A much more detailed event page is forthcoming on this site, but for now, here’s a quick list of all the confirmed The Wilder Life events for this spring:

April 14: CHICAGO: Barnes & Noble (Webster Place), 7:00 PM

April 16: KANSAS CITY: Johnson County Central Resource Library in Overland Park (with Rainy Day Books), 2:00 PM

April 18: ST. LOUIS: City Library, Schlafly Branch (with Pudd’nhead Books), 7:00 PM

April 19: IOWA CITY: Prairie Lights, 7:00 PM

April 20: MINNEAPOLIS: Magers & Quinn, 7:30 PM

April 21: CHICAGO: Book Cellar, 7:00 PM

April 29: CHICAGO/WINNETKA: The Bookstall, 6:30 PM

May 3: CHICAGO/NAPERVILLE: Anderson’s Bookshop, 7:00 PM

May 10: MADISON: Barnes & Noble (West Towne), 7:00 PM

May 17: BROOKLYN: Word, 7:30 PM

May 18: DURHAM: The Regulator Bookshop, 7:00 PM

June 11: ALBUQUERQUE: Bookworks, 3:00 PM

In addition to the event page on this site I’ll also have all these events posted on The Wilder Life’s Facebook page, where you can spread the word or RSVP for reminders.

There’s one part that’s really hard about announcing book event stuff, which is that for every place I’m headed, there are dozens of others that I can’t visit. I’m lucky that Riverhead could give me a few days of semi-glamorous Midwestern jet-setting in addition to the couple of trips that I’m making on my own dime, but it’s still just eight cities I’m visiting, which makes it awfully statistically likely that I’ll miss yours.

So when you say, “Come to Otisburg!” or “Can you please stop in Chocolate City?” my heart wrenches like a twisted towel, because of all the above events have been in the works for months and it’s usually not possible to spontaneously add Otisburg or Chocolate City or Bedford Falls or even Port Charles to the list, though I will definitely keep them in mind for next year when the paperback comes out. It is a sad fact that I am not a one-woman jam band and cannot tour the country for months and months, improvising long, noodling solos every night on my butter churn guitar.  That said, I hope that those of you who are in these cities will come out for a lovely night (or afternoon) of reading, book discussion, trivia (maybe!) and other Little House shenanigans yet to be determined.

(Photo courtesy of Travelpod.com)

The Wilder Life is coming out as a hardcover book. I was fine with I’m Not the New Me being a trade paperback, but the idea of hardcover thrills me—the smooth jacket, the photo on the back flap, the board binding and stamped spine underneath. I love how you can take off the jacket of any hardcover book, even the Snooki book, and suddenly it looks important and serious, like a Franklin Library Classic.

I keep thinking it’s sort of a weird time to be published in hardcover. I wonder these days, with the book business the way it is, and bookstores closing down, and ebooks as this bright new flickering thing.  It’s a fun time to be working in children’s books—at work our picture books are starting to show up on tablets and we’re starting to think in terms of apps. (I wish there was a better shorthand name for a digitally enhanced picture book than “app,” as long as it’s not something inane like “blingybook” or “schmoopystory” or whatever.)

But when it comes to hardcover books in general, I wonder whether they’re destined to become more precious objects, or just clunkier ones. I wonder what it’ll all be like the next time I have a book out.

I’m definitely not one of those people who thinks ebooks are the end of the world, but I don’t quite know what they’re the beginning of, either, or even if they’re the beginning of anything different. I have an e-reader now (I don’t want to say what kind, but it has a k in its name). It’s great—nice and light and I use it mostly for reading manuscripts, and it’s already pretty life-changing in that respect. I have a few books on there, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet, and probably won’t until I do some traveling this spring. I suspect when I do finally start reading this way I am going to love the hell out of not having to stuff books in my carry-on and that there are certain books that I’m going to buy and read this way. But I also know that I’ll still be buying a lot of new books in hardcover for the time being. I’ll keep buying my friends’ books in old-style booky form, and books from people whose readings I go to, and books from bookstores that I want to support so that they don’t go out of business and get turned into Jimmy John’s franchises. I know most people don’t have all of those same reasons I have, but I like to think that when it comes to book formats we’re going to stay omnivorous and consume different books in different ways.

One side effect of having a book published, I’ve found, is that people tend to tell you how they bought or didn’t buy your book, whether or not you want to hear the truth. They’ll tell you that they loved reading the copy that fifteen of their friends are passing around, or that they bought it for ten cents at a library sale, or that they read it at the bookstore because they “just don’t buy books.” And yes, some of these truths make me wince a little, but it’s also true that those people found me and read me and thought enough about what they read to email me about it, or to post something on a place like Goodreads. I will try to remember that next time I hear that someone is reading a pirated PDF of my book on their internet-enabled digital watch or something (but please don’t read a pirated PDF of my book on your internet-enabled digital watch).

