There are moments in life when you really have to pause and consider: “What horrible thing did I do in my past to deserve this?”

Recently I was in St. Louis, Missouri for a bookstore event. I was raised in St. Louis and – given that there would be people at this event who were not only in the book but who might want to set me on fire afterwards – I was a trifle nervous. As such, I probably should have driven to the bookstore alone in order to have time to compose either myself or my will.

I chose, instead, to drive my parents and I in my glamorous Rent-A-Wreck rental car. Of course, having been living in LA for the past 22 years, I didn’t exactly remember how to get to the bookstore in question, so I brought along my portable GPS.

It was freaking hot, being June, and the air conditioning was on full tilt in an effort to keep my parents cool in the back seat. Why, you may be wondering, were my parents sitting in the back seat of this PT Cruiser like it was a stretch limo? Because in the front seat sat my severely autistic nephew, Brian, who we needed to drop off at his dad’s house on the way.

I absolutely adore Brian – he’s a big bundle of love – but a child this challlenged is a major handful, and on this particular night, he was WOUND UP. Whether it was being in a car he didn’t recognize, or being with me, or being excited about seeing his dad, he was in full Autism overload – shrieking, bouncing against the back of the car seat, waving his hands like a symphony conductor on crystal meth.

Then my dad couldn’t remember how to get to Brian’s father’s house.

The, as the air conditioning blasted, the GPS lady yelled at me for making wrong turns.

All the while, Brian screamed and shouted, the top of his head threatening to blow off like a Roadrunner cartoon, and my parents hollered turn suggestions from the back seat, all of which turned out to be wrong.

We eventually had to call my sister for directions, and, exasperated, she began yelling at me.

And I began to wonder what would happen if I just drove the whole lot of us into a ditch.

This probably sounds pretty minor in the scheme of things. I mean, it wasn’t like I was lying in a ditch. That probably would have been a larger cause for concern. But for someone who was trying to maintain an equanimity (and denial) over the fact that I would soon be standing before people I hadn’t seen in 20 or 30 years (many of whom for good reason), it was, in the moment, pretty damn tense.

But then, I arrived – and saw the bounty of wonderful people from my past who had so kindly shown up to support me, smiles on their faces and love in their hearts. And all my stress evaporated.

And since I was able to get out of there before any of them read too far into the book, no one was maimed.

All’s well that ends well.

Two weekends ago I launched my book into the world with a tour that began with two events in my “hometown” of LA (I’ve lived here 22 years, which not only qualifies me as a native, but means I’ve been here longer than most of the historical buildings): at Barnes and Noble at the Grove in Hollywood and Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena.

 The Vroman’s event couldn’t have gone better – great (and big) crowd, we sold a lot of books, and I didn’t sweat like a CEO at a congressional hearing.

 The Friday night event at Barnes & Noble was something else altogether.

 This particular B&N store is big and glamorous – it’s one of the bookstores in LA where celebrities do their signings and where, on this particular Friday night, the air conditioning was out. And, conveniently, out ONLY in the section of the store where they hold signings, an area that’s lit like a Broadway stage.

 It wasn’t like the attendees (and I was fortunate enough to have a nice crowd) should have been wearing towels, but still – it was pretty freaking hot. Ben [name changed so I don’t have to hear about this later], the very chatty young guy who is in charge of the author events, advised me of this fact during the twenty or so minutes we spent together in the green room prior to my introduction.

 This was not, unfortunately, the only thing he advised me of. During that period of enforced togetherness, he kept up a running commentary on past celebrity guests that astounded me for its sheer lack of breaths taken. Not only couldn’t I get a word in edgewise, I couldn’t think. About what I was about to do. About how I would be introducing the book. About the fact that I needed thirty seconds, just thirty freaking seconds of silence to compose myself before stepping out onto the stage for my first ever author event.

 So I lurched out onto the stage, unfocused, and proceeded to stumble through my reading, cutting it short because of the heat and wishing that I had been rude enough to ask Ben to shut the you-know-what up in the green room and let me have a moment to prepare.

 I would like to suggest to Ben that in the future, he ask the author if they’d like a moment to themselves. Raquel Welch, who had been there a few weeks earlier, needed just such a moment and simply said to him, in a voice that indicated little possibility of negotiation, “Get out.”

 Perhaps I should be more like Raquel Welch.

 p.s. I will be in San Francisco tomorrow for a book event (www.ericpoole.net/events), so no posting. Miss me. Get misty and dewy and moist and sad.

I am blessed to have a wonderful group of supportive, loving, successful friends…most of whom don’t read.

 For many of my friends, checking the gas gauge is the equivalent of consuming a literary novel, and some of them stumbled into Barnes and Noble and Vroman’s Bookstore in LA for my recent book launch events looking as if they expected to be arrested on fraud charges.

 Part of this is doubtless a result of the fact that we live in Los Angeles, where television and movies are the industry of choice and thus where people’s lips move when they approach a stop sign.

 But really – no reading, ever? What is a life that is made up solely of TV and movies and video games, where your eyes are engaged but not your imagination? Although I do admit to once noting, “Cool – they made a novel out of the musical Les Miserables!”, I personally have been a reader for most of my life. Granted, the majority of my reading these days takes place in the car, via audiobook, since I work 12 hour days and have a 90-minute commute. But it does pain me sometimes that we’ve become a culture where other people’s imagination is on display on screens small and large, but your own rarely is.

 I’ll climb down off my soapbox now. (I actually just wear platform heels, it’s less dangerous.)

The launch of a book into the world is sort of like giving birth – there’s lots of screaming and crying and you hope it doesn’t come out ass first.

 I was fortunate. My baby weighed in at 263 pages and was born virtually pain-free on June 1^st, swaddled in an incredibly flattering People Magazine review that made it, in my eyes, the cutest baby on the block. This is gonna be a breeze, I thought. An easy birth, a beautiful baby – I am one lucky mutha.

 Then a friend suggested I put a Google news alert on my name and the title of the book…and I discovered what so many parents of bouncing baby books have before me: there are some people who think your baby is fat and ugly, and will sure as hell relish telling you so.

 Most reviews of WHERE’S MY WAND? have been extremely gratifying, and I consider myself terribly lucky; but it only takes one comment like “Tenth-rate Sedaris” or a one-star review by some guy on Amazon to make me rank book writing as a career choice on par with manual turkey insemination. I try to comfort myself by imagining the homes (soon to be featured in an episode of Hoarders) and lives (creepy, desperate, medicated) of the people who write such unkind remarks; but ultimately I’m reminded that whether these people are toothless hillbillies or snotty literati, they’re entitled to their opinions.

 Even if those opinions occasionally SUCK.