Slightly under 24 hours from Tulsa

Who would have thought it?  I have become a character in a song.

I am, as Gene Pitney warbled, 24 Hours from Tulsa. Actually, at the time of writing, slightly under 24 hours, but that doesn’t scan.

When I list the cities on my book tour, American friends all exclaim: “Tulsa???” as if I’d said I was taking detour via the moon.

But Booksmart in Tulsa looks like a brilliant independent book store of a kind that is dying out in the UK. And they’ve hosted far more eminent writers than me – David Sedaris, Yann Martel, Jonathan Safran Foer, to name just a few. I’ll report back tomorrow.

Last night I was at the public library in Atlanta. An audience of about 25 included two former airforce men who had been at Wheelus Airbase in Tripoli in the time of King Idris, before Gaddafi seized power. Also a Peace Corps volunteer on a quick trip home from Jordan, who was about to marry his Jordanian fiancee.

Travelling round America should be easy compared to the kind of travelling I normally do, but this is not necessarily so.

I nearly missed my first radio interview in New York, because the train from Washington stopped to rescue another train and its passengers. Hotel rooms have aircon which turns them into small ice-boxes, and it’s generally beyond my technical ability to turn it off, so I have to wear a fleece despite the heat outside. My phone is so ancient, it won’t recharge.

But people are very welcoming, and enthusiastic. “You must buy this book!” thundered one radio interviewer, live on air. “It’s amazing!”

At Politics and Prose, the bookstore in Washington where I launched the book on Monday, a woman who asked me to sign a copy said, “We were just passing by, but it sounded so interesting, we stayed and bought the book.” That, I guess, is the point.

Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution is published by Penguin USA.

Follow @lindseyhilsum on Twitter