Live from Portland, It's Tuesday Night

A couple of Lucky Man/Portland thoughts for you as I sit here in the lobby of the DoubleTree, warm cookie in hand:

(1) We did our Manx Media - Lucky Man/40 Hour Man/Cat Suit reading tonight at The Press Club and a good time was had by all. Well, maybe not everyone, there were clearly some patrons there trying to enjoy their wine and crepes who may not have actually come in knowing there would be a reading and in turn may not have been so thrilled to find themselves in the middle of this one. You know who you are and we thank you for not storming out. We also want to thank in no particular order (a) The Press Club for hosting us, (b) my sisters in arms Lori and Ann for braving the weather and joining us, and (c) the one person who bought a copy of the book.

(2) We have confirmed that Lucky Man is on the shelf at Powell's bookstore. Nice. There are three copies and they are placed between The World, The Flesh, and The Devil by Reay Tannahill, a novel whose cover description begins "The world claimed him, and the devil called her his own," very nice; and The Mistress by Philippe Tapon, whose own description begins "Set in a hothouse atmosphere of growing fear and paranoia, The Mistress is a darkly atmospheric, erotically charged tale of jealousy, love and betrayal," very, very nice. Lucky Man is not only in good company, but my publisher Steve noted that Powell's has placed its own bar code on the books which he feels makes it much less likely they will return them to our distributer if they go unsold. We can only hope this is true, but to be safe, please go to Powell's right now and buy those books. Thanks.

(3) On the flight out here I watched The Pursuit of Happyness, promptly breaking my no crying on planes rule. However, it was well worth it, because an early pivotal scene revolves around the Will Smith character solving a Rubik's Cube. Also nice, yes? You see, the movie draws on the Rubik's Cube as a key metaphor for the character solving the challenges before him even as he is continually told he cannot do so, and Portland's own Williamette Weekly of course used the Rubik's Cube as a metaphor to describe Lucky Man. Now, in Lucky Man's case, it was a Rubik's Cube on acid, but still, is this a coincidence, I don't think so. It's kismet baby.

(4) And finally, we have scored our second Amazon customer review:

Lucky Man is fun, funny and poignant, April 16, 2007
Reviewer: Christy M. Peterson - See all my reviews

I really enjoyed this book. Once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. There's always something new, funny and adventurous happening. I laughed a lot. And I was also taken off guard a few times by unexpected moments of edgy poignancy. I loved this funny-edgy duality which Mr. Tanzer weaves throughout the story. He opens the heart with laughter, then touches it with truths and subtleties of the human experience. The ending has a wonderfully unique twist to it as well, where Mr. Tanzer shows how interconnected the characters lives really are. This first novel clearly shows how talented Mr. Tanzer is. I hope he writes more!

Great read!

Most nice. And enough said.