The test of a new book...

So I've already posted about how I got my brand new copies of LEARNING TO PLAY GIN in the mail this week.

Well, here's a little secret: this is among the most exciting and the most terrifying things that ever happens to me.

After all, new, shiny, pretty book with my name on the cover = good.

Knowing you can never, ever change a word of the book = bad.

So I always swear I won't pick up the final version and drive myself crazy with all the things I wish I could change.

But, inevitably, I do pick it up and read a completley random portion and pray that it won't be too terrible.

So that's what I did last night.

I read this:

From LEARNING TO PLAY GIN,

(a completely random excerpt chosen not to represent the book as a whole or tease but simply to satisfy Ally's utterly morbid curiosity.)

There was a gas station just inside the Park Valley city limits, so Lance stopped and got directions, even though he was pretty sure he wouldn’t need them. Without being told, he knew the state highway would turn into Main Street; he knew the theater would be downtown, and he’d find it on his first pass through. He parallel parked and walked to the doors, and even though he’d never been there before, he knew exactly what he was going to find inside.

As he pushed the door open, white light from outside swept across the dim theater, over thread-bare red velvet seats. Lance took off his sunglasses and waited for his eyes to adjust. Everything smelled like moth balls and wood polish. Three women stood around the base of a ladder at stage left, and the acoustics in the old building carried their voices all the way to the door.

“Roger, more to the left,” one of the women said. She was wearing a pink velour track suit from when velour was in style the first time. It was active wear. She was being active. And yet, Roger was the one up there on the ladder.

“No, the other left,” another woman said.

Roger had a thick stomach and thin hair. Lance’s guess was that his wife had been dead eighteen months. The women looked up at him longingly. Roger was quite a catch.

To Lance’s right, a pair of girls kneeled beside three pieces of poster board, sprinkling glitter over clue-covered letters that said tickets would be five dollars each–just like they must do it on Broadway. Strands of long, fine hair fell over their faces, shielding Lance from their view as he stepped toward them and said, “Hi. Excuse me.”

They looked up at the same time and their hair fell back as, simultaneously, their jaws dropped.

“Ohmygosh,” one of them said in a breathless whisper.

“Hi. I’m Lance, and I think my mom might be—"

“Ohmygosh!”

As they stumbled to their feet Lance could see that one was tall and shapely, while the other carried twenty more pounds on three fewer inches. The taller one shook her hands as if her fingers were on fire. “OH! MY! GOSH!!!!”

On the stage, someone said, “Be careful, Roger,” but the girls were bouncing up and down then, grasping each other, screeching at the top of their lungs, and Lance didn’t know what do to.

Fans, he thought. I guess these are fans. Like most forces of nature they looked different up close, in their native habitat.

“I love you,” the heavier girl cried. “I love you so much!”

But you don’t even know me, Lance thought but couldn’t say. Lance pulled his hand back and gestured toward the stage where Roger was moving the ladder and the women watched his butt as he climbed. Right then, Lance was really, really glad he wasn’t Roger.

later...

Ally