“She’s a bad-ass, her own person, unapologetic about who she is. I have to publish her book,’ ” Cheiffetz recalls. “When I met Nora, I thought, ‘This woman is amazing. She says Nora’s authorial voice immediately grabbed her when she started to read the manuscript. Julia Cheiffetz, Dey Street Books executive editor, isn’t surprised there is so much interest in Purmort’s book. The idea that every book I signed was going out into the world to be read and held by somebody, that’s pretty incredible.” Purmort’s best memory was “when I opened the little curtain to sit down to sign books and seeing there were actually people there. It was like a cool senior being nice to a freshman.” I told her I was alone at a party and asked if I could stand with her. I found (author) Jennifer Weiner, who I follow on Twitter, and walked up to her ready to cry. I went to one party, but I am not socially fluent. “Everyone else seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing. (Being invited to sign your book at BEA is a very big deal for a debut author.) Purmort also has a self-deprecating charm that shows when she talks about signing her book earlier this month at BEA, the national trade show that draws more than 10,000 authors, publishers, publicists, booksellers, agents and others from the literary world. Now Nora, 32, has turned her funny, frank, intimate Internet writing into a book, “It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too).” They made news when their 2011 wedding streamed live on Ustream, and when the national media picked up the story of Aaron’s self-written obituary, in which he referred to himself as Spider-Man.

She writes that way, too.Īaron and Nora Purmort are old friends to some 200,000 readers who follow Nora’s nationally-known blog - and her writing on Tumblr about how the couple lived with Aaron’s cancer and squeezed a lot of joy into the years before he died. Blue-eyed, with a wide smile, she has a sympathetic manner that makes you want to share your deepest secrets. She’s so tall - 6 feet - she has to bend down to hug a short person she’s joining for a lunch interview. Nora is a popular blogger and now book author. These are the sweet, small things Nora holds in her heart about her husband, who died in her arms in 2014 after a three-year fight with brain cancer. “After he died, I found a folder in the computer of things I would like.” “Aaron knew there was no way he would use those tickets, but he always gave me the nicest things,” Nora says. When Aaron Purmort was dying, he bought two tickets to a Taylor Swift concert for his wife, Nora, that was 10 months in the future.

Pike's Plaque by Stephen J. McInerny