Tuesday: Rock Star Day: interviews, stock signings, media escorts

Tuesday:

I woke up about 1:45 in the morning my time, ’cause I was afraid of oversleeping, and I hadn’t slept all that well anyway. Got up at 2:30 (I’ve pretty much not switched to PT, not that it’s a big switch, but I pretty much haven’t), showered, debated whether or not I could not dress up, decided I couldn’t not dress up, and so by, y’know, like, a quarter after three in the morning I was hanging around my hotel room looking like a million dollars. :)

…

First interview was the one they double-booked, so I ended up not being on the air until about 5 to 5 PT, and only talked to them for a few minutes, but it was fun anyway. They asked more Alaska questions than I’d wanted, but they got back on track and we generally had a good time and I can’t remember a damned thing that really got talked about, except I’m pretty sure I at least plugged the website. And evidently they called the PR people and said I was delightful, so go me. :)

I think the second interview was the one with Jerry, except Jerry had left the station in the two or three weeks between the interview being set up and the interview happening, so the woman I talked with (Teri? Toni? I have to find out what her name was) didn’t really seem to know I was going to call, but she winged it nicely and it was another fun talk. (I mean, they’re asking questions about me and my writing. How could it not be fun?)

The most memorable Tuesday interview was the Louisiana one. The interviewer had both read and thoroughly enjoyed the book, and she was very excited about the whole thing. Plus, she started out (while I was on the phone listening, but not participating yet) plugging some local java joint and talking about their cinnamon rolls and stuff, so by the time she got to me and asked how I was doing I was like, “Hungry! And you were teasing me with all that talk about cinnamon rolls!” So we got off to a good start, and she had not only read the book, but also my webpage, where it says things like my hobbies include moose-wrestling. That made her laugh a lot, and she wanted to know if we really saw moose a lot, and she had good questions about the book (none of which I remember right now, of course…usually I’m better at remembering conversations in detail, but it *was* awfully early in the morning), and later when I talked to the PR people they said she wanted to do listener give-aways for the book, so she really was pretty gung-ho on it. That was neat. And her daughter, who had also read the book, was disappointed she couldn’t be at the studio that morning, but she’d gotten sick so missed out. She was listening on the radio, though, Louise said. :)

Well, I do know some of what she asked–these were some of the pretty typical questions:

How’d you come up with the idea for the story?

Ted and I were flying into Seattle and he looked out the airplane window and said, all thoughtfully, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if you were flying into a city and you looked out the window and saw someone running down the street with a pack of dogs or something after her? What would you do?”

And that essentially became the opening scene for URBAN SHAMAN. (I also said to Louise, “When we got the first copies of the book, Ted said, “I feel like I’m holding our first child! I had the idea, and you did all the work!” which made her laugh very hard indeed. Hee hee! *She* said that she would never look out the window as she flew into a city the same way again.)

How was Jo’s background developed?

I took my own Irish heritage and Ted’s strain of Cherokee and used those as my basis for creating Jo. I also wanted her to be involved in a police department without actually being a cop, and in a position of being a kind of tough girl, so she became a mechanic in the motor pool at a police station, so that gave me plenty to play with.

What’s a shaman?

From my reading, what I understand is that a shaman’s primary function in his society is as a healer. He’s a wise man, a medicine man, someone who can guide a person through the steps necessary for both mental and physical healing, though he can’t force healing on anyone.

How do you do your research/are you a shaman?

I’m not a shaman, and I did my research by reading books about shamanism and shamanic cultures literally all over the world. It was fascinating, because there are elements that really are very similar from one end of the world to the other, from the Australian aboriginals to Native Americans, from South America to Mongolia. So after reading all these books, I started taking bits that I liked and working them together into a magic system of my own. I don’t claim it’s “real” shamanism, but then, that’s why I’m writing fiction!

(Fortunately, before I left, Dad said, “Don’t be afraid to say the same things over and over,” and while I don’t think I would’ve been anyway, that reminder was certainly helpful.)

There were also some of the, “How’d you get to be a writer,” kinds of questions, and she asked if I thought there were more readers today than there were, say, ten years ago. I said that thanks to a wonderful fellow named Harry Potter I certainly thought there were more fantasy readers than there’d been ten years ago, and bless him for bringing so many new readers into the genre. I got that kind of question more than once, in fact, and I thought it was pretty cool to kind of be able to talk about the state of the industry a little.

Oh, and also, “What should people do if they want to get where you are?” questions. And, y’know, I quoted Yoda again: there is no try, only do. The hardest part is developing the discipline to sit down and *write*.

…which reminds me that I don’t think I posted the discipline essay on cemurphy.net before I left. I’m going to have to do that when I get home (I’m on the airplane right now).

God, it was all so much fun. I remember that the Minnesota guy didn’t say so in so many words, but fantasy wasn’t really his genre. He thought I’d put together an “interesting story”, which is kind of what Ted’s grandmother said, too. Polite way of saying not my cup of tea. :) However, he said that off the air, and on the air he said all the right sorts of things, and because I know eight zillion people in the MN area I was able to say if you wanted to buy at local bookstores, Dreamhaven and Uncle Edgar’s (I really shoulda said Uncle Hugo’s, but my brain went flat) would definitely carry the book, so that was kind of nice. That’s something else I need to do–email Uncle Hugo’s and offer to send bookplates.