I don’t know what the takeaway of all this is: a book in the hand is worth something, even it’s not the kind of book that you can hold in your hand? That sounds right.  Hearing that someone has my book on a Nook or a Kindle or a Kobo or an iPad or a Samsung tablet thingamabob or as an mp3 audio download will be humbling and wonderful, and I hope when the time comes you’ll let me know how you’re reading The Wilder Life.

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Speaking of Goodreads, there’s still time to sign up for a chance to win a free galley. (Just don’t pirate it and stick it on your watch.)

Laura Ingalls Wilder is 144 years old today.  Her husband, Almanzo Wilder, turns 154 on Saturday, so I’m putting up a picture that includes him, too.

This is one of my very favorite Wilder photos. Laura and Manly are only around 65 and 75 here, and they are standing with their dog, Nero, in front of the little modern cottage where they lived for several years in Mansfield, Missouri. Laura was working on the first Little House books by this point. She sent this photo to a fan, and explained that even though she and Almanzo are both looking down and appear sort of ashamed, they were really just trying to make sure the dog sat still.

I love her whole look here—her dress, her bob, her shoes. And oh God, I love that dog. They brought him along on a car trip from Mansfield to South Dakota (a 2500 mile drive!) in the spring of 1931, and Laura bought him ice cream. (“He loved it,” she said in her travel diary.)

For a long time I couldn’t quite tell Laura Ingalls Wilder apart from her fictional counterpart. While I’ve always loved the Laura of the books, I’ve been less sure about Bessie. (She went by that name throughout most of her adult life.) But this photo is one of the things that helped me know her better.

Happy Birthday to Laura and Bessie and Mama Bess, to Half-Pint and Flutterbudget and Mrs. Wilder.  Thank you for everything.

Me during the Blizzard of '79. I still miss that blue plush coat.

*I have this idea that for the rest of the winter I could name blog entries after chapter titles in The Long Winter. Need to find some reason to have a blog post called “ANTELOPE!”

Coming home early on Tuesday afternoon and watching the blizzard begin was an exquisitely giddy experience. I just sat by the big window by my desk and watched the snow come in careening gusts of wind.

No, I didn’t try to make this snowstorm one of my Little House reenactment projects, though I did have lots of Long Winter thoughts, and they swirled around in my head with all my modern neuroses. Like I was thinking that if the power went out I could use my quaint, adorable oil lamp, and then I remembered that my laptop’s battery function was broken, which of course freaked me out because THEN I’d have to make a tiny little generator with the old-fashioned coffee grinder and spend every morning hand-cranking a meager little serving of wireless while Chris twisted Chicago mayoral campaign junk mail into bundles of fuel.

But that didn’t happen. Our power stayed on, though the wind blew so hard I could feel our building shake, and there was lightning and thunder (which in a snowstorm looks and sounds really insane, like the earth is going to break open and fling up Superman’s Fortress of Solitude or something), and we were fine. Our car was stuck in the garage for three days until Chris was finally able to shovel out a narrow passage allowing the car to just barely squeeze through the waist-high snowbanks; the first time we pulled out the snow squeaked, like giant styrofoam wedges.  And if I were to describe the blizzard experience overall, I would say it was almost fun, thanks to this improbably comfy world we live in, with all this home insulation and central heat and horseless-carriage-plows.

And “almost fun” except for the free-floating sensation that’s been lingering these few days after the storm, when everything seems to stand still and sometimes it’s all I can do to complete the simplest tasks, even when the weather has kept me at home and opened up new vistas of spare time. But I guess it’s no coincidence that Laura feels “stupid” so many times during The Long Winter. (And I love that Google Books lets me look that up.) I have so much to do in the next few months between work and the book coming out, but maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself when I find myself wanting to just sit around and stare at the stove fire (or, really, Season 3 of Jersey Shore).

Hope you all are doing okay with your own Long Winters.

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Wedding Planning Question Corner (which will perhaps be an occasionally recurring feature this year): What do you have to do to get to talk to a caterer? We’re still looking for one and I seem to be sending a lot of emails and voicemails into the void lately.

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Book release stuff: my event schedule is being finalized right now, so if you’re in or near Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Iowa City, or Kansas City, I’ll have news for you soon…

To answer the three most frequently asked questions I’ve gotten from people since we got engaged last weekend:

1.) Chris and I haven’t set a date yet, but are planning for sometime in the fall.

2.) No, we are NOT having a Little-House themed wedding. I will not wear a poke bonnet, walk down the aisle to fiddle music, and ride off on a covered wagon. It’s sort of cool that Laura Ingalls Wilder wore black for her wedding, but I seriously doubt I could pull off that look without looking like Louise Fletcher in Flowers in the Attic.  (And no, we are not having a V.C. Andrews-themed wedding either, though if another couple ever decides to go that route, PLEASE SEND PICTURES.)

