[Prestidigitweeze]

New York happens to be worldwide in the sense it's one of the few cities in the States that people from all over the world visit frequently.

On the other hand, I'd love it if people in Melbourne and Berlin posted, too. You never know -- I might just have booked a flight.

I'll be doing readings in Prague in the fall as well. Posting about that locally seems less logical than posting about it here.

Also, it isn't a "promotion" in the sense of selling anything. I've never promoted my books or magazines here. The only thing I've ever posted about was a piece I wrote for my mother's funeral last November. That wasn't to promote anything but her memory, since very few people came to her funeral and she deserves to be honored. That's why I offered it to people for free by email -- not through official channels, where it would benefit my career, but through me, as a shared personal file.

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No doubt a few of the authors who will read at both events will be promoting themselves. That isn't my concern. The more important objective is to foster a sense of community, as Robert Coover tried to do for me and many other writers at Brown University. In that sense, the events are meetings as well as readings.

We ought to get over our desire to be rock stars and move on to the idea that connecting with other writers and readers is just a healthy thing for nearly everyone to do.

Re the event this Saturday: We'll go out for a bite or a drink afterward, no doubt. We'd love to have a member or two from Mobile Read share one of our tables (we usually need two or three).

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And the reason live readings are relevant to Mobileread is because the site is about reading and writing as well as eReaders.

Truthfully, I'd much rather post about readings here than on a spoken word site. Here, people tend to read fiction primarily -- specifically the novel. Whereas in the world of spoken word, the emphasis is frequently on the performance rather than the writing.

A friend of mine gave a TED talk recently. I'm wondering, too, where she could post about that. After all, it wouldn't be a promotion in the literal sense. She just wants her idea to be considered.