Award-winning author Jenny Milchman is the founder of
Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day and chair of the Debut Authors Program for
International Thriller Writers. She also goes out on very long book tours as
you’ll discover from reading what she has to say today. Learn more about Jenny
and her books at her website.
Sheer Bliss or Utter Insanity? The Story of the
World’s Longest Book Tour
I’m not usually one for
titles, but I believe I should be in the running for this one: She Who Goes on
the Longest Book Tours.
OK, as a title it may be a
little cumbersome. As a reality, though? It fits. When my debut novel came out
last year, I traveled 7 months and 35,000 miles. My second novel is out now,
and I’m on the road for another 4 months and 20,000 miles.
When I met mystery writer
Mary Stanton at Murder on the Beach in Florida last year, she said, “I would
rather eat rats than do what you’re doing.”
Did I mention that my
husband and our two children are along with me? He works from the front seat,
kids are “car-schooled” in the back. And just to share a few more details…we
rented out our home in New Jersey to cover costs, traded in two cars for an SUV
that could handle Denver in February, and gave up a place at the kids’ charter
school.
Why did we do all that?
Well, there are many reasons, and none include my having a taste for
rat—although I will say that Mary is not alone in her thinking. There’s a look
I receive that ranges from incredulous to fall-on-the-floor shock when I
describe our exploits.
But when it takes you
thirteen years to get published, a few things happen. The first is that the
road to that “first” book—my debut was actually the eighth novel I had
written—becomes something of a quest. And a dream. Another is that a great
number of people become supports and supporters along the way. Once It finally
happened, I wanted to get out there and thank everyone who had kept me going
all those years.
I also have a deep belief
that no matter how the web has widened our worlds—and it has,
wonderfully—there’s nothing like the connection that takes place in real time.
I have seen this occur over and over—and over and over and over some
more—during our ten months of traveling. A handshake or a hug is different than
a smiley face emoticon. Both enrich our lives. When the twain meet,
though—that’s when the real magic happens.
There’s a robust and lively
bookstore scene that doesn’t reflect the messages we get from the media. Small
town America and Main Street are thriving, thanks in part to a renewed penchant
for locavorism—and this is happening in cities, too. Bookstores often become a
hub of this revitalization in astonishingly creative ways.
I have sat down to a
ticketed three-course dinner held off-site by a bookstore—it was like a wedding
with books. Square Books in Oxford, MS brings in 200 attendees to their regular
author radio and music night. The Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, PA holds
a coffee & crime brunch. Yum. Macintosh Books on Sanibel Island, FL goes
for lunch a little later in the day. I could go on and on, describing events
that draw attendees from as far as three states away.
As much as I love them,
bookstores aren’t the only sites I visit. Libraries, book clubs, schools and
other even more outside-the-box locations bring people together for a lively
discussion about books, culture, and our lives.
There’s a practical reason
for getting out there—if not for seven months, then perhaps for seven days—and
it’s about introducing a book to readers in ways that are less focused upon
these days. When a bookseller who never otherwise would’ve discovered your book
continues selling it a year after it’s come out because her customers tell
their friends about it…that’s word of mouth in action, and WOM may be the only
real way we know to sell books. Zigging while others are zagging also just
makes good sense—you stand out, and that’s awfully hard to do amidst today’s
clamor of voices.
But there are also what I
call reasons of the heart. Is the driving hard, especially with two kids in the
back? Sometimes, I guess, but if you find a school, you find a playground, and
kids don’t need much more than that when they’ve got their parents with them.
And there’s nothing like turning the whole country into a classroom—watching
those same kids come alive over civil rights or environmental infrastructure or
The Hunger Games in that evening’s bookstore.
About those nights spent in
bookstores. When you walk into an audience of one—which you will do, no matter
how big you become—and that person doesn’t buy your book, you might think,
“What am I doing out here?” But then say that person buys a different book, one
you recommend, so the bookseller is happy. And say he tells you that he didn’t
buy your book because he already owns two copies—one to read, and one to keep
pristine. And then he tells you that he has to go—because he’s got a
three hour drive home after coming to see you, which he did because your book
meant so much to him.
That’s a reason of the
heart. And believe me, it’s a lot better than eating rats.
Ruin Falls
Liz Daniels should be
happy about taking a rare family vacation, leaving behind their remote home in
the Adirondack Mountains for a while. Instead, she feels uneasy. Her children,
eight-year-old Reid and six-year-old Ally, have only met their paternal
grandparents a handful of times. But her husband, Paul, has decided that
despite a strained relationship with his mother and father, they should visit
the farm in western New York where he spent his childhood.
The family doesn’t make
it all the way to the farm and stops at a hotel for the night. And in the
morning, when Liz checks on her sleeping children, all of the small paranoias
and anxieties from the day before come to life: Ally and Reid are nowhere to be
found. Blind panic slides into ice cold terror as the hours tick by without
discovering a trace of her kids. Soon, Paul and Liz are being interviewed by
police, an Amber Alert is issued, detectives are called in. Frantic worry and
helplessness threaten to overtake Liz’s mind.
But the children are
safe. In a sudden, gut-wrenching realization, Liz knows that it was no stranger
who slipped into the hotel room and kidnapped her children. Instead it was
someone she trusted completely. And as the police abruptly wrap-up their
investigation, Liz identifies the person who has betrayed her. Now she will
stop at nothing to find Ally and Reid and get them back. From her guarded
in-laws’ unwelcoming farmhouse to the deep woods of her hometown, Liz follows
the threads of a terrible secret to uncover a hidden world created from dreams
and haunted by nightmares.
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