On Friday, I wrote about two authors who were reading at the University Book Store that night. Kathleen Rooney, who has written a book titled Live Nude Girl, and Kyle Minor, author of the short story collection In the Devil's Territory, are doing 24 readings across country together in a tour called, cleverly and unimaginatively, "Live Nude Girl In the Devil's Territory."

At each stop in their tour, they're reading with a local author. Seattle's author was Jonathan Evison, who read a delightful new piece about a man putting a bandage on another man's dick at a party. Rooney was pleasant and laid-back (she thanked the audience for laughing at one point) and Minor was heavier and more atmospheric. After the reading, they invited everyone to a bar across the street. It was a really good time.

Rooney and Minor are blogging about their tour here, and it's a really interesting look into what book tours are like. Just before the tour kicked off, Minor was informed that his teaching job had dried up:

(What will I do for work now? How will I find a new job this late in the game? Will we have to move? Will we have health insurance? Will my children be angry with me for getting them into whatever mess is sure to follow?)

And he writes a compelling list of his touring experience thus far:

19. The trays of Twinkies and tiny hot dogs arranged like a kaleidoscope of candy cancer at the University Bookstore in Seattle;

But Rooney is doing most of the regular reporting, and it's quite a range of subjects—photos of the people and places they see on the tour, what Joan Didion packs when she travels, dog costumes. I heartily recommend this blog if you've ever been to a reading and wondered why the author is acting so weird: It's because he or she is committing the very un-authorial act of traveling around and meeting a lot of people.