I think we’re down to 18 days now before Odd Mom Out hits the store shelves on September 27th. I felt my first flutter of nerves this morning as I addressed event postcards for my book tour that begins October 3rd and doesn’t wrap up until just before Thanksgiving.

Readers and reviewers continue to tell me they love this book, and they think its even better than Flirting with Forty. I just want the book to be read. I also want my book tour events to be fun, so if I’m going to be at a bookstore near you, do come see me. If you think your friends would be interested in ODD MOM OUT send me an email with their names and addresses and I’ll send them a postcard event invite to the event nearest them.

I’ve been working really hard on the book tour. I never just leave the tour details up to my publicists and hope for the best. I do a lot behind the scene (a lot, a lot) just as I do with publicity and media. Just as we parents know no one will ever love our children the way we love do, I know that no one will ever be as devoted to my books and career as I am. I have to be involved at every level. Part of it might be the control freak in me, but the other part is the realist. Event listings in newspapers don’t generate big turnouts at book or literary events. Reviews in papers don’t necessarily draw traffic. Verbal invites don’t always do the trick. You’ve got to put together good mailing lists, lists that are personal and selective, people that have not just read your books in the past, but have written you to let you know, or have sent you an email to say thank you, or have asked to be notified of future releases and events.

Ever since Flirting with Forty came out last July, I’ve been working on developing a list of core readers, readers that do want to read my next book, readers that wanted a sequel to Flirting, or wanted me to know how much they enjoyed Flirting.

I’ve done the events where no one’s there. I’ve read for an hour in SF from Frog Prince about depressed Holly with her fat thighs to a room consisting of Three Men and a Baby (seriously, a bookseller with dreadlogs from Jamica, a man from Turkey and my brother who brought his infant daughter) and that was my first reading ever. It was painful. It was long. It was also very funny in a achingly awful sort of way.

I’ve had events where one hundred people show up and they’re faces I’ve known all my life. My 6th grade teacher. My former parent-in-laws. My swim coach. The mother of my best friend. A crush from first grade (Froggie, I called him because he was so little and cute). My mothers book club. My mothers bridge club. My mothers PEO sisters. (Thank God for my mother. If I had a daughter and she needed people at an event I’d have to beg my boyfriends surfer friends to come and they’d want alcohol and music and girls in bikinis and it wouldn’t be literary.)

In short, book events require people, devoted people who are both readers, family and friends. Over time my readers do become family and friends (just ask Kari and Mitchy) and the best part about going on the road is that I get to meet them.

Do not fear if I’m not in your city or state on this booktour. I’ll hit the road again in late May for ALPHA MOM, the sequel to ODD MOM OUT, and I’m hoping to visit some new cities this spring/summer. So send me an email with your address if you want me to come see you and fingers crossed we’ll be having coffee and chatting about books, life and men very soon.

I have been writing pretty much night and day since July 28th to take Alpha Mom from fifty pages of notes, scenes and ideas into a 550 page manuscript. Essentially I spent the past month writing a chapter a day with a few extra days thrown in at the end for editing and revision.

A week ago I had an ending for the book but wasn’t quite ready for the end. Instead I plotted out the final 6-7 chapters and wrote pieces here and there, writing forwards, backwards, writing until the story became coherent.

The only negative was that the ending when I actually got there, didn’t work. So I pulled apart Chapters 18-22 and tried again, coming up with a different 23 and then a 24. But once I was back at chapter 24 the ending didn’t work this way, either. So I wrote a new ending but that didn’t feel right.

I went back and edited from the beginning, making line edits, tightening scenes, cutting out other scenes hoping that as I wrote I’d figure out the one, the right, the perfect end.

Today, I was back at chapter 23 and 24 wondering if I would ever end a book that must be sent out Labor Day night so my editor has it on her desk Tuesday morning. I spent the day writing, thinking I have a book but no ending.

It’s an exhausting way to write. And it’s not that I haven’t been trying but I needed an ending that was just right, one that is exactly what these characters needed. I didn’t want it forced on them, didn’t want a resolution stemming from external change but internal.

And finally, tonight, after nine hours at the computer, I had an ending. It was far more simple than I expected. It was also right.

Maybe it’ll need tweaks. Maybe it’ll demand an additional scene or two somewhere in that last chapter (yes, I ended up writing a chapter 25 today) but at least there is an end. At least I have said what I needed to say in this book. And maybe that’s when a book should end. When the characters have taken the journey they needed to take.

I had an email this week from a reader and she’d just read Flirting with Forty and she loved it. Loved it. She felt like I was inside her head and she said she hadn’t read a book she’d loved this much in so long.

And then I did a double take and it wasn’t Flirting with Forty. She’d read Odd Mom Out. Someone had given her an advanced reading copy of Odd Mom Out.

I was touched and amazed by this woman’s response to Odd Mom Out because I wasn’t sure this next book would resonate with readers the same way Flirting did, and yet the reviews and reader comments are just as good, if not better.

That’s when I had my first of several small epiphanies: I don’t write for everybody. I write for those who need my books.

The second epiphany was that those who need my books will find them. I can’t agonize over sales numbers or public response or lists. I can only have faith that my books will find those who need them most. And I do mean need them.

Those who know me know I have this long history of being a missionary in my own way. I want women to have more. I want women to know love and expect goodness and compassion, hope and laughter. If I can write something that makes a woman believe…if I can write something that makes someone feel…if I can write something that comforts and encourages than I have done what I’m meant to do.

We women can do anything. We just have to know we’re not alone.