The week behind, the week ahead

#1 in dog books! Kudos to Amazon for creating so many subcategories that I could be #1 at something

Next week, I promise, we’ll get back to our regular format here, with my 10 favorite things of the week and so forth. But this morning I want to do a quick recap of DOGLAND’s first week out in the world, and give a preview of my upcoming week on tour.

Let’s actually flip that around. I’ve got three tour dates in the coming week:

• Tuesday night at the Mary C. Jenkins Community Center in Brevard, NC, sponsored by Highland Books (in conversation with Lisa Rab)

• Wednesday night at Malaprop’s in Asheville (free but registration required)

• A virtual event Thursday night sponsored by the Hudson Library and Historical Society in Hudson, OH (registration required)

If you’re around or available, I’d love to see you at one of those. More dates in the weeks to come:

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I want to quickly mention three perks that I’ve got coming up for paid subscribers to The Writing Shed.

1. Sometime in the next week or two, I’ll send all paid subscribers a bonus passage—a section I cut from DOGLAND but still really enjoyed writing.

2. Maybe a week or so after that, I’ll do an Ask Me Anything Q&A for paid subscribers only … I want to make sure people have a little time to read the book first. I’ll send out notice about that shortly.

3. Finally, I’m offering a signed bookplate to any paid subscriber who bought the book but hasn’t had the chance to get it signed some other way. A bookplate is a label of sorts that you can affix to the page so you can have a signed copy. If you’re a paid subscriber, just send me an email to tomlinsonwrites@gmail.com with BOOKPLATE in the subject line and your address in the body of the email. I’ll start getting those out right away.

If you’re interested in those perks but you’re not a paid subscriber yet, well, now’s the time:

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So I couldn’t have been happier with the official book launch this past Tuesday night in Charlotte. Big crowd at the ImaginOn Library uptown, lots of old friends, signed a lot of books, hugged a lot of necks.

I posted a batch of DOGLAND-related interviews and essays in my newsletter that ran on pub day, but since then there have been a few more:

I spent an hour talking to the great Mike Collins about DOGLAND on Charlotte Talks. We managed to talk about bitches AND male dog-parts on public radio!

The Washington Post published a thoughtful and fair review.

I wrote a piece for TIME on how spending so much time among the purebreds made me appreciate mutts.

I was a guest on the lovely Thoughts From a Page podcast.

And I have to mention that Tom Nichols, a staff writer for The Atlantic, reposted my piece on Twitter/X about how people sometimes cry harder for their pets than for the people they love. Tom has a big following and that tweet apparently touched a nerve—as I write this Saturday morning, it has almost 108,000 views and many, many comments.

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A quick story before I go: Friday afternoon, I stopped by Park Road Books—for my money, the best bookstore in America. They had asked me to come by and inscribe a few books that readers had requested, and sign a couple of boxes of books they could keep in stock.

They set me up at a little table at the front of the store. I was there maybe half an hour. And I’ll be damned if we didn’t sell five copies of DOGLAND while I was there.

My favorite moment was when a young man walked in the door, watched me sign books for a moment, and wandered over.

“What’s this book about?” he said.

“Well,” I said, “it’s partly about the Westminster Dog Show. But it’s really about how dogs and people have bonded with each other over thousands of years.”

He picked up a copy and joggled it in his hand like he was judging its weight. After a few seconds he looked up.

“OK, he said. “I’ll buy it.”

I’m not sure if he’s going to read it or use it as a doorstop. But either way, thank you, bud.

—TT