read this, go here: Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo.

To write a novel is to constantly visit other places in your head. Just yesterday, for instance, I went to the Edinburgh Yarn Festival without taking off my slippers. But sometimes – for sanity, for fresh air, for a refill of the creative well, for the sake of different footwear – you need to actually get out of your chair and go. So, this fall, I took a two week hiatus from novel revisions to visit South America.

It was my first time traveling to the continent, and with such a huge choice of amazing places to go it was hard to narrow it down. My husband and I landed on three cities: Santiago, Chile; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Montevideo, Uruguay. I like to read local when I travel to far-flung and exotic places, and once there, to see whatever bookish places there are to see. Here’s what I found, and read, in South America (while eating my weight in empanadas).

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book signings are hard.

Guys, Boston Book Festival is here. I finished reading The Heart Goes Last, in by far my speediest read-time this year, so I’m fully prepared for Margaret Atwood’s keynote session tonight. I have my dogeared, marked-up copy of A Handmaid’s Tale on me in case I get the opportunity to get it signed, but to be honest, I’m nervous. The last time I came face to face with a real live novelist, I sort of blew it. Let’s learn more!

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