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Adventures from an author’s book tour journal

Paula Wild's books

I went on my first book tour in 1995. Even though my pub­li­cist did all the ground­work and prepped me like a pro, I had no idea what to ex­pect. I still don’t.

The biggest un­known is the audi­ence. There may be two or there may be 200 plus, and the size doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily re­flect the qual­ity of your book, your name re­cog­ni­tion or all the work your pub­li­cist and the host have undertaken.

Return of the WolfWhat you can count on is that at some point, there will be a wild­card. My first was an eld­erly man, ob­vi­ously in some stage of de­men­tia, who kept ask­ing why all the im­ages in his book were dif­fer­ent from every­one else’s. Then there was the home­less wo­man who at­temp­ted to dom­in­ate the Q & A ses­sion with in­co­her­ent stories.

But the most wor­ri­some was the men­tally dis­turbed man (even­tu­ally in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized) who got a hold of my phone num­ber and called re­peatedly to say he wanted to “get me alone some­where” so he could tell me what ob­scene acts my friends were en­ga­ging in with chil­dren. In his first call, he said he’d been at my present­a­tion the night be­fore but there were too many people around for him to talk to me privately. The gig had ended late at night and vehicles left the isol­ated park­ing lot quickly. I was glad a friend had ac­com­pan­ied me.

’ll nev­er for­get the trip on a gravel road that was so full of potholes I kept look­ing in the rear­view mir­ror to see what part of the car might be fall­ing off. But at least I had con­trol over the vehicle’s speed and was the only per­son reacting.

That wasn’t so while fly­ing to east­ern Canada for a present­a­tion at a writer’s fest­iv­al. The wo­man on my left had a pan­ic at­tack when the plane ex­per­i­enced tur­bu­lence. Despite mul­tiple flight at­tend­ants of­fer­ing re­as­sur­ing words, as well as coach­ing on deep breath­ing, the dis­traught wo­man shrieked at every jostle. I asked if she’d like me to hold her hand and she said yes. Lunch had just been served so I nibbled at my sand­wich with my free hand. When the man on the oth­er side of me began moan­ing and hy­per­vent­il­at­ing, I put my sand­wich down and held his hand too.

My ac­com­mod­a­tion while on tour has ranged from me­diocre to wa­ter­front ho­tels. The icon­ic Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver’s west end is my fave. Quaint charm at its best. But that isn’t al­ways the case. At one des­tin­a­tion, I was es­cor­ted to an un­oc­cu­pied but fur­nished house where I was to spend the night. As we entered the front door, the loc­al or­gan­izer said, “Oh good, nothing’s in the traps. Yes, plur­al, as in five baited mouse traps.

Presentations in­volving PowerPoint can be tricky. I al­ways re­quest a tech per­son be present to as­sist with setup, but that isn’t al­ways pos­sible. Several times I’ve had to crawl along stage floors with the audi­ence look­ing on while try­ing to con­nect com­pat­ible cables.

Once, after re­cruit­ing a teen from a nearby cof­fee shop to get things go­ing, someone turned on the wash­room light at the same mo­ment someone else plugged in the kettle for tea after the event. The room was plunged into dark­ness and when power was re­stored the screen re­turned to “no in­put sig­nal found.” Once again, I ran down the street to get the teen.

A book tour of­ten means at­tend­ing as many gigs as pos­sible in the shortest amount of time. On one Vancouver tour, I was in­ter­viewed by two ra­dio sta­tions, ap­peared on three tele­vi­sion shows, gave a present­a­tion at the down­town lib­rary and had a photo shoot for the Globe & Mail all with­in 24 hours.

To say I was ex­hausted is an un­der­state­ment. That’s why hav­ing a good road­ie is a god­send. They can drive, carry boxes of books and sell them if necessary.

Yes, tak­ing ex­tra books is im­port­ant. Buyers may ex­ceed the host’s ex­pect­a­tions, or the ship­ment may be waylaid.

A road­ie can also be de­terrent to po­ten­tially dan­ger­ous strangers.   

