My First Time, Two of Them.

The Tennessee Williams Literary Festival hits New Orleans this weekend. Here's a little something I did about my first appearance there as a published novelist.

January of 2005, I sat backstage at Tipitina's, trying not to throw up. My band was about to play Tip's for the first time. With ten minutes remaining before show time, the romantic thrill of playing drums in such a storied New Orleans venue had all but evaporated. I stared at the photos on the surrounding walls. The Neville Brothers, the Meters, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Dr. John, Professor Longhair himself, they had all played on the stage I was about to take. I was a long way from the soulless strip malls of Staten Island, on the edge of one of the funkiest stages in the world's funkiest city. I struggled to believe I belonged out there. Did I really have the chops to play Tip's? Was I really a New Orleans musician? It was a true David Byrne moment: "How did I get here?"

Now, we weren't opening for Galactic or the Dirty Dozen. We had a good-sized crowd but hardly SRO. Joe "Cool" Davis introduced us, but he mispronounced the name of the band. We got an hour to do our thing. When we finished, our set hadn't set a new benchmark in the annals of New Orleans music. But it was Tipitina's. I broke a sweat under the same low-hanging lights as Mean Willie Green, Russell Batiste, and Zigaboo. I held my own. Listening back to the soundboard mix the next day, I heard the tension in the first song or two, but I heard some swing, some funk from the kit. I didn't exactly throw down, but I didn't throw up. And, most importantly, I'd earned my way onto a stage that I had longed to play.

On a Friday afternoon in March of 2009, I experienced similar sensations at the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival.

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While I have loved the drums since I was a kid, my real artistic aspirations have always been literary. I've never wanted to be a professional musician, but I've wanted to be a novelist as long as I can remember. That happened in August 2008 when Putnam published Fresh Kills, my first novel. A bigger moment than I'll ever have onstage, that publication landed me a spot on the festival's First Novelists panel. An author cancellation put me on another Friday panel, this one including Laura Lippman. In drumming terms, it was the equivalent of being asked to talk rhythm with Neil Peart. I had the David Byrne moment all over again.

At literary festivals, there is no backstage. The afternoon of my back-to-back panels I loitered, nervous and overdressed, outside the Bourbon Orleans ballroom and signed copies of my novel for the bookseller's table. I thought of the times I'd attended this very festival as a writer looking for a break, listening enviously to the authors, craving not their seat but the accomplishments that had put them there. And then there I was, finally one of the speakers, and I was practically wrecked at the prospect of sitting at that table. A part of me wanted to just go home and smoke cigarettes on my porch. But I stayed, sucking down ice water and wondering what kind of writers' conference didn't have coffee urns in every corner of every room. I waited, mostly, to take that step out of the crowd and onto the stage.

There on the bookseller's table, across the covers of their books, ran the names I was suddenly among: Amanda Boyden, Nevada Barr, Tim Gautreaux, Laura Lippman, Richard Ford. I hadn't written a dozen bestsellers like Barr or Lippman. I hadn't won the Pulitzer like Richard Ford. But like that night at Tip's, I had a moment of appreciation for how far I'd come, even if I had reached only the foot of the publishing mountain. Taking a seat at the ballroom table as an author was a long way from those high school writing workshops in the basement of the New York Public Library, New Dorp, Staten Island branch.

When the first panel started, settling in beside the other authors, I didn't feel like puking, but I did feel like laughing. Listening to the moderator read my name and credentials, I tried to relax. Nobody expected me to be the brightest, wisest author ever to speak in public. And I did belong there. My qualifications sat signed and stacked on the table out front. Still, I felt more connected to the SRO crowd of expectant readers and writers then I did the "real" authors. I felt newly minted, still damp from the cocoon, and it wasn't just the nervous perspiration. But nobody told me to get down. Neither of the "real" authors chased me off the stage. So I stayed where I was.

Eventually, the moderator put forth the first question. The Flannery O'Connor scholar answered. The best-selling author offered her comments. My turn came. When I spoke, heads nodded. People listened. I held my own. I felt the tension seep away and I found my groove. For the next hour, on went the show. When the first panel ended, I snuck outside for a smoke before the second, feeling loose and warmed up, ready for a second set.

Back in the ballroom, as I took my place among the other new novelists and another crowd filed in, this one larger than the first, I realized I had only another hour to savor my first time in a place I had longed to be. But I was also moving up the mountain, leaving first times behind me like mile markers on the trail.

This essay ran in 2009, in its original form, on Nolafugees.com.