By the time I was done I was ‘zhausted. I ate some breakfast and took a two hour nap, interrupted by cell phone callsin the early part of it, then met Christine for lunch and got to reiterate how things had gone. :) Then Susan whose last name I didn’t get, our media escort, arrived, and more or less the first thing she said to me was, “Don’t tell me how it ends!” *laugh* She said one of the great things about being a media escort was that it made her read books that she probably never ever would have read otherwise (including URBAN SHAMAN) and she was *thoroughly* enjoying the book, so she was awfully glad to have been made to read it. :)

Susan was completely awesome. It turned out she’d lived in Anchorage for several years, so we talked and talked and *talked* about Alaska (poor Christine!), and just yammered on about all sorts of things. The drive out to Tacoma didn’t take as long as anybody expected it to, so we arrived ahead of schedule and as we were getting out of the car they told me that I was *really* going to have to work on my diva author attitude, because I was *much* too friendly and laughing way too much. *laugh* So for the rest of the afternoon I kept saying, “Oops, I shouldn’t have said thank you, right?” and stuff like that. *laugh*

They told me stories about other authors, including one woman who’d been set up with a media escort that Christine had used before, and the escort called Christine and said, “So what is *with* this woman?” Christine said, “What, is she a bitch?” and the escort said, “No, she’s *mute*!” Apparently the escort had shown up, done her spiel, introduced herself, all of that, and the woman hadn’t said a word. Not a word in the car, not a word at the station, nothing, until the on-air light came on, and then for 25 minutes she was the most charming, vivacious person you’d ever seen. The on-air light went off, and she went mute again. And, I mean, they weren’t naming names or anything, but I was thinking: don’t you realize these people *talk* to one another? Very strange! Very strange indeed!

Of course, Seattle’s often the last or one of the last stops on an author tour, so people are tired out, but still, an “I don’t feel much like talking,” just seems so much nicer than not talking at all…!

At the Redmond Town Center, the manager at the Borders we stopped at had left me a *fan letter* in the pile of books she’d set out for me to sign. She said she was off shift by the time I’d be there, but she’d read the first chapter during her break and that she absolutely loved the voice and the protagonist and that she couldn’t wait to finish reading the book! *falls right over*! And Christine said she’d never seen that happen before! *falls over some more*! Isn’t that *cool*!?

And finally we went to the University Bookstore, which–let me take a moment to do a very happy dance about that indeed. Two years ago at Writer’s Weekend, there was talk from people from the University Bookstore saying they wouldn’t be carrying the Luna line, because it was a Harlequin imprint and they Didn’t Carry Romance. Even though the Luna line is a fantasy imprint, they weren’t going there–it was Harlequin and Therefore It Was Romance. So the fact that they *are* carrying them makes me *very* pleased indeed. I was thrilled beyond belief to have it in my lineup of stores for stock signings. (So was Christine, who’d been sending authors there for years but had never been there herself!)

So we got there and we found Duane, who is the SF/F guy. Duan is a very tall man indeed, whose height does nothing at all to make him imposing because he has that particularly self-effacing manner that is found in many shy geeky types. He was somewhat embarrassed, because there were only three copies of the book on the shelves (table, actually; it had a table display), “But,” he said, “there were five here earlier today!” I assured him that it really was okay if there were only three copies on the shelves because the rest had sold. :)

He actually brought us up into the stock room while he collected the rest of the books they had in the store, which was pretty cool! None of us had ever been in a bookstore stock room, so it was like seeing the Inner Sanctum. They had about five more copies of the book there, and he said he had five or eight on order for the booksigning at Writer’s Weekend on Saturday, and did I think 15 or so books would be enough? (“How many of your friends are going to be there?”) I said I thought it’d probably be enough, and sat down to sign the books while he asked a bunch of questions, many of which Christine didn’t know the answers to.

Fortunately, I *did* know the answers–he was asking about when the Luna titles would be coming out in mass market paperback, and … other things I don’t remember right now, and I was able to tell him the four that were coming out this summer and the strategy that I understand Luna to be taking with what books they’re releasing in mmpb first, so on and so forth, and Christine’s sitting there in amazement while I’m answering and she finally said, “I need to be on whatever email list *you’re* on!”, which I thought was pretty funny. :) (that was a very long sentence.) But afterward Christine was quite pleased, because it was her opinion that *I* was the one who needed to make the connection with the bookseller, and since I was the one who actually knew all the answers and was carrying on the conversation with him pretty much by myself, she rather thought that had happened. :)

So I got the books signed and they got put out on the table, and I told Duane I looked forward to seeing him at the conference that weekend, and we took our leave. Susan asked if it’d be okay if we picked up her husband (I *must* have been nice–I thought the idea of her asking that of some of the other authors she’d talked about was just Right Out) so they could catch a movie at the Seattle International Film Festival that was going on. We went by their house (she apologized for it being such a mess. Christine and I were gaping around at it and saying, “Would you please come to *our* houses and mess them up?” *Beautiful* house, and if that was a mess, then when it’s clean then it’d probably be too rarified for me to breathe in there!), we got her husband, and we headed downtown again, where she admitted the real reason she’d wanted to get her husband early (I cannot remember his name right now, darn it) was because the Alexis had cocktails and hor d’ouerves for $15 and she could park for free ’cause she was with me! *laugh*! “This is what it’s like to be used for your fame!” she said to me. I told her I thought I could live with that. *laugh* Actually, she asked if I minded if she took advantage, and I was like, “Er, no, it’s not exactly any skin off my back!” So that was funny. *laugh* I met good people on this trip!

I went up to the hotel room and called Ted and Mom and Dad and told them all about my day before dinner, and when I met up with Christine she said she’d taken a nap, which I said was probably much more sensible than having spent the hour and something on the phone. She said, “No, no, that’s just what you should have done, telling everybody about your rock star day!”

And that’s exactly what it was. *beam* A rock star day. I loved it. *beams more*