Mitch Albom

To my readers –

We’re down to the final days before For One More Day is released. In some ways, I feel like I’ve been on tour for weeks already.

There’s been an enormous amount of activity with regard to this book – more than I recall on any other. We’re organizing a big charity event to launch it in Detroit on September 27th at the wonderful Fox Theater with Tony Bennett, Hank Azaria and Joe Dumars all coming by to help me. Planning it has been like planning Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s simultaneously. But it should be worthwhile, and can do some real good for the homeless in Detroit.

Joe and Hank and Tony, in addition to talking about their own lives, plan to read small segments from the book, and that honors me more than I can say. It’s amazing to hear your own words read by someone else, even a sentence. It’s one of those rare thrills a writer gets. Maybe – I can only imagine this – it’s like a songwriter when he hears someone whistling a tune he wrote.

One of the sentences in this book – which is about a broken man who gets a magical “last day” with his departed mother back in their old home town – talks about what happens when you lose a parent. The man sees his mother’s ghost, he whispers the word “mom” and then thinks, “When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.” Only a handful of people have read For One More Day at this point, yet already several have told me that particular sentence made them stop in their tracks. They were all people who had lost a parent.

This is one of those things, as I mentioned, that as a writer, when you hear someone repeat a sentence that you wrote, makes you feel that you have been blessed with a small shovel to dig into the word pile and find something that may be universal.

It is as good a feeling as it gets.

I hang onto that now - as the release day approaches and my nerves fray - and try to remember that that’s what you get into writing for in the first place.

I look forward to meeting you out on the tour, which takes me, in the first week, first to Orlando, then Detroit, then the Northeast – Albany, N.Y., Portsmouth, NH, Hartford, CT., Framingham and Chicopee, MA. For a full schedule, click here.

And on the morning of the 26th, the release date, I’ll be doing Good Morning America, around 8.a.m. Thanks for your belief in my work. I hope to see you on the trail.

Any questions, send them through this website and I’ll try to answer them in this blog or on the Q&A part of the site.

Cheers,

Mitch

A Note of Thanks

Hello to all. I didn’t plan on writing anything for this blog until closer to the release date of "for one more day" but people have been so responsive to the email we sent out a few weeks ago that I felt compelled to already say "thank you."

I am glad to read that the book’s theme is resonating with so many people who also wonder what it would be like to have one more day with someone they’ve lost.

Our plans for the fall are pretty extensive. I will essentially be going on a nine week book tour all across the country. I love meeting readers and this time I plan on doing a good amount of talks where I can tell stories about the books and my experiences and not just sit and mechanically sign books. I hope you are able to come out and say hello if I am anywhere near you. Check this website for the tour schedule. The first day the book comes out September 26th - I will be doing Good Morning America on ABC around 8 a.m., so if you’re curious about the book, that’s the first glimpse. The following day, in my home town of Detroit, we are having a gala charity event with Tony Bennett, Hank Azaria and Joe Dumars at the Fox Theater downtown. All the profits will help the homeless in Detroit, and the tickets include an autographed book. If you are interested in attending, we’d love to see you. Here’s the link to info…http://mitchalbom.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?aid=/20060829/features05/608290367

Mainly, I wanted to say how excited I am to see and hear early responses from readers. Launching a book is a nerve-racking thing, even more so if, like me, you don’t come out with new books every year. So your messages are much appreciated.

I’ll get the hang of this blog thing and be entering notes and thoughts all along the tour. So come on back anytime. Thanks for your good thoughts about "for one more day."

Talk to you soon,

Mitch Albom