I have every faith that YOU are going to need this tip some day when your novels are in the bookstores. (If I believe in you, I can believe in myself, OK?) The ever-wonderful Tess Gerritsen has an easy tip for finding out detailed info about how Borders stores stock your books.

Technorati Tags: book tours

My younger daughter is going to spend the next week with her aunt and uncle and cousins, and it took a family “kid transfer system” to get her there. We drove her from Collierville, Tennessee, to Oxford, Mississippi, and handed her over with hugs and kisses to another uncle. He drove her to Jackson, Mississippi (patiently enduring a couple of “Are we there yet?” hours) where her grandfather and cousin met her for a big lunch at Red Lobster before taking her the rest of the way to the small town of McHenry, Mississippi. I’m sure she felt like a sack of mail after 5-6 hours of car riding by early afternoon, but she *did* get to go the circus and was still bubbling over about the trapeze artists and the elephants when she called tonight.

Me, I got to have an hour and a half in the car with my two girls when we seldom stopped talking about everything from men/boy jokes to oppression of women in some Muslim countries. My 9-year-old was appalled at the idea that women don’t have rights everywhere. (Her: “That is just so STUPID!”) Such smart girls, and I enjoy their company. This morning was another reminder of just how lucky I am.

My oldest and I spent the morning bumming around Oxford, where we lived in 1987-2001, touring the highlights of those years of family history (”Aw, there’s where Caitlyn threw her first fit,” and “Remember how we had so many gophers in our back yard?”). We drove around the university where I went to college, passed the magazine publishing company where I worked and admired their new sign, and landed at one of my favorite bookstores in the whole world.

You know how it is with the very best independent bookstores — there are shabby chairs and well-worn benches and quiet niches where you can sit and flip through books. You breathe in the scent of coffee and cookies and paper and ink. Hand-lettered notes peek out between the pages of stacked books, pointing out which have signatures. And best of all, there are books you haven’t seen anywhere else — like, um, “Native American Place Names in Mississippi” and an enticing hardcover first edition of a new biography, “Mississippi Sissy.” (I’m just sayin’.)

I should just walk up to the counter and sigh. “Here’s my credit card. Please don’t hurt me.”

Doesn’t this look inviting? All it needs is a fat kitty purring nearby …

I capped the day by having a three-hour lunch with a dear old friend who recently went back to school and is finishing up a degree in elementary ed. I can’t imagine why I let so much time go by without visiting. We talked so much about our children and other people we love — and how we’d run the world if only everyone else would just put us in charge — that I pretty much talked myself out and spent the ride home in silence, followed by a long nap under cool sheets when I got home.

A pretty much perfect day, actually.

Technorati Tags: daughters, friends, bookstores, Square Books, Oxford Mississippi, independent bookstores