Some of you no doubt felt a pang or two of envy when I shared the news that NPR would be airing "audio postcards" by Mark Peter Hughes as he and his family travel across the country promoting his most recent YA novel, Lemonade Mouth. Your envy might well be replaced by sympathy now, though, as NPR told Mark this week that they won’t be doing the series after all. The producer originally working on the project had to pack off to Alaska and apparently no others were available to take on the task. Talk about a disappointment!

There are a few consolations here, though. 1. ) Mark did make it onto the airvaves in May with a commentary on the act of quitting his job to write full-time, and 2.) The beautiful Hughes brood is continuing their cross-country Lemonade Mouth tour unabated and reportedly with great success. You can track their progress on Mark’s blog, which is replete with entertaining photos of the journey, descriptions of bookstores or booksellers, and funny accounts of Mark learning about things like chaps.

I propose a toast to Mark, who got closer to the NPR dream than most of us ever will, and who’s pursuing the ambitious "cross-country book tour" dream without waiting for a publisher to hand it to him.