Time is a strange commodity.  In the middle of an experience, the minutes can stretch out in long, silly putty increments.  The ride between Albany and Buffalo, for example, when we were all exhausted and the bus rolled on and on as if we were part of a Twilight Zone episode in which, in the end, we discover that we’re really in hell and doomed to ride the damned bus forever.  But sitting here at the desk in my hotel room, with the talk and the laughter and the intimate connection between us so apparent in our last meal together, the eight days seem to have sped by, a breath or two and done.

I don’t know how Atria Books will judge the success of the Great Mystery Bus Tour.  I hope that whatever gauge they use, the enterprise rises to the hoped-for mark.  In terms of those of us in the trenches—the authors, our “handlers” (the great folks from Atria publicity who facilitated everything), and our phenomenal bus guys—the week was nothing short of stellar.  We loved the whole idea, we enjoyed the events immensely, and we were given the gift of each other.

Today, we go our separate ways.  That’s life.  And I remember the advice my wife often offers me: “Don’t cry because it’s over.  Be happy that it ever was.”

From the road, this is my final dispatch.

I’ll start with Liza Marklund. Before we launched, Liza (it’s pronounced Leesa) was the author I was most uncertain about.  Statuesque, lovely, colossally successful in Sweden and Europe, several of her books already in film, she seemed to me the author most likely to be a prima donna.  Thank God nothing could be farther from the truth.  What a great and gracious woman.  Not only is she a talented writer, she’s down to earth and very funny.  She’s not well known in this country yet (but that will change) and so at our events, she doesn’t have the hundreds of adoring readers crowding into the bookstore that she would draw were our signings in Europe.  I asked her how she felt about that, and her reply was that it troubled her not at all, that she’s building a following here, and that all good things take time.  Lovely and wise, what a killer combination.

I expected to be intimidated by M.J. Rose.  For those of you not in the book business, the skinny on M.J. is that she’s a whiz at marketing books.  She owns her own company, AuthorBuzz, which does just that.  Before embarking on the tour, I read her most recent novel, The Book of Lost Fragrances, and loved it.  The research is awesome.  The storyline is compelling.  The writing is silk smooth.  I thought to myself, Here’s one very smart woman who’s going to make me feel like a dumb donkey.  M.J. is smart.  M.J. is savvy.  And M.J. is delightful.  She has a marvelous sense of humor, and if you’re not following her blog or her tweets, you’re missing out on some fall-on-the-floor-laughing commentary.

Okay, John Connolly.  John’s the only one of the authors I knew in advance, but I didn’t know him well.  I know him better now, and fully fleshed out, this guy is the kind of author we all aspire to be.  Please don’t tell him I said that!  In my estimation, he stands beside James Lee Burke as one of the finest prose writers in our genre.  He also a keen sense of both the art and the business of books, and when he defends the brick and mortar bookstore, he’s articulate and even a little scary in his passion.  (The other night while he was ranting eloquently, I saw a blood vessel throbbing in his temple like one of those creatures from Aliens ready to burst through his skin!)  And did I say funny?  The man’s a walking comedy club.

So, humor is clearly a big part of what makes this tour so delightful.  We don’t any of us take ourselves too seriously, and all of us are more than willing to be nakedly human.  Okay, maybe “nakedly” was the wrong word.  I really don’t want you—or my wife—to get the wrong idea about what happens on the Mystery Bus.

That’s all for now.  More down the road.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that the Great Mystery Bus Tour’s first crisis was a dearth of toilet paper.  Yesterday the crisis escalated to rebellion.  We learned that we were using the bus toilet incorrectly.  (Probably the reason we ran out of toilet paper.)  Apparently, of the options available to human beings for the body’s elimination of waste, only one is allowed on the bus.  I mean number one.  And no toilet paper is allowed to be flushed down with any elimination.  Who knew?

The result is a situation with the waste pipe in our mammoth vehicle that, in human beings, would require a good deal of Ex-Lax.  And as I understand it, in order to remedy the situation, our driver has to do to our drain pipe what James Herriot, the young vet in All Creatures Great and Small (if you remember the book or the fine BBC production made from it), was forced to do to clear the bowels of a plugged cow.  Believe me, whatever they’re paying our driver, it ain’t enough.

At any rate, we’ve learned our lesson, and now when one of us hears nature’s delicate call, we simply indicate that we “need to make an important phone call,” and the driver will find the nearest clean “phone” along the highway.

Two events yesterday: the first at Centuries and Sleuths, a lovely mystery bookstore in Forest Park, IL; the second in Milwaukee, WI, at the very intimate Mystery One.  Milwaukee has lovely real estate, especially on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.  Here’s a photo of me in front of an impressive water tower near the shore.

