Category Archives: The Orphanmaster

Bank Square Books in Mystic, Connecticut bills itself as a “locally owned and fiercely independent book store” and as soon as I arrived I understood the truth of this description. Mystic is undergoing upheaval as its main thoroughfare gets chopped up and repaved to accommodate sunken power lines. The place is a mess and the worst of it is that many of the local stores find themselves cut off from customers day after day during this the peak of the summer season. Nautical-themed polo shirts and scrimshaw knick knacks, off limits, unless you want to clamber over unpaved sidewalk areas to get inside a shop.

I visited Bank Square to present about The Orphanmaster and heard that, just the previous day, there had been literally no access to the store. A pit marked the front entrance and a pile of debris the back door. Still, as a testament to Americans’ — even vacationing Americans’ —  love of bound books, the place was thrumming with activity. In cases representing every genre, literary fiction, mysteries, history, biography, poetry, you name it, readers were handling books, perusing them, taking them over to the cash register and paying good money for them.

Given the publishing industry’s concerns about book buying, the national economy and the physical upheaval in Mystic, owners Annie and Patience at Bank Square are fierce indeed.

A blast. It was just great at Barnes & Noble looking into that sea of curious faces, so nice, as I put up the pictures of maps and muffs. So very nice. I am going to eliminate nice from my vocabulary, it doesn’t do things justice. Either that or I am going to make more use of nice, as it describes most everything.

We partied afterward at The Dublin House on 79th Street, and raised an O’Douls — at least I did — to all the great (nice) people who have been supportive as The Orphanmaster came into being. I am grateful.

The bartender at the pub was not nice, he was grouchy, and he made me appreciate now nice grouchy can be sometimes.

Now on to a panoply of radio interviews (today), Connecticut and New York events, Arizona and then the great unwashed of the Midwest. Having weathered the distracting beauty of the West Coast, I am ready for this next chapter.

Yikes! I’m in Logan Airport and haven’t even had my morning coffee yet. I go to BookLink and there is The Orphanmaster prominently displayed at the front of the store. I say to the clerk, I’m the author of one of your books, would you like me to sign them? Which one, she says? I tell her. Oh, good, we’ve had a lot of people coming in and asking for that! Really? Yes!

Weee! I don’t need coffee now.

Signed books at seven Boston-area stores today, then presented at Gibson’s just over the New Hampshire line. I like seeing stacks of The Orphanmaster at the front of the store! And some stores had smaller stacks of Love, Fiercely, which I was also glad of. Someone asked a question after my slide show, not the first time: when does the research stop and the writing begin? The answer, for me, is that all those details and facts are so important in conveying the texture of place and time that I could never stop researching and begin writing. The two will always go hand in hand.

Thunder peals over the Boston Public Garden, the nation’s oldest, where I walked earlier this evening, admiring the late June roses half shattered to the ground. Tomorrow morning I get to talk with a TV book host named Smoki Bacon; apparently the show is syndicated in a dozen markets.

In the evening, at 7 pm, I will be at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, NH.

A long haul from San Francisco to Boston, which I spent reading Gone Girl, the tasty thriller that came out a bit before my novel.

Shout out to Book Passage in Marin, the most civilized and dapper of independent book stores. It really has class, and I thoroughly enjoyed putting my slide show through its paces. I haven’t done any reading from The Orphanmaster, just blathering about it, but I think I am going to start. Tell me, would you rather hear an author read, or spiel, or some combination of both?

Important news from The New York Times, but I’m going to wait a few days to tell it. Ha!

The Lagoon Bridge in the Public Garden

My feet are dead from running from store to store, my right hand is numb from signing books — something no author should never ever complain about. My trip started in Seattle, then continued to Los Angeles. Driving to various bookstores, crisscrossing the city in the parking lots they call freeways — almost missed my stop, Vroman’s, a really nice bookstore where I laid out my slide show for an audience that I think liked it. I indulge myself a little, talking about the fur trade, a world built on beaver and other fur goods like the hand muff, topics that fascinate me and that inspired the writing of The Orphanmaster. Then it was off to Anaheim for the American Library Association convention, which had hordes of avid, pleasant librarians standing in line to receive copies of new books, including mine. Do not get between a librarian and her historical fiction. I am now ensconced in a spiffy San Francisco hotel on Geary Street, conking out before more bookstore stock signings and another presentation at a store, Book Passage, tomorrow.

I heard my publishing escort Eileen murmur something as we rounded a corner among the tall gray buildings under the tall gray Seattle sky (with a little sun twinkling in, to be honest). What are you saying, I asked her. Jesus Christ made Seattle under pressure, she said. Oh, I didn’t know that. Turns out to be a mnemonic for getting around downtown: the names of the twelve streets in the heart of the central business district are paired by their first letters, from south to north, as follows: Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion,Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike, Pine. So it’s hard to get lost, though you can easily roll down the hill to the water.

We headed for University, where she left me to take a mocha and a nap before Elliott Bay tonight. Seven o’clock, for those of you still on the fence.

It turns out you have to wear a jacket here, and summer has already started! I will wear mine for the reading.

Had a fun time today doing a taped radio show called the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library. I am told it is not just for the blind, and I will announce when it is available for listening.