Sand Dunes, Washington Island
I am not on the Island today, but I know how beautiful autumn can be there, and I am pining a bit.
Instead, it is my last day in Michigan before heading back to engagements in Wisconsin. It is a crisp September day that began with fog rising on the lake with the sun glowing through.
Tonight I will be at the Hackley Public Library in Muskegon. Stop by and say hello.
6 pm, Hackley Public Library
Muskegon, MI
So many writers have written about the humiliation of book tours: the awkwardness of sitting at a table waiting for strangers to approach. There are people who don’t want to buy a book and feel that it would be a form of rejection to stop and not purchase (and they’re right), but I hadn’t realized how many people are actually just shy. I watched today as people carefully turned their heads so as not to have to see me sitting alone at the table at Barnes & Noble. For the people who didn’t care it was easy. I could hail them and offer a bookmark which they could take or not, and they could then wander on. But there were several people whom I knew perfectly well wanted to engage in conversation, but who couldn’t bring themselves to do it. They lingered agonizingly near, sometimes for nearly an hour, but could never position themselves in such a way that I could catch their glance or smile and thus invite conversation.
I knew them, because they were me. I remember sitting next to Beverly Sills at dinner for an entire evening and hardly knowing what to say to her. I was 18 years old, and wanted so much to be an opera singer just like her, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Ultimately she took pity on me, but it was an opportunity missed.
Today I am going to see if I can engage more people. If nothing else it will be a way to pass the time.
I began this novel seven years ago. I didn’t know it was a novel then, and there were many times between then and now that I doubted it was anything at all. But here it is, a published novel, and tomorrow I will leave home–without dogs,and I haven’t explained that to them yet–to begin a book tour.
I am nervous, excited, and have a certain wry awareness that the life I abandoned as an opera singer–living out of a suitcase in strange cities–has come back to find me. Why? I wonder. There are peculiarities about fate at work here.
Nevertheless, here we go. At least there will be no one with bulldozers to ask me about the water lines.
So:
Saturday, September 20–Shelby Township, Michigan–Book Signing
2:00 pm
Barnes & Noble
14165 Hall Rd, Shelby Township, MI
Sunday September 21 Northville, Michigan–Book Signing
2:00 pm
Barnes & Noble
17111 Haggerty Rd, Northville, MI
Tuesday, September 23–Muskegon Michigan–Talk, Reading, Book Signing
Hackley Public Library
6:00 Pm
316 W. Webster
Muskegon, MI 49440
I have to admit that I am using this as an excuse for a four hour ferry ride to Michigan. Who wouldn’t?
Regular readers of this blog (both of them) are familiar with my distaste for Facebook. However, as a sop to Cerberus I knew I had to have a page to promote my book, North of the Tension Line. My editor and publicist at Beaufort Books, lovely people that they are, having heard of my misadventures, assigned an intern to set up a page for me.
Interns, of course, are college students–mostly English majors–hoping to gain experience so that they may beat the odds and find a job in their field after graduation. So, when they were asked to enter my birthdate on Facebook, they cleverly put in today’s date–the official launch date of NOTTL, and the most likely year for an adult to have been born–which is, obviously, 1993.
I woke up this morning to three different birthday greetings, all from people who know perfectly well how old I am, and who, therefore, were rather smirking in tone.
So, yes. Today is the birthday of North of the Tension Line, now officially out in the world. So please go purchase a copy. (Gratuitous cover shot to follow.)
For my part, I will alter my daughter’s suggestion of the traditional 21st birthday shot of tequila and celebrate instead with some nice champagne.
Although I may wait until after noon.
(Photo of Moses and me by Manning Photography)
My sister from out of town is staying at our lake cottage. She is being respectful of my writing time while she works on our late mother’s house, doing many things that I am tired of doing. She told me she didn’t want to distract me, and that I shouldn’t be worrying about her during this period of intense writing. But she did want to borrow a dog for company. Well, not “a” dog. She wanted snuggly, sweet Pete.
On her first night there she announced that we had mice or something in the ceiling. I did not find this alarming. Mice kind of come along with cottages, and much as I love animals, having seen what they do when we’re away, even I have been forced to take a hard line. So the situation did not seem particularly alarming or challenging. But when my sister began to describe what she was experiencing it began to seem unlikely that mice were the culprits. Scampering, twittering, scrabbling, and, yes, chewing.
