Pre-Tour Day #6

The last official day of the Portland-to-Portland tour, and it was just as well because my body has decided to give out on me. Spend enough time in airports and you're destined to catch a cold, which I did just in time to meet the most influential librarians in Seattle and the surrounding areas.

On the way we stopped at a B&N where I met a fellow Mainer who buys books for the store. When you're the editor of this magazine you find Mainers everywhere.

Then we had lunch at Cafe Campagne that looked excellent for everyone but me since I had no appetite by that stage and an increasingly sore throat. I tried to summon my inner reserves for the conversation with local librarians (the lunch was organized by the one and only Nancy Pearl). This was a great group who had really read and reflected on the book. The conversation that took place was very engaging, but of course you always hope to bring your A game to these events, and it's hard when your dragging. In any case, I wish the lunch had gone longer.

Despite my illness, my hosts were gracious and understanding and I promised them that I would return some day at the beginning of the trip and not the end, so they could meet my usually charming and witty self.

Pre-Tour Day #5

I'd been planning on updating this blog every day of the tour, but the pace has been such that I need to catch up to give you a retrospective sense of the experience.

This concept of promoting a new author months ahead of the pub date isn't exactly new in the book biz, but I gather that these pre-tours have worked well for Minotaur recently; with the marketplace already crowded it's smart to get out ahead whenever you can. I've come away really awestruck by my publishers' faith in this novel, needless to say.

Day #5 involved a drive from Portland to Seattle and then a visit to Amazon.com. It struck me as fitting that there's actually a Starbucks on one of the higher floors, doubling as an informal gathering place for meetings like this. Amazon is really keen on multimedia promotions so it was intriguing tossing around ideas about how I might leverage my "platform" (today it seems all writers are required to have a platform" an odd concept that embraces the idea of life expertise, general media savvy, and a willingness to do some of your own heavy lifting in the marketing department. No longer is it enough to write a fine book). We also visited a great indie store, Elliot Bay Books before heading to dinner at the top-notch Dahlia Lounge. We had a larger group (and fortunately a private room) for this one.

As was the case in Portland the night before, I was implored to perform my rude version of a moose call to demonstrate my Maine bona fides as we were leaving the restaurant. Seattle must be quite a worldly (or jaded city when you can stand on a street corner and wail like a moose and very few passers-by give you a second look.

Pre-Tour Day #4

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.