The Essential Guide Rocks America Tour: NPR Love in DC

One of the joys of going on tour is getting to hang out with old friends and to make new ones. Arielle first met Jessica Goldstein when she was fourteen. And they’ve been friends ever since. But because Jessica lives in Washington DC, they don’t get to see each other nearly as much as they’d like.

When we were booked into the DC area for the first stop on our tour, Jessica asked if we would like her to throw a book party for us. As you can probably guess by this gesture, Jessica is one of the more generous people on this earth. Naturally, we were excited to meet her friends and to have a night just to hang out and talk to all kinds of interesting people.

Jessica, and her husband Peter, are both producers at NPR. So they are surrounded by a plethora of interesting folks and many of their friends are voices that we hear over the airwaves every day. Arielle also happens to be an NPR fanatic—while David feels soothed with the sound of sports in the background, Arielle is most at ease with the hum of NPR.

For those of you who don’t follow the book business closely, NPR is kind of like the Vatican, the Yankee Stadium, the Disneyland to published authors. Get on NPR and watch your Amazon numbers skyrocket! So when Jessica told us she was going to fill her house with NPR friends and colleagues, we were literally jumping for joy. We’d get to meet some of our favorite radio journalists and we’d get to tell these folks about our new book ourselves. The alternative was to have our publisher send the book in and have it sit next to the one billion other books winging their way to the NPR offices as we write.

Jessica asked us if we would prepare a little something to say during the party. We knew this was a great idea, but we suddenly found ourselves star struck. What would we say? How could we avoid sounding stupid? Taking a page out of the boy scout’s book, we decided we must be prepared. We huddled in a corner while Jessica zoomed around prepping for the party.

The guests arrived. We greeted, conversed, had a really fun time…and then it was our turn to do our thing. David has performed in front of thousands of people in his life and Arielle has done her fair share of performing. And we both agree, it can be much more nerve-wracking to perform in front of a small crowd in a living room. But we managed to tell a semi-coherent story about how our book, our love, and our child, came to be. And how Jessica, our lovely host, was in part responsible for the book’s birth. You see, seven years ago, when we first came up with our Putting Your Passion into Print Workshop, Jessica got us booked onto NPR’s Talk of the Nation. Our publisher got wind of this appearance and asked us to write a proposal on the subject. That proposal turned into our new book.

So this blog post is really to say a big thank you to our old and wonderful friend for her past, present and future generosity and kindness. We love you, Jess!