The Four R's: Reading, 'Riting, and Rock-n-Roll

(Miranda Beverly-Whittemore is one of four authors taking part in this year's First Fiction Tour. She volunteered to send us dispatches from the road; you can follow the itinerary--or find out if the Tour's coming to your town, if you haven't seen the posters designed by Mike King of Voodoo Catbox--on her events page. The two-week, six-city roadshow begins next week, so she sent a preliminary note to introduce us to everybody...)

Far from the pristine, quiet bookstore, we read in bars with drink specials and young crowds, and the rumor is that most of the writers don't stay all that sober. In the fall, when Cindy Dach of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona (who founded and organized First Fiction Fall 2004) extended an invitation to me, I was thrilled and terrified. My novel had been chosen on its own merits (flattering, to say the least), but I had also been chosen, in part, for my "rock star" essence, which really made me giggle. I wondered if perhaps she wasn't talking about some other Miranda Beverly-Whittemore.

Since then, my debut novel, The Effects of Light, has been in the world for nearly two months, and I've gained a little more sense of self. I still wouldn't call myself a rock star, but I think that's for the best. I've done nine readings by myself, and one group reading (New Voices 2005 up at Misty Valley Books in Chester, Vermont) and my favorite part of all of these events has been the sense of community that a reading can create; I feel this in sharp contrast to the lonely intimacy of writing a book.

I've never done anything like the First Fiction Tour, and I have no idea what to expect, but I hope it will create a similar sense of community, both between the writers and with those folks in Boston, Ann Arbor, Iowa City, Seattle, Los Angeles and Austin, who come out to see us read.

So who are we? I've only met myself, but I've read everyone's book, and studied their author photos, dissected their bios, Googled them, obsessively checked all of our Amazon ratings, and here's what I know so far...

Matthew Carnahan is the author of Serpent Girl, a book about a guy whose stint working for the circus has not gone quite as he'd planned. The novel is full of freaks, petty thieves, drugs, and some pretty crazy sex. Matthew has an impressive film resume: in addition to being Helen Hunt's partner (yes, that Helen Hunt) and counting Mike Myers as a close friend, his films Mailman and Black Circle Boys premiered at Sundance, and his documentary about Rudy Giuliani, Rudyland, won a number of awards.

Marya Hornbacher's novel, The Center of Winter, is set during a brutal winter in rural Minnesota, and focuses on the aftereffects of a father's suicide on the family he leaves behind. Marya is known best for her critically acclaimed first book, Wasted, which was published in 1998 to rave reviews, and she is a senior editor at Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine.

Edward Schwarzchild has written Responsible Men, a novel about an ethically challenged salesman who returns to Philadelphia to try to make amends with his elderly father and newly Bar Mitzvahed son. Edward teaches at the University of Albany, SUNY, and has been the recipient of a prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University.

And my novel, The Effects of Light, is about two sisters whose lives are forever altered when they pose for a series of photographs. My resume is humble: I worked for three years at the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center, and graduated in 1998 from Vassar College. Needless to say, a part of me is wildly intimidated by my fellow tour-ists. Before The Effects of Light came out, not one word of mine had ever been published. I've never made a movie or had it premiere at Sundance, I've never written a critically lauded memoir or been a senior editor at a magazine, I've never been a Wallace Stegner Fellow or an assistant professor. For that matter, I've never been in love with Helen Hunt, and, as far as I know, she's never been in love with me.

But a much bigger part of me is excited. All three of these books fascinated and moved me, as, I'm sure, will the three other people who wrote them. And being on the road, getting a glimpse, however small, of the rock star life--when what I really do is sit, day in, day out, in front of a computer screen, hoping that the people I've made up will cooperate with me--sounds, well, really fun. I'm downloading the Rolling Stones onto my iPod as we speak. I'll keep you posted…