One of the aspects of book touring I’ve enjoyed most is meeting other authors. Some of us are fascinating, humble, delightful individuals. Some of us are boring, self-congratulatory knuckleheads. Sort of like the general population, actually.

No, I’m not naming names. But I will say I’ve mostly met the former. And I’ll tell you some stories.

Three weeks ago in Portland at Homeword Bound, I sat between Bart King, utterly hilarious and charming author of The Book of Mischief and The Book of Fun, and author of The Varmits Ted Coonfield who bought me a drink and kept demurring to tell me stories about sex, drugs and rock and roll from his riotous youth until he saw “sex, drugs and camping” on the back of my book Chance of Sun. Then the gloves were off.

During the key note presentation by the very famous Oregon author Jean Auel, Bart borrowed my pen and then passed me a note. That alone was thrilling as I haven’t received a note in years. Then I found myself stifling a full-on guffaw at what Bart’s note read: “Have you read her stuff? My friend says its cave porn.”

I wrote back: “Apparently cave porn sells.”

Two weeks ago I sat with William Sullivan (author of seven books on hiking the Oregon outdoors), Laurie Notaro (NY Times bestselling author of hilarious books like I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies)), and Ken Babbs (author and former member of Ken Kesey’s Band of Merry Pranksters) at the UO Duckstore.

It kind of went like this.

When Ken left for a minute, Bill leaned over and said, “Wow, you can really notice the impact of all the drugs that guy did.” Then Laurie told us a story about planting peas the day before and then scurrying around in the yard in her pajamas that morning trying to cover them up when the rain turned to hail turned to hurricane force winds. At which point Bill politely excused himself to go and pick up his grandchild’s turtle which had been sedated to have its toenails clipped. Luckily, the reigning Slug Queen Holly GoSlugly came by at that moment so I still had someone to talk to.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Last weekend at the Atkinson Church Book and Author Fair, I met Jon Bell, Oregon author of the book “On Mount Hood: A Biography of Oregon’s Perilous Peak“. We got to chatting about the stuff of writers: fame, fortune, our homes overflowing with fan mail and roses, so many six-digit book deals we have to turn some down.

Oh wait. That was a dream I had the night before.

Jon told me that when he first thought to write a book about Oregon’s most iconic peak, he was a furniture delivery man. When he finally got a contract to write said book years later, it was about two days after his second child was born and he had six months to write the book.

Now that’s a real writer’s life.

I shared some photos with Jon of my grandmother on top Mt. Hood in 1938. I’ve written about her summiting the mountain in an essay and a chapter from Chance of Sun. He used them in his blog today.

The anniversary of the publication of “Day Trips From Portland” is next week. This is what I know about the last year and book touring. I have become rich in stories, experience and new friends. And that’s worth a hell of a lot more than a room full of roses.

Yesterday, I received the evaluations from my writer in residence gig, as well as a pile o pages of the writing we produced together. If feedback is good, feedback from human beings ages 5 through 12 rocks!

Some highlights:

It made me feel like a beater writer.

Cim wos fon.   (I believe I’ve seen this etched into a bathroom wall somewhere).

Writing isn’t always boring.

I liked that there was no homework.

She seemed to really know what she was doing.

I really love how Kim came in and taught us when she could have been doing something else.

She helped us feel confident and I think she liked it.

Nothing has changed. I don’t want to be a writer.

And my top fave:

I thngck I am aosom ritr.

Last evening, Chicken Noodle asked for some time with my computer. Having exhausted my abuse of it for the day, I obliged. After all, she’s seven now. From what I’ve seen of her writing she might make better use of the thing than me.

I left her to her craft. Ten minutes of silence. Then wailing.

I returned to my office to see her crumpled in my chair, sobbing with vehemence and anger.

On the screen were these words:

The scarf

A poem

By Libby Mae Findling

A decent start. But now, tears. “The letters are wrong! I don’t know what to do! What are those squiggly lines? Why does my L look that way? What if I don’t know how to spell things? What will it look like when I’m done? What if no one reads it? What if no one likes it?”

Ah, the crux of it. At seven.

Insert here much writerly/motherly cajoling about how what matters is not how it looks, just getting the words down, thinking your own thoughts and recording them, who cares what anyone else thinks, I can’t wait to see what you write, we’ll fix the font later, Mommy will love whatever you write, I’m so proud of you, someone fix me a double vodka martini, etc.

To no consolation. She hurtled some incomprehensible existential misery at me. I left to make dinner. If it wasn’t too much to bear, or too close to home, I’d have thought she was Hemingway reincarnated, and searched the desk drawers for whiskey and pistols on my way out.

Ten minutes of silence. Then wailing. I returned to the artist’s space.

On the screen was this:

The magic scarf

A book

By Libby Mae Findling

Once upon a time

Modest improvements. But still. “I can’t do it!” she sobbed. “I can’t! It’s too hard! I want you to write it! I’m bad at this! I’ll never be a writer!”

I feel your pain, girlfriend. Been there. Will be there again.

At this point, I called in Captain Daddy for back up. Code 3. Patient agitated, hyperventilating. Possible anxiety attack. He coerced her from the room with firefighter tough love and macaroni and cheese.