Events today in two of my favorite stores—Booked For Murder in Madison, WI, and Once Upon A Crime (my hometown store) in Minneapolis.

That’s all for now and here’s hoping I don’t have to make any “important phone calls” along the way.

Second crisis: We are currently headed toward a long line of severe weather.  Books and Co. in Dayton, OH, is our next event stop.  South and west of Dayton is a turbulent storm front that is producing tornadoes at an alarming rate.  Five people have been killed already.  North and west of Dayton is another front with violent storms along the leading edge.  We have a very small chance that we might be able to slip through the narrow clear area between these two storm systems, but it will be akin to threading the eye of a needle.

So, stay tuned.  Who knows?  This could be my last dispatch from the road.

We stayed last night in a hotel just outside Brattleboro, VT.  Determined to get a better sense of the landscape here, I got up at first light this morning and walked the two miles into town as the sun rose over the mountains of southwestern New Hampshire, just across the Connecticut River.  Lovely sunrise, gorgeous walk, quaint mountain town.  I’m partial to Minnesota, what can I say, but that love doesn’t blind me to the beauty of other places, or their unique nature.  Here are some facts about Brattleboro you may not be aware of:

Brattleboro is the oldest town in the state and also is the site of the first U.S. printing of the first Harry Potter book.

Brattleboro is mention repeatedly in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

Rudyard Kipling built a home, which he called Naulakha, just outside Brattleboro where he lived with his wife, a native of Brattleboro, for several years.  Here’s a photo of the plaque commemorating Kipling and his home.

The next photo is of another plaque in one the town parks, affixed to an impressive monument erected in memory of the Vermont soldiers who fought in the Civil War.  The  monument was erected in 1887.  Check out the name that, in Vermont in 1887, they gave to the Civil War.  When I lived in Texas, it was referred to as the “War of Northern Aggression.”  All a matter of perspective.

On tap today, an event at Mystery on Main Street here in Brattleboro, then we shoot to Albany, New York, for an evening event.

See you on down the road!

Okay, so here’s the funny thing.  Atria had arranged to pick all us author/bus-mates up at our hotel at 5:30.  So we’re waiting in the lobby for our ride.  At 5:20 I get a cell phone call.

“Mr. Krueger, your car’s out front.”

My car?  What about the other authors?

I step outside.  There’s a big sheet of paper with my name on it in the Town Car window.  My driver, a guy with a very thick east European accent says, “Yes, Mr. Krueger.  Car only for you.”

So I figure, they’re sending a car for each of us.  Those wonderful folks at Atria.  I step back inside, give the others the word that I’ll see them at Otto’s store, and my driver whisks me away, far down the island.  We get to the launch site and David Brown, our incredible Atria publicist and all-around great guy, gives me this horrified look and says, “Where are the others?”

Turns out, the driver was wrong.  Car was not only for me.

Everyone who’d gathered at the Mysterious Bookshop waited patiently while the other authors grabbed a cab and arrived only fifteen minutes late.  We all had a good laugh and agreed that if this is the worst snafu of the tour, we’ll be in great shape.

The launch, by the way, was a stellar event.  A packed house.  A wonderful way to hit the road.

The photo, by the way, is me beside our incredible bus.  I’ll tell you more about this traveling Taj Mahal tomorrow.

The Great Mystery Bus Tour is an enterprise mysterious in a lot of ways. From the get-go, The most perplexing mystery for me was my bus-mates.  John Connolly and I have met and talked before, but only very briefly.  M.J. Rose, I’ve known only by reputation.  And Liza Marklund was a brand new name to me. So the prospect of spending eight days trapped on a bus with strangers was the most unsettling element of this entire proposition.  But I like to think that I’m nothing if not adventurous, so what the hell.

We were all to meet yesterday afternoon at the Atria offices for an interview with Sirius/XM radio.  Just before that I had a great lunch with Sarah Branham, my ab fab editor.  She’s remarkable in so many ways—a great editor, a smart woman, a proud mom, a convivial lunch companion, and she’s from Texas, so every once in a while that quintessential “Y’all” slips out.  I love her.  Bottom line: Terrific lunch.

Afterward I sidled over to Atria for the radio interview.  I bumped into John first, and the guy’s so disarmingly charming who couldn’t like him?  Upstairs I met Liza for the first time.  She’s Swedish, and I’m from Minnesota, land of not only 10,000 lakes but also a gazillion Swedish immigrants, so she looked like half the neighbors on my block (well, not exactly; she’s ten times more gorgeous).  And M.J. proved to be two things—a fount of good advice on promoting this tour and really delightful woman.  The interview was a great success.  And my greatest fear was laid to rest.