I am living my own novel.
We went out to the cottage that night and were sitting on the couch drinking wine, looking at family treasures my sister had unearthed when she stopped me and said: Listen.
Above our heads we heard what I can only describe as the kind of squeals and squeaking you expect to hear in a Disney animation. This was not a squirrel. This was a colony. At least. And it had happened so fast. We hadn’t been away for more than two weeks. It actually was alarming. There were many, many, many animals up there. And they were apparently rather busy. From the sound of things, they were singing to themselves as they made a dress for the ball.
My husband gave me the lecture: You cannot be softhearted about this. You have to call an exterminator. There is no other way. I nodded and pretended to look reasonable, but I confess that I had no intention of exterminating an entire neighborhood of baby squirrels. Sometimes I wonder if he knows me at all.
The next day I called a company that my friend had once used to remove a bat. Or a raccoon. Or both. They specialize in trapping and releasing wild animals that have taken up residence in your house. They assured me that they would not harm the squirrels, and they even have a squirrel expert–although he has injured his back and is not as available as usual. They charge $149 for the house call, and $39 per squirrel.
They will be there at 8:30 this morning. And I suspect that the bill will be rather high.
We have some major landscaping going on here, and the place looks like a moonscape. There have been bulldozers and skid steers, the power company (three times), the stone and gravel guy, and, of course, a perfectly-timed autumn deluge to delay the whole process and increase the pleasure of muddy dogs and white bedspreads. No distractions here.
We live in the woods, and if there’s one thing we have a great deal of, it’s firewood. We had promised our neighbor and stalwart friend, Mark, that he could have the rather enormous stack down in the woods. It’s a long difficult hill to drag that wood up by hand, and he had been slowly tackling it over the course of the past year. With the new grading, though, it was suddenly possible to get his pickup down there without damaging anything, so we were hurrying–in advance of deluge–to load up the wood in the truck while we still could. We were down in the woods, throwing logs into the truck, unaware of what was going on up at the house.
When I came in to clean up for dinner there was a UPS delivery by the side door: a big stack of boxes. I swear it took me nearly three minutes to realize what they were:
100 copies North of the Tension Line.
Official retail shipments begin arriving Monday.
There are all kinds of interesting ways for authors to communicate with their readers and with one another, and on one site authors are asked to post photos of where they write and compose a little essay about it. Don’t tell my publicist, but I haven’t done that yet. Still, I couldn’t help feeling as if I should post this edition, not of where I write, but of what’s under where I write.
At the moment we are in the midst of post-construction landscaping, and maybe the sound of the bulldozer is scary. For whatever reason, Moses, who is always nearby anyway, is unusually close. I am writing with his head on my feet, and his ears pressed up against my knees. It’s kind of nice, actually.
It is a jittery place, knowing that your book is out there, and that strangers are reading it. North of the Tension Line is off press and ready to ship, so any errors in editing are now permanent. But the hundreds of Advance Reading Copies are out there like little seeds, taking root or dying. There are so many things to worry about, but they are all things that are stupid to worry about, because they are beyond my control. I can’t make people like the book. I can’t re-read anymore and correct. I can only wait, and hope. And try not to wait and hope.
As any writer knows, you put your heart out there and hope that no one stomps it.
It will be a good night for a long romp with dogs. And possibly a cocktail.
Any day now I am expecting a package from Beaufort Books filled with first editions of North of the Tension Line. When it comes, my friends will be receiving a spur of the minute call to come for champagne. Megan, Felicia, Michael, Eric–my team extraordinaire: I wish you could be here!
My sister and I needed a little break from the melancholy task of closing my late mother’s house, so we decided a little trip up the Door Peninsula was in order. With North of the Tension Line coming out in September (pre-order now!!) I thought I should introduce myself to some booksellers and shop owners. We ambled up the Peninsula and down the other side, and managed a brief 18 hours on Washington Island, too.
On our way home, we made a lunch stop at the Albatross Drive-In, which has a cameo appearance in North of the Tension Line. Everyone there was excited and happy about the book, and told me they would make my cheeseburger with extra love. Along with the best burgers on earth, the Albatross also sells Albatross t-shirts.
On the back is their slogan, excerpted from the sign below.
Z
And it’s all true.
J.F. Riordan 