No. 72: SEDARIS, RUSHDIE & ME / Caveat auctorem. Let the author beware, at least when it comes to public appearances.

Book reading are ego strokes for those who write best-sellers, unnecessary support of titles that are best-sellers upon their release. Pity the writer of the D-list sports books.

For a writer, there’s nothing that matches the feeling of holding your freshly printed book in your grimy mitts. At various stages along the way you feared that: 1. You’d never come up with a saleable idea; 2. You’d never get your agent on board; 3. Your agent would never find a publisher who’d bite; 4. You’d never finish track down all the principals of your story; 5. You’d never finish your manuscript; 6. You’d never get through your line edit and then the page proofs; 7. You’d never get it all by the libel lawyer; and 8., 9. and 10., you’d actually have to live through to understand and those that have can bring themselves to talk about them out loud.

Clear a hurdle, you go down an open manhole. Climb out of the manhole, you stroll into a minefield. Navigate the minefield and you hit the beach in time for the tsunami. Disasters you fully expect await you at every turn, interrupted occasionally by disasters you’d never imagine.

Yeah, it all seems worthwhile once you hold that book in …