I celebrated with dinner at O’Hurley’s, a fine Irish grill I stumbled onto at the corner of 72nd and Broadway.  Here I am toasting the day and all the blessings it delivered.  That’s a Harp, not a Leinie’s in my hand.  But I am wearing a Leinenkugel’s shirt!

We launch tonight at Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Bookshop.  Then hit the road.

I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow.

I arrived in New York City yesterday afternoon, and hit the ground running.  I  NY.  It’s a great city to visit.  Every time I come here, I do the same thing first: stand in line at TKTS to get a cheap seat for a great Broadway production.  This time it was Chicago. I know it’s an oldie, but I’d never seen it live.  It was wonderful, full of the glory that only Broadway seems to bring to a musical production.  Christie Brinkley, who stars in it, was awfully weak, but gave it her best shot.  Everyone else was boffo.

Atria is putting me up in the Flatotel, a nifty boutique-ish hotel just a couple of blocks off Times Square and an easy walk from Atria’s offices in Rockefeller Center.  All the authors on the tour—Liza Marklund, M.J. Rose, and John Connolly—have rooms here.  I haven’t run into them yet, but I’ve spent almost no time in my room, except to sleep.  I keep hearing the siren call of the Big Apple.

If I sound like a hayseed, that’s because I am, and very comfortable with it.  I love Minnesota.  I love Saint Paul, and love how it’s so different from New York or San Francisco or Seattle or any of the other great cities I visit when I’m on a book tour.  Saint Paul is home, and is there any place anywhere for anyone that feels better than home?

Today, I’m having lunch with Sarah Branham, my editor.  She’s fantastic, and I look forward to our time together, which is always too brief and the intervals between too long.  Then we gather back at the publisher’s offices for an interview—all the Mystery Bus Tour authors—with Sirius radio.

Tonight, I think I’ll have dinner somewhere near Central Park, and go for a walk.  I’ll let you know tomorrow how that turns out.

For what?  For becoming the person I would like to be.  And what is that?  A vision so mundane I’m a little ashamed to share it.  But here it is.

For starters, I want to be kinder and gentler.  I would like to be more forgiving.

I would like be less envious of the success of others.  When a friend or colleague hits a home run with a book, I would love to be able to celebrate that accomplishment without thinking that somehow their success is my failure.

I would like to be more generous.  My wife is a giving person, and I rely on her as a gauge for generosity.  At some point, when we discuss our charitable giving, I’d like the first number out of my mouth to match her best expectation.

I would like to remember the name of every individual who has told me in person that he or she enjoys my work.  This is especially true of those who’ve said this to me many times, but whom I continue to regard with utter cluelessness each time we meet.

I would like to write one thing that is true.  I don’t mean non-fiction.  I mean one thing that captures life truly, simply, and without artifice.

I would like to love more deeply, less selfishly, and with a broader stretch of my heart.

I would like to lose fifteen pounds.

I would like to become the writer I believe myself capable of being.

What is a resolution but a dream of what might be?  In my experience, dreams can come true, but only if you work on them.  Wish me luck.  And I’ll do the same for you.

All that changed in the summer of my twelfth year.  The instrument of that change was a librarian in a small Ohio town.

I was a Boy Scout then, and in that summer, I decided I wanted to earn the Reading Merit Badge.  One of the requirements for the badge was a period of volunteer labor at my local library.  So I made the arrangements.  On the day I went in to fulfill my obligation, I was put to work date stamping returned books.  This was long before computers, and I used a rubber stamp and an ink pad.  For a while, I sat at the checkout desk, pounding dates in place on slips glued to the inside covers—ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk.

After an hour or so, the librarian drifted over and asked the question I was afraid she would ask and therefore knew absolutely she would.  “Kent,” she said, “what do you like to read?”

I thought about lying, but was pretty much into that whole a scout is trustworthy thing, so I told her the truth: I really liked comic books.

She didn’t bat an eye.  She said, “Have you ever read The Count of Monte Cristo?”

I left the library with that Dumas classic under my arm.  And I came back a few days later for The Three Musketeers. After that, it was The Man in the Iron Mask. When I’d gone through everything Dumas had written, I asked the librarian’s advice, and she directed me to H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and Jack London and Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson.

If you read my work, you’ll see that most of my stories contain a solid element of adventure, something that can be traced back to the influence of those great stories I fell in love with under the guidance of a librarian whose name I have forgotten but whose kind wisdom I have always treasured.

God bless librarians everywhere.