Life is a carousel, I am on the big white horse with the golden mane, the brass ring sailing around and around.Maria and I were joking as we sat at the special table set up for us at Battenkill books.Did you ever think when we got together that you would ever be signing 240 books in one afternoon? No, she said, never. We took another step towards the goal of selling a thousand copies of “Second Chance Dog: A Love Story” through the Battenkill Bookstore, my local bookstore.
A bit shipment of books came in from Random House today, the books were all signed and accounted for by 7 p.m., another big batch is coming tomorrow, Connie Brooks is very eager to ship them out quickly. This is not just my story, it is our story, it is the story of me, Maria and Frieda, so it is wonderful that she signs it too, and so telling that everybody wants her to sign t.
Connie has given her a box of colored pens and pencils, so she can do her artistic flourishes. If people call to buy the book while I am there, I ask to speak to them, and I spoke to a half-dozen people this afternoon, it is especially sweet to talk to them, Maria talked to them also. As always we are doing this together, it is a beautiful scene to be sitting at that table in this beautiful bookstore in upstate New York surrounded by piles of my books, Red sitting right alongside, Maria signing away with me,we recognize so many of the names – this one bought a scarf or a potholder, that one e-mails me often, this one posts on Facebook, it was an oddly intimate and connected kind of evening. Connie and Kate and Marilyn are well organized, they have a system – one pile for people who only want signatures, another for those who have specific and detailed inscription requests.
It is tiring, but good tiring, we will be back there in the afternoon tomorrow and perhaps throughout the weekend. I’ve signed more than 500 books already at Connie’s there are hundreds more ready to go out. My hand hurts, but it is wonderful to sign so many of my books, this is what the book tour is all about, a blending of the old and the new. This unconventional book tour has some traditional elements to it, people love the paper book and cling to it. And tomorrow, some special offerings for Facebook, I want to keep the momentum going.
In the meantime, we are heading for l,000 hardcover books sold at Battenkill, I am signing a lot of “Merry Christmas” inscriptions, you can buy the book on the store website or call 518 677-2515.
It is wonderful to be doing this with Maria (and Red and Frieda too), it is our story, from beginning to end, and we are proud and excited to be telling it.
Every time of year has it’s own light, I love October light, I love indirect light, as most photographers do, our time is the early morning and late afternoon. I think of November light as the gateway to winter light, a cold, thin light that can be quite beautiful if you capture it just right. This afternoon, I felt the gray and the cold, I saw the beautiful November light on Red and the donkeys during the afternoon chores, it brought me peace and joy, as beautiful light does.
Be careful what you wish for, Random House sent a truckload of books to Battenkill today, and they are all sold and accounted for, Maria and I are heading over around 4 to sign as many as we can tonight, because another load of books is coming tomorrow, they are also all sold. Connie wants to get them out to people quickly, she is a hard taskmaster.
We are heading towards 1,000 books sold at Battenkill Books, my goal for this week. As more and more people figure out that this is a Christmas book or Plaid Friday book it is, the orders keep coming in. Maria and I will sign and personalize all books purchased from Battenkill and there are more incentives – give-a-ways of photos, books, a Frieda potholder and vouchers for free dog food.
My wrist still hurts from last time, but I never tire of signing my own books, this is a happy situation to have. You can order your own copy online, at your local bookstore, at Battenkill, through their website, or by calling them at 518 677-2515. We’ll see what wears out first, Connie, Kate and Marilyn or my wrists (Maria’s too, she is shocked at all of the books she has to sign, not all that gracious about it, either). This is a wild book tour, I am beginning to have fun.
I’ve lived in more than 20 different places in my life – New York City several times, Washington, Boston, Cambridge, Mass., Philadelphia, Dallas, New Jersey – and it is a wonder and a joy to come to a place in life where I can say with certainty that I have moved my last. Barring something I cannot yet foresee, I have made my last move, I have come home, I have landed, out of the desert and into the life I was destined to live.
Cambridge is not a perfect place. It has the same troubles much of America, much of the world has – poverty, conflict, the confusion of rural life, the clash between newcomers and old-timers. It is not paradise, any more than a farm brings the perfect life. It is just that I have learned this about moving:
-Nirvana is a fantasy, not a real place. When I move, I bring my life and all of it’s troubles and shortcomings with me, no matter how green, no matter how pretty, no matter how remote. At some point, I learned in life that I must come to terms with who I am right where I am standing, with my face in the mirror wherever it is. I can move my physical body, change the view, but my troubled soul cannot move and is not cleansed by a change of scenery.
– Whenever I move, I become a refugee, just in a different place. Moves tear up connection, disconnect me from family, community, isolated me from the past. They bring great stress and confusion, they tear up the universe.
– Moves have brought me rebirth, renewal, opportunity. They brought me things to write about, they brought me love, and finally, to the beginnings of community. They are signposts on the hero journey, I have learned to be careful about them, they can bring darkness as well as light, even in the most beautiful places.
