Please check your mailboxes over the next few days ...

... if you're a subscriber to Catamaran or if you are getting, for one reason or another, a complimentary issue. Your copy or copies should be arriving in the mail any day now. So if it doesn't arrive today, check again tomorrow. If not, Catamaran will be available in bookstores nationwide. And speaking of check again, I know that some of you weren't able to attend our reading last week. If that is the case, I just wanted to let you know that someone filmed the entire thing including the Q and A session at the end, and it should be uploaded at some point soon; I will let you know and will probably post the link here. Also, do me a favor and drive over to your local indie bookstore or to your Barnes & Noble or whatever you have in town and pick up the latest issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, which has a beautiful cover illustration by the great Chris Ware and a piece about the wonderful Louise Erdrich,  author most recently of the novel The Round House. I'm happy to report that this particular issue also includes a personal essay of mine, "The Man in the Shoebox," about an artifact that hangs on the wall to the right of my desk. In fact, it's hanging right above my keyboard as I type these words right now. At some point I really ought to take a picture of this artifact and upload it on the blog so you can see it. It is, truly, a conversation starter.