I'd barely unpacked from a book tour of Amsterdam and Belgium when I had to head straight into a tour of America. Yesterday, I was in Washington D.C., Boston, Albany NY, Texas and Santa Fe. Today I've been to Louisiana, Colorado Springs, Grand Rapids Michigan, Tulsa Oklahoma. Tomorrow I'm mostly in California. And then for the homestretch, I zip from Iowa, back to Oklahoma, then to Connecticut and New York.

I'll need a stiff drink at the end, but just think of the airmiles.

Or not.

Because it's a radio book tour -- conducted over the phone from London.

Which means I can sit at my desk, or lounge around drinking a cup of tea in bed, and the phone rings, and a nice voice from far away says 'Howdy, is that Meg? We're on air in two minutes.'

Most segments are live and range from 10 minutes to an hour, and the strange thing about live radio is that you always think it'll go horribly wrong but it never does.

The lovely thing (besides being able to wander down to the kitchen for a snack between Colorado and Michigan) is that it reminds me how nice and broadminded and unstuffy and articulate so many Americans are. And they probably don't rate Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney much either.

Though I refrained from asking.

Unfortunately, when I hear a lovely expansive accent down the line, I respond in kind.  So when the sweet interviewer from Oklahoma says, "Well, ma'am, you hardly sound British at all!" I find myself answering, "Bless your pea-pickin' lil' ole heart!" and wonder what the hell is wrong with me.

Stop it! I tell myself, and then ten minutes later I've gone all California and girly and enthusiastic, and it's all faintly Kafka-esque, except instead of waking up as a cockroach, I wake up as Laura Ingalls Wilder or (shoot me now) Sarah Palin.

Well, I'm off now to Iowa. And thankin' ye kindly, folks, for readin' mah lil' ole blog.