During one interview, the person talking to us had clearly not read either book. She asked assorted peculiar questions, culminating in Bee, how does your life differ from the main character in Lauren’s novel?
I said I’m not a murderer.
The midwest is unbelievably vast. We found ourselves at various points on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway, at the largest truck stop in the world, and near the Ronald Reagan birthplace memorial.
Since Lauren was the designated driver I was in charge of anecdotes, and rattled happily for hours. One unexpected bonus of traveling with a new person is the fact they do not know all of your favorite stories.
We arrived in Iowa City thirty minutes before the reading. As we pulled into a parking place Lauren’s phone rang; our publicist was calling to tell us that the reading would both be filmed for the university and broadcast live on the local NPR affiliate.
This made no difference to me, but Lauren was planning to read a chapter that is not, shall we say, FCC friendly.
The Prairie Lights staff were fantastic. When I asked for some ideas of things to do in town, they assured me that there was absolutely nothing… but when I asked about large balls of twine or cheese tourism they had many suggestions.
By the time we split to fly to other destinations I was excessively thankful to travel with Lauren. She is calm, professional, a cautious driver, funny, and believes in rest stops. I’ve been on tours that took me to the outer edge of sanity, and had lots of fun, but sometimes it is a relief to act like a respectable grownup.
Which may not sound consistent with the fact that we were crashing on couches and going to drag shows in our spare time, but somehow the whole thing seemed quite genteel.