The book tour is winding to a close, and I'm back to being a writer again after several hectic months of being an author. My feelings are mixed: part hallelujah, part letdown. Being on a book tour is exhilarating, exhausting, fun, tedious, gratifying, occasionally humiliating, and totally consuming. Here are some of the highlights: Favorite indie bookstore: Lemuria in Jackson, MS

Best meal: Big bloody Porterhouse steaks at Doe's Eat Place in Greenville, MS

Funniest outdoor ad: Seen somewhere in Tennessee or Arkansas, a billboard sponsored by the Council for Healthy Marriages (or something to that effect) showing a man lying under the covers in bed with a dead deer, and a headline that said, "Hunting won't keep you warm nights."

Most elegant venue: The Arts Club of Chicago

Favorite radio station: 95.5 Hallelujiah FM in Jackson, MS

Most humbling moment: The live interview I did for a local news program in Memphis where I was bookended by what was clearly the star attraction of that day's show, a guy eating a 7.5-pound hamburger

Most surreal moment: Sitting between Cokie Roberts and Peter Carey on a dais in an Indianapolis ballroom inexplicably designed to look like a Mexican Village circa 1900, eating lunch in front of 950 women, all with pink quilted book bags

Coolest hotels: The Hotel San José in Austin, TX and The Alluvian in Greenwood, MS

Strangest sight: The life-size diorama of a small T-Rex frolicking with Adam & Eve in paradise at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY

Loveliest views: Oxford, MS as seen from the balcony at City Grocery; the horse farms of Lexington, KY as seen from the plane; and HOME, when I finally got back here after two months on the road