September 8, 2009 – Hiatus in the book tour today. “Soul Of A Dog” is holding its own for the moment, momentarily fending off the annual onslaught of cat and dog memoirs. I got obsessed with dogs and their dreams, and might write a short children’s story about that. Waiting to hear on the final draft of my novel. Preparing to hit the road for Massachusetts, and then, the Pacific Northwest. Book tours are like political campaigns, you get out of the airport and hit the ground running and keep running until they dump you back on a plane.
  This weekend was the first anniversary of the great economic panic, and the first day of last year’s book tour. I met a gaggle of haunted writers whose tours were being canceled, and they were being sent home. Fellow travelers, mostly businesspeople, were in a complete panic. Orwellian doom poured out of airport and hotel tv screens.
  Bookstores were terrified, and struggling.
   I was not sent home, and had warm and engaging crowds, and I note already a radically different mood in the country, although discussion and coverage of politics is its usual poisonous self. Washington seems a cesspool to me.
  I loved Seattle and Portland the last time I was there, and look forward to getting back. I am very excited to be touring on behalf of the Monson Free Library in Monson, Mass., “the best little library ever” this Thursday.
  I’m not taking a camera or computer on the road, as usual.  Good to take short breathers and too much junk to maneuver through airport security. Today, the mundane. Got to go shopping. Out of towel paper, tissues, toilet paper, bananas, cereal, fruit. Got to get vitamins. My friends at the Hanneford Supermarket in Saratoga will help me.
  Tomorrow night, Izzy and I will go to the Framingham, Mass., Barnes & Noble, 7 p.m.