3.) Also, Chris did not propose on a buggy ride while driving his team of Morgan horses. How did Almanzo manage to slip the ring onto Laura’s finger with one hand while he held the reins with the other? He had some slick moves, that Manly. Chris made me get out of the car. (And then walk with him to the pop-the-question spot.) I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We just barely got the tree up this season, I haven’t baked any cookies or made any gingerbread creations (sorry), and I totally missed seeing the Santa Train, but this is turning out to be one of the best holidays ever.

Speaking of Christmas and wearing bonnets: as much as I loved the Little House books as a kid, I never had my own sunbonnet or any other kind of prairie girl getup. You’d think this would’ve bothered me, but somehow it didn’t, and now I remember why. It’s because for two Christmas seasons, right around the peak of my Little House adoration, I got to dress up all 19th-century for a community theater adaptation of “A Christmas Carol.”

It was a musical production at the Village Players theater in Oak Park and it was called, I kid you not, Ebenezer! I was in the children’s chorus. The first year I performed (1980 I think?) I got to wear a long red velvet dress, a bonnet, and a shawl. The second year my costume had a fur muff.  I knew from reading On the Banks of Plum Creek that muffs were the It Accessory of the 1870s, and I about lost my mind when the wardrobe lady gave me one to wear.

Here I am in my red dress, delivering my one line, which I can still remember: “I got new skates! They’re made out of real steel!”

Maybe I wasn’t convincing enough, because in the following year’s production my line was simply, “Oh, there’s Tim.” But whatever, I had the MUFF that year.  If you look in the picture below, I think the girl in the white cape in the front row had it.

Why the heck weren’t we wearing gloves if it was supposed to be December in London? We look way too happy and warm to be Dickensian urchins. Also the kid in black on the left is supposed to be Tiny Tim. That’s right: the tallest kid in the group. But never mind, it was Christmas. God bless us, everyone!  And God help us this next year.  Merry Christmas!

SIX THINGS ABOUT HOLIDAY MUSIC THAT I VERY STRONGLY BELIEVE:

1. While people are free to record their own renditions of any traditional holiday song in the public domain, if they want to change the lyrics for commercial purposes, they should have to pay a massive, exorbitant royalty to do so. If some jackass wants to foist upon the world a line like Deck the halls with Walgreen’s Savings!, it’s only fair that he pay through his very shiny nose for the privilege. Proceeds from the royalties would go to various charities. Obvious exception to the rule: “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells,” because that is a classic.

2. The few dozen holiday pop songs that are now part of the contemporary canon should NOT be covered by other pop artists for a certain number of years following their original release date. Like maybe even fifty years. No, really, I feel this rule has become necessary due to the many recent terrible versions of Wham’s “Last Christmas” swirling around the airwaves, like a crap blizzard that grows thicker every year.

Look, I don’t even like “Last Christmas” that much, but I just think Taylor Swift and Hillary Duff and Coldplay and all the other posers need to back the hell off and let George and Andrew have their hammy synthesizer pop-ballad glory every holiday season until around Christmas 2035, when middle-aged Miley Cyrus can record it as a duet with the cryogenically preserved head of Bret Michaels. Until then, she and everyone else ought to try writing their own original songs instead of cashing in on someone else’s successful bid for holiday music immortality. Because one of the things that I love about modern Christmas music is that it’s such a crazy collage of decades, with Bing Crosby and The Ronettes and the Carpenters and Jose Feliciano and The Waitresses all captured in little retro snowglobes of their eras. Remaking those songs to sound more up-t0-date and/or fit some acceptably hipster aesthetic seems control-freakish and sad, like those color-coordinated Christmas trees that you see in magazines. IT IS NOT RIGHT.

3. I enjoy “The Little Drummer Boy” enough that for most of the song I am able to suspend whatever general skepticism I may have about the existence of percussion instruments and drum majors in the Biblical era. I’m totally with the Little Drummer Boy all the way up to the line “the ox and lamb kept time,” and then the bubble totally bursts. The ox and lamb kept time? Are you kidding, song? Am I really expected to suddenly just imagine livestock jiving along in some crazy bullshit Max Fleischer cartoon scene right then and there? Seriously, it ruins everything until the next time I hear the song.

4. “Let it Snow” is still pretty demented, but I love when Ella Fitzgerald sings it.

5. “The Christmas Song” still makes me feel dead inside, but I tolerate it in order to be part of society.

6.  The Paul McCartney Christmas song is way more fun than the John Lennon Christmas song.  This is partly Chris’s doing, because he pointed out that “(Simply Having) A Wonderful Christmastime” sounds for all the world like Paul’s in his living room on Christmas morning trying out wacky chords on the new synthesizer that he just unwrapped. Barrp-barrp-barrp-barrp BOINGG! Barrp-barrp-barrp-barrp BOINGGGG! “Brilliant keyboard, Linda!”  Not to knock John and Yoko and the whole “war is over if you want it” thing, but sometimes what you want is to just sit around in your pajamas for awhile.

Am I the only one who thinks this much about Christmas music?