After a brief return to Maine, I'm on the road again to do advance promotion for The Poacher's Son. This morning I'm flying from Portland (ME) to Portland (OR). Once I'm on the ground I'm making a pilgrimmage to Powell's, one of the world's great independent bookstores. Then it's off to dinner with booksellers and librarians at Wildwood. I'll let you know how it goes. But yes, this is a wild ride.
Red Deer Invasion
Most Americans don't realize that a lot of birds they see every day — starlings, house sparrows, and most swans — are not native to North America, but were brought here by well-meaning dunces a century ago. Scientific American tells the story:
The Acclimatization Society released some hundred starlings in New York City’s Central Park in 1890 and 1891. By 1950 starlings could be found coast to coast, north past Hudson Bay and south into Mexico. Their North American numbers today top 200 million. As bird-watcher Jeffrey Rosen put it in a 2007 New York Times article, “It isn’t their fault that they treated an open continent much as we ourselves did.”
In Maine, we might now be facing a red deer invasion thanks (or no thanks) to a careless venison farmer. The red deer are unlikely to do to white-tails what starlings did to bluebirds, but the clueless Levant farmer who unwittingly let them loose should be held financially responsible for the renegade round-up.
As an aside: It tells you something about my home state that this story is currently the most read article in the weekend edition of the Bangor Daily News.
Desperate Times Call for Hopeful Measures
I met Robin Agnew who owns Aunt Agatha's, a small mystery bookshop in Ann Arbor, on my recent pre-tour, and she gave me some great recommendations about crime writers I need to read, as well as lots of wise advice about building a career as an author. She also has some interesting insights on the innovative steps everyone in the book business — publishers and booksellers alike — are taking to sustain the industry now. For instance, Minotaur is sending me out on the road to build buzz for the The Poacher's Son even before the novel drops—instead of after it hits the shelves, as was traditionally the case. Meanwhile, Aunt Agatha's is refocusing its efforts around author events and used-book sales.
Robin's description of me at our dinner as "very nice, very excited, and somewhat overwhelmed" is accurate, I'd have to say. At least the "excited and overwhelmed" parts. I'm in no position to pronounce on my own niceness, but I'm glad she thought me so.
Coyotes Kill Canadian Singer
There have been several truly horrific stories in the news the past few days, and I haven't been watching enough television to know whether this story has received much coverage in the U.S., but I wanted to blog about it because my second novel, currently in progress, deals a bit with coyotes and how the Maine Warden Service deals with them.
Like nearby Nova Scotia, Maine is home to the larger eastern subspecies of Canis latrans. These animals have been much vilified by deer hunters who have seen them, rightfully, as efficient competitors. So over the years I've heard lots of horror stories — many far-fetched — about the viciousness of coyotes. But the truly terrible experience of 19-year-old Taylor Josephine Stephanie Luciow, who was attacked and killed by two coyotes last week while hiking on Cape Breton Island, has certainly made me question some of my assumptions. I'll be a bit more cautious the next time I encounter a coyote in the woods, for instance.
But I'm thinking also of the politics here. Isolated incidents shouldn't drive shifts in wildlife management policy (and it's still unclear, as best I know, whether one of the animals was rabid), but I wouldn't be surprised at all if sportsmen and their lobbyists use the tragedy in Nova Scotia for reinstituting Maine's coyote-snaring program, for example.
In any case, you can't help but feel for Luciow's family as they grapple with the sad and surreal experience of losing a daughter this way.
Pre-Sell Tour Day #3
I'm on my way back to Maine this morning and it feels like I've been gone a week although it's only been three days. But flying hundreds of miles each morning can play tricks on your internal gyroscope.
Last night's event was a dinner at Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, and my companions were a delightful mix of booksellers and librarians. Their excitement and interest in my novel was exhilerating. I felt myself to be among friends. Again I signed some galleys and realized I need to come up with an assortment of inscriptions for all occasions. It's no picnic to be witty on demand.
When I returned to the Marriott, I checked my email and received a surprise. A Google Alert popped up referring me to a story on the Huffington Post on the state of contemporary crime fiction and I was mentioned favorably.
The publication date of The Poacher's Son might still be a ways off, but every day this author thing becomes more real.
So I'm going home to Maine for five nights and then it's off to the book-loving Pacific Northwest.
To be continued...