In 2005 and 2006, I kept a tour blog. In 2005, the link was sent out to certain friends; in 2006, I posted an invitation here.
Everyone behaved beautifully. No one ratted me out. (Not that there was much to report. I was candid, but largely about my own mistakes and mishaps.) The blogs, when I read them now, are as vivid as my last successful journal-keeping exercise, which dates back to the 1989 diary I kept in Mexico. Nothing proves the central concept of The Memory Project better than my actual calendar pages from those three months, which list my classmates each week, my teachers, and strange snippets of phrases that should be wholly obscure almost twenty years later, but prove capable of unlocking vivid memories. “Weird bus,” for example, the sole entry on April 23, is how I summarized the decision of a bus driver, caught in a late Sunday afternoon traffic jam between Taxco and Cuernavaca, to create a “third lane” in the middle of the two-lane highway. My mother and I exchanged worried glances, even as my sister slept through it all. Or “tourist card adventure,”from March 29th: That is a reference to my need to journey to Mexico City, to extend my tourist card. The address given, however, was for a federal building damaged in the earthquake of 1987. Once there, I had to do quite a bit of sleuthing and cab-riding to find the right place.
(Okay, some of the phrases are mysterious, such as “Kiss of the Spiderwoman/leftist cell,” and I’m amazed that didn’t note the date that I was stung by a scorpion — February 18 — although I did write an extended version of it, which included the advice of my host “father,” that I eat “no carne, no mariscos, no huevos.” He was a doctor, so I obeyed.)
Still . . . I don’t think I’m going to do it. The burglary still has me rattled and my household is entering what I’ll call the Insanity Vortex, with some very challenging . . . we’ll call it scheduling, and it’s all good, but a little daunting.
Oh, and those who have detected a hypergraphia streak — bingo. I never write more than when I have a lot to write. Last week, I submitted the first fifty pages of the next Tess Monaghan novel, so my editor has a sense of what I’m doing. Today, I filed an introduction for one anthology and by week’s end, I’ll have writtten an afterword for another. Meanwhile, I have a lot of student work to contemplate.
So, no official tour blog, but maybe some entries here along the way.
I will miss a blog of the tour but I think I understand.
I enjoyed traveling with you vicariously for the last two tours, Laura. Be sure to leave us some entries along the way.
No carne, no mariscos, no huevos?
What’s left, cerveza?
Keith: That and tequila. Best snakebite remedy I know, so why wouldn’t it work for scorpions?
I always thought Mexico was no agua(except from bottles), no leche, no frutas, no hielo. I ate the other stuff. I will be happy to look for messages here instead of a separate blog- I get too confused.
Send me random emails, I will render them as haiku, which you can mail as postcards to all who love you.
I will miss the entries…you gotta do..well you know the rest…safe touring and success!
Laura!
What? No security system? Like American Express tells us – don’t leave home without it.
Looking forward to whatever you want to send us…
xoxo
You got bitten by a scorpion? You just drop that, and don’t give details?
Have a great tour!
Yes, we have no mariscos, we have no mariscos today!
We have a great security system. We also have neighborhood punks who do things like pour Super Glue in locks.
As for the scorpion — I was in Las Etacas, where several Tarzan movies were filmed, on a school outing. I was lying on my stomach on a towel when I felt a sharp piercing sting on my right foot. The scorpion was small; another student, who happened to be on crutches after a fall, killed it with a crutch. I had almost no feeling in the foot for two days, but my host “father” insisted that it wasn’t serious because the scorpion didn’t have red eyes.
Super Glue in locks? Damn, what next? Too bad they don’t put their creativity to some good use, huh?
I figured you had a security system – just joshing.
Okay, completely off-topic, are you following this news on Jonathan Luna? This is crazy stuff.
Kelly — I’m following it now, you can bet.
I don’t see how the FBI can say with a straight face that it’s suicide.
Would it be in bad taste to note that the paperback edition of NO GOOD DEEDS went on sale today?
Yes, I think that it would . . .
That’s actually why I thought to mention it to you. I was tempted to bring the copy in to show Adam (who’s covering it). “Talk to her; she’s an expert!” (If “expert” can be interpreted as “fictionalized it in kickass book,” and I think it can.)
Also, I am sad–until yesterday morning, Amazon had your book as coming out on March 1. Now they have the correct street date. I really wanted to get it almost two weeks early.