap everyone in the Bush administration to theatre seats and make them watch it.

Let’s see … what else …oh: James Wolcott writes about my party the other night and my book on his blog at Vanityfair.com. Check it out. I thought he captured both. But of course he would - nobody can write like James. I’ve always been a huge fan of his - I read everything he writes in VF as well as his blog. And he wrote the most endearing, heartfelt, funny novel a few years back called The Catsitters, which I read on a boat while sailing the Sea of Cortez one December as a palate cleanser after reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. And Andy Towle should be posting something soon on his website Towleroad. Phil Smrek wrote a great post on Papermag.com about the party and the book. And The Fashion Daily, under “Song of the South,” posted a nice mention of the party with pics. I’ll link to them all in the press column soon.

I guess you’re wondering about now why I titled this post the way I did. Okay. I’m getting to that. Yesterday I wanted to sleep in but had to get up early to get up to a sound studio on Ninth Avenue in order to record a podcast as publicity for the audio version of my book that’s also in stores. (I read the audio version myself. Check that out to if you like books in that form.) I was feeling pretty run-ragged by the time I made it up to the building where the studio is located. I had rushed out of my apartment and forgotten my photo ID as well as my cellphone. When I got there the guard wouldn’t let me up and wouldn’t call up to ask someone to come down for me. So I had to go get change at a deli and use a pay phone to ask for someone to come down and escort me up to the studio. I was not in a good mood. In fact, I was in diva mode - I hate it when I get like that - and made it known to the guard (all 6′5″ inches and 300 pounds of him) that I Was Not Amused. By the time I finally made it to the door of my recording studio, I threw open the door and, literally face-to-face with me, about to make her exit, was Helen Mirren. She had arrived at the wrong studio. She was supposed to be at one on a lower floor in order to record some poetry. I was so discombobulated and shocked by seeing her, all I could do was bow. “Oh, don’t be stupid,” she said, laughing. I had in the early 1990s sent Dame Mirren a play I’d written called Blue Suede Gospel in hopes she could be enticed at least to do a reading of it. She was then doing a play - I can’t recall what - at the Tiffany Theatre, a small theatre that was then on Sunset. Alas, she could not be enticed. But she’s another white woman who’s always made me feel a bit worshipful. She really is a dame, that one. Gotta love her. Here she was only a few weeks after winning her Oscar lost in a building on Ninth Avenue and trying to find her way to the right recording studio on an early Thursday morning in order to read some poetry. Poetry! God love her. Nothing like a Dame. All that. Here she was, a newly minted Oscar winner, still doing her yoeman’s artistic work. After I recorded my podcast - look for it on iTunes - I went downstairs and apologized to the guard for my behavior. There should be only one diva, I concluded, in that building that day. A bit of poetic justice I meted out to myself.

And Aretha? She’s now singing “Chain of Fools.”

The traffic is still silent.

Thanks to all my friends - and even some strangers - for coming out to my Barnes and Noble reading last night. We had a great turnout - close to a hundred people. I even got to meet two of my favorite bloggers - Josh and Josh. (See my links over there.) I have to admit I even gushed a bit at meeting them. I read their blog all the time and have a double crush.

Lots of people had to stand at the reading - which is what I wanted. I was a bit shocked once I looked up from my text and saw the place had filled up. Signed lots of books afterwards. So thanks to everybody for showing up. Nothing is worse than facing a sea of empty chairs. My friend, Michael Rourke - and his Rhodesian Ridgeback, the handsome Sampson - came up to me after the reading and signing and said, “You should adapt this for a one-man show.” I told him I’d be talking - only half kiddingly - to Mike Nichols after he finishes shooting his next film with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Emily Blunt, “Charlie Wilson’s War.” I have to admit I’m having fun “acting” the excerpt I’ve chosen from the book - the scene about my going disguised as a witch to my elementary school Halloween carnival. I’ve been getting in touch with my Juilliard School of Drama roots. If you’re close to any of the places where I’m reading in the next few weeks - check my tour dates on this site - then come out and watch me show off. Introduce yourselves. Let’s make this fun.

