The Ayelet Waldman publicity tour for her new book got off to its first start today with an interview in USA Today.

Waldman’s newest book, Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace, goes on sale Tuesday. She tells USA Today that she’s prepared for controversy akin to what came after she confessed in 2005 that she loved her husband more than her children.

“I am a little bit more protected now because 1) I have a feeling that it might be coming, and 2) I have fail-safes built in,” she told the paper. “I love reader mail, and I do read it, but I won’t read hate mail.”

Waldman also gave an interview to her hometown paper, the Berkeley Daily Planet. She tells the paper her new book is “half memoir and rant…and half social commentary on what contemporary American women find themselves in, the parlor game of how a mother feels–eternal ambivalence, anxiety.”

Waldman will be giving readings throughout the next two months across the country, beginning next week in Washington, D.C. on Monday and New York on Tuesday. For more information, head to her Web site.