At dinner, when it felt safe to venture in again:

“What’s your story about, Noodle?”

No hesitation.

“A boy. He’s going to this adventure thing but he trips in this hole and falls into a fuzzy tree. And a baby bird falls out of its nest and he says where am I and then there’s some magic stuff.”

Wow. I want to read that. Stay tuned as I figure out how to nurture a first grader past a wicked case of writer’s block.

Chicken Noodle: That’s not fair! You never let anyone do anything fun! You’re not fair about anything!

Chicken Little: That’s because she’s your mother, Libby.

Our flight is delayed.

Don’t think this family will be doing that.

Give ‘em more cocktails.

–

Just realized I forgot my running shoes. Guess it’s a eating and drinking only vacation.

Eating and drinking you excel at. Go for it.

–

How’s your day?

Disney World is a lot like skiing. People are stressing and yelling at their kids and calling it fun.

–

Huge party in the room next door last night. Husband in shit-ass mood. Noodle on sugar-only crack freak-out diet. Day two baby!!

Crack diets are just so tasty!

–

Notes from today: grocery shopping with half-drunk grandma and four-minute sex with husband.

Check! Check! And done.

–

Post getting soaked by Shamu. Done in by Sea World.

Nothing but sanity here.

–

And now I know I never need to ride a roller coaster again.

Good thing to learn at 40.

–

Karl says you’re in as my sister wife for his high school reunion.

Score!

–

Beach church.

Crap church.

–

I just ate at a Japanese restaurant where the “special yum sauce” was ranch.

Globalization baby.

–

Legoland penance for last night’s drinking. These rides may cause nausea and dizziness.

Sit with dad and act handicapped.

Won’t be hard. I feel handicapped. And he just offered me codeine.

A little mid-afternoon gift.

And I’ll get a bumper sticker: I did Legoland on drugs.

The only way to travel! Ting!

Ting!

–

I am a cynical bitch. Fireworks and cheer are lame.

Watch out for drunk pedestrians.

–

Your boyfriend.

I wondered where he got off to.

He is here looking hot.

I’ll share him with you.

Sister wives!

I get shotgun!

For scenes from the last family vacation we all took together, see My Hawaiian Vacation in Quotes

Chicken Soup for the Soul, people. “The Magic of Mothers and Daughters.”

Yep. The cover is pink.

It’s an essay called “A Better View” I wrote about a trip Chicken Noodle and I took to Hawaii when she was little bitty. The first two sentences are, “As my two-year-old daughter and I arrive at the airport on a cold January morning, I am thinking that in the next ten hours practically anything could happen. If ever there is a time to fear one’s own child, it’s at the outset of a full day of air travel.”

It took so long to publish this one, the two-year-old can now read it herself!

You can purchase this book everywhere, I presume. The Chicken Soup folks say “Moms and daughters will laugh, cry, and find inspiration in this collection of entertaining, poignant, and heartwarming stories that remind them of their shared love, appreciation and special bond. A great gift for Mother’s Day.”

I wonder if I own the rights to my essay? There must be a contract I signed around here somewhere, perhaps under my taxes and these glitter sequins the chickens spread about my office while I was in Portland at the Oregon Tourism Conference.

They are quite lovely. Desk bling.

I’ll put “A Better View” on my Website soon. It won’t be pink.

“Chance of Sun: An Oregon Memoir” released today on amazon.com as an e-book! “A story of sex, drugs and camping” is now available for immediate download to your Kindle, Ipad, etc. for just $6.99. You can’t even get a decent martini for that.

Buy here

Here’s what it’s all about:

In her debut as an author, Kim Cooper Findling’s Chance of Sun: An Oregon Memoir, unfolds the story of an Oregon girl coming of age in the 1970s and 80s, navigating her way through pick-up trucks, dive bars, higher education and backwoods trails before finding a place she belongs.

Beginning with her childhood in Coos County, Findling relates a rural upbringing spent walking beaches and hiking in the woods with her forester father, attending summer camp just over the hill from the Oregon Country Fair, road-tripping to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with schoolmates, and learning about the fickleness of love in campgrounds, beer joints and on the University of Oregon campus. Yet, following a move to Oregon’s biggest city after college, Findling lost her way and her connection to Oregon’s landscape, becoming caught up in the drugs and booze that flowed so freely in Portland’s restaurant scene. But it was Oregon that helped Findling find herself again later, this time on the east side of the mountains, where she found clarity in High Desert trails and a wide-open sky, as well as life’s most grounding phenomenon—love.

In 23 essays set over 20 years, Findling traces her own coming-of-age story against the beauty and complexity of the Oregon landscape. Nestucca Spit Press Publisher Matt Love writes,“In Chance of Sun, Kim Cooper Findling presents a fresh and distinct literary voice. I might even call it sexy. At long last we have a memoir by someone that captures the fantastically loose and earthy spirit of growing up in Oregon during the 1970s and 80s.”

See more reviews here

Buy as a real live paper book here

See book tour dates here

…is five today!

And sweet as Tupelo honey. Love you Boo Boo. xo, Mom

…is seven today!

We’ve come a long way, baby. Love, Mom