After our reading in Austin Saturday, I began talking to BookWoman owner Susan Post while we and others from the event relaxed over a beer at The Tavern, a bar next door that, according to Susan, had its soul ripped out when the new owners tried to clean up its dive-bar image. It was the least interesting bar I saw in a weekend of book reading and bar hopping (favorite Austin bar by far: Deep Eddy's — please tip bartender Yuri heavily). But Susan's conversation and an epic baseball game on the tube made up for the Tavern's neutered atmosphere.

Susan has run BookWoman for 34 years. Her little store on the corner of 12th and Lamar has survived and evolved while many other feminist stores have faded away. I wasn't sure how we'd be received at the store, but I knew we were in a good place when the audience and staff erupted with laughter as Ray Shea read a passage about Doc Severinsen eyeing the pretty girls in the crowd and saying, "Oh look at that! Give me some of those long beads, quick!"

In fact, the reading was great. It was short — the whole thing was about 30 minutes — and it left the crowd of nearly 20 wanting more. That's the way a reading should be, since your ultimate goal is to get people interested in your book. Dave, Juliette and Ray did a nice job of showing the breadth of our book, too, with the sad procession of brake lights that closes "Corners of the Quarter," the humorous tales of summer movie theaters from Juliette, and Ray's "I Was a Teenage Float Grunt," which has become our reliable closer, like Lynyrd Skynyrd saving "Free Bird" for the encore.