These days, authors sometimes seem to spend as much time talking about their books as they do writing them. Not that that's a hardship for us. After all, how bad can it be to have a profession where people ask you to stand up and talk about yourself?
This comes to mind because I'm in Duluth - "Stride Country," as I call it - for book signings for IN THE DARK, and I spent Friday morning doing radio interviews. Being in the media sometimes feels like stumbling right into the middle of a Carl Hiaasen novel. Case in point: I arrived at the radio station at 7:00 am to find myself surrounded by a man in a swimsuit who was about to get a tattoo live on the air, a man dressed as Britney Spears carrying a Pomeranian (also dressed as Britney Spears), and a college girl who was going to get her hair cut by one of the DJ's - who was blindfolded at the time.
And me. As I mentioned when I was on the air, I was glad I had already got my hair cut before coming up to Duluth.
So book marketing is a time when you feel closer to the entertainment side of the business. On the other hand, it doesn't make much to ground you back in the darker side of life - the side that Jonathan Stride deals with every day in my books. During the morning, I also had a chance to talk to a woman who had dealt with a stalker for more than twenty years. I could see the tension in her emotionally and physically as she described her experiences. She was hoping to get the message out in one of my books about the struggles that victims go through in those circumstances. That's when the line between fiction and reality tends to blur. For me, it's part of the variety of inspirations, many drawn from true crimes, that twist and turn and wind up in my plots.
Meanwhile, then it was back to the media. I had two newspaper interviews on Friday afternoon and a video blog to film. And then we got around to the real business of the day - signing books. I visited one of Duluth's indie bookstores to sign copies of IN THE DARK and chat with readers. Nothing makes you feel better as an author than to feel the enthusiasm that fans have for your books and how eagerly they await each new novel. I had a reader in Fargo who wrote to me earlier in the week to say she had braved flood waters to get to a bookstore to buy IN THE DARK - only to find that the store was closed because of the flood!
I told her I was flattered she had risked her life to get my book. But next time, wait until the waters go down...
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