Posted Wednesday, Apr 18, 2012 - Bookselling this Week
By M.J. Rose
I write this from onboard the Atria Mystery Bus Tour now. Liza Marklund, John Connolly, William Kent Krueger, and I have been on the road since Thursday night and are just at the halfway point in our journey.
Tours conjure romantic images of exploring and investigating and discovering new sights, sounds, tastes, smells. But this isn’t that kind of tour.
We don’t get to see the towns or cities we visit. We don’t even really see what’s outside our windows because the bus is wrapped with a skin of our book covers so the view is diffused and subdued. Even when it’s not raining, which it is, now.
What we do is drive to a bookstore, disembark, go inside, speak for 40 minutes or so, answer questions, sign books, and then step back on the bus. We get lunch on the bus while we drive to the next store,where we rinse and repeat, then get back on the bus, drive for a while more, have dinner on the bus, and then eventually get to a hotel, where we sleep overnight, and then in the morning drive to the next store and do it all over again. Some stretches between stores are two hours. Some six. It’s a lot of road.
Sort of like being in a pneumatic tube that’s gone from NYC to Madison, Connecticut, to Framingham, Massachusetts, to Brattleboro, Vermont… You get the idea.
My bus mates are not only fabulous writers but wonderful traveling companions. Writers are by nature loners so we are good at giving each other space on the bus. But when we feel like talking the conversations are fabulous.
We’re all so different. John is Irish, Liza is Swedish, and Kent is a self-professed hayseed, while I’m a born and bred New Yorker.
But what we share is a passion for writing, reading, and for the purpose we’re on this bus — to spend time with readers and booksellers. They feed us. They sustain us. And they inspire us.
It’s the booksellers and readers that make the wheels go round.
More at Bookselling this Week.
I write this from onboard the Atria Mystery Bus Tour now. Liza Marklund, John Connolly, William Kent Krueger, and I have been on the road since Thursday night and are just at the halfway point in our journey.
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| M.J. Rose is the bestselling author of 11 novels. Her latest release is The Book of Lost Fragrances. |
We don’t get to see the towns or cities we visit. We don’t even really see what’s outside our windows because the bus is wrapped with a skin of our book covers so the view is diffused and subdued. Even when it’s not raining, which it is, now.
What we do is drive to a bookstore, disembark, go inside, speak for 40 minutes or so, answer questions, sign books, and then step back on the bus. We get lunch on the bus while we drive to the next store,where we rinse and repeat, then get back on the bus, drive for a while more, have dinner on the bus, and then eventually get to a hotel, where we sleep overnight, and then in the morning drive to the next store and do it all over again. Some stretches between stores are two hours. Some six. It’s a lot of road.
Sort of like being in a pneumatic tube that’s gone from NYC to Madison, Connecticut, to Framingham, Massachusetts, to Brattleboro, Vermont… You get the idea.
My bus mates are not only fabulous writers but wonderful traveling companions. Writers are by nature loners so we are good at giving each other space on the bus. But when we feel like talking the conversations are fabulous.We’re all so different. John is Irish, Liza is Swedish, and Kent is a self-professed hayseed, while I’m a born and bred New Yorker.
But what we share is a passion for writing, reading, and for the purpose we’re on this bus — to spend time with readers and booksellers. They feed us. They sustain us. And they inspire us.
It’s the booksellers and readers that make the wheels go round.
More at Bookselling this Week.
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