Sarah E. Moffett

The first phase of book tour is over.  Twenty locations, approximately 10,000 miles, a lot of Kerouac, Vonnegut, and Bellows, and a world of stale cokes and summer storm plagued airline flights later, I’m home.   I’m tired.  And I’m contemplative.

Deal with it.

According to my publisher, the next phase of book promotion is regular posts on the web page (see SEM blog, blog SEM, blog), spreading word of mouth, and other intangible ideas involving me and a lot of subtle promotion.   As one recent article observed, there is no way of knowing what sells books and what doesn’t. So you just keep doing “stuff.” Whatever that is.

Now as I sit at my desk, I’m passing on a moment to focus on the joys of being a first time author (read: Dante’s 5th level of Hades) to take a moment to appreciate what the past sixteen weeks of dehydration, road fatigue, and oddly shaped pillows has taught me.

Packing one’s running shoes has no bearing on whether one will run while traveling.

5000 songs on an iPod is not enough.

When Cracker Barrel starts looking like a good option for a “home cooked meal,” you’ve hit rock bottom.

If the shape of my bent, stuffed, and mutilated mail is any indication, my mailman has declared war on me.

“What is the difference between a twang and a drawl?” “Oh sweetie, it’s money.”

East coast metropolitan readers want a reading, a signing, and references. Southern readers want you to mail them the book with an autograph. Midwesterners could care less about the reading or signing as long as we get a decent meal in together and some pictures. Westerners want to know why I didn’t include Moffett County Colorado, but will buy the book anyway because I’m “cute.”

Book touring during the summer in which J.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, and Stephanie Meyer released their latest and greatest is a bit like being an unknown opening act touring America one week behind the Beatles.

And last, but only slightly least…In the corporate world of Italian suits, meticulous grooming, and corporate sanctimony, emotions are separated from existence with a brain surgeon’s precision.   Book tour reminded me that there is a real world, one in which people are not “parties” or sterile nouns noted on court filed document. Where emotions are gritty, palpitating, enmeshed experiences, tangled up with who we are, what we are, and what we will be.  

This is life. 

And that Dorothy was right. There is no place like home.

Acknowledgements.  Everyone and every place that taught me to see the world through different eyes.   Thank you.  You have made me a better person.

[Listening to South.]

Share This