Going on book tour is the coun­ter­point to be­ing a writer.  You are no longer se­questered in a room by your­self; you are at the head of a room in front of a lot of people, in many cases, most of them unknown.

It is ex­cit­ing and daunt­ing. Will they like your book? Will they buy your book? Will they stare at you in rapt awe or will they bom­bard you with awk­ward ques­tions? All are possible.

The im­port­ant thing is to re­mem­ber that you are an au­thor on book tour, which is some­thing to be proud of no mat­ter what happens.

Photo cred­its:

Woman with books Mykta Dolmatov/Dreamstime.com

Red car Irina Miroshnichenko/Dreamstime.com

 

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New Year’s resolutions vs New Year goals

 

As the dark days of winter creep to­ward the end of the year, many people con­sider res­ol­u­tions they want to make for 2025. I used to make res­ol­u­tions but some how they nev­er las­ted long. Two to four weeks was av­er­age. Two months was con­sidered a success.

Of course, that left me won­der­ing about my will power and feel­ing like a fail­ure. Gradually, without even real­iz­ing it, I shif­ted to a new way of mak­ing plans for a new year. I now make a list of goals.

Resolutions and goals are sim­il­ar but also quite dif­fer­ent. A res­ol­u­tion is some­thing you want to change.

A goal is some­thing you want to achieve. It in­cludes the steps you’ll take to ac­com­plish your goal and the date you plan to achieve it by.

It took me a while to fig­ure out what a goal is. I want to write a book and have it pub­lished is not a goal, it’s a dream. It’s like know­ing where you want to go but not how you’re go­ing to get there.

A goal goes some­thing like this: I want to com­plete an 80,000 word ma­nu­script by August 31, edit and re­vise it by December 31 and send it to a pub­lish­er or agent by January 1. To ac­com­plish this, I will work on my book for two hours every week­day and for four hours every Saturday.

Goals I know will be on my 2025 list are com­plet­ing a sol­id re­vi­sion of the nov­el I’m work­ing on and sev­er­al home im­prove­ment pro­jects to make my home more en­ergy ef­fi­cient and cool­er in the summer.

The home im­prove­ments – a ceil­ing fan, new blinds and new ap­pli­ances will be re­l­at­ively easy. Each one of those goals can be ac­com­plished with­in a month, leav­ing plenty of time for writing.

The writ­ing, how­ever, is al­to­geth­er dif­fer­ent. My cur­rent draft of the ma­nu­script con­tains 33 chapters. The thought of re­vis­ing that many chapters, es­pe­cially know­ing that half of them need ma­jor work, is daunt­ing. So, I’ll break the pro­ject down into man­age­able chunks.

Months that I’m work­ing on a fairly pol­ished series of chapters, I can re­vise four or more a month. While work­ing on chal­len­ging chapters, I may only be able to re­vise two a month so I’ll plan accordingly.

From past ex­per­i­ence I know it’s easy to be overly am­bi­tious and that mod­est, real­ist­ic time frames tend to be the most successful. 

But simply hav­ing a goal of­ten isn’t enough. To be truly ef­fect­ive ex­perts say you should write your goal down, make a com­mit­ment by telling someone your plan, and be­ing ac­count­able to that per­son. I con­sider my­self lucky to have two cre­at­ives – writer Caroline Woodward and artist Judi Wild — to share my goals with.

I try to be reas­on­able about what I can ac­com­plish yet push my­self a bit too. To be per­fectly hon­est, I nev­er meet all my self-im­posed dead­lines. But they keep me on track and mo­tiv­ate me to try harder.

Of course goals can be made any time of the year but I usu­ally map mine out dur­ing the last few days of December. I al­ways look for­ward to that in­ter­lude — the cusp of one year passing and an­oth­er be­gin­ning — and all the pos­sib­il­it­ies that brings.

Feature im­age at top: Night in the Forest, a paint­ing by Bev Byerley. 

 

 

 

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Winter is a time for Reading

 

When the days be­come short and dark­ness des­cends far too early, I reach for a book. What bet­ter way to trans­port my­self to an­oth­er era, place, or person’s life?