So finally, the prophet lands, the pilgrim on the journey stakes his piece of land, makes his claim to home. I am done with moving, this is my stand, my truth, my community. For the first time, I know I cannot just pull up and run, go elsewhere to hide, there are no more fortresses or moats to protect me from my world. I make friendships here or nowhere, find my community here or do not find one, make my home or remain a wanderer, doomed to stand outside of the glass looking in for all of my life.
So life is mysterious and wonderful, I am sometimes the mystic wandering in the fields, I have blown like a weed all the way here, and taken seed. Cambridge is my home now, I have planted my flag and taken root. I will be here long enough to know the place, and for the place to know me. And finally, there is so much peace in that. I am done with this rootlessness, this searching, this quest. I am here now.
When Frieda and I were alone together in that cold and drafty barn that dark year, I would toss beef jerky at her, and look at her – she always looks at me very intensely when I speak with her, as above, she always seems to be trying to understand me – and I would say “how far can we go, girl? How much should I want from you? How much should I ask from you?” I never really got an answer, in my mind or from her, we just kept going until it came together for us. Perhaps there is no real answer.
I was thinking of this last night, as I enter a new and different phase of my book tour for “Second Chance Dog: A Love Story.” The first phase has been great – 2nd printing, lots of pre-orders, strong reviews, sold sold interviews. I’ve never really seen the blog as a place to sell things, I always felt if the blog was good and honest and helpful, people could figure out how to buy my books. But the recession changed all of that, and writers like me had to scramble to survive, or not, and those of us that have survived so far are still scrambling, and perhaps will always be. Just like you. At one time, you and I thought I was different, I am learning all of the time that this is not so. We are the same, the recession brought me that gift of understanding.
I chatted with Frieda this morning, reminded her of those talks and I am putting together this new kind of book tour day by day, so far it is working better than I thought it might. I have a good sweet story to tell, and I am going to shout that from the rooftops as we approach Plaid Friday, as we all come together to roar our support for Battenkill Books, a wonderful bookstore, as we move into the Christmas shopping season (“Second Chance Dog: A Love Story” ends with a chapter called “The Christmas Miracle”). I feel the wind at my back here, but publishing is a rough game, unpredictable and fickle and ruthless sometimes. I love it and fear it. I’m still chasing “101 Dog Tricks” on Amazon, the book has nearly 400 five star reviews.
I am not good at asking for things, it was a Ted Talk by a musician that inspired me to move the blog to a subscription format and accept payment for my work. It took me years to do that, but the good and honest people out there responded much more quickly than that. It was not a big deal for them, most were ahead of me.
Someone e-mailed me last night, urged me to keep going, to set goals and fight for them, and this was good advice, it shored me up. I am offering videos, podcasts, photos, blogs, talks on Facebook, give-a-ways of books, photos, dog food.
And what do I want? How far should I go? What am I asking for? Good to be precise, I do not want to be coy or manipulative. Nobody needs to do what I ask, but I need to be clear about what I want.
– I want to make a big bang in publishing with my new book tour, I want to send a message to writers and readers that new technology does not mean the end of books and writing, it marks a new beginning, we can use this new machinery to take responsibility of our creative lives and control our work and be paid for it. I want to have a successful books and show that books are relevant still and I can be relevant as a writer and blogger.
– I want to sell at least 1,000 books at Battenkill in the next week, it is a symbol for me not only of a good bookstore, but of our universal fight for individuality, freedom from total corporate control of our lives. It speaks to the survival of community, a desperately important issue. Many of you have told me how wonderful it is to call Battenkill, how good it feels. That is precious, it needs to be kept alive, Wal-Mart and Amazon will never do that. And after 1,000 books, I want to sell more books there and help them have the best year ever and turn every writer’s head about the future. www.battenkillbooks.com or 518 677-2515.
– I want the book to go into a third printing. And then I want to sell a ton for Plaid Friday, an increasingly important holiday for creative people who buy local, value small businesses and their importance, and celebrate the right of individuals to work for themselves.
– I wouldn’t mind hitting the New York Times Bestseller list, it isn’t all that important to most people, but publishers care about it.
– I would like to position “Second Chance Dog” as a great Christmas gift for people who love animals, who love love, who believe in second chances, happy endings, hope and encouragement. I am thinking gifts to dog and cat loves, gifts to Plaid Friday shoppers, gifts to friend and family for Christmas. I see “Second Chance Dog” as a virus that may just go viral. (And I have a Ted Talk popping up somewhere in there.)
This seems to me to be a lot to ask for, especially when there is really only one blog and the community surrounding it to do all of these things, yet I feel it is all possible, if not necessarily easy or even likely. And I think – I really believe this – that people who read this book take hope and comfort from it, and that is a precious thing in our world. Maybe I am underestimating myself, the last few years in publishing have beat me up a bit, and sometimes I have to shore myself up, this is pretty much my show. Sometimes all of you do that for me with your kind letters and messages. So those of you who are with me on this, here we go into the next phase, those of you who are not up for it, can’t do it, or don’t want to do it, you are, of course welcome to sit back and watch the show. I guarantee you it will not be dull. Thanks to all of you.
