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John Reed is our guest blogger during the week of September 8th. If you have any questions for John Reed, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some more information about All the World's a Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare:

 An epic tragedy of love, war, murder, and madness, plucked from the pages of Shakespeare

In All the World's a Grave, John Reed reconstructs the works of William Shakespeare into a new five-act tragedy. The language is Shakespeare's, but the drama that unfolds is as fresh as the blood on the stage.

Prince Hamlet goes to war for Juliet, the daughter of King Lear. Having captured Juliet as his bride-by reckless war-he returns home to find that his mother has murdered his father and married Macbeth. Enter Iago, who persuades Hamlet that Juliet is having an affair with Romeo. As the Prince goes mad with jealousy, King Lear mounts his army. . .

This play promises to be the most provocative and entertaining work to be added to the Shakespeare canon since Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. 

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At one point in my life, I wrote obits by day and did stand-up comedy at night.

These things may seem to have nothing in common at first glance. But they taught me a lot about balance. I learned to write passages that would hopefully evoke laughter or sympathy. I also learned how to quickly switch gears emotionally. I thought about that last night when I did my first stop of my paperback book tour.

My father-in-law, Floyd, always wanted me to do an event in Spokane, Wash., the town where he lived. He lobbied Auntie's, the local bookstore, who in turn lobbied Penguin. We knew back in March that I'd be doing an event here. He was just as proud of me as my own dad would have been had he not passed away nearly 28 years ago.

So, as I stood up to start speaking, and tried to warm up by telling a few jokes, I thought of that time when I wrote obits and did stand-up comedy. Missing from the crowd was my father-in-law, the one who most wanted me to speak here. He died suddenly of a stroke back in April. I mentioned this to the crowd, and my eyes seized with tears. I literally felt my throat catch. I couldn't talk about him. No one wants to see an author cry, even if the word is in the title of her book.