I come from a long line of read­ers. As a child, there were al­ways stacks of books in vari­ous places in the house. As far as I can re­mem­ber, there were no book­cases, just piles of books here and there. Some were for my grand­moth­er and par­ents; oth­ers for me and my three siblings.

As I got older, I slipped volumes from both piles, hap­pily en­scon­cing my­self in an­oth­er world.

For many years after I moved to Canada, my fam­ily vis­ited fre­quently. For some reas­on, they seem to travel in herds and of­ten my two-per­son house­hold ex­pan­ded to sev­en or even nine.

Of course, this meant ex­tra bed­ding and cre­at­ive sleep­ing ar­range­ments. But even more im­port­ant were lamps – some­times with ex­ten­sion cords – so each per­son could read in bed be­fore clos­ing their eyes to sleep.

Those in the know sug­gest that read­ing fic­tion is bet­ter for the brain as it re­quires ima­gin­a­tion. But I usu­ally have two books on the go at once. The day­time book is of­ten non­fic­tion, while the even­ing and bed­time book tends to be fiction.

Books I am or have re­cently read include:

There is a Season by Patrick Lane 

Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling by Michele Barker and David Griffin Brown

The Silent Girls by Eric Rickstad

Books on my to read list include:

Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen

The Waiting by Michael Connelly

Gumboots in the Straits: Nautical Adventures from Sointula to the Salish Sea ed­ited by Lou Allison, com­piled by Jane Wilde

Books open the door to oth­er worlds, both ima­gin­ary and real, as well as dif­fer­ent ways of think­ing, eat­ing and mov­ing. They are com­pan­ions on dark, winter nights and al­low us to es­cape the drudgery or demons of every­day life.

Top im­age: some old books by Dickens that my great-grand­fath­er brought around Cape Horn long ago.

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Give Canadian books for Christmas

Give Canadian books for Christmas. A nov­el idea some might say, but I’ve been giv­ing Canadian books as gifts since I im­mig­rated to the coun­try in 1971.

Canadian books in­clude every genre and can evoke every emo­tion. I’ve giggled, sniffled and even been creeped out on oc­ca­sion. Canadian au­thors have also in­formed and en­lightened me about our vast and var­ied mul­ti­cul­tur­al coun­try and provided in­sight into the hu­man psyche.

Most of my fam­ily lives in the USA. What’s at the top of their Christmas wish list each year? Books by Canadian au­thors. And chocol­ate, but that’s an­oth­er story.

This year, re­l­at­ives ran­ging in age from 13 to 77 will be get­ting Canadian books from this house­hold (and not just ones writ­ten by me or my partner).

I come from a long line of read­ers. Being read a bed time story was a favourite

Thanks to Canadian au­thors Steve Pitt and Kristen den Hartog for the idea, text and image.

part of my early fam­ily routine. I re­mem­ber the ex­cite­ment of fi­nally be­ing able to read books on my own. And the naughty thrill of drap­ing a tow­el over my bed­side lamp so I could do so late into the night.

Of course, Mom saw the light un­der the door. But in­stead of giv­ing me heck, she said it was okay to read but not to start a fire.

Turns out read­ing in bed is a fam­ily tra­di­tion. My re­l­at­ives tend to travel in herds. In the past, five or more have come to vis­it at once. And it doesn’t mat­ter if they sleep on the pseudo-Murphy bed in the sun room, on the futon in the base­ment, on the couch or on a cot, every one of them reads be­fore they go to sleep. Finding enough bed­side lights is more of an is­sue than round­ing up bed­ding and pillows.

Personally, I can’t think of a bet­ter way to spend a winter even­ing than cuddled up with a book by a Canadian au­thor. So, if it isn’t already part of your hol­i­day ritu­al, con­sider giv­ing Canadian books as gifts this Christmas.

I pos­ted parts of this blog in 2011 and 2015 but I still be­lieve in giv­ing books — es­pe­cially Canadian ones — as gifts!