FARGO

Monday, April 23, at 4 pm, Ellen Kuhfeld, Joan Marie Verba, and I (as Mary Monica Pulver) will be at the University of Minnesota – Minneapolis bookstore for a reading and discussion.

On Tuesday at 2 pm, I (as Monica Ferris) will come to a book club at the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in St. Louis Park to talk about the Betsy Devonshire series. The members have decided to open the meeting to the public.

On Saturday, April 28, from 1 to 5 pm, St. Peter, Minnesota, will hold a Book Festival at their Community Center. Put on by Gustavus Adolphus College, the event will feature readings, panels, and appearances by more than a dozen area authors – including me. (http://www.vita.mn/event_detail.php?event_id=130526) St. Peter is a pretty little town on the Minnesota River, once proposed as the capitol of Minnesota. I used it as the scene of a murder in Thai Die.

This past Friday and Saturday I was in Fargo, North Dakota, attending the tenth annual stitching event put on by Nordic Needle. About eighty people came, their capacity – it is so popular that they announce it and all the slots are taken literally within an hour or two. They offer lots of classes, many in very advanced kinds of stitchery. Nordic Needle was featured in my current mystery Threadbare, and I spent a couple of hours Saturday evening signing LOTS of copies sold to attendees by the store. Stitchers are among the nicest people on earth and it was an extremely pleasant experience for several reasons. One was that I met a woman who shares my interest in English history. She and I sat down later and had a wonderful gossip about the Kings and Queens past, present and future. Another was a bookmark display. Nordic Needle asks stitchers to make bookmarks for a contest, and distributes all entries to an organization that encourages children to read. There were a lot of beautiful, simple, clever, inspiring, funny, cute, amazing entries put on display at the event. It would be wonderful to think that a child who gets one of the bookmarks is inspired to take up needlework. A woman from Bermuda – did I mention that people come from all over the world to this event? – came and did a demonstration of bobbin lace. There’s a good look at bobbin lace being made in this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiTqdr38tTU. I donated two copies of Threadbare to be given as door prizes at the Saturday morning breakfast, and one winner was from Norway. She was a very sweet senior woman who, with her husband, has gone all over the world doing work for the Salvation Army. Her daughter is a physician in London. It was an honor to meet her!

My cat Snaps is having digestive problems. Normally when he throws up, the result is a pile of partly-digested food. Lately it’s been a cream-colored liquid, and it’s happening almost every day. I’ve put in a call to the vet, but meanwhile, do any of you have any idea what the problem might be? He remains lively and interested in everything.

On the Road

It’s Tuesday and I'm posting early. I have my traveling clothes on, because late this evening I am boarding The Empire Builder heading west. I have filled my biggest suitcase -- the one too large to go into an overhead bin on an airplane -- turned all my signing and speaking info into a four-page document, and packed only the clothing I think I really, really need. To show how far down I have culled things, I am taking only one hat. Unfortunately, it is too big to fit into any of my hat boxes and so has to come along in a cardboard box tied shut with cord.

I am going to post this early because the train arrives in Fargo at 3:30 tomorrow morning, and I will go to my hotel and right into bed to sleep until around ten, when Tanya and I will rise and breakfast and be picked up by someone from Nordic Needle around eleven to begin a tour of the city. I am sending my sleuth Betsy to Fargo in the book I am currently writing and so need to have a look around. Then in the evening I will do a signing and talk at the needlework shop, then start the long and tedious wait for the 3:30 Empire Building to come through again and take us to the next stop, in Montana. I will do my best to post something every Wednesday during the next three weeks, and hope I will have something adventurous, or amusing, to say about this grand tour.

Yesterday four of us went to the Mall of America to be pampered in a nail shop -- manicure and pedicure. Because my signing/talking outfit is black and yellow, I opted for yellow fingernail polish. For the first several hours after, I kept thinking I’d somehow dipped my fingertips into mustard. But there’s nothing like bold and fancy treatment to make you feel ready for anything. Today I am puttering and dithering around the apartment, making adjustments to the packing, going through the lists of things I want to bring and that I have to do before leaving, checking the schedule, and worrying. I am a great worrier. Fortunately, I don’t worry about travel until it’s too late to change my mind about going in the first place. Otherwise, I’d never go anywhere and would miss out on some great times.

The cats know something is up. I think they’ve come to understand that when a suitcase is being packed, they are going to be left behind for a while. Between naps they are being whiny and clingy. This is going to be, for them, the longest while I have ever disappeared. But my husband isn’t coming along, so it’s not a total disaster. Actually, a total disaster would be trying to bring them along on a trip. As John D. MacDonald wrote in his book about his two cats, The House Guests, “I would rather burn bamboo splinters under my fingernails than drive three thousand miles with . . . cats.” Me, too