Well, I’m finally recovering from the dinner that Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller gave me Monday night at Indochine to celebrate the publication of Mississippi Sissy. It was a night I’ll always remember and want to publicly thank them for giving me such a wonderful memory. It was like being at my own wedding - though nobody, alas, was marrying me. I knew everybody in the room and even liked them all. The cocktail scrum included, among many others, Julianne Moore, Dominick Dunne, Calvin Klein, Thom Browne, Robert Harling, Carolina and Renaldo Herrera, Ross Bleckner, Sandra Bernhard, Amy Fine Collins, Vogue’s Hamish Bowles, Allure’s Linda Wells, Travel+Leisure’s Nancy Novograd, Vanity Fair’s Beth Kseniak, People’s Jess Cagle and his partner E Bay’s design expert Shawn Henderson (check out their beyond chic apartment in this month’s Metropolitan Home and repeat after me - and the Bible - Thou Shalt Not Covet), blogger extraordinaire Andy Towle of Towleroad (he’s under my links), Amanda Brooks, Holly Peterson, CBS’s Troy Roberts, activist and entrepreneur Peter Staley, Peter Brown, Brad Gooch, Carole Radziwill, James Wolcott (see link over there) and his lovely and talented wife, writer Laura Jacobs, artist Toland Grinnell and his own lovely wife, Vanity Fair’s Beauty Editor Sunhee Grinnell, as well as longtime buddies computer whiz Juan Penalosa (AKA Boozhy - see link) and director Dan Minahan and artist John Dowd and television producer Michael Rourke and public relations muckety-muck Hamilton South and author Daniel Mendelsohn, who just won a Book Critics Circle Award for memoir/autobiogrpahy for his brilliant and heartfelt, The Lost - so a shout-out to Dan. There were around 150 friends and family who settled in for dinner. Diane and Barry made sweet and eloquent toasts to me and the book, which I’ll always cherish. My toast to them went something like this, which I’d like to share with you as well since the two of them mean a lot to me: “I’d like to thank Diane and Barry for their kindness and generosity not only tonight, but for the past 20 years. You both are very dear to me. You could be considered charter members of a very elite club. But I’m not feeling clubby tonight. What I’m feeling is friendly and familial. And as an old 51 year-old orphan, that latter word can still pack a powerful and welcome punch for me. I’ve written a memoir and memoirs are inherently about the past. But it is also a book about survival, moving forward, moving onward. So I would not only like to raise a glass to Diane and Barry, but also to Tuesday. To tomorrow!”

You can read more about the party by signing on to nyobserver.com and clicking on the City on its table of contents bar and then clicking on The Transom. (And while you’re still clicking away you can go on the Village Voice’s website and sign onto the La Dolce Musto column and read my last rant about Norah Vincent, bless her heart.)

The San Francisco leg of my book tour is now over. Every time I go to San Francisco I wonder why I didn’t move there when I was 19 instead of NYC. It’s such a beautiful city. I had a great time riding around with my driver Delores, a lovely blonde-haired woman who could not have been better company, to my readings and radio interviews and several area bookstores in order to sign my books out on display. And I stayed at a great little hotel - the Hotel Rex - right above Union Square that I recommend if you want a reasonably priced room if you’re heading out that way. And if you eat in its restaurant, be sure to order the porcini-dusted roasted chicken with the brioche/foie gras bread pudding with mushroom sauce and roasted beets. Delicious. I almost licked the plate. Almost.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran its review of the book yesterday and it was a good one. It said Sissy was “heroic and heartfelt and filled with no small amount of wit and grace.” The Chronicle will run a big profile of me next Sunday in its Style section. So all you readers out there be sure to go to your local independent bookstore to buy a book or buy one from Barnes and Noble or Borders if you’re sleeping with a salesperson or order on Amazon(thanks everybody out there for getting my sells ranking down below 1000 - last night before I went to bed it was at 540 - but now my goal is to get below 100 so keep telling your friends about the book if you like it).

Other reviews have begun coming in as well. People magazine has the book under its Best Reads list this week and says it’s “compelling and bracingly unsentimental.” The Toronto Globe and Mail said I was “the Mississippi Frank McCourt.” And the Rocky Mountain News: “Sessums’ intimate and meditative style suffuses his struggles with pathos and insight. Mississippi Sissy is an affirming memoir for those who’ve struggled with tragedy and identity.” Entertainment Weekly gave the book a B+. More to come. And once I get them posted, you can read the complete reviews here on the blog.

My family has come up for the dinner that Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller are giving me tonight here in NYC. Last night my sister Karole and her partner, artist H.C. Porter, and my brother, Kim, and his wife, Kristy, and three of their children - Jake and Joey and Stewart - and I all went out for a long, raucous dinner down the block from my apartment at an Italian restaurant. (Price, for those of you who are regular readers and know him as the youngest child who recently accompanied me out to LA for Oscar Weekend, couldn’t make it because he was in Atlanta for the SEC basketball tournament.) I was a bit tired from having arrived on Saturday night late from San Francisco and gotten up early yesterday to catch a train out to Old Greenwich, Connecticut, to do a reading and signing. There was a great turnout and want to thank Just Books and Arcadia Coffeehouse for hosting the event and Leslie for inviting me out.

Tomorrow night - March 13th - I read and sign at the Barnes and Noble on Sixth Avenue here in New York between 21st and 22nd Streets at 7 pm. If you’re in the neighborhood stop by.

And thanks for all your comments I’ve been getting. They have been so heartening to me and, though I did love my time in San Francisco this past weekend, I didn’t leave my old scarred heart out there. So keep those comments coming, folks.