A mature writer finds an agent, gets a publisher and goes on tour: Postcards from the edge

 In my last post, I mentioned how helpful it can be to do local readings and interviews first -- before you go on tour with your book.

While I've been doing these local readings and interviews, I've also been writing. Not the writing I like to do best, commenting and posting on Gather. No, I've been writing postcards. Hundreds of post cards. Postcards to people I know slightly. People I might possibly know. People listed in my alumni directories. Why? So that I don't confront an empty room when I arrive to do a reading.

Have you ever tried trekking through those directories? It's time consuming and eye-ball rattling. First you have to find the years surrounding the years you were at school (or wherever). You note the people who live in the cities where you'll be reading (in my case Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and Minneapolis/St. Paul).

Then you need to find their addresses, but guess what?-- many of your alumni are women, and, guess what else, most of those women have married and most of those married women have taken their husbands' names (bless them). So now you must search under their married names and, Lord help you, what do you find? You find that hundreds of people have that same last name.

To add to the pain, those post cards that your publisher so kindly sent (at your request – were you crazy?) are filled with beautiful words about your book but leave no room for you to write a personal note, reminding them that you went to school with them at/or around the time that they did and that you will be in their city doing a reading at such and such a place at such and such a time and that you'd love to see them there.

By now, your eye-balls are screwed and so is your hand. You're not into cramped writing. Never have been. And its not just your writing that gets cramps. Your hand looks like it belongs to Quasimodo and you're not finished yet. You still have to stamp those cards and stick address labels on them. But where?

Now, if all those contacts you've so tediously dug up from alumni directories were Gather readers, and they somehow managed to blunder into your tour post on Gather, they'd find all the information they need. They'd say, Wow. Isn't that so-and-so? By golly, I went to school with her! By golly, she's written a book! And they might even decide to come and listen to you read.

But you, dear Gather reader, are here, so I'm going to post the link to my tour schedule again -- just in case you happen to live in, near, or around Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, or Minneapolis. I'd really love to see you there. Thank you!

P.S. Boston Gatherers have responded with incredible warmth -- many of them will be at the Harvard Coop on May 10 at 7 p.m. and have invited me to join them after the event. 

Boston, as probably know, is where the Gather.com phenomenon took shape and where Gather has its offices. Boston, is where I also get to visit those offices and meet the Gather.com staff.

So, if you get to go on tour with your book -- make certain to got to Boston first. The warmth of that launch is sure to set you flying.