Ficlets

So, I’ve been on tour for a week now, and here are a couple of things I’ve learned about how book tours are:

1. There is no time. All the things you thought you were going to be able to do, like sightsee and hang out for hours on end with pals? Not so much. You travel, you land, you do your appearance and possibly some media event or stock signing at bookstores, then you go back to your hotel room, stare glassily at your e-mail for a few minutes and then pass out. And the next day you do it again! Wheeee!

Which is not to say that you don’t get to see friends and such: You can, and I have, which has been good for my sanity. But it does take a little bit of planning, and also, hopefully your friends don’t mind being dropped into a schedule. When I was in San Francisco, my sister came down from her mountain in northern California to see me do my reading and wanted to spend a little time with me. I said to her “Great, I can pencil you in at 2pm.” Which makes me sound like a jerk, to be sure. But it was true – that was the time I had (we had a nice get-together).

I was fortunate that here in LA (where I am until 1pm, when I head to Arizona), my publisher was kind enough to give me a day off – I had a whole 24 hour stretch where all I needed to do was sleep and see friends. It made a real difference, because after four straight days of running around, I needed a bit of a break.

To be clear, I’m having a blast on this tour – this is fun for me. But I’m amazed at how little time I have. This is good to know. A week ago, for example, I was under the impression I would have at least a little time to, you know, write part of the next book while I was on the road. Now I know how silly and naive that was.

2. Handlers are good. For this tour, at nearly every stop I’m at, there’s someone who picks me up from the airport, drives me to where I need to go, tells me where I need to be, and basically keeps me on schedule and helps me do the things I do. My first thought when I looked at my schedule and saw I had handlers was “Yay! An entrourage!” – now I know what it’s like to be J-Lo.

Having worked with some now, however, I realize just how damn useful these folks have been. Maybe other authors do things differently, but I’ve been in a little bit of a daze since the tour began, and I suspect that if I didn’t have someone gently nudging me in the direction of where I needed to go, I’d still be at an airport somewhere, walking in circles and subsisting on cadged packets of airline peanuts. And that would be no good.

3. Readers are awesome. I originally typed “fans” instead of “readers,” but I don’t think “fan” is the right word. Fall Out Boy has fans. I have people who read my work and then have been kind enough to show up when I come into town and let me know that they’ve like my work. And some of them have also been kind enough to give me gifts: Yesterday here in LA, one of them became my bestest friend ever by handing off to me a In-N-Out T-shirt and a gift certificate to the place (in you’re not from Southern California, you may not know just how awesome that was); when I was in Seattle, a reader provided me with original art of what he thought one of my aliens looked like, which was terribly cool as well. Others, knowing I was on the road, have made gifts of reading material.

Basically I feel like the folks I’ve been meeting have made it their mission to help me get through the tour with some amount of sanity intact, and boy, do I appreciate that.

4. Touring is a performance. If you watched the Google appearance thing in the last entry, you’ll see that when I’m talking to folks there I’m just this side of completely manic – lots of talking and gesturing and walking about. This is me being “on.” On the car ride from Google to Berkeley, to my next appearance, I was pretty much comatose (ask my handler). Then when I was at Berkeley, I was on again, signing books and chatting with folks at the bookstore. Then back in the car and another session of being utterly comatose until I got to the airport. When I’m on, I’m on, and when I’m off, I’m entirely off.

Again, maybe this is just me – maybe other authors gradiate between being “on” and “off” better when they’re on tour than I do. But I’ll tell you what. When I was younger I used to do a lot of concert reviews, and sometimes I would go backstage and meet the musicians, and it always seemed like they were wandering about just a little stunned after being on stage. I always wondered if they had dosed themselves pharmaceutically, but now I suspect it was just the normal process of dropping into a lower energy state after a performance. If that’s the case, I have a hell of a lot of respect for them, since I’ve been doing this for a week so far, and they do this sort of thing for months. Yes, they get groupies and I don’t. It’s still a lot of work.

And now I have to get ready for another flight – see you all in Arizona in just a little while.